Yes. As to the original question, I don’t see how a worldwide health crisis with its concurrent information storm could possibly harm the health conspiracy community.
@GIGObuster, specific to this thread, you are being quite blind to the magnitudes of difference between older symptomatic children potentially being as contagious as adults in close household contact situations, and how children, especially younger children, exceptionally efficient transmitters of influenza, are the huge drivers of spread of influenza through communities, far beyond the spread impact of adults who get sick.
The point remains that despite clear evidence of children significantly driving influenza spread, childhood influenza campaigns would be no-go if there was not also solid evidence of significant benefit greater than risk to children themselves. The latter is required.
No, I am saying that it is as specifically relevant as you demanding detailed answers to every possibility that you can imagine.
“Well, what about this?” is a game that can be played forever, and ceases to be productive fewer iterations than we have already gone.
I’m not sure how you get this, but I see first line workers and at risk populations as being the most important in getting the vaccine as soon as it is deemed safe.
Wtf? Where am I demanding detailed answers? I am just saying that a rushed vaccine definitely has risks once it goes out for the full population. It would be unethical to give children a vaccine that puts THEM at greater risk than the disease. You don’t get to say “greater good”, at least doctors don’t.
Like if I had not reported before that I agree that kids up to elementary school should be allowed to go back to school; provided that other issues like testing are ready for the levels needed to open the schools.
It looks like it is likely that the vaccine for covid-19 should be available first to medical workers first, then teachers and older students and then, after safety has been established more, to younger kids.
I didn’t say it didn’t benefit the children, I’m just saying that they are not the primary beneficiaries of it.
Just like the polio vaccine being widely distributed was not meant to just keep your kid from getting polio, this is also intended to benefit the public health, as much or more than the individual.
You don’t get the disease, and neither do your fellow human beings. Sounds like a good deal to me.
You want to put kids as third in line for getting vaccinated, rather than first, I agree.
Even if we “get” the vaccine from China, we are still going to do our own testing on it to make sure that it’s not actually melamine and arsenic. I don’t know, can we trust out own FDA to test a vaccine? I hope so, I think so.
If the FDA and the consensus of doctors stand behind it, then I would say that not vaccinating children would be the irresponsible action. Of course if the FDA questions it, or if a significant contingent of respectable doctors disagree with the FDA, then I would absolutely agree with hesitating with continuing distribution.
In what way, specifically, are you imagining that the vaccine is worse than the disease?
Moderator Note
If you get “a little pissed” maybe step away from the keyboard for a bit before responding. This isn’t the Pit. Please post appropriately.
So now, you’re the one asking for detailed answers? I’m not a doctor but I know there’s a reason vaccines still have to go through safety trials. You must know that too. The problem seems to be, you’re judging some yet unknown rushed through trials vaccine with the vaccines that already went through those trials and have been in general use for decades. Yes, the latter are safe.
Just to clarify - it is very easy to imagine serious adverse to fatal immunization events that occur at rates greater than those of the disease in low risk populations that only show during post-marketing surveillance. It is why post-marketing surveillance is done.
Children would directly benefit from the vaccine very little; even rare adverse events might offset any direct benefit to them. It is not at all clear that others would benefit much from them being vaccinated (other than psychologically) and promoting vaccination for that without clear benefit to the children themselves would be, should be, a tough sell.
Assuming that at some point it is approved and promoted for children @RealityCheck71’s what-if would be a concern. The first serious adverse event in a child associated with vaccine administration, even if later determined to be not actually greater than chance, WILL be huge ammunition for the anti-vaxxers, for the anti-science/experts in general. That is a given. And if it turns out to be real when it happens? Hoo boy. There can be no sense, no perception, that the process was rushed and corners cut before approval (maybe to lower teachers’ anxiety) in a low risk population.
No, I am asking you to make your questions specific. give a concern, and a valid reason for that concern.
This, “what if it’s worse than the disease” is vague and unproductive.
In what way are you saying that you think it may be worse than the disease?
Did I say that they should not go through safety trials? No, I very specifically did not, in fact, I said the opposite. So for you to smugly say “there’s a reason vaccines still have to go through safety trials.” is to entirely ignore everything that I have said, and instead make up something else to which to respond.
Given that I have specifically said that I would be very hesitant to use a vaccine that did not muster FDA acceptance, or was objected to by a significant number of respected doctors, what is the specific scenario that you are envisioning in which the vaccine is worse than the disease?
Without you defining what problems you foresee, it is impossible for others to respond with their thoughts or opinions on the matter.
I really don’t think that it will bolster the numbers of anti-vaxxers if predicable side effects occur.
It may make them more hysterical, but I don’t think it would convince anyone who is not already convinced.
I really don’t think that the science is in that children are immune to this. Sure, lower chances of serious complications, but lower is not zero.
If only 1 in 1000 children get seriously sick from Covid (optimistic), and as much as one in 10,000 children have an adverse reaction to the vaccine (pessimistic), it is still obviously a benifit to the children, as well as the community.
If we rush a vaccine to where it has worse than 1 in 10000 chance of adverse reaction, then we shouldn’t use it, or use it very sparingly among those at greatest risk. If it’s better than that, or is close to the 1 in a million that modern vaccines have, then use the hell out of it.
There will always be anecdotes that those who are against progress can use to hold it up. No matter how safe we make it, there will be adverse reactions. With the number to be done, statistically, some distracted nurse could stab the kid in the eye by accident, rather than jab them in the arm. Some hypodermic needles may be improperly stored and be contaminated.
But, that’s always going to be the case, and antivaxxers will always hold up any anecdote, no matter how statistically insignificant, as proof that vaccines are harmful. Those on the pro-vax side can only point to what didn’t happen, point to the people who didn’t get sick or die.
Point is, anti-vaxxers are not rational, and there is no way to make them happy or to meet their demands. I’m certainly not saying they shouldn’t make their opinions known, nor that we should not listen. But, I will say that we should not shape health policy on their paranoia.
Here’s the thing you missed from Dseid’s post: those won’t show up until they are distributed to the general population. Trials have trouble picking up 1/100,000 or 1/million events because they don’t have hundreds of thousands of people in the trials. As he said, that’s post-market monitoring’s job.
That’s why I put a limit at 1 in 10,000, not one in 100,000 or a million to start. Did you miss that part of my post?
Do you have an example of a vaccine that was rolled out that had worse numbers for an adverse reaction?
Frankly, I don’t know what vaccines have recently been developed that were widely distributed to children. I assume you mean recent, because I already mentioned the '76 flu vaccine that caused Guillain Barre syndrome in 1/100,000.
The Chinese skipped the last phase of trials and started vaccinating military personnel. Can you name an example of that happening before? The political and economic forces on this vaccine development is simply different from past efforts. We should definitely be on guard that cutting corners has not let safety slide. Most certainly we shouldn’t just assume a vaccine is safe because those anti-vaxxers are nutjobs.
I don’t even get what I am supposed to be defending at the moment. All I said was that it was possible that a rushed to market vaccine out of China might be more dangerous than the disease. Certainly in children, who aren’t in very much danger at all. If you agree with that, we shouldn’t be arguing.
k9bfriender: “If we rush a vaccine to where it has worse than 1 in 10000 chance of adverse reaction, then we shouldn’t use it, or use it very sparingly among those at greatest risk. If it’s better than that, or is close to the 1 in a million that modern vaccines have, then use the hell out of it.”
We need to differentiate minor adverse reactions like temporary injection site pain which is common to many vaccines and occurs far more frequently than 1 in 10000 recipients, from serious adverse reactions. If a Covid-19 vaccine makes 1 in 3 people feel achy and slightly feverish for a couple of days afterwards, do we reject it on those grounds if it also induces long-term protective immunity? Shingrix is a vaccine which also makes a substantial minority of recipients feel fatigued/crappy for a day or two, but that’s an acceptable trade-off for being protected against shingles.
This isn’t an abstract consideration. One of the Covid-19 vaccines in the pipeline , made by Moderna, was stated in a preliminary report to cause systemic reactions i.e. transient fever and aches in close to half of recipients. This is a bit misleading because the figure includes those getting the highest test dose of antigens (which likely wouldn’t be the dosage used in actual practice), but still - for that amount of unpleasantness you’d want it to be a hugely effective vaccine and we don’t know that yet.
Pro-immunization advocates are distinctly uneasy about the possibility of “warp speed” development leading to unforseen problems and resulting in a blot on vaccines’ excellent safety record. Personally I’d be happy if the U.S. did not “win” the race to be first to mass vaccinate the population with an insufficiently tested vaccine.
Well, I have seen people say they are not going to take the Covid vaccination when it came out. People that I’m fairly certain have been vaccinated and have vaccinated their kids for the “other stuff”. People that I’ve never seen post anti-vaxx stuff before, so anecdotally, I’m going to say it’s been strengthened.
Right, it had a 1 in 100,000 chance.
Sounds like the last phase of trial is on the military personnel. More data to determine how safe the vaccine is. Sounds like it’s good for us, that they are using their own people as test subjects, rather than sending us an untested vaccine. Still not all that moral, but not something that should lead to the type of ambiguous concern that you are implying.
Polio vaccine was barely 2 years between its development and widespread distribution. 2 years later, polio was all but eradicated in the US.
We rolled out the test on millions of children.
There were complications. There were bad batches of the vaccine, and from what I can see, a couple hundred children were badly affected.
This was over 50 years ago. I would hope that we could do better today.
Almost all vaccines are going to cause some kind of fever. That’s your immune system reacting to the antigens.
If we are going to wait for a vaccine that doesn’t have any sort of minor effect, then I don’t know that we can ever have one.
Sure, if the vaccine is not effective, it give immunity to less than 50% or something, then it’s not really worthwhile. What level of effectiveness do you think is acceptable for a transient fever and some aches?
So, you are saying it’s impossible for a vaccine to cause more trouble than a disease that seems rather benign in children. Ok then.