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Comment by somewhereoutth | Hacker News Reader

That is misinformation. While the vaccines are generally safe and effective, they are not "completely" safe. There is a small but real risk of serious side effects, particularly myocarditis which has mainly affected young males. The risks from not getting vaccinated are still higher, but let's be straight with parents about the safety profile.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v...

> That is misinformation. While the vaccines are generally safe and effective, they are not "completely" safe. There is a small but real risk of serious side effects, particularly myocarditis which has mainly affected young males.

You should note the preprint you've quoted refers to a study covering "people aged 13 or more". Therefore, I'm not sure it's relevant to any claim on the risk to "youh children", given the youngest are already teenagers.

My understanding is that the trial of the under 12s for Pfizer saw zero safety signals.

It’s worth noting the disclaimer on that paper:

“Caution: Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.”

Is it? No one else does it, including the news media it specifically mentions.

Yes? I don't know what you're referring to by "the news media it specifically mentions" but speaking as someone who doesn't have a dog in this fight, but who does actually want to know what's going on, it seems (to me) worth knowing that the paper being held forth as evidence that the vaccine is dangerous carries the disclaimer that it's a pre-print, not peer reviewed, and should not be used to guide health-related behavior. Is the vaccine dangerous? I would like to know! Is this paper strong evidence that the vaccine is dangerous? It is not convincing to me in its current state, though maybe it will go on to be proven a valid and important piece of work.

If your point is that there is a lot of low-quality media out there, then I agree. My sense is that we should increase, not decrease, our skepticism in response.

The only reason Covid vaccines for young children are seen as so important is the absurd politicisation. To be fair, they're not harmful on balance - they just don't seem to have much benefit that justifies them. The UK government actually failed to convince the independent vaccine advisory board here to support them even for over-12s for that reason, and ended up just ignoring their advice and going ahead anyway for essentially political reasons.

What political reason could there be for vaccinating children?

(apart from implanting 5G of course)

Parts of the media were pushing the idea that the government was incompetent and dragging their feet for not doing it, including I think even the BBC, and there seems to be a reasonably large chunk of parents that think not doing so was massively harming their kids due to wildly wrong estimates of how much risk Covid poses to them. Also, a bit of the usual need to be seen to be doing something on top. Normal boring stuff - no 5G implants or secret kickbacks from big pharma in sight.

These are not political reasons for 'pushing' the vaccine. They are reactions to the government being held back (by political/ideological reasons) from pushing the vaccine.

Studies have indicated a positive health benefit for children, so let's get on with it. No politics needed to make that judgement.

For the sake of factual accuracy, the vaccine being “completely safe” for children should be rephrased “short term side effects outweighed by risks associated with the disease; medium and long term cost/benefit unknown.”

Either way bunk without a source, is it even true for all ages that short term side effects are outweighed by the disease? Is it still true if stratified further by known comorbidities/autoimmune issues?

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