Reply to BA.2 surge hitting US in April/May

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Reply to "BA.2 surge hitting US in April/May"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oh parents... You do realize long covid is a thing right? I mean not really for those of us who are vaccinated. We have NO idea what effects this will have on kids 5+ years from now. None. It's shocking to me how many parents want to risk their kids future because they don't "want" to wear a little piece of fabric over part of their face for a short period of time...[/quote]
[b]
I know people with long Covid who got vaccinated.[/b] And hey you never know about long term effects of Covid that will just come out of nowhere even in people who didn’t get long Covid. You better go hide forever! Have fun.[/quote]

Wanted to chime in - We also have no idea what long term effects there might be if giving kids three Covid shots in a span of 8 months.  I mean, they’re out here pushing boosters on 12 year olds, but there is so much we still need to learn about the virus itself, let alone the vaccines.  [/quote]

+100
I am vaccinated and boosted but the argument that long covid is a concern but yet ignoring the lack of information about vaccines and boosters in kids is really mind boggling.
[/quote]

The long COVID stuff is mostly ridiculous, but so are the "hidden dangers of vaccinations" comments.  Vaccination side effects occur shortly after vaccines are given. There is no precedent for *hidden* long-term complications of the sort you are alluding to.[/quote]

I don't think there are "hidden" long-term complications from the vaccines, but I do know there are some open questions about what the long term effect of repeated mRNA vaccines on the immune system could be. These were not particularly relevant when I was getting vaccinated (I'm in my 40s, Covid is enough of a risk to me that it was obvious I should just get vaccinated and not worry too much about this). So I'm vaccinated and boosted and so grateful for the protection it offers me now and in the future. If repeated mRNA vaccines does something wonky to my immune system in 20 years, oh well. It's better than dying of Covid today.

But when you are talking about vaccinating a 5 year old, that risk assessment is flipped on its head. 5 year olds are not at high, or even medium, risk from Covid. The rates of long-Covid in this age group are miniscule. And the vaccines are not super effective and will almost certainly need to be repeated. So does it make sense to start giving a 5 yr old annual or biannual or even more frequent mRNA vaccine shots against a virus that poses a very minimal threat, without a longterm study on immune system response to repeated shots? I don't think the answer there is "obvious" and I think that's one reason vaccine rates are lower for the 5-11 group, and also why you might see them drop off further if they start talking about boosting these kids every year or every 6 months. It's not that parents think the vaccine could kill their kids years later due to hidden effects. It's that I worry that my kid will get to my age and have a malfunctioning immune system because I gave her an unnecessary shot every 6 months for years as a child. [/quote]

Oh, and I wanted to add that one reason this is a concern is that look at what has happened with antibiotics. It's not that antibiotics have scary longterm side effects. It's that they are so good that over-prescribing them has led them to become less effective. So now we talk about not just taking an antibiotic for everything, because you want to be able to preserve the effectiveness of the best antibiotics for when you really need them. The mRNA vaccines are so good at what they do that there seems to be a similar concern here. What if they are so good at training your immune system to spot Covid that it makes it harder for your immune system to recognize other threats? Or your system goes into overdrive when it thinks something is Covid, which could cause autoimmune problems down the road.

The Covid vaccines are amazing but even medical miracles can have unexpected externalities. Which is why some of us feel more cautious about the idea of using repeatedly on very young kids with low risk, without at least exploring those possible externalities first. We can't roll back the clock on this.[/quote]

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