FDA Authorizes Covid-19 Vaccines for Children Down to 6 Months of Age | Hacker News Reader

FDA Authorizes Covid-19 Vaccines for Children Down to 6 Months of Age

fda.gov

12 pointsYeBanKo8 comments

Interesting to see this. Some European countries are beginning to question the need to vaccinate young children given the statistical characteristics.

How many 6 month old children died of Covid?

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-...

0-4 years 442 out of 20 million. Lets vaccinate them all because there is 0.00221% chance of death. Btw a chance to be electrocuted by lightning are 0.006536%

> Lets vaccinate them all

These are not mandatory vaccines. They are merely approved. People can get them if they want them for their child.

> Btw a chance to be electrocuted by lightning are 0.006536%

That doesn't seem to be anywhere close to the odds of getting struck by lightning, much less dying from a strike, as reported by the CDC and NWS.

https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-odds

https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html

For example, there were only 444 total deaths from 2006 to 2021 due to lightning strikes. That doesn't even take into account the odds for certain age brackets.

The surface area for COVID infections and lightning strikes are two completely different things and shouldn't even be compared, even if you use accurate numbers. And last I checked, lightning strikes that are at all visible on the horizon during events, especially events concerning children, are taken very seriously.

I'm curious how the benefit-risk assessment for this approval works since both the benefits and risks of the vaccine appear to be negligible in this age group.

Sure it produces antibodies. It's good that it's "sort of effective" for a few months after the second dose (numbers like 50% and 30% effective over a very short follow-up period ie not very). We're told it reduces risk of severe disease and that's plausible but I don't see any indication that was actually measured for this age group (or at least, they didn't mention those results in the announcement).

So, why?

Sure, like covid vaccines were never mandatory.

You just had to do 3 tests per day and couldn't travel or go to school or hold your job without it.

My biggest concern for children is the potential for long covid. New studies suggest a possible correlation between severe infection and long covid (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00072-1). If the vaccine can reduce the likelihood of a severe infection, thus reducing the likelihood of long covid, then I'll take my chances and vaccinate my kids. Long covid aside, I'd still vaccinate my children if it could potentially reduce the severity of an infection. I'm not worried about my kids dying from the seasonal flu, but we still vaccinate them to prevent a severe infection.

Why did they wait so long? This is a great way for the pharma giants to generate revenue. Monetizing the 6 month old demographic will really push those profit margins.

It's better to be slow and gradual and capture the majority of the market rather than jump at people immediately with "vaccinate your 6 months old or your grandma dies"

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