Kids 5-11 Appear Safely Protected By Small Doses of COVID Vaccine, Pfizer Says (arstechnica.com) 156
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Small doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 appeared to produce strong antibody responses and comparable side effects to those seen in older age groups, according to the first top-line results from a Phase 2/3 clinical trial released by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech early Monday. The trial data involved 2,268 children ages 5 to 11 years, and these children were given a series of two 10-microgram doses of the vaccine, 21 days apart. The dosage is just a third of the 30-microgram doses given to people ages 12 and above. One month after the second dose, researchers measured the children's levels of antibodies able to neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a lab experiment. The geometric mean titer of antibody in the 5 to 11 year olds was 1,197.6 (95 percent confidence interval of 1,106.1 to 1,296.6), which is comparable to the geometric mean titer of 1,146.5 seen in people ages 16 to 25. Pfizer described the vaccine as being well tolerated in children, with side effects generally comparable to what's seen in people ages 16 to 25. But the company did not provide further data on the side effects. It also did not provide any further data on vaccine efficacy, though experts expect that comparable neutralizing antibody levels will provide comparable levels of protection against infection, hospitalization, and death. The company said it plans to submit the data to the FDA as soon as possible. It also aims to submit the data for emergency use authorization to the FDA by the end of the month. "Once data is submitted to the FDA, it will take regulators several weeks to review the data and make a decision," the report adds. "That places the earliest estimates for vaccine authorization and availability for the 5-to-11 group at the end of October."
huge (Score:1)
1200 is way the fuck too high.
For reference, adult average peak was around 600. Natural infection gives around 100, which is by all indications plenty to prevent infections.
Note 1: I'm quoting those numbers from memory, based on a study I read a while back. Month ago? Two? I might be remembering them wrong, or different/better data may be out there.
Note 2: I'm not saying that 1200 is bad or dangerous, it is just WAY overshooting the target. It strongly suggests that they could halve the dose again at
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1200 is way the fuck too high.
Perhaps. But that is a geometric mean. So some kids may be much lower.
It strongly suggests that they could halve the dose again at least 1 or 2 more times.
Everyone would be better off with smaller doses in multiple jabs, but that means more admin overhead.
Re: Those poor kids.. (Score:3)
Re:huge (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's right to compare adults to children on this either. Kids' immune systems are developing, and kids are at very different stages, and vary quite a lot in terms of mass, immune development, etc. even when the same age, let alone the age category of 5 to 11, and much much more variation than adults in various age categories.
Not to mention that the article and summary compare to adults 16 to 25 (a more relevant figure), which are at 1,146. Seems to me they're right on the money and going in the right direction.
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which are at 1,146. Seems to me they're right on the money and going in the right direction.
Yes, but its all a bit of guesswork.
The Moderna vaccine is almost identical to Pfizer, but they went with 100 micrograms, compared to 30 for Pfizer with adults.
https://www.webmd.com/vaccines... [webmd.com]
> Moderna vaccine averaged 2,881 units per milliliter, as compared with those who got the Pfizer vaccine, who averaged 1,108 units per milliliter.
and yet both have very similar efficacy, and similar low risk.
Kids' immune systems are developing, and kids are at very different stages,
What does that even mean?
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Kids' immune systems are developing, and kids are at very different stages,
What does that even mean?
It means he has no clue.
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>and yet both have very similar efficacy, and similar low risk.
That depends upon your value of "similar".
Pretty much every comparison I've seen, from early on to the major one on long term effectiveness, has found that Moderna has an edge.
In particular, effectiveness wanes faster for Pfizer.
And today, J&J is claiming to be as effective as the others if served with a second dose at 21 days . . . so why in the world didn't they test for this at stage 1 & 2 in the first place???
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The best markets are where the product does nothing: vague, minor or no benefit but no harm. Pfizer wants to sell and the vaccine appears to be reasonably safe. The benefits for children are also minor though.
They are measuring titers, not real world benefits. Previously titers have been used to argue that the protection from vaccination was better than the protection from actual infection . That was wrong. Not to be confused with the comparison 'counting on infection to protect you' vs 'counting on vaccin
Personal vs social benefit (Score:2)
It was reported that an FDA scientist testified before the FDA board making the booster decision that the slight risk of heart inflammation (1 in 5000, 1 in 6000 from Israeli data) makes the Pfizer vaccine of no personal benefit in relation to the risk from COVID disease in males under age 40.
Mind you, this is from FDA, not from Robert Kennedy Jr or some flaming anti-vaxers among the Trump crowd, unless someone here can convince me that this is Fake News?
There may be a social benefit of reduced chance
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Someone said a common feature of covid is high dispersion: a lot of stuff happens far from the average. Some people are superspreaders ,many people spread little or nothing. So it is to expected that while for old people the choice for vaccination is easy it is less straightforward for young people.
The simple approach is, if the individual choice is not straightforward it does not make a big difference which you choose, so what is the problem with going along with the official advice which has the advantage
The official advice (Score:2)
The official advice, right now, is not to give booster doses of vaccine to those under 65 or without certain high-risk medical conditions.
The evidence behind that advice, coming from FDA itself, is that the risk/benefit, which is the FDA's stock-and-trade, is not clear cut for giving vaccines to males under age 40.
So is this a case of the government (FDA) not trusting the government (Biden Administration, CDC)?
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I don't know, but can't it be reduced to different risk calculus? The government focuses on getting the epidemic under control and is willing to take more risks to get maximum vaccination. The argument you give about the FDA is 'not clear cut' meaning if the benefit is clear cut then we support it, otherwise not. What about the opposite: if the downsides of the vaccines are clearcut stop recommending them, otherwise keep going. That is a wide middle ground.
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Yeah, that's an unfortunate factoid about the *personal* benefit of vaccines for males under 40. Another straw for anti-vaxxers to grasp at.
YES - there is huge social benefit to the vaccine. There is also the fact that there is little to no *personal* benefit to wearing a mask. But huge, proven, social benefits - as seen by the drastic differences in transmission rates, hospitalizations, and deaths between regions that HAVE good mask-wearing stats vs. those that do not.
Like any good military defense, de
Citation needed (Score:2)
> Previously titers have been used to argue that the protection from vaccination was better than the protection from actual infection . That was wrong.
Citation needed.
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of what? There has been a whole period where people who had been infected were still exhorted to take the vaccine.
This article shows a change of mind: https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
The coarse grained deduction is this: whichever way you got your immunity , you're pretty safe now and don't have to bother about extra shots.
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I don't think it's right to compare adults to children on this either. Kids' immune systems are developing, and kids are at very different stages, and vary quite a lot in terms of mass, immune development, etc. even when the same age, let alone the age category of 5 to 11, and much much more variation than adults in various age categories.
Not to mention, kids of that age group are far less likely to suffer serious consequences as a result of COVID-19 infection. That raises the bar for safety in terms of "net benefit" of the vaccine.
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Slashdot poster "1200 is way too high, adults were only 600. I'm quoting that from memory."
Summary: "comparable to the geometric mean titer of 1,146.5 seen in people ages 16 to 25"
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Indeed. Some people are incredibly stupid and incapable, yet believe they are smarter than everybody else. This one is a good example. Dunning-Kruger effect at work.
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The very next sentence reads "which is comparable to the geometric mean titer of 1,146.5 seen in people ages 16 to 25"
So I'm wondering where you came up with that "adult average peak was around 600" besides from a "study [you] read a while back".
Seems vague, and contradicted by the very next sentence of the article.
You say you're not saying 1200 is bad, but you then go on to say that you "strongly suggest" they shoot for a lower target, and then that you suggest the adult 600 number that you "remember" is a
Why? (Score:1, Troll)
Here’s a quote from nature
Of 3,105 deaths from all causes among the 12 million or so people under 18 in England between March 2020 and February 2021, 25 were attributable to COVID-19 — a rate of about 2 for every million people in this age range. None had asthma or type-1 diabetes, the authors note, and about half had conditions that put them at a higher risk than healthy children of dying from any cause.
Why expose kids to a vaccine that doesn’t yet have long term health data and does have side effects when COVID is such a low risk to children?
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Shareholder value, of course!
we'd save more kids banning hot dogs.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Why expose kids to a vaccine that doesn’t yet have long term health data and does have side effects when COVID is such a low risk to children?
Your concern is valid but there are a couple of reasons to vaccinate children under twelve. First is the rise in short and long term pediatric neurological disorders. This doesn't get a lot of headline press because it isn't kids dying. The absolute numbers are low but the disease rate increase is startling. Sorry don't have links handy.
The other issue is that kids may be asymptomatic but are carriers and herd immunity won't be achieved unless they are part of the vaccination program.
A difficult issue and more information is definitely necessary.
Take one for the team? (Score:2)
So children need to be exposed to a (low risk) of an adverse effect to protect fat codgers?
We have legislation that allows drafting 19-year-old men where they may lose their lives in furtherance of our common defense, so I guess this is OK?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The incidence of breakthrough is insufficient to keep it going if we had everyone vaccinated.
Domain experts disagree. Andrew Pollard director of oxford vaccine group characterizes this position as "mythical" saying "I think we are in a situation here with this current variant where herd immunity is not a possibility because it still infects vaccinated individuals"
"And that does mean that anyone whoâ(TM)s still unvaccinated, at some point, will meet the virus. That might not be this month or next month, it might be next year, but at some point they will meet the virus and we donâ(TM)t hav
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He isn't wrong that we'll have subsequent waves, probably seasonally like flu. But between vaccination and the contagiousness of Delta, once it hits everyone as he describes, then that's the end of the wave.
What you said was "The incidence of breakthrough is insufficient to keep it going if we had everyone vaccinated." do you no longer believe this to be the case?
Pollard was quite clear with his remarks of what he was referring to. "The problem with this virus is it is not measles. If 95% of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot transmit in the population" he was talking about the prospect of stopping the virus with vaccines.
Once everyone has acquired immunity the real world impact of the
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The CDC reported that over the last 21 months the total number of kids between the ages of 0-17 that have died of covid is 439. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Prov... [cdc.gov]
Probably most of those had extenuating medical circumstances. But, how many children would you be willing to give cardiomyopathy to in order to save them from death due to covid? As of June 10, 2021 there were 789 cases "reported" of myocarditis with 285 being under 30. Nice, obtuse figures. https://www. [aappublications.org]
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I love how when it comes to vaccines, we need to worry about everything that might go wrong, including non-fatal cases of myocarditis, but when it comes to covid, we can just ignore the much higher rate of myocarditis because the only thing that matters is death.
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Not to mention someone can refute a post about kids getting sick, including quoting the line "every child which gets serious sick..." with the count of children who have died.
There's some hard core wishful thinking going on.
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Indeed. And the longer this crap goes on, the more other negative effects on children merely from a prolonged pandemic running.
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citation?
Do you really need a citation that a child can get sick without dying?
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"Filled with adults and children"
Now there is a nice, narrow category. /s
To be fair, the headline title is really, really wrong. The conversation is with a pediatric doctor who works at a pediatric hospital, so naturally the conversation is mostly about children. The phrase "adults and children" seems to come from "anywhere from 10 to 60 or 70 or 80 adults and children in the state are looking and waiting for an ICU bed that is not there"
They do talk briefly about staffing levels, but sorta skip over the
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Because what right do you have to be a vector to forcibly subject others to these outcomes when a proven safe alternative exists?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The kids won't catch it so won't have to worry about long term effects of COVID
2. The vaccine is extremely safe. No deaths have been reported from it.
3. The kids won't spread it to more vulnerable people.
4. You can't reach a herd immunity if 20% of the population equally spread about that regularly comes in contact isn't immune.
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Indeed. But these are facts are too difficult for the utterly-dumb anti-vaxxers to understand. Hence they deny, lie and deride.
Utterly-dumb anti-vaxxers at FDA (Score:2)
Just sayin'
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1. The kids won't catch it so won't have to worry about long term effects of COVID
A vaccine does not prevent infection. It merely minimizes the effects of it.
And since #1 on the list is complete bullshit, I'm going to safely assume we can ignore the rest.
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That's an anti-vax talking point I've been seeing a lot lately. It is of course not true, vaccines do prevent infection in some people and overall they reduce the chance of infection. What they don't do is prevent spread from already infected people, though they do increase the recovery time which also reduces the spread
But like most anti-vaxxers, your second comment about believing science is bs and ignoring everything also seems to be pretty common
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In just England alone, 30,305 people died within 21 days of getting the jab [theexpose.uk] during the first 6 months of 2021.
And in England, every year over 600k people die within 21 days of drinking a glass of water.
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2. The vaccine is extremely safe. No deaths have been reported from it.
Why are you spreading such blatant mis-information? More people have died from COVID-19 jabs than all of the people who have died from any vaccine in the past 15 years combined.
In just England alone, 30,305 people died within 21 days of getting the jab [theexpose.uk] during the first 6 months of 2021.
That means absolutely nothing. You are lying by misrepresenting data.
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1. England is using a different vaccine so their numbers aren't relevant.
2. It's not an immortality shot - people still will die This is kind of a weird measurement since it's not even looking at the cause of death
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That's not really correct. The vaccine reduces the chance of infection and also reduces the recovery time. Both of those significantly reduce the transmission.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why expose kids to a vaccine that doesn’t yet have long term health data and does have side effects when COVID is such a low risk to children?
Because kids are disease vectors. Ask any parent with kids what happens when school starts. The whole family gets sick. Every year.
Because the risk for the vaccine is still way lower than the risk of getting COVID, even at that age.
Because any long-term effects are provably no worse than getting COVID.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because kids are disease vectors. Ask any parent with kids what happens when school starts. The whole family gets sick. Every year.
Please engage your brain for a moment.
First, these COVID-19 "vaccines" aren't like yesterday's vaccines -- the jabs do not prevent infection nor transmission, they only reduce severity of the disease.
You're starting off wrong from the very first sentence. COVID vaccines dramatically reduce the rate of infection (at least using the epidemiological definition; pedantically, a few cells are still likely to get infected before your immune system acts, but that is true for literally every vaccine ever created), which by extension, reduces the rate of transmission, because if you aren't infected, you cannot transmit the virus. So literally every single thing you said there is wrong.
Secondly, unjabbed children typically do not experience severe cases of COVID-19 anyway, so there is no good reason to subject children to the risks of the vax.
Define "typically". Depending on the state, anywhere from 0.1% to 2% of child COVID cases resulted in hospitalization. That's far fewer than the 21% in unvaccinated adults, but we're only talking about one to two orders of magnitude fewer cases than a really high number, which makes it still pretty darn scary.
Finally, studies have shown that naturally acquired immunity can be an order of magnitude stronger than the jab provides.
Also wrong. Studies are all over the map. Some studies show that vaccines are an order of magnitude stronger than natural infection. And all studies show that vaccines on top of natural infection are an order of magnitude better than natural infection alone. And all studies show that a third dose increases protection from the vaccine by about an order of magnitude, which would make it at least as good as natural infections even by your extremely generous numbers for natural infection efficacy.
Also, about one third of infected people develop no antibodies at all. This is not the case for the vaccine. So about a third of people can literally get COVID over and over again and keep spreading it around unless they get vaccinated.
Think about it. The mRNA only programs your cells to produce a spike protein of some old original version of the COVID-19 disease. Get the real thing and your child's body can produce antibodies against ALL aspects of the current variant in your area -- not just the spike protein and not the spike protein of some old variant that isn't even likely prevalent in your area anymore.
A vaccine against other parts of the virus is unlikely to be effective. Only the spike protein interacts with your cells. For an antibody to provide any neutralization against the virus, it must, by definition, be an antibody against the spike protein, because only something that attaches to the spike protein can physically prevent that spike protein from interfacing with your ACE2 receptors.
All other antibodies other than spike protein antibodies are inherently less effective, because the best they can do is signal to other parts of the immune system (e.g. macrophages) that the virus needs to be picked up and disposed of. Yes, that helps a little, but not much. Having an order-of-magnitude stronger reaction to the spike is far more effective at preventing illness than having a reaction to other parts of the capsid. This is basic immunology.
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Re: Why? (Score:2)
I've come across most of what you said, but for this one I'd be grateful for a link. A vaccine against other parts of the virus is unlikely to be effective. Only the spike protein interacts with your cells. For an antibody to provide any neutralization against the vi
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Are you a paid troll, to write garbage like this?
This is what an utter failure looks like, and this was expected from previous covid animal trials. We had 20 years of experiments on these so called covid vaccines: https://twitter.com/FreedomIsr... [twitter.com]
Are you a paid troll, to write garbage like that? COVID didn't exist 20 years ago. Yes, it's related to SARS, but it isn't precisely SARS. And no, we don't have 20 years of failed experiments on SARS vaccines. We had SARS vaccines ready for human trials almost two decades ago, but they didn't bother with that testing because the epidemic died out.
Incidentally, the post you linked to actually proves something even stronger than my claims. It says that for vaccinated people who get sick, their infection
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Are you a paid troll, to write garbage like that? COVID didn't exist 20 years ago...
You are a science illiterate person, and likely paid. This is fascinating to find people ready writing garbage on a field they didn't even study. Here is an informed answer on this matter, these family of viruses existed 20 years ago: https://twitter.com/JosephAaro... [twitter.com]
No, you are clearly science-illiterate. A family of viruses is not a virus. Coronavirus is a huge family of viruses; only a few of them cause illness in humans, one of which is basically a severe cold, another of which is COVID-19, etc. What makes the SARS subfamily unique* is that its binding site is the ACE2 receptor. Other coronaviruses bind to other receptors, such as the sialic acid receptor and receptors for various host-specific proteins.
And even within the SARS subfamily, even though SARS and CO
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Mr. dgatwood --
Bravo sir. I admire your fortitude for engaging so thoroughly and thoughtfully with the AC/troll. Actually, it's hard to tell if he really believes that rubbish or if he is in fact just trolling. But either way you're a champ.
Please don't lose faith, reasonable people are out here & we've got your back.
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I know a lot of people who say the same things, and I'm pretty sure that most of them really do believe what they're saying. And every one of those folks is convincing people to not get vaccinated, etc. with their posts and stuff. That's why I think it's really important to fight FUD with facts whenever you can. I've lost too many friends and acquaintances to COVID already. I want this virus gone.
Thanks for the kind words. It means a lot.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why expose kids to a vaccine that doesn’t yet have long term health data and does have side effects when COVID is such a low risk to children?
From my risk analysis, death is a very bad side effect to getting CoVID. Also you neglected this part: "The studies did not evaluate rates of less-severe illness or debilitating ‘long COVID’ symptoms that can linger months after the acute phase of the infection has past". So you ignored the long term effects of CoVID while asking about the long term effects of the vaccine.
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Why expose kids to a vaccine that doesn’t yet have long term health data
Who says we don't have long term health data? For each component of the Pfizer vaccine we have long term health data with the exception of the effect of the anti-bodies being generated themselves. And any effect this would have would have shown up within months at the most, would be just as bad from getting even asymptomatic COVID, and above all we have over a years worth of data on this as well.
More reading science and less reading antivax blogs.
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There is more risk to COVID than death. For example, long COVID is a thing for children as well. Also, if a child infects an adult they are close to and _that_ one dies, do you think this has no adverse effect on the child? Right.
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Regardless, how many children would have to die before you would consider a vaccine? Three per million? Ten per million? One hundred per million? Maybe it would be useful to ask a parent who has lost a child to COVID whether a vacci
Milk is good for you (Score:1, Insightful)
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Study conducted by dairy farmer concludes.
Poor analogy. A better analogy is dairy farmers concluding you can get all the benefits of milk by drinking less.
Re: Milk is good for you (Score:2)
Is this an emergency-use vaccine or not? (Score:2)
https://www.fda.gov/emergency-... [fda.gov]
Under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act [fda.gov]), when the Secretary of HHS declares that an emergency use authorization is appropriate, FDA may authorize unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate, approved, and avai
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Re:"Markers" are not good enough. (Score:4, Informative)
It's not good enough to show "markers" like antibodies. Every other vaccine that has been approved had to show a benefit in a real outcome like death, hospitalization, or infectiousness, and show it in a randomized controlled trial. Pfizer has not done this in children.
Basic biology means that if there are antibodies present the immune system is very likely in better shape to fight off disease in question. If anything, the logic should go in the other direction. If the vaccines had been allowed to be distributed before the randomized studies were done, hundreds of thousands of people might still be alive who are not. In this case, since we already know the vaccine works, and the antibody response is comparable to that in older age-cohorts (as noted by Pfizer in the released info), that's more than enough information to conclude based on the evidence that the vaccine works in children. As for the Høeg paper, it is completely not subject to peer review, and is based on data from VAERS which is completely uncontrolled and where any issue whether or not it is connected to a vaccine can be submitted.
The kutzpah here is unbelievable.
The word is chutzpah, sometimes spelled hutzpah. Definitely not spelled with a k which would correspond to kuf in a yiddish or Hebrew transliteration rather than a chaf.
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If the vaccines had been allowed to be distributed before the randomized studies were done, hundreds of thousands of people might still be alive who are not.
In the past when it was assumed a vaccine was safe, it caused problems [wikipedia.org]. Better to run a study.
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Oh wow, you are a moron. It's another one of those "they killed the test animals" videos. Guess what, dipship? They euthanized the animals at the end of their experiment, just like that always do at the end of their experiments. Oh and "they know the vaccine WILL kill you"... except we are seeing the exact OPPOSITE in the real world. US covid deaths these days are overwhelmingly unvaccinated people. And at the same time, I have yet to see any studies from real hospital researches showing any sort of correla
Morons at the FDA (Score:2)
The pushback from FDA on boosters appears to be adverse vaccine effects balanced against the low level of harm of COVID in younger people?
Re:"Markers" are not good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
"here is someone speaking" - ooooh, somebody speaking. That's certainly authoritative. I guess you win.
You will believe one lady who sounds like a quack while simultaneously ignoring the reports from hundreds of doctors stating otherwise.
Here you go moron:
https://fullfact.org/online/co... [fullfact.org]
https://factcheck.afp.com/covi... [afp.com]
And as for VAERS:
https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/dat... [hhs.gov]
"VAERS accepts all reports without judging whether the event was caused by the vaccine."
and
"When evaluating data from VAERS, it is important to note that for any reported event, no cause-and-effect relationship has been established. Reports of all possible associations between vaccines and adverse events (possible side effects) are filed in VAERS. Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event."
Oh yes, Dr. Lee Merritt. I go to orthopedic surgeons for all of my virology related information. And how exactly does she have privileged access to all of this secret information that's not available to anyone except America's Frontline Doctors?
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It's not good enough to show "markers" like antibodies.
Since the initial studies on the vaccines, they've been able to establish a strong correlation between antibody levels and real world observed protective efficacy [nature.com]. It's not unreasonable to use equivalent immune response among similar age groups to assume similar efficacy. Children aren't magic; their immune response isn't sufficiently different from adults that we'd expect their antibodies not to work after all. And the risk of harm to the child is why they're using a reduced dose for younger children, and
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Here is what happening with these so called "safe" products: https://twitter.com/Sleevemonk... [twitter.com]
3rd Leading Cause of Sudden Death (Score:2, Insightful)
myocarditis resolves in a few weeks and isn't long-lasting.
Yeah, no -- death is definitely long-lasting.
Myocarditis is the 3rd leading cause of Sudden Death [myocarditi...dation.org] in children and young adults (and this was before these COVID-19 jabs existed). In some cases, symptoms may not be present at all, and victims may die instantly. In young adults, nearly 20% of sudden death cases are linked to myocarditis.
Overall, myocarditis which can cause dilated cardiomyopathy, are thought to account for up to 45 percent of heart transplants in the U.S. today. Myocarditis can recur, and in s
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Not just that, but myocarditis is a more common symptom from catching covid, and it causes more severe cases of it.
Their ridiculous argument is kinda like pointing out how many people in accidents end up with cracked ribs from their seatbelt...and then just leaving it at that, as if that's the whole story.
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And vaccinated children typically do not experience myocarditis either. Therefore it is not a non-sequitur. You are complaining about a rare occurrence while simultaneously dismissing the less rare (and more severe) version of that same thing.
Re:"Markers" are not good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not good enough to show "markers" like antibodies. Every other vaccine that has been approved had to show a benefit in a real outcome like death, hospitalization, or infectiousness, and show it in a randomized controlled trial. Pfizer has not done this in children.
There's a strong correlation between antibody levels and protection from infection in general. And they did show that.
Showing a benefit in death or hospitalization would be impossible without vaccinating a sizable percentage of the kids in the country, because that's how big a sample size you would need to show statistical significance in an event so relatively rare.
Meanwhile, the Høeg paper [medrxiv.org] is showing it's possible there's a net harm to the child, at least for adolescent boys taking two doses.
No, it didn't really show that [sciencebasedmedicine.org].
This is an unreasonable standard: we never approve a treatment because some other scientist has so far failed to show that treatment is harmful, or failed to get proof of that harm past adversarial peer review. That's ridiculous and not logic: we don't prove negatives. It's the other way around. Pfizer has to prove a benefit. They didn't do that for 12 - 16, and their drug was authorized for 12 - 16 anyway.
Citation needed.
In the study for kids age 12 to 15, they studied 2,260 kids, and in the placebo-controlled arm, 18 got COVID, versus 0 in the experiment arm [rochester.edu].
Just because you read something on some anti-vaxxer blog doesn't make it true, or even close to true.
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I'll save other slashdotters the hassle. One of the authors of the paper in question had, and I'll quote SBM here:
That is literally half of the linked page.* I used page down 26 times before I got to the end of the ad hominem part of the article. After that, there was a bizarre section where I think the author of the SBM page was argu
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I'll save other slashdotters the hassle. One of the authors of the paper in question had, and I'll quote SBM here:
That is literally half of the linked page.* I used page down 26 times before I got to the end of the ad hominem part of the article.
As wary as I am of ad hominem attacks, the fact that it's ostensibly a medical paper being written by someone with absolutely no medical background and absolutely no understanding of the quality of data going into VAERS and the complete lack of scrutiny that data gets while being entered is actually relevant to the question of whether the paper has merit.
That said, the parts of the article that explain why you can't usefully mine VAERS data without a lot more careful screening are worth a read.
Either way, I
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Either way, I think the comments on the preprint article itself sum up my opinion:
So the worst-case risk from the vaccine is still lower than the risk that those same people would have from getting COVID. And that really is the only comparison that matters — not the comparison against the background level of myocarditis at some arbitrarily chosen point in time, but the total risk to an individual arising out of the two different types of exposure (vaccination and infection). All else is meaningless.
Also, the paper appears to assume that the 162 per million number is not a massive overcount. But COVID itself causes myocarditis, as do many other viruses, and people who are vaccinated are likely to become less cautious about circulating among the general public, which increases their risk of exposure to COVID and various other viruses that can cause myocarditis. And the COVID vaccination rate in young people is closely tied to the rate of COVID community spread, which means that people getting vaccinat
Re:"Markers" are not good enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a phase I/II/III trial, which is not uncommon when extending an already approved adult drug to children. First you give it to a few and see if they turn blue, and whether they show promising effects with a few different doses. Then you give it to a bunch and look for efficacy.
Pfizer will follow these kids until enough of them get COVID to give the efficacy data you want. In the meantime, they'll submit the results they have to the FDA so outside experts can decide whether it's enough for emergency authorization.
Biomarkers surrogates are a reasonable way to show efficacy once you've demonstrated in other studies that they're meaningful.
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https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/a... [cdc.gov]
"A lower risk of symptomatic COVID-19 was observed with vaccination compared to placebo (relative risk [RR] 0.03, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.00, 0.49, evidence type 1)"
That certainly looks to me like they proved it. And the real world is now proving it further. Only about half of teens are unvaccinated, but they account for over 90% of the teen hospitalizations according to every report I've read from hospitals all across the country
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
"Hos
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Seriously? So you prefer people getting sick, maimed (long covid, which children _can_ get) and killed is preferable? You seem to not understand at all what is going on currently. There are some time constraints involved.
Incidentally that paper is you quote is not peer-reviewed and you are reading it wrong.
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Seriously? So you prefer people getting sick, maimed (long covid, which children _can_ get) and killed is preferable? You seem to not understand at all what is going on currently. There are some time constraints involved.
I would be curious what the cheerleaders for vaccination of young children under 12 think about JCVIs decision in the UK against vaccination of children.
"The assessment by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is that the health benefits from vaccination are marginally greater than the potential known harms. However, the margin of benefit is considered too small to support universal vaccination of healthy 12 to 15 year olds at this time."
https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
Last time I chec
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I doubt that. I stopped reading here because you are clearly asking in bad faith. Makes you part of the problem.
And what problem would that be? I quoted UKs advisory groups statement on vaccination and provided a link to it. All I'm hearing from you is derision.
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More bad faith. You are a dishonest PoS, nothing else.
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More bad faith. You are a dishonest PoS, nothing else.
If you have nothing substantive to say then shut the fuck up.
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Pfizer has to prove a benefit. They didn't do that for 12 - 16, and their drug was authorized for 12 - 16 anyway.
You are an idiot.
The vaccine is made and developed by BioNtech. They did the trials. Pfizer is basically only manufacturing it and selling it under their brand.
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Look up the regulations around pools sometime. There are a few, and they pretty much exist because kids fall into the things.
You've got quite a way with putting your foot in your mouth though.
Re: Why though? (Score:2)
The same applies here: vaccinating every child is a blanket proclamation that does not appreciably change public health and safety. There is mounting evidence that it causes myocarditis in a significant portion of teenaged boys. The vast majority of children are not at risk; vaccinating selectively is the correct approach that balances