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Comment by genuineresponse | Hacker News Reader

Covid is a serious illness. It can cause a wide range of effects from death, to myocarditis, to immune system resets, to long covid, to permanent scarring on the lungs, mood disorders, embolisms, and permanently reduced mental capacity.

Covid is not a tail risk.

Additionally, by not getting a vaccine, you potentially put people at risk who cannot get a vaccine -- immunocompromised folks, etc. Vaccinating your child also protects everyone in their communities.

Choosing not to vaccinate because you want to limit the number for no expressed reason is vaccine hesitancy. You have expressed a position of vaccine hesitancy here.

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You are incorrect and are harming public trust in vaccination with your comments.

COVID-19 vaccines are no longer indicated for most healthy children (or most healthy young adults) in most jurisdictions as the risk benefit analysis no longer supports it.

In healthy children the chances of any of that happening are effectively 0, and while vaccine injuries and significant side effects are rare in their case it might actually be more likely. That’s why very few countries other than the US ever vaccinated healthy children, especially post-pandemic.

Almost literally everyone has and will continue to get COVID at this point. Not vaccinating your child, or all of the children in the US, won’t prevent that. I don’t know a single person that hasn’t had it, vaccinated or not. So, your child gets the vaccine. They’re then, what, maybe 50% less likely to get COVID for 6 months? Not exactly moving the needle as far as community transmission goes. This isn’t 2021 anymore.

If we had a better, longer lasting vaccine you might have an argument. Very, very few parents are going to do the COVID vaccine for their child every year. At the very least you’re risking them picking up something more serious just by going to a clinic or pharmacy to get it.

I don't know that I've had covid. My SO had it twice during the pandemic and i was testing myself daily but never tested positive. I like to joke that I'm immune. Of course I also had the vaccine but I understand that I should still get the disease, just less severe.

Anyway I haven't tested since the pandemic so I wouldn't have known if I'd had it afterwards.

Did you do self-tests?

I've been exposed three times (twice by my SO) and only tested positive once, but I had symptoms both other times as well.

All my tests for those were done at home and I wouldn't take "I did it wrong" out of my equation.

Yeah, did self-tests and have thought the same. I definitely followed the instructions and my SO is a nurse so she knew how to do it, but who knows. I also had some very mild symptoms at least one of the times.

Could be something like our viral load wasn't high enough to register on the test, maybe our immune systems just dealt well with covid.

Considering the response to the subject this is probably a bit risky, but I also like to joke that I'm immune.

Except I like to claim it's because of an intentional approach

https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Low_Dose,_Frequent_Exposure

Not very likely, but amusing nonetheless.

you were testing daily???

While my partner was sick, not every day of the pandemic. So every day for about ~two weeks.

Also tested whenever I felt unwell during the pandemic.

Some people are far more likely to clear it so quickly they don't test positive: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/jun/immune-response-study-ex...

Judging by how badly I got COVID (twice) and how I tend to get every single cold my daughters bring back home, I'm pretty sure that gene is running in reverse for me.

Covid was literally 10x more dangerous than the vaccine for those without comorbidities, but it's played out now. The vaccine is about as effective as a flu jab.

This seems like a bad way to phrase it. The vaccine is certainly a lot (many orders of magnitude) less dangerous than just 0.1x as dangerous as COVID. Maybe you wanted to say that the risks from COVID are only 10x more without vaccination than with it due to limited effectiveness of the vaccine?

yeah the 10x was just myocarditis.

I've discounted the other effects as they were generally associated with comorbidities (lung scaring was a % of hospitalized people).

I've also discounted long-covid because of comorbidities, self-reporting bias, nocebo effective, and depression/anxiety overlap. Yes I know its still real, but the true rates are difficult to know.

Edit: I should have factored clotting as well

Myocarditis from the is usually mild while myocarditis from COVID may have worse outcomes. And for myocarditis, the 10x would apply only for a specific age group and males, and not overall.

friend of mine (early 20s) got his atp production severely damaged (not annihilated but way less than normal).

he can't really use stairs, or walk a long time, etc. he sleeps a lot, and basically can't be active for a long time anymore. his reaction time also worsened apparently (used to be ridiculously fast).

hospital folks (in 2 different countries) directly linked it to the vaccine.

so yeah it's rare but it can get really bad...

I wonder why they blamed the vaccine?

unfortunately i don't know.

>Additionally, by not getting a vaccine, you potentially put people at risk who cannot get a vaccine -- immunocompromised folks, etc. Vaccinating your child also protects everyone in their communities.

No. You probably thinking some other vaccine and infection, not covid. For covid once infected, vaccinated people express similar number of virus in their saliva as unvaccinated (see for example [1]). Additionally, infected vaccinated people have lower intensity symptoms or now symptoms at all, and thus more likely to go about their business as usual (and thus spread the virus) than to stay home like unvaccinated. As a result the vaccinated people do possibly spread more infection than unvaccinated. The obviously propagandistic and using government force push "do it for the good of the community" (very USSR style) for covid vaccinations against the science - as those results were already known at the end of 2021 - drove a lot of new people into vaccine-sceptic crowd.

[1] https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim...

"new study from the University of California, Davis, Genome Center, UC San Francisco and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub shows no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who tested positive for the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. It also found no significant difference between infected people with or without symptoms.

...

Although vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection are much less likely to become severely ill than unvaccinated, the new study shows that they can be carrying similar amounts of virus and could potentially spread the virus to other people."

> For covid once infected ... and thus more likely to go about their business as usual (and thus spread the virus) than to stay home like unvaccinated.

> As a result the vaccinated people do possibly spread more infection than unvaccinated.

You are using a subset of the groups to argue around the entire groups.

If the entire (much larger) group of vaccinated got infected at a rate of unvaccinated, your argument would hold, but they don't and it doesn't.

>If the entire (much larger) group of vaccinated got infected at a rate of unvaccinated, your argument would hold, but they don't and it doesn't.

they do. Covid vaccine doesn't significantly decrease infection rate [1] (that, if you think a bit about how immune system works and how covid infects, in particular is why viral load is the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated). The vaccine only softens, a lot, the symptoms.

Thus widely vaccinating healthy people, we do increase threat to immunosuppressed and the likes.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/28/covid-vaccinat...

"The results suggest even those who are fully vaccinated have a sizeable risk of becoming infected, with analysis revealing a fully vaccinated contact has a 25% chance of catching the virus from an infected household member while an unvaccinated contact has a 38% chance of becoming infected."

[2] https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/11/02/covid-flu-vaccine-e...

"Why do some vaccines (polio, measles) prevent diseases, while others (COVID-19, flu) only reduce their severity?"

> they do. Covid vaccine doesn't significantly decrease infection rate [1] (that, if you think a bit about how immune system works and how covid infects, in particular is why viral load is the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated). The vaccine only softens, a lot, the symptoms.

No they don't.

> "The results suggest even those who are fully vaccinated have a sizeable risk of becoming infected, with analysis revealing a fully vaccinated contact has a 25% chance of catching the virus from an infected household member while an unvaccinated contact has a 38% chance of becoming infected."

A couple of points here:

1) 25% vs 38% is an enormous difference in compounding risk of transmission across populations.

2) Accepting the premise that viral load at peak is the same, multiple studies still show that vaccinations reduce duration of shedding and transmissibility. [1]

> Thus widely vaccinating healthy people, we do increase threat to immunosuppressed and the likes.

This is simply wrong based on above in both first and second order effects. On top of that, having fewer/less severe reactions in otherwise healthy people leaves more healthcare resources for immunosuppressed.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9499220/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.10.22269010v...

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/monitoring-reports-of-the-effect...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8992250/

>1) 25% vs 38% is an enormous difference in compounding risk of transmission across populations.

there is no compounding in a wide spread infection like Covid where you're guaranteed to meet a carrier several times a day, and thus there is no practical difference between 25% and 38%. You'll get it either way - say you meet 10 carriers, each time probability 25% or 38% (or even if were just 5% and 10%) - the end result is indistinguishably similar. And you meet carriers every day. So if not today, then tomorrow.

>2) Accepting the premise that viral load at peak is the same, multiple studies still show that vaccinations reduce duration of shedding and transmissibility. [1]

yep. Unvaccinated is sitting at home, feeling ill, shedding, yet not transmitting. While vaccinated is out and about, no symptoms, shedding and happily transmitting to everybody around during that "reduced duration".

>On top of that, having fewer/less severe reactions in otherwise healthy people leaves more healthcare resources for immunosuppressed.

That is another propagandistic BS. I've been to ER in the summer 2020 for a non-covid related issue - it was empty.

> there is no compounding in wide spread infection where you're guaranteed to meet a carrier several times a day, and thus there is no practical difference between 25% and 38%. You'll get it either way - say you meet 10 carriers, each time probability 25% or 38% - the end result is indistinguishably similar.

Is your argument: "I can come up with a scenario where the real-world-measured statistics are not relevant?"

> yep. Unvaccinated is sitting at home, feeling ill, shedding, yet not transmitting. While vaccinated is out and about, no symptoms, shedding and transmitting during that "reduced duration".

You're making up scenarios not reflected in real-world data.

> That is another propagandistic BS. I've been to ER in the summer 2020 for a non-covid related issue - it was empty.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.16.20248366v...

https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/112217/cdc_112217_DS1.pdf

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7046a5.htm

Like the flu (the real flu). Viruses are always dangerous and carry a risk of long term neurological issues, always.

He did all the mandatory vaccines, the rest is a tail risk. Unless you vaccinate yourself against the flu and your children for both flu and COVID, I don't think you have any leg to stand on.

I vaccinate against flu and Covid, and vaccinate my child against flu and Covid.

The probability of COVID causing injury to your child is basically zero

Science disagrees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45721179

Everything you listed are tail risks of COVID, even in individuals with comorbidities, and are far more characteristic of the early strains than what’s circulating today. The only exception in your list of side effects is myocarditis, which is also a side effect of the COVID vaccine. Furthermore, the vaccine’s target population is individuals over 65 years old, immunocompromised individuals, obese individuals… not newborns or infants.

Alarmism, militant shaming, and omission of details like the ones I mentioned above are three strategies that steer vaccine hesitant people away from taking vaccine advocates seriously. Personally, I would raise concerns about anything but COVID and ease up on the Newspeak.

Except long term effects from COVID are not fully understood yet, especially in children. Feels like unnecessary gambling to me.

> Except long term effects from COVID are not fully understood yet, especially in children.

Most European countries don't offer vaccines for under 18's unless there's a very specific reason. Some don't offer the vaccine for general public except for vulnerable groups. Why? All medical interventions carry a risk and there is always a threshold where that risk outweighs any potential benefit. This is what sensible public health policy looks like.

> All medical interventions carry a risk and there is always a threshold where that risk outweighs any potential benefit.

Neither Germany nor France nor the UK advise against vaccinating children against COVID. The Germans explicitly say that the absence of a recommendation to vaccinate is only because children have relatively mild cases and safety or risk concerns are no factor.

Go look up long term effects from COVID in children. Everything I find says children are at risk for long COVID just like adults, and the effects and risks are not understood yet. Then tell me you won't vaccinate your child. (Or yourself, for that matter.)

Studies disagree with you. Children are absolutely at risk for a wide range of increased impacts from the disease:

Children have increased likelihood of anxiety, communication disorders, and other developmental mental health issues: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12290120/

In studies of children and adolescents, it has caused increased likelihood of fatigue, anxiety, and various other symptoms: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11339705/

Children are at significant risk of ongoing complications: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article-abstract/80/6/1247/8002...

Cardiovascular risk is demonstrably elevated post infection: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11992182/

Increased risk of kidney malfunction: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11992607/

But aside from usual "studies show" skepticism:

- Ho much does this apply to the weaker strains that are still circulating today?

- To what extent does vaccination prevent any of these issues?

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