Would you be happy for your children to receive covid-19 vaccine

While your two points are true:

• "The history of vaccines" is somewhat irrelevant here, since mRNA vaccines are delivering the genetic material required to cause your body's cells to produce and express a modified version of one spike protein (antigen). Every other vaccine has directly induced the antigen into the injection site.
• While it's true that no development steps were "skipped", they were run concurrently, meaning that the time from phase 1 trials to broad deployment was very contracted compared to a "normal" vaccine development. The only remedy for this is the passage of time.
• Of the vaccine-hesitant people I've spoken to who are not "Bill Gates is trying to chip me" types or crunchy earth mother types, (and in my own case) the hesitation comes from concerns around the potential for lipid nanoparticles (the particles used to encapsulate the delicate mRNA and move it across the cell membrane before it can be destroyed) to cause long-term autoimmune issues, particularly with repeated doses. This is what scuppered Moderna's pre-vaccine efforts in mRNA therapeutics, for example. The risk is probably minimal given the length of time between doses, but the data on tissue tropism is not complete and it's not yet possible to say whether any long-term effects will result and if so, how common they might be.

When that is the concern and you're stacking up an unknown long-term risk for a healthy child who has 80 years left to live and has effectively zero risk of long-term effects from Covid, "Every other vaccine was fine!" is not a good argument, and nor is an appeal to possibly maybe for a little while reduce the risk to the elderly and infirm.

I'm sure that mRNA technology is the future in terms of vaccination, and likely to revolutionise broader medicine in ways as-yet unimaginable. But as of this moment, I am not prepared to allow it to be used on my children.

Give me a more traditional vaccine sans LNPs and I'll skip off the the clinic and pull their sleeves up happily, just as I have for every other vaccine they've been offered.

I think it’s worth pointing out that there were only approx 1600 children given the actual shot in the Pfizer trial - the others were given a placebo. This information is all out there.

Also worth noting that Pfizer are refusing to release their vaccine data submission, which was requested in a freedom of information request to the FDA - for initially 55 years and are now requesting 75 years off the courts. Nothing says trust the science like hiding data from the public until we’re all dead and buried.

I mean, sure, it is possible that Covid will cause some sort of long-term and long-lasting health issues in healthy children who get it, but there's no evidence of it right now and I would put the chances of it at much lower than the (also unknown) long term risk of repeated doses of never-before-used LNPs. Especially when factoring in the waning efficacy of vaccines and the necessity to repeat the dose an as-yet-unknown number of times, the known prior issues with LNPs, and the fact that there are very few viral diseases that cause long-term issues that arise later, none of which are coronaviruses.

I also don't see why a vaccinated-then-infected child would be less likely to get these long-term, long-lasting, as-yet-unseen issues over an unvaccinated-then-infected child, given the rarity of severe disease in children. It would depend on the mechanism by which the long-term issues came about.

I'm not saying I'm right, or that I think it's probable that LNPs will cause long-term issues. I'm saying that for me, right now, the balance of the unknowns and knowns is stacking up on the side of holding off.

Other people's mileage will obviously differ, and they should make their own decisions about vaccinating their children. Nobody knows what will happen in the long-term for sure, and I'm definitely not going to judge anyone who decides that they think their best option is to get their children vaccinated just because I happen to have an "idiosyncrasy", as Wibbs put it earlier.

I know you don't, and I knew you wouldn't. I was answering your question, not seeking your approval. I've explained my position, you disagree with me. Neither of us have definitive answers and we both grant different weight to unknowns. I'm comfortable with that and you will learn to be.

Have a good evening.