I am puzzled by anyone saying that there is room for “reasonable debate” on who gets to be protected by one of the only tools we have to fight this virus, and who deserves to be excluded entirely from the opportunity to protect themselves. During the CDC ACIP meeting, the data showed that half of *kids* who died of COVID had no underlying conditions. That means we are literally all at risk, and we should all be offered the chance to access the (admittedly meager) protection from vaccines. Vaccine and booster uptake has been so poor that I simply don’t grasp this gatekeeping of vaccines. There shouldn’t be “reasoned debate” on excluding people from public health tools. FULL STOP.
Thanks Megan. I hope from reading the article you can see that I agree with your poin that everyone can benefit from the vaccine (and thus I believe everyone should be eligible, which is not the case here in the UK where I live). The reasonable debate comes from the fact that society does not have infinite resources thus and we are always making decisions about balancing costs and benefits. That is much more of a public policy and health care funding question, which is where I think these issues get less straightforward-- but preventive public health measures such as vaccines are almost always worthwhile even in that context.
I believe some sort of testing regime needs to invented in order to check someone’s immune response to COVID in the first place to determine whether or not they need the vaccines or not in the first place. Why some people who are unvaccinated do very well with recovering from COVID infections or others not even showing a flinch to it is obviously because they have an immune system that doesn’t need COVID vaccines in order to fight it off naturally.
On the topic of more COVID vaccines for health people under 30, there is no clear long term safety data, and given we are seeing enough events of myocarditis and other negative health outcomes, there is little need to provide a health intervention that does not have a large benefit. If mental gymnastics have to be performed to try and showcase a benefit in those age groups, there probably isn't enough benefit to expose the risk.
Truly, what would be the point of subjecting children to this? They have faired very well when it comes to more severe variants never mind the mild one that exists now, yet lets give them a medical intervention we still don't know the long term effects of, especially as we keep dosing. It seems irresponsible.
Other countries have very different perspectives on this that are much more reasonable, thus they provide very different advice than the pharma obsessed United States... it seems important to let your readers know more about this subject.
I am puzzled by anyone saying that there is room for “reasonable debate” on who gets to be protected by one of the only tools we have to fight this virus, and who deserves to be excluded entirely from the opportunity to protect themselves. During the CDC ACIP meeting, the data showed that half of *kids* who died of COVID had no underlying conditions. That means we are literally all at risk, and we should all be offered the chance to access the (admittedly meager) protection from vaccines. Vaccine and booster uptake has been so poor that I simply don’t grasp this gatekeeping of vaccines. There shouldn’t be “reasoned debate” on excluding people from public health tools. FULL STOP.
Thanks Megan. I hope from reading the article you can see that I agree with your poin that everyone can benefit from the vaccine (and thus I believe everyone should be eligible, which is not the case here in the UK where I live). The reasonable debate comes from the fact that society does not have infinite resources thus and we are always making decisions about balancing costs and benefits. That is much more of a public policy and health care funding question, which is where I think these issues get less straightforward-- but preventive public health measures such as vaccines are almost always worthwhile even in that context.
I believe some sort of testing regime needs to invented in order to check someone’s immune response to COVID in the first place to determine whether or not they need the vaccines or not in the first place. Why some people who are unvaccinated do very well with recovering from COVID infections or others not even showing a flinch to it is obviously because they have an immune system that doesn’t need COVID vaccines in order to fight it off naturally.
On the topic of more COVID vaccines for health people under 30, there is no clear long term safety data, and given we are seeing enough events of myocarditis and other negative health outcomes, there is little need to provide a health intervention that does not have a large benefit. If mental gymnastics have to be performed to try and showcase a benefit in those age groups, there probably isn't enough benefit to expose the risk.
Truly, what would be the point of subjecting children to this? They have faired very well when it comes to more severe variants never mind the mild one that exists now, yet lets give them a medical intervention we still don't know the long term effects of, especially as we keep dosing. It seems irresponsible.
Other countries have very different perspectives on this that are much more reasonable, thus they provide very different advice than the pharma obsessed United States... it seems important to let your readers know more about this subject.
Great reasoning on this. Thank you Dr. Dowd!
Thanks Jack, appreciate it!