To suggest immunisations should be a legal requirement?

[rednailsredheart]

Look at it like this:

Wearing seatbelts it purely a safety issue. It's also a legal requirement in the UK to protect car passengers.

So why is immunisation not a legal requirement?

Likewise, drinking and driving is a criminal offence, due to the danger to the passengers and other drivers/people around you.

But deliberately choosing to let your child become a carrier of a totally preventable disease, infecting people around them (including those too young for immunisations), is totally fine? If someone doesn't vaccinate their child, then the child subsequently becomes gravely ill, why aren't the parents charged with neglect?

Makes me think of this article

ONION

So say education places are refused for children who are unvaccinated with exemptions for medical conditions etc, if vaccinated children still carry the disease then surely the unvaccinated child would be at the same level of risk or am I getting it wrong?

INickedAName

www.wired.com/2015/01/vaccinated-people-get-measles-disneyland-blame-unvaccinated/ will hopefully help.

YABU

We are moving away from one-size fits all approaches to medicine. Vaccines should be no exception. Yes, for the majority they may not cause any harm but for some, they do. Currently there is no way of knowing which children will react badly so you can't force people to take a risk.

I've seen a lot about this Disneyland measles outbreak. If it had been caused by a group of 'medically exempt' unvaccinated people would that have made it ok?

"If it had been caused by a group of 'medically exempt' unvaccinated people would that have made it ok?"

If the only people not vaccinated were medically exempt it almost certainly wouldn't have happened/become an outbreak, unless loads of the medically exempt had descended on Disneyland simultaneously and at least one of them had been somewhere with an existing measles outbreak. That's how herd immunity works - if enough people are immune, there is no wild virus around for the medically exempt/too young/vaccine didn't work very well people to catch, or if somehow they do, there is nobody for them to spread it to and continue the infection.

If a medically exempt person did somehow infect someone else who also wasn't immune, obviously that would be very sad but not really something anyone could do anything about. But I'd be looking at how the medically exempt person caught it - again, that's the point of herd immunity, to protect medically exempt folks from catching stuff.

"if vaccinated children still carry the disease then surely the unvaccinated child would be at the same level of risk or am I getting it wrong?"

If the vaccine has "taken" properly then no, vaccinated children in general won't be carriers, and (herd immunity again) if there's nobody around with the disease due to high vaccination/immunity levels there'll be nobody for the vaccinated children to catch it from anyway, even if the vaccine wasn't successful.

There was some issue a while back about the pertussis vaccine not always reaching that level of protection (think there was some primate study where the animals didn't get pertussis but could pass it on), but haven't heard anything similar about any of the other childhood vaccines, other than some highly unscientific waffle about "virus shedding" (which as far as I know is only an issue with the live polio vaccine and being in regular contact with other people's shit).

YABU

Its been established very early on in vaccination programmes that if you take something compulsory - people will go monumental lengths to avoid it. Making it voluntary has always had a far higher uptake rate.

Leedy, I know how herd immunity works, thanks.

Some vaccinated people contracted measles during the outbreak as well. The tagline of the above article is - "blame the unvaccinated'. However, not everyone who is vaccinated is immune and those who are not immune (despite being vaccinated) are just as able to contract/spread the virus.

"However, not everyone who is vaccinated is immune and those who are not immune (despite being vaccinated) are just as able to contract/spread the virus."

Well, yes, but given that the vaccine is something like 95% effective presumably they didn't all catch it from or infect other vaccinated people - you're saying that as if the outbreak had nothing to do with unvaccinated folks. That's why there generally aren't measles outbreaks where most of the population are vaccinated, there aren't enough people to catch it from, or get infected and spread it. That is herd immunity.

leedy, the rotavirus vaccine given to small babies is also shed after administration.

Leedy, yes, I know what herd immunity is, thanks again.

I'm just curious if people would be waving their 'blame the unvaccinated' banners if most of those unvaccinated people were actually medically exempt. Say if it was, hypothetically, a day trip for a group of people with a medical condition that prevented them from being vaccinated. They would still be the cause of the outbreak - they would still be infecting others who are not immune but they have a reason for not being vaccinated - do they still get attacked for it?

Oh yes, so it does, sorry, we didn't have that one. Though only to the extent that immunocompromised people should avoid their poo for a short while, not that they'll go around infecting people willy nilly. Per a paper in pubmed " Since the risk of vaccine transmission and subsequent vaccine-derived disease with the current vaccines is much less than the risk of wildtype rotavirus disease in immunocompromised contacts, vaccination should be encouraged."

"I'm just curious if people would be waving their 'blame the unvaccinated' banners if most of those unvaccinated people were actually medically exempt. Say if it was, hypothetically, a day trip for a group of people with a medical condition that prevented them from being vaccinated. They would still be the cause of the outbreak - they would still be infecting others who are not immune but they have a reason for not being vaccinated - do they still get attacked for it?"

In the unlikely event of an outbreak entirely caused by people who hadn't been vaccinated for some medical reason, then no, of course nobody would blame them. And, as I said, I'd still be looking at however the original unwell person was infected - presumably an outbreak elsewhere that wasn't entirely caused by medically exempt people. It's not like leukaemia patients are a well-known reservoir of measles, or whatever.

Maybe they caught it from a non-immune vaccinated person? :)

And they caught it from...? :)

Another non-immune person presumably. Unless you are suggesting that it has another animal reservoir?

I'm just suggesting that if everyone other than medically exempt people were immunized, the likelihood of there being measles outbreaks entirely caused by unsuccessfully vaccinated people and medically exempt people/babies infecting each other is pretty damn unlikely.

Well you don't actually know what reasons people had for not vaccinating. They could have been medical. The problem is, most people don't realise that they/their child will react badly until they've had it so, currently, it would be a bit difficult to identify people who shouldn't have the vaccine for medical reasons.

YABVU

As for whoever it was who said that vaccination. Doesn't cause harm, you are fortunate not to have seen one of your DC crash and go into cardiac arrest as a result of a vaccination. The extreme reactions are thankfully very, very rare...but my dd came too close to death for me to risk it again.

I also have had life threatening reactions, but discounted my history when making decisions for dd because she's adopted. Physically she has recovered, psychologically not so much. I now live with guilt of knowing that a decision I made for my child has caused immense harm, unintentional harm but no less real.

www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/measles/faqs-dis-vac-risks.htm

(think the 95 is for MMR as a whole)

The mumps component is the least effective - around 60% iirc.

I would not go as far as making it a legal requirement but I do think it should be a requirement for registration in a public school system. I think the government has a right to request that children should be vaccinated before being accepted in a public school in which they may put other kids, who for whatever reason cannot be vaccinated, at risk.
YANBU

whatmess - so how do the ones who can't get vaccinated get in to school? What test proves that they can't have the vaccine?