Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Family Guy does a great job of streamlining reasons to vaccinate, here.

I just disagree with continuing COVID protocols out of fear of infecting the non-vaccinated and/or out of fear of a mutation developing somewhere in the future that the vaccine is ineffective against.

 

Alas, it's too late for me.

 

Honestly, this video highlights the problem. When he talks about what to look for, he talks about "safe, safe, safe" and is it "clearly effective." What he doesn't at all mention is whether or not it is actually necessary and whether or not some kids may need it more than others. It's starting to become tiresome how this stuff gets glossed over, it's kind of important (not your fault, of course).

Here's the other thing, he talked about community spread and kids being susceptible. He doesn't mention anything about the severity levels in kids, they don't talk about the hospitalization rate, what a typical hospitalization entails, and what the frequency is of kids with no known risk factors ending up in the ICU or with long COVID.

I think people are more passive when it comes to vaccine mandates when it comes to adults; but you better have your i's dotted and your t's crossed when anybody's ready to bring the issue to the table for kids.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Another new variant the hits keep coming R.1
Covid variant in nursing home has deadly mutations that may evade antibodies

 

Exactly. Anyone recommending the vaccine to a healthy 12-15 year old boy should be questioned. The rate of myocarditis on kids from the vaccine are significantly higher than from the virus itself. The vaccine should only be given to children who have underlying conditions. Otherwise, let it run it's course. Keep kids in school(unless sick) and only test if they are showing symptoms.

 

The rate of hospitalization from myocarditis for the most susceptible male age 12-15 is still only 1 in 6000. To put that in perspective, if an average high school has 1,500 students, 50/50 male/female split, this would be 1 student out of 8 full high schools. The death rate from myocarditis after vaccine is even lower. It's at zero.

The small risk of a minor inconvenience that kids recover from 100% of the time does not outweigh the benefits of the vaccine. COVID has a small mortality rate in kids. Myocarditis does not. COVID-19 can spread among kids and from kids to adults, where again, myocarditis does not. COVID-19 can mutate and form a new variant, and again, not something myocarditis does.

 

I don't take offense. I offered the link as merely an introduction to one person in a field of many. My point was, if you or any parent are truly interested, there are numerous expert sources out there for you to seek out and read up on their work, their opinions and their explanations. This information is likely to be far more complete/ wide ranging, relevant and accurate than anything that the old family pediatrician has at their disposal or even understands.

 

I reject the idea that I can understand this issue better than my pediatrician, and I saw you make a similar comment about a GP. I respectfully disagree with your assessment on each. Our trusted doctors have a level of experience that I can't possibly match. Not just in longevity in seeing how things like these develop, but also in terms of actually having a live sample set of a large number of patients that they can observe and see how various treatment plans work and which ones are more susceptible and what not. Our pediatrician is far, far more read up on COVID-related topics than I am, and that is WITH my current level of interest.

I'm not going to go out of my way to convince myself that getting the kids vaccinated is or will be the right idea. If it's that obvious, the information will be brought to us and and answered questions (nothing I've asked has been terribly complex) will be brought to the surface for ease of review. I will continue to lean on our docs for our situations, THEY have the compulsion to do the research that you are talking about and can likely do it far better than me. They have the clientele with which they can see how it is working out or which kids are getting hit the hardest. Our pediatrician supports plenty of other vaccines; again, would love to observe clinical professionals engage one another on this topic. What harm would it cause?

The other thing is, I'm not looking for opinions without supporting data (for informational purposes, that's great...but not for instructional purposes). Right now we see a lot more opinion than data, and people will lean in one of two directions:

- I don't see information indicating that it's not safe for my kids, so they're getting it
- I don't see information indicating that my kids need it, so they're not getting it

Neither one of these folks has a moral right to push their preference onto others, but the medical community should feel an obligation to get all questions answered so that folks can make the best decisions for their families. The onus will be and always should be on the one who is trying to change the behavior of somebody else. In this case, we are talking about those who want others to be vaccinated, particularly kids.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

These people make judgments based upon their professional background, known data, risks and other factors. That is what they do. That doesn't mean they are always right, but they have the best training to make such recommendations.

The alternative is everyone doing their own cost benefit with cherry picked facts and biases. Many of these people place a high weight on potential unknown undiscovered future vaccine side effect / dangers which rarely exist.

The common theme in almost all vaccine hesitentcy posts is looking at it 100% from the perspective of the person getting vaxxed and zero percent of community benefits of vaccine, coupled with an unfounded fear of future unknown side effects that rarely come to pass.

 

Some state animosity.
Washington governor to Idaho officials: 'Stop clogging up my hospitals'

Nearly all COVID-19 recent COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths have occurred among the unvaccinated, the governor's statement added.

During the obamacare discussions, would this have been considered a Death Panel?

Idaho implemented its Crisis Standards of Care late last week, which permits hospitals to prioritize care for patients with higher chances of recovery, although the state said not every hospital would need to ration care.

 

It is actually quite common for Flu season alone to fill ICU beds. It just isn't on the news with huge flashing graphics every night.
It isn't just ICU beds either. The CDC noted that the estimated number of hospitalizations during the 2017-2018 influenza season exceeded the number of staffed hospital beds in the United States — 902,202.

Hospitals aren't generally "overrun" with Covid patents .
That is a myth. ICU beds run at a high percentage anyway. Covid may be the straw to the camels back in select cases, but the hospitals are not "overrun" with covid patients.
ICU units at most major trauma centers will run 80%-90% full in non Covid times. Toss in a mix of Flu and Covid and you have an overrun system, but the 90% already there are equally an issue.

 

1 in 6000 is significantly greater than the odds of kids having anything happen to them with regard to covid. Especially when somewhere in the neighborhood of 35% of all child covid deaths have nothing to do with covid. And now downplaying myocarditis is the play when last year you and others were super worried about kids getting myocarditis. Quite the switch. And i'm not going to "small risk" for my son when it's much larger than my son having any such issue with covid. I'll pass on the vaccine for now. Maybe if they lower the dosage for kids and have more studies i'll reconsider.

 

Doesn't this same thing apply to pediatricians?

Sure, that's ONE alternative, but I already identified what I'd like to see above. In case you don't feel like going back to look for it (I understand, this thread is ridiculously large), we can summarize a reasonable alternative as follows:

(1) seek out questions, and answer them
(2) if any pediatricians still do not think it is necessary for ALL children to receive the vaccine, let them have their voice and preferably let a panel provide for a discussion that can be presented to the public. If there's a convincing argument to be had, it will be brought forth; if there's not, then that TOO should be brought forth.
(3) provide for more granulated data that shows exactly how children are doing based on smaller groupings of age brackets; indicate what risk factors they have or they have no known risk factors; if people can see that (for example) 0.05% of children with no known risk factors are being hospitalized for longer than a week but still not needing ICU treatment, then that's useful information. If people can see that 1% of children with no known risk factors are ending up on a ventilator, then that, too is useful information. But if there is a useful reason to actually withhold this information that should be expressed.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Once again, the whole premise of this post is

- the impact and risks on recipient of the vaccine
- no discussion of community benefits of the vaccination
- an implicit assumption that there may be hidden vaccine dangers that one should minimize.

 

The risk of a male child ending up in a hospital is greater from myocarditis from the vaccine. But what about the risk of death? Again, no reported deaths in the US from myocarditis from the vaccine, and even if 99% of deaths of kids with COVID aren't caused by COVID, any number higher than 0 means COVID has a greater risk of death.

The risk of myocarditis from getting COVID was the worry. That was before a vaccine for anyone existed. If the risk of a disease can be greatly reduced, then we should consider that course of action. With COVID and myocarditis from the vaccine, the choice is all but binary. Either get the vaccine or eventually, get COVID. Which is worse?

If myocarditis risk was 1 in 500 total kids being hospitalized, different story. But it's actually about 1 in 15,000 when you consider there is little to no risk for females, and the 1 in 6,000 is for highest risk males, with males with no other health issues such as diabetes having a lower risk for hospitalization from myocarditis. While this is greater than the risk of ending up in a hospital for kids, again, kids unfortunately die from COVID. They have not yet died as a result of being vaccinated.

And that's the calculus. Slightly higher risk of ending up in a hospital with an all but 100% guarantee the kid will be released and 100% fine, versus a lower hospital risk, but greater chance of death.

 

You are being dismissive of the establishment of a need for children to be vaccinated. This is not unique to our current situation; a lot of folks are completely skipping this discussion point.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Agree, and once again the vaccine hesitant stance fails to take into account community benefits of vaccine.

 

No there is a position on kids getting vaccinated. You just seem uncomfortable with it.

 

Ha, sure, there are many positions on kids getting vaccinated:

- definitely yes! for everybody!
- probably yes, for some
- maybe, we need to look at data, does it indicate that some need it more than others or that some many not need it at all
- probably not, at least not for healthy kids, their natural immunity seems to be working fine
- definitely not! and you can't talk me out of it!

I'm only uncomfortable with the idea of going through the same nonsense of folks talking down to others about not getting vaccinated; the same withholding of useful information that could better inform people on the benefits of vaccination...these things applied to children and parents' care of their own children is what I'm trying to avoid before we even go down that road.

I'm perfectly comfortable with what our pediatrician has advised us, but I gather that some of you may not be.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Pfizer be like...