[timr]

> You would see side effects for a vaccine within six months, and we have been administering it for much longer than that.

We have now had two separate rare-but-serious side effects of different Covid vaccines: the CVT issue with J&J, and the myocarditis issue with the mRNA vaccines in children. It's disingenuous to suggest that the vaccines are "safe" merely because they've been widely administered; even the question of what "safe" means is a far more nuanced question than you're presenting. For children, in particular, two-dose vaccination with the mRNA vaccines is probably a poor risk/benefit profile. We didn't know that until we started dosing enough kids to see the rare side effects.

The phase 3 trials were not powered to detect rare side effects, which is part of the reason that they're still classified as emergency use, and not fully approved.

I am an advocate for vaccination, but it's not right to ignore these issues.

[Pyramus]

I don't think anyone is ignoring these issues - on the contrary, even in these very rare cases of side effects vaccination efforts were halted immediately.

Safe is always relative. If you don't think the vaccines are safe enough, then please also be consistent and don't engage in equally unsafe activities, e.g. don't drive a car, exercise regularly, eat healthily, don't encourage your girlfriend/wife/daughter/friend to take the contraceptive pill or, even worse, get pregnant, also do not take a large number of other drugs etc.

Again, from what we know today, it is safer to vaccinate your kids then driving them around in a car. Even when the risk/benefit profile is even/negative, absolute risk is super low.

[timr]

> Again, from what we know today, it is safer to vaccinate your kids then driving them around in a car.

...and if it were choice between vaccinating kids and driving them places, then this example would be relevant.

We don't approve drugs simply because they're less risky for a target population than some other selection of risky things.

> Even when the risk/benefit profile is even/negative, absolute risk is super low.

Yes. So is the benefit.

[mrj]

Not ignoring but these are very rare side effects. It's something for doctors to know about in order to help treat the unlucky. But I think we have different meanings of the word safe.

These vaccines are very, very unlikely to give anyone a hard time. Nothing's without risk, but even for the unlucky that doesn't even sound that bad.

As soon as my son is eligible, he's getting it, too.

[timr]

> Not ignoring but these are very rare side effects. It's something for doctors to know about in order to help treat the unlucky. But I think we have different meanings of the word safe.

The chances that a child will experience anything other than extremely minor illness from Covid is also very rare. The current numbers are teetering on the edge of implying that children are at more risk from the vaccine than from the virus.

My definition of the word "safe" includes the rational weighing of risks vs. benefit for a target population. Is it worth it to put kids at risk from myocarditis that exceeds their risk from Covid, just to reduce population-level Covid stats and reduce the marginal risk to the elderly? I don't know, but it's not a question to simply ignore.

[raphlinus]

Child deaths from Covid-19 in the US as of 6/24 [1]: 336

Child deaths attributed to vaccines [2]: 0. We can break this down further: 3 deaths from blood clots attributed to adenovirus vector vaccine, none in children. 616 reports of myocarditis[3], 393 confirmed, none fatal.

[1]: https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP%20and%20CHA%20-%20Chil...

[2]: https://covid-101.org/science/how-many-people-have-died-from...

[3]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...

[timr]

If you think you can reduce this to the singular axis of "deaths", you're making a straw-man argument: we should absolutely vaccinate the children who are at risk of death, and fortunately, we can easily identify them, because it's not random. Essentially all child deaths from Covid have occurred in kids with serious pre-existing conditions.

Moreover, you're implicitly using a biased selection of data to make this argument. Want more children to die of myocarditis? Keep doing the same thing we're doing now. It will happen. We've been vaccinating kids for a fraction of the time they've been getting Covid.

I will say this for the benefit of others: regarding the CDCs numbers, in particular, they've used the incorrect counter-factual (no doses vs. two doses), and substantially mis-represented the rates of myocarditis in children.

https://medium.com/@wpegden/weighing-myocarditis-cases-acip-...

I've been mortified to see the CDC spreading this kind of mis-calculation so widely. It's simply unconscionable.

[sjwalter]

Far fewer kids have gotten vaccinated than have caught covid.