I hate anti-vaxxers

Untrue. There are anti vaxxers in my life. Some I hate for it, others I’m trying to educate out of it for the sake of their children.

@BlueJuniper94

The tough line is what is creating the resistance

Well, tough. Sometimes regressive health behaviours need to be eradicated by mandate and the state needs to enforce this.

If we hadn't legislated, people would still be smoking in bars and restaurants, driving over the drink driving limit and without seat-belts. Domestic violence within a marriage would still be legal.

Anti-vaxxers aren't the only people who have ever considered themselves a misunderstood majority who are being oppressed by the world. I remember lots of self-indulgent hand-wringing about people's right to smoke etc.

The government has to do a decent job in explaining why this is necessary, for sure and it fumbled this during COVID. But vaccine deniers/refusers are a threat to the whole of society.

They are if they affect other people, particularly children. Unvaxxed children can't be enrolled in school in some countries, so the impact on other children is much less. That sounds sensible to me.

The HPV vaccine has already been proven to be incredibly effective.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2x2en4lpro.amp

I don't understand doing your own research. I am not qualified to do that, so I take advice from those who are.

I’m not an anti-vaxxer but I also won’t just blindly take any vaccine without weighing things up and doing my research. The whole scandal over the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine is a perfect example of why people should be doing this - a young relative, highly unlikely to ever be severely effected by Covid ended up on a high dependency ward days after having it due to the now known blood clot side effect. Her blood was so thickened that they struggled to even get a sample. Was it really worth risking her life for?

DD for example didn’t have the HPV vaccine in secondary school as it only protects against a few out of hundreds of strains yet has documented side effects like Guillan-Barre syndrome. The risk outweighed the benefit in my eyes.

For the record - yes, she was fully vaccinated as a baby/toddler. I’d never dream of leaving my child susceptible to diseases like measles or meningitis.

I’m not sure about the argument for not allowing children who haven’t had their vaccines into school/ nursery, imagine those poor children, being raised and schooled by parents who believe in all the anti-vax nonsense!

The measles one isn’t antivaxxers

The tough line is what is creating the resistance

Absolutely. Decades of evidence, showing have safe and effective vaccinations against common childhood diseases are.

We've become complacent. People with elderly parents will know how miraculous they were considered to be when first rolled out. They still are.

YANBU.

I think a lot of people have no idea how serious measles can be, even fatal in very young children. I'm old and the vaccine wasn't developed when I was a toddler. I came very close to being hospitalised with measles, and was so ill that the GP was visiting twice a day to check on me. I can still remember my DM crying with relief when I finally felt well enough to ask for something to eat. And I was bloody ill with mumps in my early teens.

If opposition to vaccines had been a thing decades ago, smallpox would never have been eradicated and polio would still be commonplace, instead of down to single figures and only in Afghanistan/Pakistan.

Vaccines have made a massive contribution to health and life expectancy, and in the case of polio, prevented crippling disabilities.

I am of an age that these vaccines were not available when I was a child. I remember having measels, it was hideous I was extremely ill and have suffered permanent damage to my ears, a friend of mine has her sight affected. I am glad the vaccine was available for my DC's and they didn't have to go through what I did.

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.

Secondly there are two arguments for vaccines/ jabs:

1. to protect and give health benefit to the individual taking the vaccine/ jabs, for example the polio vaccine for babies.
2. to protect and give health benefits to the wider society from the individual taking the vaccine / jabs.

Now most of the time 1 and 2 are the same for example the polio vaccine stops the individual from dying but also prevents the spread across society.

However sometimes they are not the same, for example not making the chickenpox vaccine available on the NHS means that some individuals may suffer badly from the virus (and a small number die) but it does mean that the chickenpox virus is still in circulation meaning that there are less severe reactions from older people to shingles

Or more recently people were giving their children COVID jabs when there was minimal risk to the child from dying from COVID but the original idea was to create "herd immunity " and to "eradicate" COVID. However this proved to be a false argument in that the COVID jab doesn't prevent transmission, it also doesn't offer life long protection, it only reduced the severity which in children was minimal anyway.

As a result of this "false promise " and societal pressure to have the COVID jabs, I think that unfortunately many people have lost confidence in "science " are now irrationally pushing back against all vaccines especially for children. This will tragically lead to deaths and life long health consequences from preventable diseases such as mumps or measles or polio etc.

Tragically I believe that more lives will be lost and more serious illnesses caused by the policies and mass hysteria reaction to Covid than would ever been caused by simply letting it spread, just like they did with the 1957 -58 Asian flu pandemic or the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic.

The "my body, my choice" argument sums up so much that is wrong with our society at the moment. I cringe inwardly when anyone says this. Such a profoundly selfish and stupid way to look at the world. I'm alright, Jack, and I don't give a tinker's what happens to others' kids as long as I can live in my ill-informed bubble while convincing myself I'm among the enlightened.

It's not just your body. It's your children's bodies, and the bodies of everyone else who comes into contact with you, including people who are sick or elderly or immune compromised.

As a PP pointed out upthread, it's a profoundly decadent and spoiled way to look at the world. People who've lived through a period of peak health security and lost the memory of how terrifying childhood illness can be, choosing to live in ignorance.

I don't hate all antivaxxers: I accept that there are some people who are ill educated or with below average intellectual capacity and some with needle phobias and some who genuinely don't understand that the link between MMR and autism has been robustly debunked. It's not their fault and they need to be supported in learning to understand this better. Maybe the government didn't help matters during the COVID pandemic through a lack of transparancy. The ascendancy of RFK and his cronies in the US has turbo-charged the sense of entitlement that the antivax lobby has and that's a problem.

But the bottom line is we need to take a much tougher line on people who withhold life-saving vaccines from their children which impact herd immunity. We don't, as a society, have the luxury of indulging this nonsense.

my DD likewise - one of her close friends at uni had been seriously ill, had to take a year out in sixth form, and permanently affected by contracting mumps at that time.
I don’t hate parents for making bad decisions for what they mistakenly thought were valid reasons, but I do hate Andrew Wakefield and his ilk. And Kennedy…cutting vaccination programs worldwide will kill millions of children and leave even more permanently impaired.

I think we need to not lump the Covid vax in with vaccines for preventable diseases.

I hate to break it to you but Covid variants change so often that the vaccine is very unlikely to give you full protection. Also, unless you’re a walking microbiology lab how exactly do you know it’s Covid?

I do give a shit and actively judge/ preach/ criticize people who did not/ do not vaccinate their kids. One of my friends is now looking to get her 10 year old vaccinated as a result. If someone wants to stop speaking to ne because of it - fine, they can fuck off. But I wish childhood vaccinations were compulsory.

You know why I feel this way? Because I know statistics of how many children died historically before vaccines were rolled out. From preventable illnesses we are seeing returning now. Almost every family had at lest a couple of kids not surviving to adulthood - you have to be mad to want this shit returning. I wish ativaxxers put themselves in danger, not their kids.

You've hit the nail on the head there. You are not concerned about anyone else outside your tiny little life. The truth is you could have a major impact on someone else's child, but you still don't care. You, and all those like you, are selfish, nasty people. In fact, your concern is only for yourself and not even for your children. If one of your kids gets measles badly and is permanently damaged in some way, you might have cause to question your decision. You probably wouldn't though because of your ugly and absolute egocentricity.

And it just goes to show that having children does not make anyone a better person - sometimes, it makes people far more selfish

This! I think it ramps up the selfishness that was already there often. And they see their children purely as an extension of themselves that they own.

I watched a documentary on YouTube recently about a young American “Christian” couple who didn’t get medical help for their babies Jaundice, claimed it was against their religion - it’s not. The baby died and they remained unrepentant.

Yes, anti-vaxxers can home school.

It is their choice and I don't personally agree with it but I do think anti-vaxxers shouldn't be able to send their kids to primary school. The schools should get proof of vaccination when signing up new pupils, and anti-vaxxers should have to home school if it's that important to them, so that other kids are not put at risk from their personal choices. This would lessen the risk to other families. It would be interesting to see how many parents would ditch their principles in a heart beat if they were not able to send their kids to school as a result.

People need to be educated about herd immunity, as we can see from some responses.

A huge part of the government vaccination programme is the social pressure to agree so that you are not bullied, ostracised, and labelled neglectful by other parents and institutions. Is that scientific? Is it right?

I am not anti-vax but I asked a question about a certain immunisation that my child was due, and despite this person being more than willing to give it to them, they couldn't answer the question.

I am just saying alot of trust has been lost with health professionals since the covid response. Remember these are the same professionals and institutions that were pushing the vaccination and holding the threat of not being able to go to on holiday, concerts, university over our heads.

You’d rather leave your kids exposed to potentially deadly childhood diseases?

I’ve watched my husband struggle for his life, being told to prepare myself, twice.

If your children ever became seriously ill, I promise you, you will agree to anything being put into their bodies.

Please, get them vaccinated,

Not true. For vaccination programmes to be effective in eradicating a disease the take up has to be 95%. It’s why in some countries (the US) you are not allowed to attend school if you are not vaccinated. If more than 5% refuse to take it up, then the disease often mutates with each contraction and the version that proliferates is not longer protected against by the original vaccination… so 100% of the population becomes at risk. Children, pregnant mothers and the elderly and those medically all vulnerable. They then put people in less developed nations at risk when they visit on holidays.

Talk to my MIL about the impact on her family of aunties contracting measles and never recovering (encephalitis leading to permanent brain damage), of a neighbour’s child dying due to chicken pox and of the polio ‘survivors’ who struggled their whole lives with acquired disabilities. People think these illnesses are minor, that it is just a rash and a temperature that Calpol can fix… they are often life threatening. But the idiots who are not taking the vaccinations up have no idea because they grew up in a world that didn’t have it due to people actually having their bloody vaccinations. Their imbecility puts us all at risk.

for context:

Prior to widespread vaccination, childhood diseases caused very high death rates. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, nearly one in five children in the US died before their fifth birthday, with infectious diseases like pneumonia, diphtheria, and measles being major contributors, according to Vox.com. For example, smallpox alone caused 400,000 deaths per year in Europe in the 18th century, with infant mortality rates as high as 80% in London