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by dbt00 1751 days ago
There's no evidence of any risk of mRNA vaccines at all. The only issue so far has been extremely rare blood clot issues with the adenovirus vaccines (AstraZeneca & J&J).

The vaccines are not approved for children under 12 because the risks to young children from the virus are the lowest of any population group, so older groups were prioritized for efficacy and safety testing. It is being tested now in that age group (I know people with kids in the trial group) and will hopefully be approved shortly.

If this virus worked the way the flu does, doing the most damage to children and the elderly, then the vaccine would have been tested on children much sooner and would have been available to that group sooner. In that world, that's not because the vaccine was more dangerous to 25 year olds.

3 comments

That is incorrect. The CDC believes that mRNA vaccines have caused myocarditis and pericarditis, mainly in young males. The risk is very low (possibly lower than the risk of getting those symptoms from a viral infection) but not zero. I'm not suggesting that anyone avoid vaccination for this reason but let's be honest about the risks. False claims that there is no evidence of any risk just leads to public mistrust.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my...

The UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) currently doesn't recommend universal COVID-19 vaccinations for healthy children ages 12-15 because the health benefits are marginal. That guidance may shift as more data comes in.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-updated-advic...

> There's no evidence of any risk of mRNA vaccines at all.

You need to add "short run" since these vaccines have not been tested long term. Not to say it is likely at all since other mRNA vaccines have not had long run issues, but to say there is "no evidence" is cheap when long run studies have not been conducted.

Extraordinary claim: Vaccines cause negative side effects that can't be detected until years later.

Please cite a case where this extraordinary claim has held true. Where a vaccine has caused a side effect not noticeable within the first year.

Globally hundreds of millions have been vaccinated and we've had enough data to get really precise numbers on even the absolute rarest of side effects; which are vanishingly rare and pale in severity and incidence to the disease in the wild.

With all due respect there seems to be some rhetorical sleight of hand involved in transforming the claim "we don't know about the possible long-term effects of mRNA vaccines" into the extraordinary claim you wrote. The sleight of hand consists in not acknowledging the fundamental novelty of mRNA vaccines compared to traditional vaccines, which allows you to conflate them and use the proven long-term safety of the one as an argument for the long-term safety of the other. Not everyone agrees with this conflation, because the mechanism of action is quite different.