To vaccinate newborn or not

The Covid vaccine really does need to be separated from all standard vaccines. It wasn’t developed the way we usually develop any sort of drug/vaccine/treatment. It was rushed, out of necessity, and didn’t go through as many trials as normal. And also, the entire population was vaccinated all at pretty much the same time. When you have a 1% side effect rate, and vaccinate 60 million people, you get a lot of people with side effects. If you have a 1% side effect but are only vaccinating the babies born that year, you don’t see as many. It looks worse when you do a full population in one go.

However, these vaccine regimens have been in use for decades and they are absolutely safe. They also save lives. You’re not scared of the alternative because you live in a country with high enough vaccine rates that you don’t see children dieing in the hundreds because of measles, but you will start seeing that if the anti-vax trend continues. Your child will not be harmed by the vaccines, they just won’t be. They could die without it, and given the pockets of anti-vaxers causing outbreaks of measles etc, they actually very much do have a chance of catching it and dying. That’s your choice. Have a safe vaccines with decades of safe use or leave your child open to the very real, very tangible effects of these diseases, including death.

I have to admit I haven’t read the full thread but this is like saying ‘I don’t wear a seatbelt and I haven’t been killed in a car accident’.

The same scientific community pushing vaccines started out as saying the Covid vaccines stopped illness and transmission, then this was diluted to the pitch - that if you take the vaccine you're less likely to get seriously ill.
This would be because as we got more data we knew more. Would you rather nobody admitted when the conclusions changed?

my vaccination pushing cheque must be getting lost in the post. bloody royal mail!

have fun with your conspiracy theories love

As others have pointed out = if you live in a low immigrant/high vaccination area your children will be unlike to get certain illnesses & diseases regardless of wether you vaccinate

If your hanging around other anti-vaccers in a high turn over area your baby may suffer

It’s disingenuous to do some very limited googling around such a contentious subject and then start a post on MN asking whether you should vaccinate your child. If everyone had said “no, absolutely not” would you have gone back to your GP and HV and told them you’ve decided not to vaccinate? Would you have ignored the wealth of peer-reviewed research on childhood vaccinations? Give your head a wobble please.

Hi OP

i think it is perfectly fine to ask the question, why we wouldn’t we check something we are going to put our children through?

I hope the reflective posts on here are useful to you. I will be honest both of my children were vaccinated when needed and I am grateful -and as someone who’s then 4 month old caught chicken pox from his slightly older sister can reflect on the effect of childhood diseases on infants .
These days the uk is going to vaccinate against chicken pox, and although he wouldn’t have been vaccinated at the time he caught it, his sister would have, and she wouldn’t have passed it on to him, and that is the other thing about vaccination is it protects those too young or vulnerable to be vaccinated by keeping the disease out of circulation, so vaccinating this baby will help protect future babies ( yours or otherwise) that dc1 will come into contact with

Another argument to vaccinate that resonates with me is that as great as modern medicine is we don’t have cures for many of the complications that may result from infection (for example, deafness and measles ) - so vaccination is our best shot at keeping our child healthy.

Finally, I do agree that the health system is set up to get as many people vaccinated at the right time as possible tick, and feels a bit brusque - but this is the current reality of our health service trying to provide a fundamental aspect of health and care, so I do understand why you are seeking support elsewhere and are supportive that you have done so

Vaccines saves lives in other ways than just death.

Measles doesn't just kill. It can also cause brain damage, blindness, seizures.

Mumps can cause encephalitis (Which kills), meningitis, Pancreatitis, swollen testies and ovaries (My husbands recently had mumps because he wasn't fully vaccinated)

Meningitis which also kills, in some causes can cause limp problem so bad that limbs have to be amputated.

Vaccines can cause symptoms yes and in rare occasions reactions. But these reactions are less likely to happen than a woman getting pregnant on the pill or IUD.

But to me you've already made your mind up that your probably not going to vaccinate your child.

But 'the NHS recommends you to vaccinate your baby etc' because the JCVI evaluates the 'facts' as far as it is possible to predict the outcome of vaccines in individuals and the populations, in order to reach the most evidence-based conclusion and develop guidelines around it.

Why do you think anybody else on here's FACTS are worth more than that?

For heaven's sake are people actually this stupid?
Vaccines save lives. Just check out what happens to unvaccinated children in third world countries then imagine your precious baby in that situation.
Why should we 'be kind' when faced with such crap.

Go to university, get a Biology degree, start working in a lab, do an MSc and a PhD and then carry on working in a lab.
Or speak to qualified medical professionals.
Those are both ways of getting at medical research.
Randomly Googling is not a way of getting at medical research.

Please get your baby vaccinated. There’s a reason why diseases like polio dramatically fell in cases when vaccines were introduced.

Childhood illnesses are on the rise after covid with people ‘properly’ mixing again - it’s more important than ever to protect your vulnerable baby. Please don’t equate COVID vaccines to these- they are not the same.

Totally up to you if you are comfortable with knowing the baby is more likely to die without them.

Presume you won't be taking antibiotics if you end up with post partum infections or sepsis either or is it just baby you're willing to risk?

it is SO HARD when our protective mama hormones kick in and we start panicking about the barrage of information that is shooting our way. it’s all designed to hook us by the heart - we’re such vulnerable information consumers during pregnancy and motherhood!

I am a mother + a biology teacher. Both my parents are doctors. I still panicked a bit.

this is where I got to. The very very miniscule risk of your child having a negative vaccine reaction is much much smaller than the potential consequences of them being infected by an avoidable disease. Statistically you are doing the right thing for your own baby and for wider society by having them vaccinated.

it feels hard because choosing to vaccinate seems like an active choice with potential consequences, however unlikely vs not vaccinating them seems like opting out of that risk.

but choosing not to is an active choice too. Ultimately it is your choice. But if you were to make an entirely dispassionate / robotic / data driven choice about the best way to reduce the risks of harm to your baby. There is no question that choosing to vaccinate is the way to do that.

@confusedaboutclothes

Many communicable diseases, such as measles, are making a comeback, particularly post covid when mixing of people (and thus immune system exposure), has been limited for a period of time.

We are not hitting vaccine targets unfortunately which is bad for everyone. If you look at references 24-29 (at the bottom) they talk about addressing vaccine hesitancy in parents.
https://stateofchildhealth.rcpch.ac.uk/evidence/prevention-of-ill-health/immunisations/

The way to look at it from the NHS’ perspective is this (in my opinion) no, the NHS doesn’t necessarily ‘care’ about your baby (well, not as much as you do obviously)
But they do care about keeping disease down at a population level. Largely because illness costs the NHS money.
It is the same reason that you can see a GP in advance of going abroad to countries with malaria and they will prescribe you prophylaxis for it as it’s cheaper doing that than treating you for malaria when you get home (sorry if that’s a silly comparison)

So, the NHS will provide, free at the point of delivery, for everyone‘s babies and small children because if they didn’t, the cost of treating things like measles on a huge scale would be far higher and take up much more resource than the vaccine program.

I understand why you might feel apprehensive over your newborn, I didn’t enjoy getting mine vaccinated because they look so tiny and helpless but I really don’t believe the NHS would inject literally millions of babies with anything that would cause them to need further medical treatment in the future, if that makes sense?

@confusedaboutclothes The doctor who said Vaccines were bad has been discredited and lost his medical lisence. This isn't an "each to their own" argument. This is a "My child could die or give a very ill baby their germs if they get sick" moment

Vaccinate. Your. Child

Google the symptoms and outcomes of the diseases that the vaccines protect your baby against. That should be enough to convince you

Absolutely do.

Cases of previously well controlled diseases are on the rise in Britain because people are failing to vaccinate as much as they did.

A vaccine success story is small pox which was virtually eradicated through vaccine.

What a lot of people don't understand is that vaccines help our immune system to fight these diseases. They take a dead or weakened dose which our immune system picks up and learns how to fight and eradicate it. Then when it faces the real deal, it can deal with it without it being fatal or serious.

Basically, these jabs are essential for human health. And the autism link was actually proven to be an absolute lie before anyone tries to trot that one out.

@Verbena17 so you were OK to leave your children with the risk of developing cancer because YOU have an issue with vaccines? wonderful

Putting aside all the obvious reasons for vaccinating your kids, whenever I have a difficult choice to make, I try and imagine that choice being taken away.

So imagine how you would feel if suddenly all the vaccines ran out. Imagine you get a call from your health visitor to say that due to an unexpected permanent supply problem, there were no baby vaccines available, so no babies could get vaccinated ever again. The Health Visitor tells you that it is now expected that rates of illness such as measles will rise fairly rapidly due to unvaccinated babies, so you must be on the look out for illness, and be prepared for the risk of possible long term significant health damage as a result, or possibly death. She tells you that you might want to avoid baby groups, trips out with friends, because of the infection risk. The risk will be lifelong, and so precautions will need to be taken for ever. Over time, diseases like measles will be common, with a rise in infant mortality becoming accepted.

How would you feel then? If you'd be relieved, and happy to accept the risk and stay away from other people from now on (to protect yourself and them), then don't get your baby vaccinated.

If you'd be worried, then get your baby vaccinated.

Would you vaccinate a puppy if you had one?

i’m asking please for FACTS only - I don’t want answers like ‘because the NHS recommends you to vaccinate your baby etc’

Ummm where do you think the NHS got their advice to vaccinate from? Out of thin air?
Hint: no, it's from huge numbers of clinical trials and vast amounts of research into the harms of the diseases they are vaccinating against.

correlation is not the same as causation. not to mention the sample size of your child and her friends/your friends children is not sufficient to produce any statistically significant results.

Wakefield's research was thoroughly debunked and the original publication withdrawn.