Nuance is important and I think I have been nuanced. I put forward a fair and reasonable post, made in a respectful tone, and I debated based on what @fenwaypark said, and have not twisted any words out of context. I used reports and statistics from reputable media to make my argument.
The initial post by @Tassotti was explicitly centred around there supposedly being zero risk to children from Covid. This is demonstrably wrong. I donât think you can agree with a post like that without agreeing with that assertion, which is why I was surprised that @fenwaypark did so, as I consider him to be a very sensible and measured poster in general. He has clarified that he does not think there is zero risk to children from Covid, which is welcome, but I donât know why you would agree with a post like Tassottiâs in the first place in that case.
The other point, that resources should be being pumped into vaccinating vulnerable people in less well off countries, I donât think any reasonable person would have an argument with â but it should not be an either/or question â we can and should be pumping resources into vaccinating people in less well off countries while also making vaccination available to children in richer countries.
However, I do not think itâs in any way unreasonable to ask @fenwaypark to substantiate the following, particularly as this sort of a statement is a blanket one and seems to extend beyond Covid vaccines to everything else that children are routinely vaccinated for.
Citing the âunknowns of long term effects of vaccines on childrenâ is a statement that one cannot prove wrong. It is effectively asking me to prove that there cannot be any long term effects of vaccines in any children - and you canât prove a negative. The same technique is used by people who were and are against Covid vaccination in adults and is a staple of anti-vaccine opinion in general.
Which is why it needs substantiation, and especially needs substantiation in comparison to the negative long term effects of catching SARS COV-2, for which there is much evidence for in adults through long Covid - it is clear that the risks of long term effects of Covid in adults are much greater than the risks of vaccination, which are miniscule.
If people are speculating about this being different as regards children, and that there is a significant risk of negative long term effects of vaccination in children, they should put forward evidence based arguments rather than speculation with nothing to back it up. As far as I can see, there is currently no evidence based argument for this.
I would be surprised if anybody else would have had a problem with the post if it was somebody else posting it. It smacks more of you and others having more of a problem with the person who made the post rather than what was posted.
