Coronavirus

[Famous Mortimer]

There isn't one. It's a nuanced subject.

I mean, not really. It's nuanced if you downplay all the people who've spent their lives studying this stuff on one side, and signal-boost a bunch of malcontents and grifters on the other. Perhaps you should try these arguments on some immunologists, see what they have to say about it. You may be right, of course.

[GeddyWrox]

AW, you've taught me a ton about all of this stuff the last couple of years. I'm not going to argue with your reasoning here. It's clearly well thought out.

What I'm thinking back to as I read your post was a study I posted a few weeks back that seemed to show that vaxxed folks are apparently not causing breakthrough cases. If that study was right, then vaxxing our kids becomes as much about protecting Nana and Pawpaw as it is about protecting the kids themselves.

If you don't remember the study I'm referring to I can try to find it again.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

There isn't one. It's a nuanced subject.

I mean, not really. It's nuanced if you downplay all the people who've spent their lives studying this stuff on one side, and signal-boost a bunch of malcontents and grifters on the other. Perhaps you should try these arguments on some immunologists, see what they have to say about it. You may be right, of course.

You mean people like this:

Covid: Single jab recommended for 12 to 15-year-olds by UK's top doctors


The CMOs said it would help reduce disruption to education.

It comes after the government's vaccine committee said there was not enough benefit to warrant it on health grounds alone - but they said ministers could take into account other factors.

The CMOs concluded this tipped the balance given the virus was going to keep spreading over winter.

They said this would continue to cause disruption to face-to-face education given the policy in all parts of the UK asking people who test positive to isolate for 10 days.

Prof Chris Whitty, the lead CMO for the UK, said it was a "difficult decision" and should not be seen as a "silver bullet".

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58547659

And, that's aged 12-15. So, yeah, your govt is coming to the same conclusion I did. In the future, I'd suggest you tone down the snark unless you understand what you're talking about which I'd imagine would entirely mute it.

[GeddyWrox]

I found the article I mentioned a few minutes ago:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... ansmission

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

AW, you've taught me a ton about all of this stuff the last couple of years. I'm not going to argue with your reasoning here. It's clearly well thought out.

What I'm thinking back to as I read your post was a study I posted a few weeks back that seemed to show that vaxxed folks are apparently not causing breakthrough cases. If that study was right, then vaxxing our kids becomes as much about protecting Nana and Pawpaw as it is about protecting the kids themselves.

If you don't remember the study I'm referring to I can try to find it again.

I can't recall the numbers, but I do remember the article.

There are certainly other things to consider that I didn't mention.

Namely, protection of school staff/immunocompromised kids/bus drivers/etc. There is a responsibility to the greater good and while I didn't mention it, I do recognize it. At the same time, I just wanted to really understand the singular issue of risk to the individual.

There's also a huge question about the timeframe they chose for the cost/benefit analysis of 6 months. It seems to imply boosters are going to be recommended and that natural immunity won't last, neither of which are entirely known/proven still. And, it actually works against them to do it that way because if they had done a year or two years or 5 years, the number of adverse events would have remained pretty much the same but their number or hospitalizations prevented would have ballooned.

[G. Keenan]

No matter how you slice it, the health risks of getting Covid are much higher than vaccine side effects. The risk of myocarditis from the vaccine is much LESS than the risk of myocarditis from a Covid infection. And for the kids that do get that side effect from vaccination, it's very treatable.

There simply is not a risk calculation of vaccinate vs. get infected (which is virtually inevitable for unvaccinated individuals at this point) that does not yield vaccination as the logical course of action.

That sounds good and all, but the numbers don't bear it out.

How? Where are the numbers that say a vaccine poses a greater health risk to a child age 5 - 11 than an infection from Covid-19?

Myocarditis is really not something to be worried about. It's extremely rare and not that serious. That study you linked says 180 cases per million fully vaccinated boys age 12-15. The rate however of myocarditis among infected children are higher than the rate of myocarditis among fully vaccinated children as a vaccine side effect. Given that your kid is almost guaranteed to encounter the virus, the logical thing is to vaccinate.

That said, if you don't, he'll most likely be fine as most children are. Though as you said, "most" is not all and some kids do get very sick, do get long Covid, or have to be hospitalized.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

No matter how you slice it, the health risks of getting Covid are much higher than vaccine side effects. The risk of myocarditis from the vaccine is much LESS than the risk of myocarditis from a Covid infection. And for the kids that do get that side effect from vaccination, it's very treatable.

There simply is not a risk calculation of vaccinate vs. get infected (which is virtually inevitable for unvaccinated individuals at this point) that does not yield vaccination as the logical course of action.

That sounds good and all, but the numbers don't bear it out.

How? Where are the numbers that say a vaccine poses a greater health risk to a child age 5 - 11 than an infection from Covid-19?

Myocarditis is really not something to be worried about. It's extremely rare and not that serious. That study you linked says 180 cases per million fully vaccinated boys age 12-15. The rate however of myocarditis among infected children are higher than the rate of myocarditis among fully vaccinated children as a vaccine side effect. Given that your kid is almost guaranteed to encounter the virus, the logical thing is to vaccinate.

That said, if you don't, he'll most likely be fine as most children are. Though as you said, "most" is not all and some kids do get very sick, do get long Covid, or have to be hospitalized.

The pfizer study I quoted had 1130 participants, 1 was hospitalized for myocarditis. Assuming the mix was ~50/50 male/female, that's about 1:565 hospitalizations for boys directly from the vaccine in Pfizer's own study of 12-15 year olds. It's too small of a sample size, I agree, but pfizer did it and the fda approved it, I don't control that. The math is the math. The fact it's a boy is no surprise, people, including people in this thread, have been talking about the increased risk to boys from the vaccine for months.

Then you go to claims, which is a hospital visit to get diagnosed, and there's 180-200 excessive claims per million people in the 12-17 year old range. I don't know if that's inclusive of a population that's going through covid at the same time or not. I don't fully understand the analysis. If you have a dataset that shows articulately and accurately what I'm saying is incorrect, by all means, I'd love to see it. But, as is, it's an excess of 1 in 5,000 vaxxed roughly are being treated (again, not something that happens at the PCP) for myocarditis according to the analysis I quoted.

Yes, myocarditis is sometimes nothing to worry about. But, sometimes it is, and those are the times people end up in the hospital, filing claims, and ending up in these types of analysis. It's not like they follow up every vax recipient or natural infection patient with a sonogram to check for heart inflammation. You hear about the bad cases.

Regardless, those are the numbers. I think they're right. Maybe I'm wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. You're free to post your own data.

Then there's the risk from covid to the non-vaxxed 5-11 year old subset. A dataset that doesn't really exist but the fda or pfizer made it up so we can go with that. They calc the risk of hospitalization is 1 out of every 220 cases which I got by reverse calcing their number of cases prevented and dividing by number of hospitalizations prevented. It's roughly 220 most of the time. Then I back checked that with what we see in Arkansas which is 1 out of every 108 known pediatric (under 18) cases is hospitalized and apply a 2-3 multiple since not all cases are diagnosed and that part pretty much checks out.

So risk of myocarditis severe enough to be diagnosed and make a claim according to the claims is 1 in 5000. The risk of myocarditis severe enough to go to the hospital is 1 in 565 according to pfizers double blinded randomized placebo controlled gold standard test. And the risk of hospitalization is 1 in 220 for a natural infection.

This suggests the vaccine is safer than covid. Agreed. Having sifted through a metric [expletive] ton of stuff over the past couple years, its pretty well documented that blinded randomized control tests are trusted above all else, let alone above relying on insurance claims. So, let's go with that.* It's about 2.5:1 safer to get the vax than covid.

But, it's not all that big of a gap. And, then when you start accounting for health of little AW, which is what I'm doing, it becomes hazy. The 1:220 hospitalization rate is for a population that has a lot of obesity which is one of the leading risk factors for poor outcomes. He has precisely zero things that increase his risk for a worst outcome. So, if you take that 1:220 and plot a curve of those most at risk and those least at risk within that subset, he's going to fall at the very low end of it.

Then, take into account he's probably already been exposed to Sars-Cov-2 which would give him the same benefits as being vaccinated.

And, that's where I'm at without even getting into any of the myriad of other things that worry me. And we just got a flu vaccine shot a couple weeks ago without a second thought.

*Using pfizer's study numbers in lieu of the insurance claims numbers in table 14 of the fda analysis I posted earlier shifts all the data from showing that the vaccine is safer to showing natural infections are safer with one possible exception. Just realized that while typing. If you combine boys and girls in the pfizer data, it's 909 hospitalizations per million kids vaxxed. Worst case scenario for natural infections is 250. If you separate boys/girls, the boys have 1818 hospitalizations per million. Worst case scenario for natural infections is 254. Girls are zero when separated, so they're good.

[AdmiralKird]

I had my booster dose on Friday. After not having any side effects with the first dose, and barely any weakness with the 2nd, this one was absolutely terrible - fever, muscle aches, weakness, burning eyes, headache - for 36 hours straight starting roughly 5 hours after administration. I also had my flu shot at the same time, and I haven't had the flu in decades so maybe that was what really set me off, but this was absolutely terrible. I hadn't felt that "sick" since 2007 when I got food poisoning at Laclede's Bar and Grill.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

I had my booster dose on Friday. After not having any side effects with the first dose, and barely any weakness with the 2nd, this one was absolutely terrible - fever, muscle aches, weakness, burning eyes, headache - for 36 hours straight starting roughly 5 hours after administration. I also had my flu shot at the same time, and I haven't had the flu in decades so maybe that was what really set me off, but this was absolutely terrible. I hadn't felt that "sick" since 2007 when I got food poisoning at Laclede's Bar and Grill.

Did you get the same or different vaccine? We're getting our boosters this week.

We had to get more tests yesterday (negative) because the son's ex who has his two young sons at her house and refused to get vaccinated or tested has come down with it. She's a disappointing piece of work. She told my son she was feeling like she might be in trouble Saturday when her 8 year old complained about not being able to taste. So she had him and herself tested. Despite that, she attended her mother's 50th birthday celebration sans mask that evening - had to be 50-60 people there including many elderly. Then she woke up yesterday hungover, sick and finding out she tested positive. Can you believe it? So there my 1 and 3 year old grandsons are quarantining in a house full of covid. It's an awful situation all around.

[GeddyWrox]

I had my booster dose on Friday. After not having any side effects with the first dose, and barely any weakness with the 2nd, this one was absolutely terrible - fever, muscle aches, weakness, burning eyes, headache - for 36 hours straight starting roughly 5 hours after administration. I also had my flu shot at the same time, and I haven't had the flu in decades so maybe that was what really set me off, but this was absolutely terrible. I hadn't felt that "sick" since 2007 when I got food poisoning at Laclede's Bar and Grill.

Did you get the same or different vaccine? We're getting our boosters this week.

We had to get more tests yesterday (negative) because the son's ex who has his two young sons at her house and refused to get vaccinated or tested has come down with it. She's a disappointing piece of work. She told my son she was feeling like she might be in trouble Saturday when her 8 year old complained about not being able to taste. So she had him and herself tested. Despite that, she attended her mother's 50th birthday celebration sans mask that evening - had to be 50-60 people there including many elderly. Then she woke up yesterday hungover, sick and finding out she tested positive. Can you believe it? So there my 1 and 3 year old grandsons are quarantining in a house full of covid. It's an awful situation all around.

OMFG... that should be considered child endangerment. UGH!!!