U.S. Public Health Agencies Aren't ‘Following the Science,’ Officials Say

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On HN we try to go by article quality, not site quality: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... The author names here are probably more important than whoever owns the site.

• coronavirus-data

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  This repository contains data on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in New York City (NYC), from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

  

> You are ignoring the comorbidities aspect GP was talking about.

Even if we break this split this into two groups - those under 18 with comorbidities, and those without, there's still good evidence for both groups to get vaccinated. I don't know if there is a good breakdown nationally, but even just looking at NYC, the evidence becomes compelling. NYC has a dataset that breaks down deaths by age group and by comorbidity status:

https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/to...

For under 18, as of 9/11/21 (yes, I wish they'd push a more recent update), 29 total deaths, 19 with an underlying condition, 5 without, and 5 pending/unknown. Underlying conditions by NYC's metric is pretty broad:

> Underlying conditions currently include diabetes, lung disease, cancer, immunodeficiency, heart disease, hypertension, asthma, kidney disease, gastrointestinal/liver disease, and obesity.

So, in New York City alone, and as of nearly a year ago, you had 5 kids under the age of 18 with no known underlying conditions who died of Covid. Just an educated guess, but it's quite plausible we've had 100+ deaths in the under 18 with no underlying conditions group. That alone is pretty strong evidence in favor of vaccinating everyone in the under 18 group, and not just those with underlying conditions.

All that said, the primary reason for vaccine mandates for schools is related to transmission. And here too, there is good efficacy.

Ultimately, the harm/benefit calculation is quite clear in favor of vaccinations for kids, outside of rare scenarios. The main debate is whether the risk of backlash from schools mandating vaccination is worth the clear benefits of increasing vaccine uptake in these age groups.

> Cloth masks are security theater. Nobody’s disputing properly worn N95s. GP is talking about what has been pushed for two years and the credibility that has been destroyed. They’re not talking about recent shifts.

Cloth masks reduce transmission. They're not great at doing so, but they do still have an effect. Surgical masks are better. KN94/N95/etc are much better. Yes, we should have long ago moved to surgical as the minimum viable mask in mask mandate scenarios. It's unfortunate that we didn't. But even still, cloth masks do still help a small amount.

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