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by timr 1815 days ago
> 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.
1 comments
raphlinus 1815 days ago
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...

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timr 1815 days ago
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.

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sjwalter 1815 days ago
Far fewer kids have gotten vaccinated than have caught covid.
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