[genuineresponse]

Covid is a serious illness. It can cause a wide range of effects from death, to myocarditis, to immune system resets, to long covid, to permanent scarring on the lungs, mood disorders, embolisms, and permanently reduced mental capacity.

Covid is not a tail risk.

Additionally, by not getting a vaccine, you potentially put people at risk who cannot get a vaccine -- immunocompromised folks, etc. Vaccinating your child also protects everyone in their communities.

Choosing not to vaccinate because you want to limit the number for no expressed reason is vaccine hesitancy. You have expressed a position of vaccine hesitancy here.

[closewith]

You are incorrect and are harming public trust in vaccination with your comments.

COVID-19 vaccines are no longer indicated for most healthy children (or most healthy young adults) in most jurisdictions as the risk benefit analysis no longer supports it.

[AuryGlenz]

In healthy children the chances of any of that happening are effectively 0, and while vaccine injuries and significant side effects are rare in their case it might actually be more likely. That’s why very few countries other than the US ever vaccinated healthy children, especially post-pandemic.

Almost literally everyone has and will continue to get COVID at this point. Not vaccinating your child, or all of the children in the US, won’t prevent that. I don’t know a single person that hasn’t had it, vaccinated or not. So, your child gets the vaccine. They’re then, what, maybe 50% less likely to get COVID for 6 months? Not exactly moving the needle as far as community transmission goes. This isn’t 2021 anymore.

If we had a better, longer lasting vaccine you might have an argument. Very, very few parents are going to do the COVID vaccine for their child every year. At the very least you’re risking them picking up something more serious just by going to a clinic or pharmacy to get it.

[sfn42]

I don't know that I've had covid. My SO had it twice during the pandemic and i was testing myself daily but never tested positive. I like to joke that I'm immune. Of course I also had the vaccine but I understand that I should still get the disease, just less severe.

Anyway I haven't tested since the pandemic so I wouldn't have known if I'd had it afterwards.

[diordiderot]

Covid was literally 10x more dangerous than the vaccine for those without comorbidities, but it's played out now. The vaccine is about as effective as a flu jab.

[uecker]

This seems like a bad way to phrase it. The vaccine is certainly a lot (many orders of magnitude) less dangerous than just 0.1x as dangerous as COVID. Maybe you wanted to say that the risks from COVID are only 10x more without vaccination than with it due to limited effectiveness of the vaccine?

[trhway]

>Additionally, by not getting a vaccine, you potentially put people at risk who cannot get a vaccine -- immunocompromised folks, etc. Vaccinating your child also protects everyone in their communities.

No. You probably thinking some other vaccine and infection, not covid. For covid once infected, vaccinated people express similar number of virus in their saliva as unvaccinated (see for example [1]). Additionally, infected vaccinated people have lower intensity symptoms or now symptoms at all, and thus more likely to go about their business as usual (and thus spread the virus) than to stay home like unvaccinated. As a result the vaccinated people do possibly spread more infection than unvaccinated. The obviously propagandistic and using government force push "do it for the good of the community" (very USSR style) for covid vaccinations against the science - as those results were already known at the end of 2021 - drove a lot of new people into vaccine-sceptic crowd.

[1] https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim...

"new study from the University of California, Davis, Genome Center, UC San Francisco and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub shows no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who tested positive for the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. It also found no significant difference between infected people with or without symptoms.

...

Although vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection are much less likely to become severely ill than unvaccinated, the new study shows that they can be carrying similar amounts of virus and could potentially spread the virus to other people."

[croon]

> For covid once infected ... and thus more likely to go about their business as usual (and thus spread the virus) than to stay home like unvaccinated.

> As a result the vaccinated people do possibly spread more infection than unvaccinated.

You are using a subset of the groups to argue around the entire groups.

If the entire (much larger) group of vaccinated got infected at a rate of unvaccinated, your argument would hold, but they don't and it doesn't.

[orwin]

Like the flu (the real flu). Viruses are always dangerous and carry a risk of long term neurological issues, always.

He did all the mandatory vaccines, the rest is a tail risk. Unless you vaccinate yourself against the flu and your children for both flu and COVID, I don't think you have any leg to stand on.

[genuineresponse]

I vaccinate against flu and Covid, and vaccinate my child against flu and Covid.

[Danjoe4]

The probability of COVID causing injury to your child is basically zero

[genuineresponse]

Science disagrees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45721179

[sedivy94]

Everything you listed are tail risks of COVID, even in individuals with comorbidities, and are far more characteristic of the early strains than what’s circulating today. The only exception in your list of side effects is myocarditis, which is also a side effect of the COVID vaccine. Furthermore, the vaccine’s target population is individuals over 65 years old, immunocompromised individuals, obese individuals… not newborns or infants.

Alarmism, militant shaming, and omission of details like the ones I mentioned above are three strategies that steer vaccine hesitant people away from taking vaccine advocates seriously. Personally, I would raise concerns about anything but COVID and ease up on the Newspeak.

[genuineresponse]

Studies disagree with you. Children are absolutely at risk for a wide range of increased impacts from the disease:

Children have increased likelihood of anxiety, communication disorders, and other developmental mental health issues: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12290120/

In studies of children and adolescents, it has caused increased likelihood of fatigue, anxiety, and various other symptoms: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11339705/

Children are at significant risk of ongoing complications: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article-abstract/80/6/1247/8002...

Cardiovascular risk is demonstrably elevated post infection: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11992182/

Increased risk of kidney malfunction: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11992607/

[eqvinox]

Except long term effects from COVID are not fully understood yet, especially in children. Feels like unnecessary gambling to me.