> Young, healthy males have a statistically zero risk of severe COVID complications, and a statistically small but non-zero risk of myocarditis.
Now imagine having a healthy 7-year old son, and having an excruciatingly difficult conversation with your spouse about why he shouldn’t get vaccinated. Or having to cut off ties with your mother-in-law, preventing your children from seeing their grandmother, because she thinks you are actively harming your own young children by not getting vaccinated despite having natural immunity.
These people are destroying the very bonds of society.
My wife is from a family of fiercely independent Filipino immigrants. She's always been super levelheaded. I lucked out with her. Her late father was a chemist, and her uncles are all practicing physicians. They were all universally shocked when the push to vaccinate kids started. They know it's not dangerous to kids. They can't even talk about it without lapsing into angry rapid Tagalog. She was right there with them.
Here's a new editorial from a prof at Johns Hopkins:
Might be useful in those conversations on previous infection. And I agree regarding the social fabric being destroyed by these bureaucrats. They are going to slowly try to find a way to ease out of this in a manner that minimizes the damage to their reputations. That's what political elites have always done when their narratives crumble after they have dug in. See the utter absence of contrition or self reflection after the Iraq wmd fiasco for an example. Or Vietnam. They don't care how much damage they do in the process.
Regardless of how small the absolute risk, the risks of COVID are far higher than the risks of the vaccine, even for 7 year olds. So why are you choosing to die on that hill?
Regarding 7 year olds, you are grossly misinformed, but that's not your fault. The US Federal government is continuing in it's grand tradition of doubling down on bad science to save face of bureaucrats who made bad policy decisions. For previous examples, see the thousands of studies by NIH to justify cannabis prohibition, USDA food pyramid, dragging feet on leaded gasoline for decades, etc.
The rationale for vaccinating kids was to prevent them from spreading it. The vaccine did that effectively before Delta. With omicron, it's worthless for preventing spread. Kids are the one age group at higher risk from flu than covid.
My two kids (8 and 15) aren't vaxxed. They caught omicron, and now they are in the ICU... Oh wait,no they are fine, had almost zero symptoms, and were playing outside the day they tested positive. Which is, statistically, a virtual certainty. They aren't morbidly obese or immunocompromised, so they shrugged it off.
Nobody is dying on a hill. We're just better at statistics and aren't gullible enough to believe these panicked fools.
Put an experimental product from Big Pharma in your kid for no reason. That's your call. But ask yourself why you suddenly trust the FDA, an organization that labeled oxycontin non addictive, approved Vioxx, approved remdesivir for covid despite it being useless, and that's just the past 15 years. Fear is the mind killer indeed.
At this point, the vaccine is as experimental as getting COVID.
We have lots of data on both. Said data shows that 7 year olds are much more likely to have serious affects from COVID than from the vaccine. That's not to say serious outcomes from covid are at all likely. Just that the relative risk is lower with the vaccine.
To reiterate, the absolute risk is tiny, so it's really not a big deal. But if you truly understand statistics, then you will also see that everyone will be exposed to COVID and you are better off with the vaccine than without no matter the age cohort.
And the vaccine reduces transmission (less so than we had hoped, but a reduction, nonetheless), no one ever said it would 100% stop transmission.
I suppose taking an experimental vaccine seems unnecessary if you consider a wild virus to be natural, maybe even artisinal, and you ignore the fact that while the vaccine is quality controlled and the same as what billions of people have now received, and the virus is constantly mutating, well then I guess the virus sounds safer.
Now imagine having a healthy 7-year old son, and having an excruciatingly difficult conversation with your spouse about why he shouldn’t get vaccinated. Or having to cut off ties with your mother-in-law, preventing your children from seeing their grandmother, because she thinks you are actively harming your own young children by not getting vaccinated despite having natural immunity.
These people are destroying the very bonds of society.