FYI, in case you don’t have kids: A number of vaccines are already required for school children. If COVID continues to be a problem, it’s not surprising at all that the vaccine will get added to those lists.
> If COVID continues to be a problem, it’s not surprising at all that the vaccine will get added to those lists.
There's a huge difference. This vaccine has a miniscule benefit for kids. We've never before mandated a vaccine for children that didn't provide a sizable benefit to the child him or herself.
Mandatory vaccinations for school-age children exclusively target illnesses with high childhood morbidity/mortality: Measles, Polio, Chickenpox, DtP.
SARS-CoV2, thankfully, is safer than influenza for kids. As of right now, the CDC says that 727 kids have died in the US with Covid throughout the entire pandemic:
California has always been extremely generous with exemptions, part of why measles and whooping cough were/are making a comeback here, this seems to tighten some of that.
After the big measles outbreak at Disneyland in 2014, California tightened school vaccination requirements: Senate Bill 277, passed in 2015, removed personal belief exemptions for mandated vaccinations. Senate Bill 276, passed in 2019, further tightened up what counts as a valid medical exemption.
Mostly because it has become politically expedient to tighten exemptions. In the past the demographic requesting exemptions was mostly liberal hipsters, so there were generous exemptions, but now that the Democratic party stands for COVID vaccination mandates the exemptions are being tightened.
FYI, those other vaccines actually have benefits for those children. Requiring vaccination when there is almost unmeasurable benefit to the recipient is unethical. It's sad that kids have to bear the brunt of all the fear going on right now.
Even if COVID-19 didn't hurt kids directly, a rational state could require them to get vaccinated to tamp down on a major source of community spread and protect people who are hurt more by the virus.
Getting vaccinated is far from the worst thing the government makes people do. The U.S. government still runs the military draft, and has forced unwilling people to go fight and die in miserable circumstances for a cause they think is unjust. By comparison, getting a vaccine to protect the community is small potatoes.
This is an important point I hadn't really considered. It's bad enough having vaccine mandates (I mean having to show proof of vaccine) targeting people going bars or wherever (I'm in Quebec, Canada and apparently now you have to show you're vaccinated to shop at the state run liquor store, that's literally just spite), but bringing kids into the fight is really inappropriate, both on the vaccine side and all the other theatre going on in schools right now. I hope we look back on this with shame and to the extent possible can hold those who have actively gotten us here accountable
The worst part about this in my view is that the fair pushback against this (the vaccine efficiency is low compared to these other vaccines, and the danger to children from COVID is non-existent) will be co-opted against other vaccines that actually matter.
"State Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) will announce Monday morning a bill to add COVID-19 vaccines to California’s list of required inoculations for attending K-12 schools, a move that would override Gov. Gavin Newsom’s scaled-back mandate from last year."
Just to be clear this is a proposed bill. Lots of bills are proposed that don't even get voted on. Long way from becoming law.
The previous mandate required the vaccine starting the semester after full approval. This mandates it regardless if it still under emergency use authorization. The latter strikes me as unreasonable.
This would be like mandating flu vaccines for children. They are unnecessary for their age group, and not very effective against variants like Omicron.
For folks who say "Covid doesn't kill that many kids", it kills more than several diseases we've vaccinated kids against for years: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1480679054541996033. We require those vaccinations for school attendence and have for years.
We vaccinate kids against chickenpox too (though we didn't when I was a kid). I remember my 1st grade class singing happy birthday to me over the phone. I was home sick, missed a week of school. I didn't die, I didn't go to the hospital.
Fast forward: I got my kids chicken-pox vaccines.
Edit: it looks like chicken pox might've posed similar risk to kids as Covid, maybe up to 2x more? Not 100% sure of that, and I have a weak belief that Omicron is more dangerous to kids. I don't think that affects my overall point, but better to be clear and not overstate things.
Second edit: Varicella in the original tweet is Chickenpox, which would indicate less danger to kids. Not sure why the numbers are different.
Seems weird that this applies equally to people who have already had COVID. Yes, you can get COVID a second time. But you can also get COVID after having had a vaccine, or three.
There are other required vaccinations. But those are for illnesses that virtually no kid actually gets. By next school year, probably 3/4 of all kids will have had COVID.
> But those are for illnesses that virtually no kid actually gets…
Because everybody has been vaccinated and we’ve reached heard immunity? Maybe we’ll get there one day with Covid, if everybody will get vaccinated, or at least as well as the flu
I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated, but the virus is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect.
I can't make sense of this. Is it simply government and pharma teaming up to grab as much money and power as possible before the show is over?
Covid is clearly coming to an end.
The UK and Ireland just lifted all restrictions. [0] [1]
The East Coast is over the hump. [2]
School kids are probably last on the long list of cohorts that should be getting a vaccine mandate. [3]
Further, the vaccine isn't sterilizing. It's 2 strains behind. How does this mandate parse with an open ended definition of "fully vaccinated"?
> Under the bill, the California Department of Public Health could mandate vaccines in the future without requiring the state to offer personal belief exemptions, a move that would make it easier to add COVID-19 boosters or other immunizations for students without a lengthy legislative process.
Covid sure as hell is NOT coming to an end. It is a novel virus that rapidly mutates and infects animal populations including pets. It will be coming back over and over again, just like the flu, but with a lot greater chance of flaring back up into a global pandemic and with much more likelihood of causing severely detrimental outcomes. We are NEVER going back to “November 2019 normal.” It is daft to think otherwise.
Those countries generally still offer pfizer for that age group, which has lower myocarditis risk than moderna (presumably because of the dose mostly). I think a lot of European countries also still use astra zeneca, not sure about J&J but they are similar platforms.
Banned visiting beaches during the early phases - you had to crowd into indoor spaces.
What - actually - is the current death rate among children from this thing?
I wish these stories would come with actual data. Any questioning of the traditional line - gets slammed down.
Quick note - if they say sky is falling (ie, kids > 5 dying at high rates - mandatory vaccination or no school on an unapproved vaccine for this age group) but won't actually share the data despite the incredible high number of cases (ie, should be able to do some analysis by now) they are probably hiding something.
Was the banning of beaches back when we all were hand sanitizing and wiping down our amazon packages and groceries when no one really understood the transmission mechanism? Now we know it is mostly airborne and rare to catch outside with enough distance.
> There's already a long list of required vaccinations for school... is this one any different?
To me, the answer is a clear Yes. Every vaccine on that list, to my knowledge, results in a much more complete immunity profile than the COVID-19 vaccine. The diseases on that list also impact children in rather devastating ways.
COVID-19 vaccines seem to be more similar to the seasonal flu/cold vaccines than to any of the vaccines on that list. Respiratory diseases circulate around schools every year, and we haven't mandated vaccines for those.
Do we have scientific models showing clear benefits for mandated COVID-19 vaccines for school-age children?
> (But I've also heard the transmission rate from children to teachers has been pretty low, but how low?)
I would imagine it’s pretty damn low. I have two kids in daycare, and except for a few weeks early on in the pandemic, their daycare has been open the whole time. Before even, y’know, the vaccine. I dare say daycare workers who change diapers, play closely with toddlers, wipe away bodily fluids, etc. come in far closer contact with children than the average K-12 teacher. And in the whole time we’ve had two of the daycare teachers come down with Covid, based on contract tracing from family members. I think teachers are seriously milking this whole situation to stay home.
Does it? Isn't it well established now that getting the vaccine does not protect infection, only the severity of the disease. If teachers want to protect themselves, then they should get the vaccine.
> Banned visiting beaches during the early phases - you had to crowd into indoor spaces.
As sibling comment says, large indoor gatherings were also not allowed.
This was back when we knew next to nothing about COVID. We didn't know yet what was safe or not. We didn't know if it was transmitted via the air or via touch. We didn't know what was safe, and what was not. Hindsight is 20:20...
> This was back when we knew next to nothing about COVID. We didn't know yet what was safe or not. We didn't know if it was transmitted via the air or via touch. We didn't know what was safe, and what was not.
No, that's post-hoc rationalization. SARS-CoV2 is a coronavirus. After all was said and done...it behaves pretty much like other coronaviruses. We know a lot about coronaviruses, and did back then, as well: they're seasonal; they transmit via the air; they don't transmit readily outside; they're sensitive to heat and light; they don't live long on surfaces; they induce long-lasting B- and T-cell immunity after infection.
Moreover, certain things we knew about SARS-CoV2 from very early on, but completely ignored. The original data out of China, for example, showed that the virus posed miniscule threat to children:
Indoor gatherings were banned. But going to the mall wearing a bandana was allowed. And it was much more likely to transmit COVID than sitting outside at the beach.
In Minnesota, the first covid death for the 10-14 age group happened a few weeks ago.
The death rate for school age children is very low.
I think before anyone goes and decides if this vaccine deserved a mandate, they should decide conditions for which a vaccine should be considered for a mandate based on measured risks. What we’re having now is emotionally and politically motivated.
That's over two years, and the vast, vast majority of those children dying had severe health issues. We've already seen extremely consistently across children and adults that 50% or more "COVID hospitalizations" were actually hospitalizations for non-COVID related issues and COVID was detected incidentally. You can pretty much assume that half of those deaths were not related to COVID, which means that the real number of COVID deaths was more like 200 a year out of tens of millions of infections per year.
I lost faith in the state of California when camping got banned. Meanwhile, every major trail and park near where I lived in San Jose was lined with tents like a heroin bazaar.
> ... but won't actually share the data despite the incredible high number of cases (ie, should be able to do some analysis by now) they are probably hiding something.
I don't know about that but the paper we had to sign to decide if we wanted to give our kid the vaccine or not was a "beautiful" example of a dark pattern:
"Do you want your kid to get the vaccine? YES / NO. Pick one. Example reason for saying "NO": your kid has some rare medical condition (see with your doctor)"
This was carefully crafted and nasty. Vaccine for kids ain't mandatory yet (at least not in the country where my kid goes to school). I'm 100% sure several parents got tricked into thinking you needed a valid medical reason to answer "NO".
In addition to that, it was made in a hurry: kid came back with the paper in their backpack and you had 48 hours to answer, leaving many parents without any time to think / talk about it.
FWIW I know several doctor friends who are fully vaccinated, who fought in ICUs during the previous waves, including one who got three shots already (he showed me his "covid pass", which contains a counter with the number of shots), and who totally refuse to give their kids the vaccine.
I really don't see the point if you have an healthy kid, knowing that vaccinated people do still catch and transmit the virus. The interests of whom are served by vaccinating an healthy kid?
> Banned visiting beaches during the early phases - you had to crowd into indoor spaces.
I don't know how it was implemented elsewhere, but in San Diego county it was forbidden to stay (or sit, or lay) on the beach, while walking and jogging was allowed. Lifeguards were tasked with harassing an occasional sunbather to get moving.
Bill dead in the water, even in the densest populated areas with the most government involvement, everyone knows the entire current mitigation response is just performance theatre by now, it doesn't have the fear or political support.
The only point of this headline is for people that aren't in California to be presented with an article that matches what they already think about California.
If it helps you to know, even in vaccine-passport municipalities most people are laughing at this, while they momentarily put on a cloth mask (that's useless against the omicron variant as nobody has n95's) at a crowded bar just to pass through the door.
and for the others that had no idea life has been back to normal for quite some time, if you're in an at-risk population we are absolutely not in this together. its a completely parallel world.
Readit News
The Covid-19 vaccines famously are not sterilizing, and Covid-19 itself does not pose any sort of significant risk to otherwise healthy children.
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There's a huge difference. This vaccine has a miniscule benefit for kids. We've never before mandated a vaccine for children that didn't provide a sizable benefit to the child him or herself.
Mandatory vaccinations for school-age children exclusively target illnesses with high childhood morbidity/mortality: Measles, Polio, Chickenpox, DtP.
SARS-CoV2, thankfully, is safer than influenza for kids. As of right now, the CDC says that 727 kids have died in the US with Covid throughout the entire pandemic:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
ETA: here's the current list of required vaccines in FL http://www.floridahealth.gov/programs-and-services/immunizat...
Above details from this overview: https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/07/24/no-california-d...
I, for one, am glad to live in a state with strong and consistent vaccination requirements for school children.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/01/unvaccinated-5x-more...
Even if COVID-19 didn't hurt kids directly, a rational state could require them to get vaccinated to tamp down on a major source of community spread and protect people who are hurt more by the virus.
Getting vaccinated is far from the worst thing the government makes people do. The U.S. government still runs the military draft, and has forced unwilling people to go fight and die in miserable circumstances for a cause they think is unjust. By comparison, getting a vaccine to protect the community is small potatoes.
To the best of my knowledge all the vaccines on the required list are fully FDA approved. COVID-19 one has a lesser "FDA emergency authorization".
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Just to be clear this is a proposed bill. Lots of bills are proposed that don't even get voted on. Long way from becoming law.
Seems like most urban CA people would go for something like this.
Help prevent spread of Covid with virtually no downside.
Californians should ALL be mandated to take the vaccine not just kids.
Masks could also possibly be a target for a future permanent mandate by the government of CA.
COVID is just one of many respiratory diseases that are dangerous to certain vulnerable groups.
Drug resistant TB, SARS, the Flu.
California should really be the leader in pathogen safety here and enact vaccine and mask mandates for ALL of it's citizens.
Gloves could be a good safety option as well.
We vaccinate kids against chickenpox too (though we didn't when I was a kid). I remember my 1st grade class singing happy birthday to me over the phone. I was home sick, missed a week of school. I didn't die, I didn't go to the hospital.
Fast forward: I got my kids chicken-pox vaccines.
Edit: it looks like chicken pox might've posed similar risk to kids as Covid, maybe up to 2x more? Not 100% sure of that, and I have a weak belief that Omicron is more dangerous to kids. I don't think that affects my overall point, but better to be clear and not overstate things.
Second edit: Varicella in the original tweet is Chickenpox, which would indicate less danger to kids. Not sure why the numbers are different.
Some of these vaccines are still not mandated by most states, and many states have exemptions if you demonstrate immunity.
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There are other required vaccinations. But those are for illnesses that virtually no kid actually gets. By next school year, probably 3/4 of all kids will have had COVID.
Because everybody has been vaccinated and we’ve reached heard immunity? Maybe we’ll get there one day with Covid, if everybody will get vaccinated, or at least as well as the flu
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
Covid is clearly coming to an end.
The UK and Ireland just lifted all restrictions. [0] [1]
The East Coast is over the hump. [2]
School kids are probably last on the long list of cohorts that should be getting a vaccine mandate. [3]
Further, the vaccine isn't sterilizing. It's 2 strains behind. How does this mandate parse with an open ended definition of "fully vaccinated"?
> Under the bill, the California Department of Public Health could mandate vaccines in the future without requiring the state to offer personal belief exemptions, a move that would make it easier to add COVID-19 boosters or other immunizations for students without a lengthy legislative process.
This is flat out absurd.
[0] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/uk-lifts-covid-restr...
[1] https://consent.yahoo.com/v2/collectConsent?sessionId=1_cc-s...
[2] https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm
[3] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex...
Moderna is banned in certain european countries for people under 30 because of myocarditis risk.
Banned visiting beaches during the early phases - you had to crowd into indoor spaces.
What - actually - is the current death rate among children from this thing?
I wish these stories would come with actual data. Any questioning of the traditional line - gets slammed down.
Quick note - if they say sky is falling (ie, kids > 5 dying at high rates - mandatory vaccination or no school on an unapproved vaccine for this age group) but won't actually share the data despite the incredible high number of cases (ie, should be able to do some analysis by now) they are probably hiding something.
"Still, among Omicron cases reported to TESSy, 1.14% were hospitalised, 0.16% required ICU admission/respiratory support, and 0.06% died" - https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/weekly-epidemiolog...
Can anyone find an age based version of this?
(But I've also heard the transmission rate from children to teachers has been pretty low, but how low?)
There's already a long list of required vaccinations for school... is this one any different?
Was the banning of beaches back when we all were hand sanitizing and wiping down our amazon packages and groceries when no one really understood the transmission mechanism? Now we know it is mostly airborne and rare to catch outside with enough distance.To me, the answer is a clear Yes. Every vaccine on that list, to my knowledge, results in a much more complete immunity profile than the COVID-19 vaccine. The diseases on that list also impact children in rather devastating ways.
COVID-19 vaccines seem to be more similar to the seasonal flu/cold vaccines than to any of the vaccines on that list. Respiratory diseases circulate around schools every year, and we haven't mandated vaccines for those.
Do we have scientific models showing clear benefits for mandated COVID-19 vaccines for school-age children?
I would imagine it’s pretty damn low. I have two kids in daycare, and except for a few weeks early on in the pandemic, their daycare has been open the whole time. Before even, y’know, the vaccine. I dare say daycare workers who change diapers, play closely with toddlers, wipe away bodily fluids, etc. come in far closer contact with children than the average K-12 teacher. And in the whole time we’ve had two of the daycare teachers come down with Covid, based on contract tracing from family members. I think teachers are seriously milking this whole situation to stay home.
Does it? Isn't it well established now that getting the vaccine does not protect infection, only the severity of the disease. If teachers want to protect themselves, then they should get the vaccine.
As sibling comment says, large indoor gatherings were also not allowed.
This was back when we knew next to nothing about COVID. We didn't know yet what was safe or not. We didn't know if it was transmitted via the air or via touch. We didn't know what was safe, and what was not. Hindsight is 20:20...
No, that's post-hoc rationalization. SARS-CoV2 is a coronavirus. After all was said and done...it behaves pretty much like other coronaviruses. We know a lot about coronaviruses, and did back then, as well: they're seasonal; they transmit via the air; they don't transmit readily outside; they're sensitive to heat and light; they don't live long on surfaces; they induce long-lasting B- and T-cell immunity after infection.
Moreover, certain things we knew about SARS-CoV2 from very early on, but completely ignored. The original data out of China, for example, showed that the virus posed miniscule threat to children:
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/14853024107844321...
Indoor gatherings were banned. But going to the mall wearing a bandana was allowed. And it was much more likely to transmit COVID than sitting outside at the beach.
The death rate for school age children is very low.
I think before anyone goes and decides if this vaccine deserved a mandate, they should decide conditions for which a vaccine should be considered for a mandate based on measured risks. What we’re having now is emotionally and politically motivated.
835 total [1]
[1] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-...
You mean the beaches that were closed during the same time they had banned large indoor gatherings?
Dead Comment
I don't know about that but the paper we had to sign to decide if we wanted to give our kid the vaccine or not was a "beautiful" example of a dark pattern:
"Do you want your kid to get the vaccine? YES / NO. Pick one. Example reason for saying "NO": your kid has some rare medical condition (see with your doctor)"
This was carefully crafted and nasty. Vaccine for kids ain't mandatory yet (at least not in the country where my kid goes to school). I'm 100% sure several parents got tricked into thinking you needed a valid medical reason to answer "NO".
In addition to that, it was made in a hurry: kid came back with the paper in their backpack and you had 48 hours to answer, leaving many parents without any time to think / talk about it.
FWIW I know several doctor friends who are fully vaccinated, who fought in ICUs during the previous waves, including one who got three shots already (he showed me his "covid pass", which contains a counter with the number of shots), and who totally refuse to give their kids the vaccine.
I really don't see the point if you have an healthy kid, knowing that vaccinated people do still catch and transmit the virus. The interests of whom are served by vaccinating an healthy kid?
I don't know how it was implemented elsewhere, but in San Diego county it was forbidden to stay (or sit, or lay) on the beach, while walking and jogging was allowed. Lifeguards were tasked with harassing an occasional sunbather to get moving.
The only point of this headline is for people that aren't in California to be presented with an article that matches what they already think about California.
If it helps you to know, even in vaccine-passport municipalities most people are laughing at this, while they momentarily put on a cloth mask (that's useless against the omicron variant as nobody has n95's) at a crowded bar just to pass through the door.
and for the others that had no idea life has been back to normal for quite some time, if you're in an at-risk population we are absolutely not in this together. its a completely parallel world.