I hate anti-vaxxers

It always amuses me when anti-vaxxers are pious about what they will put into their bodies. Yet they're apparently perfectly happy for dangerous viruses to run rampant and unchecked in their sacred bodies, even though it's fully preventable. They're also usually pretty happy to take into their bodies whatever the medical profession can offer if they become dangerously ill.

Except that they are in the case of heard immunity and vaccinations.

In 94% of situations I hold a very live and let live attitude towards others, but I draw the line when your beliefs and actions are actively harming others.

Don't want to vaccinate? Fine, but your child shouldn't be allowed to attend nursery/soft play etc with immunocompromised infants.

@1dayatatime So firstly I think it's important to define the difference between a vaccine and a jab. Polio,mumps, measles etc are all vaccines in that they mimic the virus with a deactivated or harmless version that the body then uses to build up a life long protection. Whereas something like flu or covid are jabs in that they don't prevent you catching the disease but reduce its severity and also have to be updated and retaken every year.

This is patently wrong. I don't know where you got that information from! All the illnesses you mention have vaccines. They are given via injection or the slang word 'jab'. By the way there is NO vaccine that prevents you catching a virus - they aren't force fields.

example the polio vaccine stops the individual from dying - it's more complicated than that, the main aim is to prevent paralysis (which can mean death if it's your breathing). There are actually 2 forms of polio vaccine - IPV and OPV. IPV is the injected inactivated virus, OPV is the attenuated (weakened) one given on a sugar cube, an oral vaccine, mainly used in third world countries (due to ease of delivery). The problem with OPV is that the weakened virus is excreted via the gut for a few days after vaccination and so that means others can catch polio if they haven't been vaccinated as well. IPV is really the only effective vaccine for polio and is used in most first world countries. Unfortunately until the use of OPV is stopped and only IPV is used poliovirus will continue to exist and spread (albeit at a far lower rate).

the chickenpox virus is still in circulation meaning that there are less severe reactions from older people to shingles

Are you aware that you can ONLY get shingles if you've had chickenpox? So if everyone was vaccinated against chicken pox then no-one would develop shingles in later life.

No, more like the part when they literally forced it on people and lied about it stopping transmission etc when it absolutely didn't. Oh and also the fact that it killed people, who weren't given a choice about taking it really

Exactly this. My mum had all of above including meningitis (viral) and has a ridiculously robust immune system now as an adult. Of course as with any illness, including the flu, there is a risk of serious complications but with better sanitation and nutrition, these are less likely now. We also cannot ignore the fact that some of us do have vaccine injured children - like myself. The doctor has confirmed this is the case and subsequently I ceased any future vaccines. There is risk involved in both scenarios. Also it’s worth noting that had these viral diseases been allowed to circulate they would have naturally produced herd inmmunity but obviously all viruses mutate. 9/10 the strains today are vaccine acquired mutations.

YANBU. We are all nervous about our children potentially having a reaction to vaccines - but we do it anyway, both for their sakes and for the sake of others. Just like we have vaccinations ourselves (Covid etc) for the sake of others as much as ourselves.

I hope all those who don’t vaccinate (unless on really strong medical grounds and so advised not to by doctors) are all “off-grid” types and so are completely self-sufficient and don’t mix with people in other ways. You don’t get to have the benefits of being part of a community, without also doing things yourself to benefit that community 😡

Wait till you get shingles - which you could have prevented had a chickenpox vaccine been available - and you will be less sanguine about your experience of chickenpox. Unless, of course, you are old enough to qualify for the shingles vaccine.

You don't think the state would intervene when parents neglect their children?

You do know that polio has disabled far more millions than vaccine injury ever has?

The Covid Vaccine fiasco?..... where a new vaccine was successfully formulated, rolled out across the world, and got the us all back to normal within a short period of time, which hardly any consequences. It was a triumph in human healthcare.

It's interesting that the people who purport to be the most caring and considerate in society are also the ones who want parents prosecuted for neglect, children exculded from school and clubs/activities. They are also the ones who want the state to 'enforce', 'ban' and 'punish'.

My great great uncle was sent home from a sanatorium to die of TB. Home was a tiny house with several younger children so they made him a bed in one of the chicken sheds.

Unfortunately TB is on the rise again, and moreover is becoming drug resistant because the cohort who are carrying it tend to be transient, have other social and health issues and often don’t finish treatment but re present later to start treatment again and repeat the cycle.

Evidence for this?

To add, if I had a newborn now I absolutely would reconsider just blindly taking every vaccination that is offered at such a young age, especially here in the US, there are so so many at such a young age. This is 100% because of the covid vaccine fiasco.

One of my child's friends from kindergarten years ago was an og non vax kid, and no one cared. This is because his uncle was left severely disabled by one, to the point where the family received millions in compensation from the US government as it was acknowledged that this was the cause. I used to think the mom was slightly kooky for this but not anymore. Her brother passed away a few years ago before the age of 40 after never living an independent life.

Oh dear lord 😩

What harm do you imagine a measles vaccine will do to your bodies as compared with the harm a measles virus will do to them?

In our hospital the doctors were at the front of the queue for the Covid vaccine whenIt was first released. It was fascinating and reassured me to have mine. I’ve yet to meet a doctor who’s an anti-vaxer in my whole trust.

People certainly give a shit if, for example, their small babies catch measles off unvaccinated idiots and are left with lifelong disabilities.

In the uk we have NICE who are not for profit and critical analysis of multiple papers are taken on board before any medication passes for use. Might be different in other countries but in the UK we have robust checks and transparency (I had to read such papers for my post grad - they are hugely detailed with evidence and full details of the research which is then scrutinised).

They are if they cause diseases to spread unnecessarily and put vulnerable people at risk.

Exactly this. I am old enough to remember what was possibly the last large scale polio outbreak in the UK, and how terrified our parents were, I can also remember that luckily the polio vaccine, which was not at that time routinely offered, was rushed into production and distribution, and probably saved thousands of lives and countless more from devastating lifelong illness and disability.

Polio, smallpox, TB ( before they stopped making the vaccine widely available), diphtheria, all killer diseases that have largely been eliminated in the Western world because of vaccination. Smallpox is now thought to be extinct as a disease, though the virus is still held by many countries.

But because some deranged man with an issue and an agenda spouted lies about measles which have since been indisputably proved to be deliberate falsehoods we are now seeing a killer disease that can cause blindness, brain damage or death creepback into our lives.

Google images of severe measles infections. It is a sobering experience. Personally I would not want to be reliant on the herd immunity effect protecting my child, I would rather have the assurance that as a parent I had taken control of my child’s present and future health.

It's disgusting to put yours and other people's children at risk of dying from preventable illnesses because you're too stupid to vaccinate them. It's child neglect.

I had my first baby just after the Wakefield scandal first started. So many people were utterly convinced by it. MN was a hotbed of antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists lobbying against parents who were continuing to vaccinate.

I am heartened by this thread that there appear to now be so few with that mindset here.

Seems to be a generational thing. My mum spent months in a sanatorium with TB. She was treated with antibiotics - which hadn't long been invented. The very first TB patient to get them was George Orwell but the disease was too far advanced alas. My mother's first sweetheart died of TB , he was 21 I think. It was a death sentence back then. So as you can imagine she and our dad were big supporters of vaccination.
But it's a long time since people in Europe died of measles or TB so maybe we've just got blasé about it. We may be in for a nasty reminder.

Wait till Polio re-emerges. The anti vaxxers are going cause real suffering as they are already managing in the US