Everything I am saying below is based on the CDC's numbers and admitted statements.
According to VAERS, the vaccine has a death rate of 1 in 31,000. So, if you give it to 75 million children, you will have approximately 2400 dead kids. Given that only 700 are said to have died from covid and only 50 without serious comorbidities, it is pretty clear the vaccine is not a net positive for most kids. Not exactly certain why this math is so impossible for people to do. However, if you target it only to children whose conditions put them at risk from Covid-19, you can save lives. There are some kids who can benefit, but they are a small minority. Targeted use is the smart way to go. Healthy kids don't need the vaccine.
Assume one third of kids have had Covid-19, the indiscriminate vaccination policy would kill 2400 and save 1400---netting 1000 extra deaths. But since we know what puts someone at risk of dying from Covid-19, we can use the vaccine in a targeted way and save most of the additional 1400 without killing 2400.
I am pretty fucking sick of being called an idiot for this---esp. when there were studies out of Harvard suggesting VAERS has underreported side effects and deaths in the past. We have every reason to believe that vaccine deaths and side effects are more frequent than what is recorded in VAERS.
However, I was being too charitable. If immunity only lasts six months, then what happens when the 1 in 31,000 dice roll has to be repeated again and again? My cost benefit analysis assumed the vaccines granted permanent immunity. So, again, the odds are stacked even further against the vaccine when it comes to children.
Furthermore, with Omicron being even less deadly than the earlier variants, chances are the numbers are even less favorable to the vaccine than I have presented them. The vaccines are unlikely to save an additional 1400 lives. The harm prevented is smaller than I assumed above. (So, once the booster regime kicks in, it will likely be that we kill something like 1200 children for every 200 we save, every six months.)
So, sorry to break it to you, but the shot is at least 66% more deadly to children than Covid-19 would be if you used it indiscriminately. My analysis actually gave the vaccine the benefit of the doubt in every way, and it still fails to be beneficial.
How is it so fucking hard to get the idea of risk-benefit analysis through people's heads. Everything is good or bad, safe or unsafe in their simplified worldview. Should we give kids blood pressure medication they don't need because "my doctor says it is good for me." No, what is good for an old man with crazy blood pressure is not good for a healthy kid.
Here is the thing, if the vaccine were clearly a net benefit---assuming some of you disagree with my/VAERS' numbers, the numbers would not be this close. Given the uncertainty, let's be cautious.
I’m not going to quibble with your premise, which, especially in the wake of Omicron’s decreased morbidity and mortality, seems decisively against child vaccination. I watched a good deal of the CDC advisory board meeting about approving the vaccine for 5-11, and even what was presented then (at the height of the delta wave) seemed as if the benefits and costs were, at best, roughly even. The one board member who abstained believed said that he couldn’t get to a position where the benefits were greater, and he made a convincing argument.
However, I was surprised at the 1 in 31k number you cite and went to the VAERS dataset to see if that was for children or all vaccine recipients, and to sate other actuarial curiosities of mine. Frankly, my takeaway is the dataset (at least the publicly available one) is garbage. In particular, the ‘Died’ field is incredibly incongruous with the data reported in other fields, as there are over a thousand instances with both Died = Y and Recovered = Y, plus hundreds of DateDied prior to Vax_date. As near as I can tell, there are only two deaths for children 5-11 in the data, out of the 100+ that filter out based on the Died field, that seem to be corroborated with the other information presented. Admittedly, I didn’t thoroughly review the user guide, and perhaps there is a cleaned up dataset somewhere that I should be using instead, so I am certainly willing to be challenged on my conclusion.
-Rorex