No, that is not what I said. Not even close.
If after all this, that is what you choose to assert, then I’m done here. There is nothing productive left to be had in this exchange.
just so we are on the same page, this is where we currently stand on children and Covid
If you have better numbers, feel free to share them, it’s a pain finding any useful breakdowns like this.
But if you are purporting that a vaccine is going to be worse then this, then we have simply failed as a species. We would not release a vaccine with those sorts of results. (Assuming that we can trust our FDA and healthcare system, of course. If we can’t then we’re all just screwed anyway).
It was likely unintentional, but k9bfriender strung together a couple of my quotes which present a misleading picture of my views on a potential Covid-19 vaccine.
A decent vaccine that produces self-limited low grade fever and body aches in 1 of 3 recipients is acceptable to me, as I think it would be to most people.
On the other hand, a vaccine that made you feel lousy and kept you out of work for a couple days (with more severe reactions in a small minority of recipients), but only provided limited immunity for 6 months, is questionably worth investing billions and a mass immunization campaign on. It might be better in that case to wait longer for a better vaccine.
As for febrile reactions, studies of childhood vaccines typically report fever in 1-10% of vaccines, with a higher percentage possible when multiple shots are given at one time. Fever is generally less likely in adults, who more commonly will experience other types of systemic symptoms (if they have them at all).
I felt crappy for a day after my first Shingrix shot, and I’m glad I got the vaccine. Give me an 80% chance of meaningful immunity to Covid-19 for a year with a similar side effect profile, and I’ll gladly get that vaccine.
Numbers are hard to find and often are worthless like those are, which I hope you realize. What we know is that there are over 140,000 deaths from COVID-19 in this country, and only a few dozen of them in kids. We know that many children’s ICUs have had zero cases and that there have been few admissions. There are not one in a thousand kids getting very sick with COVID-19. Either they don’t catch it or they stay asymptomatic or so mild that they don’t get diagnosed often. For kids this is much less than seasonal influenza and the burden of proof for safety will be that much higher.
Vaccines have been withdrawn after approval before (the first Rotavirus for example). That happening with a COVID-19 one would be a PR disaster for all immunization efforts.
Well, obviously we need better numbers than from last December out of China to make a decision. And we’d want numbers on lasting damage, not just whether they suffered symptoms. The Case Fatality Rate in Canada amongst <18 is about .013% at the moment. In Ontario, as of May, out of 2700 hospital admissions for covid only 5 were under the age of 14. No fatalities.
We don’t have enough info on what kind of lasting damage covid does to children. So I’m afraid we can’t settle this now.
I agree with all you’ve said about balancing the pros and cons of any vaccines. Of course we’ll (well, medical ethicists) have to do that. But that’ll be based on what we know about the vaccine’s side effects. Any serious complications that only show up with mass distribution is definitely going to have to be low to justify giving it to children. If there’s a screw up, it’ll definitely give the anti-vaxxers ammo.
Some better numbers. AAP sourced. As of 7/16.
Cases/100,000 = 318.6 … 8% of all cases.
Of those 2.1% have been hospitalized (2074) and 0.03% have died. A total of 66 deaths to date. 0.06% of the total deaths.