To be fucked off that parents not vaccinating their child is risking my childs life?

[TheGlovesAreOrf]

I never judged them before. I never cared, if they chose not to vaccinate their child I always thought it was their choice and its not for me to have an opinion.
I never used to give it much more thought that that. I vaccinate mu children and what others do with theirs is none of my business.

Until I have a child who's immune system is often (but not always, steroid use) compramised. He is more likely to pick up bugs, and not deal with them very well.

He is also allergic to many things. I know tha egg allergy isnt usually an issue, but the MMR is cultivated on egg albumin. He is allergic to egg (anaphylactic) chicken meat, and feathers. The whole caboodle. Im pretty sure his tiny body wont like egg albumin either.

He's due to have this vaccine very very soon in hospital and Im absolutely shitting myself. Every time I remember it my stomach drops and my heart races.

Im genuinely thinking, what if he dies?

I cant get the vaccines done individually because the private clinics wont touch me with a barge pole.

I cant risk leaving it (Ive left it 18 months so far) because the area I live in has a very low MMR rate.

And that really, really angers me. Probably irrationally so.

I should be able to leave it. My son should be protected by societies use of the MMR.

Instead I either have to risk him getting an illness, or risk giving him this injection.

As if he hasnt been enough already.

I know IABU, but I just feel very resentful and angry towards those who choose not to vaccine right now.

More than prepared to be flamed for this.

PrimalLass how do you think the single are/were made?

OP YANBU it is the parent's choice, but if it is not for medical reasons then that child should (I know impossible to do) be limited in where they are allowed to go.

Jengnr

Absolutely agree 100% with you. Just vaccinate your bloody children if they are healthy. Why on earth people think they know more than the hundreds and hundreds of experts is beyond me. It should be compulsory for all healthy children.

Altkin, is he allergic to the whole chicken?

YANBU

Pisses me off when people don't vax because they have read some shit on google and decided they know better than all the people who have been studying this stuff for years and actually have the qualifications to know what they are talking about.

I feel that as a member of society it is an obligation for me to vax my children to help the children who genuinely can't be vaxxed due to medical conditions.

All healthy children should be vaxxed, it is our duty as members of society to help protect those who are vulnerable.

My own children are my top priority for sure but I better have a darn good reason to not vax them and lower the herd immunity even more. For me, fear of autism and googling doesn't cut it.

The NHS has a lot to answer for in causing these problems IMO.

If they made single vaccines available, even at cost, to parents who have valid reason to be concerned, we would have higher levels of immunity.

If they were honest about how many children were vaccinated against mmr instead of leading parents like the OP to believe that immunity is low, despite many many parents using single vaccines, then maybe OP wouldn't feel the need to take this significant risk by getting her child vaccinated. My children are counted in statistics as being unvaccinated, despite their surgery being informed by a consultant paediatrician when they were vaccinated and when blood test results proved they have strong immunity.

If they admitted that some children are vaccine damaged and discussed this possibility with parents instead of pretending it never happens, then people would have more trust in them and may be more willing to take a very small risk because they know they the truth.

Instead, parents are made to feel like they can't really trust the NHS when it comes to MMR, and it's that that has lead to low uptake of MMR every bit as much as Wakefield IMO.

We are lucky to have the choice, whopping cough is back on the rise and potentially deadly to newborns who can't be vaccinated against it

Sigh...

Jegnr-
Children who react badly to vaccines were healthy children before the vaccine. There is currently no way of knowing which children will suffer complications. They may very well be the ones who need not to be vaccinated.

Sunny,

I'm very sad to hear about your friends baby. There are increasing numbers of cases of WC around at the moment - not because of unvaccibated children (the uptake for the 5-in-1 is actually quite high) but because they have found that immunity to it wanes after a few years so most older children/adults are no longer immune and most of them don't even realise that this is possible so they end up infecting the vulnerable :(

Emmyloo - my post to jegnr applies to you to. How should we figure out which of all the healthy children we vaccinate will react badly to the vaccine? Silly to say - 'all healthy children should be vaccinated.' Currently many people are having to base their decisions on their own family history - previous reactions to vaccines etc and usually without the support of doctors.

we have eradicated smallpox

polio no longer exists in this country

ditto TB until recently

My mother remembers not being allowed to use public paddling pools due to risk of polio.

Do you know why TB is back?

Obviously if one of your children or another relative has had a severe adverse reaction to a vaccine then of course you will think twice about vaccinating and possibly not vaccinate at all. That is perfectly understandable and really is a separate issue.

However, given the tiny number of cases of vaccine damage compared to the massive decline in the rate of vaccination since the advent of the Internet, my guess would be that people are not avoiding vaccination due to experience of vaccine damage, but to reading bullshit on google and deciding that they don't want to 'pump little bodies full of rubbish' or some such bollocks. Which again is understandable - after all everyone just wants to do the best for their child, but why people think that the tiny bit of research they have done on the Internet is better than what experts have proved repeatedly, I have no idea.

Altinkum who told you he should not be vaccinated? And in what way is his immune system compromised?

My son is the same and also has severe asthma and eczema.
Yet the paeditrician at Guy and St Thomas hospital flick away my concerns with an eye roll, and they are top allergy specialists in the UK. I dont know whether to find their reaction to my concerns reassuring or worrying...

I got my children vaccinated for their sake not as some sacrifice for other children, you never know what is going to happen in life but them contacting a potentially fatal disease is more likely than an adverse reaction

Sorry OP, but I have one son who will need 24 hour 1:1 care for the rest of his life. I don't need more & I'm not prepared to sacrifice then just in case they come across yours.

FWIW my friends had a child with very severe immune problems & they were far more concerned about everyday illnesses that everyone gets, or viruses that we all carry that don't make us sick than they were about any of the vaccine preventable diseases.

And FWIW my son caught rubella from a child who had had the vaccine (it didn't work), whooping cough is often spread by those up to date with their whooping cough vaccinations etc etc. A vaccination certificate doesn't automatically = safe.

Oh Christ not the 'parents are too stupid to recognise a regression' argument again. I must have imagined my child talking & the video from that time must be wrong, I'll tell my friend she imagined the post MMR seizures and the stay in ICU.

Arggh, did the OP say every child bar hers should be vaccinated? Children with genuine medical reasons are not the norm, your child could benefit from herd immunity too

Also, to an earlier poster - according to the pHA there is no firm evidence that orchitis (possible complication of mumps) causes sterility.

2tired - so how do we filter out the healthy children who are going to react badly? How do we determine their medical reasons?

There is a balance of risk with vacinations. Given how nasty Measles, Mumps and Rubella are it is not surprising that a vacination can hurt potentially vunerable children. Maybe there is a 1 in 500,000 chance that child will be damaged by a vacine, but stastically more children were damaged or killed by these virsuses than by the vacination. Ofcourse that is no comfort if your child is the 1 in 500,000 who is damaged.

In an ideal world we would wipe these diseases off the face of the earth, just like was achieved with smallpox. We need as many people as possible to have the MMR to achieve the eradication of measles, mumps and rubella. If measles, mumps and rubella were erradicated then no child would need to take the risk of vaccine damage.

Vacination injury is one of those areas where doctors become defensive because of fear of lawsuits. Prehaps we need some research to intentify which children are at greater risk of vacicne damage.