> The studies did not evaluate rates of less-severe illness or debilitating ‘long COVID’ symptoms that can linger months after the acute phase of the infection has past. “The low rate of severe acute disease is important news, but this does not have to mean that COVID does not matter to children,” says paediatrician Danilo Buonsenso at the Gemelli University Hospital in Rome. “Please, let’s keep attention — as much as is feasible — on immunization.”
Death is not the only bad outcome to be avoided.
> The reason the vaccines aren't being approved for children is that there is compelling evidence that children are at greater risk from the vaccines than the virus.
A Nature article [0] says:
> Most of those affected have recovered, and the data suggest that the risk of these conditions is “extremely low”, says paediatrician David Pace at the University of Malta in Msida — about 67 cases per million second doses in adolescent males aged 12–17, and 9 per million in adolescent females in the same age group.
There are ~48 million kids under 12 in the US. Assuming they are evenly split between male and female, that would mean 1,824 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis if 100% of them were vaccinated. Given that nowhere near 100% of children have been exposed to COVID and yet 340 have died, I don't see clear evidence here that the vaccine is more risky than not being vaccinated.
> Death is not the only bad outcome to be avoided.
And this is yet another illustration of the point I was making about fear, uncertainty and doubt: the Nature article didn't say that there is proof that children will have "long Covid"...it says that these particular studies didn't address the question.
By this standard, anyone can make up any speculation of something that might happen to children someday, and we'll use that speculation to demand fearful responses, indefinitely. There is no end to this logic.
Fortunately, the well-controlled evidence is increasingly pointing to the conclusion that "long Covid" is not a serious risk to children -- and that, more generally, Covid appears to be similar to other viral infections in terms of long-term symptoms:
Again, lots of hysterical speculation in this area, not much good data. But the better the data gets, the less legitimate the early, speculative claims appear.
> There are ~48 million kids under 12 in the US. Assuming they are evenly split between male and female, that would mean 1,824 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis if 100% of them were vaccinated.
The myocarditis issue disproportionately affects young boys. Your calculation is incorrect.
> Given that nowhere near 100% of children have been exposed to COVID and yet 340 have died, I don't see clear evidence here that the vaccine is more risky than not being vaccinated.
Be that as it may, the UK and about half of the EU countries disagree with your assessment, including a number of experts here in the US, as well:
> By this standard, anyone can make up any speculation of something that might happen to children someday, and we'll use that speculation to demand fearful responses, indefinitely.
You are also speculating, but simply about different things. You're speculating about harm from the vaccine, or about infection that don't happen. One way to avoid going down that speculation rabbithole is to defer to experts whose job it is to weigh the pros and cons and crunch the numbers.
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends vaccinating all children ages 12 and older who are eligible for the federally authorized COVID-19 vaccine."
"Yes. Experts, including those at Johns Hopkins, believe that the benefits of being vaccinated for COVID-19 outweigh the risks. Although COVID-19 in children is usually milder than in adults, some kids can get very sick and have complications or long-lasting symptoms that affect their health and well-being. The virus can cause death in children although this is rarer than for adults."
> The myocarditis issue disproportionately affects young boys. Your calculation is incorrect.
I took that into account when calculating.
> including a number of experts here in the US
At national scale, you can find experts that will tell you anything. The consensus opinion of the major US health authorities is that the vaccine is a net benefit for children.
> You are also speculating, but simply about different things. You're speculating about harm from the vaccine,
No, I've provided evidence of that. It's not speculation: young boys are seeing disproportionate levels of vaccine-induced myocarditis
> One way to avoid going down that speculation rabbithole is to defer to experts whose job it is to weigh the pros and cons and crunch the numbers
Indeed, that's all I've done here.
> "The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends vaccinating all children ages 12 and older who are eligible for the federally authorized COVID-19 vaccine."
We're talking about kids under 12.
> "CDC recommends everyone 12 years and older should get a COVID-19 vaccination to help protect against COVID-19."
We're talking about kids under 12.
> Experts, including those at Johns Hopkins, believe that the benefits of being vaccinated for COVID-19 outweigh the risks.
And other experts disagree with those experts (the ones I linked to, above). Now what?
That's the problem with blind appeals to authority...you can always find another authority. I'm getting pretty tired of seeing news reporters credulously using the phrase "experts say", and applying no critical thought to what they're actually saying.
In this case, you can find legitimate "experts" on both sides of the debate, and both deserve to be heard.
Here you say listen to both arguments, which seems right. Above your tone was ‘don’t vax kids because the UK and half of Europe say not to’ which does make one wonder, ‘what about the other half?’
The UK is often on the wrong side of health vs. quackery, in recent decades originating then spreading more ‘expert’ FUD to set back global disease eradication than perhaps any other first world country. That doesn’t mean the UK is mistaken now, but it does indeed suggest a more careful and less credulous deconstruction of “the UK’s” balance of belief.
> Above your tone was ‘don’t vax kids because the UK and half of Europe say not to’ which does make one wonder, ‘what about the other half?’
I don't think that was my tone, but interpretation is up to the reader, I guess.
An accurate, concise statement of my opinion is that the vaccines should probably not be approved for kids under 12 at this time, and that this does not meaningfully affect our ability to get past the current hysteria, which we should be doing with great haste.
I agree there is a lot of hysterical speculation, around everything from the initial high death rates to the supposed benefits of HCQ. And slowly we have need to attempt to re-evaluate the data, when it is possible. I really wonder how we could get that data more accurately in the future, without all of the inherent privacy implications and dangers from collecting it.
The article also mentions that most of those myocarditis have already recovered while none of those dead came back to life (I am assuming so anyways). Since I see you post to COVID questions often, what would you consider to be "more risky?" It is clear teens are on the low end of personal risk from COVID, but they also put others at increased risk of complications, such as their parents, in addition to their own mild risks.
> Since I see you post to COVID questions often, what would you consider to be "more risky?" It is clear teens are on the low end of personal risk from COVID, but they also put others at increased risk of complications, such as their parents, in addition to their own mild risks.
This depends so heavily on personal circumstance that all I can say is "consult with your doctor". There are kids for whom the tradeoff is obviously in favor of getting the vaccine, and others for whom it isn't.
From a high-level perspective, I tend to agree with the logic outlined here (same link as in previous comment):
Yes, PCP involvement is wise. Reading deep into that link, I notice it says their advice (for 1 dose) is predicated specifically on the drop in infectivity rates in June, implying that that the more virulent delta strain that began circulating shortly after publication meant we should vaccine all eligible teens with 2 doses now. I think that is too strong perhaps, but I am not too certain what we know about it. Even most of the counter-example countries have changed their position (Germany today, Israel before the article, their link Netherlands for seems to have actually said teens should be vaccinated as soon as doses were available). Do you agree with that assessment of the link?
Having a personal experience with this, I now strongly suspect that we have a severe gap in data collection, and failures of the medical system where I'm at to properly capture side effects. This might be in part because of medical professional cultural hesitancy to attribute effects to vaccination. The bucketing of symptoms may also affect this, not all heart related side effects are myocarditis, but that's what everyone is looking at.
In my case, with no prior history of any heart conditions, I experienced a racing heartbeat, crushing chest pain and pain that radiated from my chest to my head beginning 2-3 days after the vaccination. Doctors I saw were generally skeptical that this could be caused by the vaccine; their first instinct was to discount any possibility that it might be vaccine related.
I'm now significantly more distrustful of public vaccination campaigns for covid-19, and the side effect data for such. There seems to be a strong incentive, or some underlying cultural bias to underreport this.
> The studies did not evaluate rates of less-severe illness or debilitating ‘long COVID’ symptoms that can linger months after the acute phase of the infection has past. “The low rate of severe acute disease is important news, but this does not have to mean that COVID does not matter to children,” says paediatrician Danilo Buonsenso at the Gemelli University Hospital in Rome. “Please, let’s keep attention — as much as is feasible — on immunization.”
Death is not the only bad outcome to be avoided.
> The reason the vaccines aren't being approved for children is that there is compelling evidence that children are at greater risk from the vaccines than the virus.
A Nature article [0] says:
> Most of those affected have recovered, and the data suggest that the risk of these conditions is “extremely low”, says paediatrician David Pace at the University of Malta in Msida — about 67 cases per million second doses in adolescent males aged 12–17, and 9 per million in adolescent females in the same age group.
There are ~48 million kids under 12 in the US. Assuming they are evenly split between male and female, that would mean 1,824 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis if 100% of them were vaccinated. Given that nowhere near 100% of children have been exposed to COVID and yet 340 have died, I don't see clear evidence here that the vaccine is more risky than not being vaccinated.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01898-9