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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think this takes not vaccinating to a whole new level

999 replies

Swanlaked · 26/09/2016 12:31

DD has a child at school who has cancer. The school sent a letter home asking all parents to please think about giving their child the MMR if they haven't had it and also to inform them immediately if any child was in contact with chicken pox.

One of the mums at the school is still refusing to have her 3DC vaccinated. No health issues it's big pharma/poison/conspiracy theory crap

AIBU at this point to think the school should seek removal of the children and tell the bloody thicko to find another school for them?

OP posts:
PinkFondantFancy · 26/09/2016 20:44

"Even if a few children have been hurt by it" - easy to dismiss these faceless children when they're not yours or someone you know, isn't it....

PinkFondantFancy · 26/09/2016 20:45

Also, not sure you can rank disabilities like that. Autism can be a very severe and life changing disability, brushing it off like that is so unfair to the families affected.

PinkFondantFancy · 26/09/2016 20:48

Anyway, am hiding this thread now. Those who are pro vax won't be swayed, nor will anti vaxxers. Everyone has to balance up the risks and benefits for themselves.

randomsabreuse · 26/09/2016 20:52

If your immune system is suppressed you lose acquired immunity at least temporarily - you basically have no immune system. If you end up with a bone marrow transplant then you have to redo vaccination if you get well enough.

CarShare · 26/09/2016 20:58

Gonetosee measles is (highly) infectious before it's diagnosable as measles (takes several days- saliva testing in a lab) so only quarantining after diagnosis isn't particularly helpful to most. My argument is very much against anti-vaxers as per my previous post.

Hotlingbling · 26/09/2016 21:04

I had the swine flu jab when I was pregnant. Thank god nothing happened to me or my ds but it has caused narcolepsy to a lot of other people.
www.narcolepsy.org.uk/resources/pandemrix-narcolepsy
Also the fact that this exists
www.gov.uk/vaccine-damage-payment/overview
has made me very wary of vaccines.

dybil · 26/09/2016 21:14

hotlingbling

Yes, there are very small risks associated with various health risks, however, you are similarly endangering your child's health every time you let them make a journey by car, but I bet most anti-vaxers aren't also anti-transport.

And most car journeys aren't as important for your child, or society in general, as a vaccine against a deadly disease.

Hotlingbling · 26/09/2016 21:19

The thing is when I was discussing the swine flu jab with my GP she said that it was safe and swine flu was an epidemic and I should get it as I was an at risk group. I wasn't told of the risks. I only found this out from watching a channel 4 documentary about the vaccine.
The parents had to get together to prove that it was the swine flu vaccine and had to fight to get the vaccine companies to admit it was their fault.

bumbleymummy · 26/09/2016 21:21

Imagine if we'd all been forced to give our children the swine flu vaccine in order for them to attend school/for us to be allowed to drive.

mathsmum314 · 26/09/2016 21:26

To those who are in favour of compulsory vaccination, how would you enforce it? How would you make the parents have their child vaccinated?

a) No state benefits
b) No state health care
c) No driving license
d) No state school
d) Fines
e) Last, remove child from parents care for neglect.

The risk of a reaction to a vaccination is very low
The severity of reaction to a vaccination is very low
The risk of disease to an anti vaccinated child is very high
The severity of disease to an anti vaccinated child is very high (death)

Society tries to do the most good for the most people while protecting the most vulnerable, like the immunosuppressed.

In short if one child has to risk a reaction to save one hundred children's lives, then I support that.

Anti-vaxers are monsters

dybil · 26/09/2016 21:26

Tbf to your GP, it sounds like it wasn't a known risk at the time. When a risk is really small (say, it only affects one if 55,000 of a certain age-group, as per the swine flu jab), then its unlikely that the risk will be identified until millions of people have had that particular jab.

BertrandRussell · 26/09/2016 21:26

So people are worried by the fact that there is official recognition that nothing that works is entirely risk free and that there is provision to support the minute number of people who suffer adverse side effects?

I would be a bloody sight more worried if people pretended that anything that works can be 100% safe..........

If you want something 100% risk free try homeopathy...........

bumbleymummy · 26/09/2016 21:39

maths, are you being genuine or goady?

You don't know an individual child's risk of a reaction to a vaccine. Many parents only find out that their children shouldn't be vaccinated when their child has had a serious reaction and, quite often, they have to spend a considerable amount of time and effort even getting that reaction acknowledged.

People can have serious, life changing reactions to vaccines.

As someone mentioned earlier, having a vaccine doesn't guarantee immunity.

Contracting one of the diseases does not automatically = death of you haven't been vaccinated.

I think it's pretty monsterous to think that it would be ok to 'sacrifice' one child out of every hundred tbh. As long as it's not your child I guess?

Soubriquet · 26/09/2016 21:48

Woah...have you read the Facebook comments? It's getting pretty heated over there

PinkSparklyPussyCat · 26/09/2016 21:49

What the hell has a driving licence got to do with not vaccinating?!

My parents chose not to have me vaccinated against whooping cough as there was a scare about it.

Maths, going by your logic they wouldn't have been able to drive. Dad was a lorry driver so that's his job out the window. He was then diagnosed with MS and had to give up work. I suppose he was lucky he was still allowed medical treatment just because I didn't have a jab.

Mum never went back to work as she cared for him for 20 years so they had to claim benefits. What should they have done, just left him to suffer while I was taken into care?

Some people just have no idea.

NataliaOsipova · 26/09/2016 21:51

And I remain of the view that if you don't vaccinate your child because of conspiracy nonsense, you shouldn't get a place at a taxpayer funded school

I agree with this. And actually, reflecting on it, a similar priciple is applied in all sorts of other areas:

  • If you choose to give birth under a private consultant, you don't get a space on an NHS post natal ward
  • If you choose to have an appointment with a private consultant and he/she writes a prescription, you pay the market cost and not the NHS prescription charge
  • If you send your child to a private school, you are not then eligible for free school meals or free transport because there isn't a suitable public transport alternative

Same point, surely? Nobody is forced into "the system"; there is no compulsion...but there are consequences as a result of opting out.

Hotlingbling · 26/09/2016 21:53

That's with the assumption that getting vaccinated makes you apart of the system.

ReallyTired · 26/09/2016 21:53

""Even if a few children have been hurt by it" - easy to dismiss these faceless children when they're not yours or someone you know, isn't it...."

Maybe you see children hurt by mengenitis, rubella or mumps as faceless. Most of us do not know any children hurt by diseases we vaccinate against. Many anti vaxers have no idea how dangerous these diseases are. Polio or measles are diseases of the past. Just like the bubonic plague is history in the uk.

No child is faceless. On a population level vaccination is about minimising the chances of any child being hurt. There is no risk free option. Vacinnation is no guarantee that a child will not get these diseases. Choosing to vacinnate a child is thr option that minimises risk.

mathsmum314 · 26/09/2016 21:53

bumbleymummy , I am being genuine..

These diseases KILL, anti-vaxers are complicit in stopping doctors from saving peoples lives.
I can't find any statistically significance number of people dying from having a reaction to the MMR vaccination.

ayeokthen · 26/09/2016 21:54

NataliaOsipova what you said, word for word! Far more eloquently written than I managed, perfectly put.

bumbleymummy · 26/09/2016 22:05

Maths, some of them may kill, it's not a case of 'if you don't vaccinate then your child will catch this disease and die' - as you suggested in your previous post.

ReallyTired, I had measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough along with everyone else in my family/the neighbourhood. It really wasn't that long ago that they were considered normal, childhood diseases that everyone went through so I don't think it's a case of people not knowing what these diseases are like anymore and them being part of history like the plague. I'm not that old!

dybil · 26/09/2016 22:08

It's really very appropriate that bumbleymummy is arguing against maths

Mathematically, any child is at far more risk not being vaccinated than they are being vaccinated.

bumbleymummy · 26/09/2016 22:11

dybil, that depends on the child.

WinchesterWoman · 26/09/2016 22:11

I support her right not to vaccinate her children. No one has the right to impose a medical intervention on someone else's child.

WinchesterWoman · 26/09/2016 22:15

Our of 100 vaccinated children (MMR) at least five won't be immune from the jab. That's on top of all those for whom it wore off, and the adults they come into contact with who also aren't immune. Plus colds, flu, things we don't vaccinate for.

So the additional risk from an unvaccinated child is not really comparable to the risk the child takes with being vaccinated. Neither is a known variable.

I think unless you're willing to go for an immunity check and make sure you're immune yourself, and your children, then you can't criticise someone else.