Why would someone say this about vaccines? Is it odd?

[PuzzlingPanda]

Was in a health food shop today and mentioned an ongoing issue I'm having with one of my do.

The man mentioned he thought the biggest thing going wrong with our children was all the vaccines they receive. He said they full of nasties, designed to make people ill.

It could be put down to a man having a pointless rant but why would he say this? Is there any sort of truth in it?

Not the first time I've heard negative things about vaccines.

Now I'm worried about it.

pigeon I'm strongly against mandatory vaccination for many reasons, but in part because the state doesn't take responsibility for those damaged by vaccines. In fact the 'collateral damage' often have to fight for any kind of acknowledgement that vaccines did them harm in the first place. But I do agree that weighing up the risks can be harrowing, and the more informed we are, such as having some idea of the risk of a bad reaction, the easier it would be.

Bumbley that also really worried me - that Faye's dad (I think) seemed to think Men B vaccine could rule out Men B as a diagnosis. Even if the vaccine 'took', and even if it worked as expected, about 1in 5 Men B cases wouldn't be covered. The primary course is also only expected to give 2-3 years protection, so as you say without boosters immunity would be lost very quickly. I think it is very dangerous to assume that you can't get Men B because you've you've had the vaccine, and I sincerely hope parents aren't doing this and potentially missing red flag warning signs.

It is really good that Mn retains anonymity.

"A better answer would be to research who reacts and why and discover the answers that would enable MORE parents to be basing their choice on fact. If you can PROVE your child won't react"

How can you possibly prove that?

What did worry me slightly was that there seemed to be a suggestion that having the vaccine would rule out the need for a doctor to consider meningitis in a vaccinated patient.

I'm not sure if you were around earlier in the thread when I shared my mothers experience of pertussis and doctors missing classic severe symptoms and causing her to probably infect a huge amount of other vulnerable people. Purely because she was vaccinated.

This worries me greatly. Especially with something I believe has a much higher death/permanent disability rate(?) I'm assuming.

I think we play a dangerous game believing that vaccines WILL prevent the disease. Those who search out knowledge of vaccines know otherwise but even in quite a lot of HCPs there is an assumption of the 100% effectiveness of a vaccine and HCPs are who should know better than to blindly trust.

But the message that your child can still become very sick from the illness that your vaccinating for, perhaps undermines getting herd immunity?

As a parent, I don't know the symptoms of say hpv for instance - it's not something Iv thought about much. Thankfully I do know symptoms of menB thanks to people like sugar raising awareness, posters in GP surgeries and a first aid course I went on about 3 years ago which like sugar points out - informed me a rash didn't need to be present to rule out meningitis, as well as that cold hands and feet could be an indicator

It shouldn't be left down to parents or patients to suggest and know symptoms of vaccine preventable diseases. Of course it's good, it's necessary, and it will save lives to know. But HCPs should be the ones taking the greater responsibility and not assuming a vaccine rules something out.

My mothers experience at the time was what had me mistakenly believing that "vaccines don't work anyway and are a conspiracy" it's only digging deeper I found merit to vaccinating and thank god I did "dig deeper"

I think meningitis needs a lot of awareness raised. I had no idea (until the point in my life I looked at vaccines) that there are so many different strains, that it can be both bacterial and viral, and that it doesn't always cause a rash. Those myths need to be broken down in society. People may assume that viral meningitis isn't possible after the imms. And although it's less serious usually, it's possible for anyone immunised or not...

*"A better answer would be to research who reacts and why and discover the answers that would enable MORE parents to be basing their choice on fact. If you can PROVE your child won't react"

How can you possibly prove that?*

As it stands, you can't. If we studied it more maybe we would find out and be able to develop some sort of screening tool that gave that information... Or at least give even greater reassurance to people who despite statistics when it comes to their own child still remain stuck on the side of fearing a vaccine reaction more due to personal experience

pigeon I agree with what you say, and HCPs definitely need to be better informed about the limitations of vaccines. I also know someone who's ds caught Men C despite being vaccinated - thankfully he made a full recovery.

It might make people question the point if the vaccine if their children can still get ill, but the facts are the facts and people should be aware of that so that they don't delay getting help. As we heard, prompt treatment is critical.

Exactly, better to give people the facts so they can at least be aware that there is still a risk.

I think the problem is that severe vaccine reactions are so incredibly rare that there really isn't any research material to go on. And there is such a wide range of types of reaction that once again, I don't see what sort of research could be done.

Maybe the real answer is compulsory statistics and risk analysis lessons at school?

pigeon That is exactly what I hate, my child is a statistic just a number for researchers to quote
When your child becomes that number it is devastating and feels inhuman.

It's awful it's unfair, and it makes me so incredibly sorry, and angry

And also sorry for people such as Greatfuck who also find their child on the side of statistics nobody wants to ever be

It's important we have statistics, but parents don't want to know statistics. They want to knowTHEIR child is on the right side of them

Scientists and people allocating budgets want to know statistics.

In order to research vaccine reactions I would imagine you could apply the same methods used to research any rare disorder. Whole genome screening for instance of people with bad reactions vs people who tolerate vaccines well. It's challenging, but that's not a reason to not try! After all, Meningitis is rare, but I don't think anyone here accepts that those affected are an acceptable loss or that we shouldn't try to prevent those too.

YouCannot - I do agree with you re mandatory vaccines. It's just a case of wishing to absolve responsibility from myself why I fantasise for a mandatory schedule.

I know it wouldn't work. Countries such as Australia or US don't absolve responsibility anyway - those who want to opt out due to concerns still can. They just might not be able to get benefits or enrol in state education.

And yes, pigeon, I read about your mum's experience. I think it is quite common for these things to be ruled out because people have had the vaccine. Another MNer posted years ago about her child being diagnosed with measles (unvaccinated) but the child in the bed beside her was diagnosed with a 'measles like virus' (vaccinated).

Just another point from the discussion - calpol/nurofen potentially 'masking' symptoms when children are being assessed. I'm not sure how they're going to work around that one though.

Quite bumbley

They thought I had a mild virus till I ran out of paracetamol and became too ill to go purchase more last year. I was blue lighted with suspected sepsis later that night.

Did I just mask symptoms? I won't know. I'm glad I ran out of paracetamol though!

Hindsight and all that.

In order to research vaccine reactions I would imagine you could apply the same methods used to research any rare disorder. Whole genome screening for instance of people with bad reactions vs people who tolerate vaccines well. It's challenging, but that's not a reason to not try! After all, Meningitis is rare, but I don't think anyone here accepts that those affected are an acceptable loss or that we shouldn't try to prevent those too.

^^ THIS

I wish I knew how to... And had access to funds to do so.

I know the current NICE guidelines recommend not giving paracetamol with the sole aim of reducing fever - only if the child is in discomfort but in the case of meningitis, when they are so unwell, they will almost definitely have been given it. In Faye's case it was enough to 'perk her up' for the doctor but she just slumped when she got home :(

The Calpol thing has me a bit worried too. I always assumed that if an illness responded to Calpol that was a good sign that it wasn't that serious, but it seems I might have that wrong. It doesn't help that a Dr won't even see you unless you've tried to bring the temp down (at least round here that's the case - it's always the first question I'm asked).

You've just reminded me of a paper I was reading recently about genetic susceptibility to meningitis. It was interesting that Mason's mum had meningitis herself as a child. Perhaps in the future it will be possible to identify people who are more genetically susceptible to the disease and selectively vaccinate?

I wondered if there was a genetic component to that as well Bumbley. I know there are a variety of genetic immune disorders (I think about 1 in 200 have one iirc), some of which can make it harder to deal with bacteria. Perhaps a defect in the complement could be linked to susceptibility to N Meningitidis? I wonder if anyone is working on that angle? Working out who exactly is most at risk would be a huge step forward over the rather crude age brackets we currently have.

Sorry, just re-read and saw that obviously someone is working on that!

There's this one from 2010 but it was something more recent that I was reading. I'll have to check my history in work.

That's really interesting Bumbley, thanks. It seems it is an aspect of complement that was linked to susceptibility. It would be great to see some of this research translated into the clinic.

I also want to quote this piece of lying rubbish back at its author:

Japan stopped vaccinating under 2's...and their SID rate dropped to zero. Yes. Zero.

An outright lie, and an immoral piece of garbage to boot.

It should be remembered that grieving parents are not something out of a soap opera and I know for a fact some of their families are on here.

sugar as I said up thread, I think the families did incredibly well, and I hope some positive change comes out of this.