Why aren't people vaccinating against measles?

[TableTurners]

Just read about the measles outbreak in Enfield and Haringey at the moment - just wondering why a lot of people aren't vaccinating again measles these days?

Apparently the UK has lost it's measles free status or something, just seems weird to me that we're letting something old fashioned like this go rife again.

I agree there’s a lot of stupidity around this issue, some people seem to think ‘should we vaccinate’ is on a par with ‘should we choose baby led weaning’ or ‘which school should we choose’. But unfortunately telling people they’re a bit stupid doesn’t tend to work and a greater programme of education is needed to look at the wider reasons around the issue.

I also wonder if a lot of adults are fully protected - I was visiting the urgent treatment centre with a relative recently and a nurse asked to check if I’d had both doses of MMR. Surprisingly I’d only had one dose so I was given a top up. I’m 48 and I know my parents made sure I had every vaccine available at the time (late 70s). Obviously this was before the MMR was available so I’m assuming what I had was the standard at the time, but I wasn’t fully protected.

I doubt that she knows the ingredients of half the stuff she eats. She probably couldn't tell you what the ingredients were in her supermarket loaf of bread!

It shouldn’t be optional to vaccinate children against diseases like measles, it’s not just an individual decision that doesn’t impact anyone. There is a huge element of social responsibility. We don’t allow people to choose whether to put their child in a car seat, we don’t allow drink driving, we don’t allow smoking on the plane. We shouldn’t be allowing epidemics of measles, polio etc to emerge regardless of what makes people hesitant to vaccinate their children

Children who would have been 12 weeks old around the time of the first covid lockdown will be about 5/6 now… I wonder if this contributed to a decrease in uptake. I live in one of the boroughs mentioned and there is a high percentage of English as 2nd, 3rd, 4th language… more education needs to be done. There was a whole pack about it in my son’s school newsletter. It’s very worrying.

I think your right about the first bit - middle classes in my view who always have to research and explore everything - this one’s gone a bit far

What was your point about then? Ethnic minority uptake is worryingly low.

Yup

Exactly what I was getting at.

It’s not just anti vaxxers, there is an issue with certain demographics too.

Because vaccine damage is a real thing that exists, but anyone who wants to discuss that is called thick and stupid and ‘anti vax’ so questions remain unanswered an anxious parents decide that they’d rather take their chances with an illness that can usually be cured than with a vaccine.

I’m in my late fifties and am not fully vaccinated after a serious allergic reaction to one jab put me in intensive care as a small child. My parents were then too scared to let me have the rest. Both of my siblings are fully vaccinated.

DS was born in 2002 after Andrew Wakefield had been in the news quite a lot and I have to admit I was terrified about having him vaccinated. Mainly due to my experience but the whole now debunked autism link was also a frightening prospect.

Fortunately my health visitor and the practice nurse didn’t call me stupid and uneducated. They took the time to go through my concerns and provide reassurance. DS is fully vaccinated and thankfully nothing untoward happened.

I really don’t think that calling parents names is helpful. If I hadn’t had the support of the staff at my GP surgery, I might have made a different decision.

On the whole 'stupid and uneducated' debate. I was the person who gave the example of the person in a high profile job further up the thread. In her case she is the opposite of stupid and uneducated.

That is where it becomes so difficult for us to understand. She gave me her list of reasons and they were factually incorrect but you can see where careful manipulation could come in.

1. Claim: vaccinations can cause SIDs. I researched this and that is incorrect (in fact there is lower rates of SIDs among vaccinated vs unvaccinated children. However, SIDs typically occurs between 2 & 4 months which is similar timing to first vaccinations so you can see how sob stories could be used as manipulation.
2. People previously got measles and it was a childhood disease the same as chickenpox. Correct but it's much nastier than chickenpox and can leave your child disabled and cause death in bad cases.
3. The risk of the illnesses is less than the risk of the vaccines. This one is tricky - yes because of the vaccines success the UK has historically almost eliminated many of the illnesses vaccinated against. However, many of these are now resurging due to the drop in vaccination rates and the illnesses being highly contagious. Therefore, current trends mean those risks will increase over time. There is also a moral argument that healthy children should get vaccinated to help protect those who can't be.
4. Vaccines contain metals and there's all sorts of side effects we don't know about. I find this so bizarre because if you take a paracetamol or feed your baby a processed baby food or inhale some petrol fumes at the car garage there is undoubtedly negatives as well. All these things are so tiny that the odd small instance is proven to be safe for the body. If you live off processed food or in a petrol garage it may well impact your health.

I could go on but honestly it's just so difficult. I think probably a lot are quite stupid. However, I think the YouTube's and TikTok's are just so persuasive and cleverly done. They play off people's fears and convince them that they can't trust any government organisations or media.

It's very sad but the more you push the more these people will dig their heels in.

No, they really shouldn't be compulsory!

Also, in those areas, likely transitory populations of people who don't have English as first language, probably moving between rented accommodations and not keeping up with GP correspondence and vaccine schedules.

i wasn’t vaccinated against various diseases because my mother was borderline neglectful and thought that if she had done something for an older child, them she had basically covered that job across all her children. Madness.

i have partial deafness, I believe as a result of my measles ( I had a very bad case).

Im not sure hat we should make vaccination compulsory because forcing someone to medicate a child would be, in my opinion, the wrong thing to do.

However, there are a number of countries that have introduced fines and other sanctions like no entry to nursery and education without vaccination.

I think that’s the way to go because that way that has been shown to evidence an increase in the vaccination rate, taking it above the herd immunity level.

and that means lives saved

They're not very bright

Absolutely this. If you are to look at figures from several cities (I'm specifically looking at Birmingham) you'll find some areas within it have a lower uptake than others. There are many reasons to why this is, if communities aren't engaged then you won't have high uptake.

When we had an outbreak in 2024 in our area I questioned my medical records and I got an additional dose of the MMR. I'm late 30's and only got one dose as a child, however I live with an immunosuppressed adult and at the time my youngest wasn't old enough for his pre school dose so they got me in urgently for a second one.

Hi everyone sorry to hijack just feeling really nervous about this whole thing ☹️ we’re also in north east London with two young children (one under 12 months) and feel so cross at the thought of the risk of them catching measles due to unvaccinated children.

I'm old enough to remember children, older than me, with polio.

I remember my Mum queuing up with me to get my polio injection.

my Mum was a working class woman who left school when she was 14, but she was also wise enough to understand that her government had no reason to want to hurt her child (me) so I had my injection.

I did the same with my child.

I have not heard one credible reason why a government/organisation would wish to cause widespread harm deliberately.

I understand why some people believe some conspiracy theories, where their is a credible reason to believe that somebody would benefit from others believing the conspiracy. Though I struggle to believe such reasoning.

but I'm yet to hear any credible reason why any group would benefit by poisoning children via vaccinations.

I remember seeing kids in calipers from having polio as well.

Sorry but yes they should - everyone benefits unanimously

It’s not medication it’s a vaccination that we all benefit from having once

Ian Drury was polio damaged. I also remember someone at school being brain damaged because they got encephalitis through having measles.

I'm sure I received my measles jab in school even though I had actually caught measles beforehand.

Yes people who want to be all flimsy about not making it mandatory forget all this

Just looked and the measles vaccine came out in 1968 which ties in with me getting it when I started school.