DH has shingles...can we visit our nephew who has had no vaccinations?

[user1477282676]

DH been feeling rotten for about a week now....today he came up in the tell tale spotty looking things across his side, back and some on legs.

We're meant to be going to MIL"s tomorrow for boxing day lunch....but SIL has a 2 year old who is completely unvaccinated. (I know, I know...don't ask!}

Will it be bad for our nephew? What happens? Can we still go or should we cancel?

We've just called MIL to let her know...she's saying "Oh it's fine!" which she would say because of course she wants us to go...but DH told her to tell SIL because it's up to her.

What's the sensible thing?

"there's a greater risk of harm from the diseases than from vaccine injury. "

WRONG. Rubella is such a light disease that many parents don't even notice that their children have had it. It causes a "fever" of about 37.5 C, barely above normal. Pinprick rash doesn't cause discomfort and goes away within 24 hours. Vaccinating boys for rubella is unnecessary. Vaccinating baby girls for rubella robs them of the opportunity to have the disease as children and acquire lifetime immunity, leaving them open to the possibility of waning vaccine immunity in their childbearing years.

Mostly yes but some do develop complications plus I do find it somewhat cold that you have no care whatsoever for pregnant mothers.

Also what about measles, mumps, tetanus, whooping cough, meningitis, polio, hpv?

What about them? If you actually RTFT before posting, you would know that I have nothing against vaccination that actually protects against dangerous diseases.

It is just the vaccines that offer no benefit whatsoever to DC (rubella) or those that are not terribly necessary (chicken pox) that I have refused.

Why on Earth would I take the risk of permanent vaccine damage if there is no benefit to DC? WHY?

Find it "somewhat cold" all you want. My responsibility, first and foremost, is to my DC. Not to a hypothetical pregnant woman who has not had rubella and has not bothered to have the vaccine herself before getting pregnant.

Yes, it would be very sad if she caught rubella for the 1st time while pregnant. No, it is not the my DC's responsibility to take on a serious risk (albeit with low probability) to protect her.

ellie

There has been a shingles vaccine since around 2006

Cote enough with the 'rtft' I have repeatedly made it clear I HAVE and yes I do think It's cold and selfish to think only of you and yours and I'm certain you'd have something to say if others took the same attitude to your families health. Not all unvaccinated adults are unvaccinated because they 'can't be bothered' there may be medical reasons they couldn't be OR they were - ironically - raised by anti vax parents.

Cote as you make a personal argument, here is one back: your unvaccinated for rubella son is a couple of decades down the line in his life and decides to have a baby with his gorgeous partner. During her pregnancy he catches rubella, passes it on to her (she was never vaccinated for anything as her parents believe in woo rather than science) and there you go. Would you like to give us the statistical risk of adverse reactions from the rubella vaccine that you have weighed against the possibility of your son infecting others including his own unborn children?

Not to mention that if everyone thought so highly of themselves they refused to expose themselves to even the tiniest risk of harm when it could benefit others we'd be a planet of psychopaths (not to mention that it entirely contradicts your utilitarian risk calculations - utilitarianism being an egalitarian theory to the point of distortion of our moral intuitions).

ellie no one is wishing vaccine damage on their child or anyone else's, no one is wishing preventable disease damage on their child or anyone else's. If a wish were to be granted then we would do away with all harm to children. But as the consultant at the children's rare bone diseases appointment told me, this is not a place for wishes. People face all sorts of horrific harms in their lifetimes, why not make an effort (much more effective than a wish) to avoid the preventable ones?

As I said in my first post the OP wanted the thread to turn into an anti vaxers bashing thread. So enjoy😃. Until people engage with anti vaxers without using words like woo etc you can't win them over. But I dont think you want to anyway. I bet you get a sense of satisfaction from it.

Just to say Graphista when I was holding my children for the vaccine injections pregnant women and other people were not a consideration. I was thinking "shit they will cry for a long time and I will need calpol" lol. I am cold like that. I vaccinated them for very selfish reasons

Ellie OP here. NO. I did not want it to turn into that. I was seeking advice. SO keep your stupid emoticon to yourself. You sound ignorant as fuck. I left the thread when it kicked off....because that wasn't what I wanted.

Yes ellie I get such a sense of satisfaction from seeing unvaccinated kids suffer from preventable diseases! You really understood my argument, well done.

Okay, I caught chickenpox from someone with shingles. No contact with sores etc. Only in the same vicinity for a couple of hours. So don't necessarily rely on the "if the rash is covered, you'll be fine" advice. That said, nephew could equally catch chickenpox from a random in the street. His vaccination or non vaccination status is neither here nor there. Chickenpox won't be worse for him than a child who's had the mmr.

Cote is right - the idea that we undergo invasive medical treatment to provide a benefit to anonymous strangers is both laughable and indefensible. We do it to protect ourselves and/or our children, nothing more.

"Cote your unvaccinated for rubella son is a couple of decades down the line in his life and decides to have a baby with his gorgeous partner. During her pregnancy he catches rubella, passes it on to her"

What else do you see in your crystal ball?

You are clutching at straws. You obviously realise that expecting babies to take on vaccine risk only for the sake of some stranger (adult) is ethically indefensible. So you resort to nonsense scenarios like this. It's embarrassing to watch. Really, just stop.

"if everyone thought so highly of themselves they refused to expose themselves to even the tiniest risk of harm when it could benefit others we'd be a planet of psychopaths"

I really think you need to look into the ethical issues around medical interventions. It is not ethical to perform an invasive procedure on anyone, let alone a baby, when it is not in their interest to do so.

Likening this to being a psychopath just shows how far you are from understanding the basics of the debate.

It is not at all normal to expect all babies everywhere to take on a risk (albeit small) for the sake of some adult who is perfectly capable of checking her own immunity and getting vaccinated herself.

I don't know how many times I can say this in different ways, so please do try to understand this time.

"I do think It's cold and selfish to think only of you and yours"

Bless. Is it news to you that my primary responsibility if to my DC? That I will not have them subjected to any medical procedure if it is not for their benefit?

Well now you know. Parents do what is best for their children, first and foremost. Glad to help wake you up to what it means to be responsible for the health and well-being of a baby.

Perfectly capable of being responsible for the welfare of babies was a nanny for several years, a nurse and now a mother and aunt.

It IS normal because it is what MILLIONS of people have done and what governments have legislated for.

Frankly I find your views on this repulsive and as you're a mother worrying. I DO NOT need educated or woken up!

To clarify

I do think It's cold and selfish to think ONLY of you and yours

It's not that myself and others don't UNDERSTAND what you're trying to argue (we're not stupid which seems to be what you're trying to infer) it's that we don't AGREE

I really think you need to look into the ethical issues surrounding medical interventions Hahahaha. I am a moral philosopher with a specialty in medical ethics and years of experience of training medical students, doctors and research ethics committees. I have advised bodies like the Nuffield Council on paediatric topics.

Of course you are, Boo

That's why you have been able to say nothing in response to "It is ethically indefensible to make a baby take a risk for the benefit of an adult, and resorted to silly scenarios like "Your son will grow up, get a gorgeous girl pregnant", etc.

Anyway, both of you can move on now. We got that you think parents should vaccinate DC against their best interests, for the good of hypothetical adults.

Cote - your babies - as well as being individuals - are also part of society. So they, as members of society, receive benefits from altruism that benefits society as a whole. You don't seem to be factoring that into your calculations.

Society functions because people as a whole, are a bit better off if they do things without obvious immediate benefit to themselves - or even if they do things with a small risk of harm to themselves.

I take your point about adult women being able to take responsibility for pre-pregnancy vaccination. But we know that pregnancies are often unplanned, people have little idea about whether they are immune, teenagers believe they are invincible etc etc.

In my mind (as the mother of a vaccinated boy) the tiny tiny risks for all those boys do not add up to more than the catastrophe of deaf blind congenital rubella infected children

Altruism is a good thing, I agree, just not when the price is risking DC's health, possibly permanently. No way.

I give blood, support multiple charities including two for disadvantaged girls in other countries. I help friends and strangers in a million different ways. But no way, none whatsoever, am I ever going to consent to DC undergoing an invasive procedure that is against their interests. Fuck that.

You can bet that this would be the default response to Rubella vaccine if more parents realized their children don't need it, too.

Can we agree that people's altruism is a matter of personal opinion and conscience and that your boundaries are right for you and not necessarily for everyone else?

That it is not necessarily unethical to vaccinate boys against rubella?

I'll always bite on this topic as it is so significant.

The evaluation of risk involves a number of considerations:

1. Who is making the decision and who risks the harms benefits? A number of combinations are possible here but the most problematic is a case where person A makes the decision to risk and stands to gain the benefit while person B risks the harm. The least problematic is arguably the case where the same person decides and risks both harms and benefits.

1. Harm risked: this includes severity, type of harm, prior knowledge of harm, feasibility of assessing the impact of unknown harm, etc.

1. Benefit risked: similar to above

1. Probability of harms/benefits actualising: this includes feasibility of determining probabilities, reasoning biases, etc.

So the rubella vaccine:

1. A parent decides on behalf of a child who runs the risk, while society at large will benefit. Parents are presumed to act in the best interests of the child, but the concept can be understood broadly to include acts of altruism, e.g. a parent consents on behalf of a child who donates bone marrow to a sibling - this does not benefit the donor and puts her at some risk, but is acceptable on the grounds that family members would want to help other family members.

1. Harm: there are no known serious adverse reactions to the rubella vaccine. There are very rare cases of allergic reaction to the MMR and that is about it. The harm from the vaccine is miniscule at best.

1. Benefit: rubella causes known, severe complications to pregnant women and may also affect immunosuppressed others. There is a clear benefit to a large number of individuals and society as a whole.

1. Probability: given the numbers of pregnant women if rubella were to become widespread it is probable that many of them would be affected.

Therefore in vaccinating a child for rubella the parent is risking either nothing or a miniscule possibility of harm to the child for a strong likelihood of benefiting others greatly.

That is how my argument is justified Cote.

Booboo, the risk of rubella to a child who catches it is minuscule. The risk to pregnant women is in the first 20 weeks and the vast majority of women are immune from having the vaccine themselves/being exposed to it.

There are known reactions to the MMR (rubella vaccine). See vaccine insert.

It doesn't make sense to rely on other people for protection if you can have the vaccine yourself. You don't know if they have been vaccinated/you don't know if they're immune.

I agree with heebie that everyone has their own boundaries wrt altruism. You may judge giving the vaccine a 'small' risk to benefit others while someone else may think giving the vaccine is unlikely to be of much benefit to others yet carries a real risk to their child.

Well this went the way all threads mentioning vaccination go on MN!

To the OP, the vaccination status of the child is irrelevant in the UK as CP isn't on the schedule anyway, and vaccinating against other diseases will offer no protection against CP or shingles. IMO it would be polite to mention it to the parents, but I don't think anyone should panic about it too much as in the vast majority of cases CP is a mild disease in childhood anyway.

The discussion about vaccinating babies for the theoretical benefit of non-immune pregnant women is interesting, and I think highlights the subtle difference between benefit to society and to the individual. On a societal level it makes perfect sense to vaccinate babies against rubella, but for an individual child it is an unnecessary risk. I think it gets ethically murky when 'society' gives parents the impression that all vaccinations are for their child's benefit (and you just have to read the replies to threads like this one to see that many parents believe this us the case). Presumably this is because if parents realised it wasn't necessary for their baby to get the rubella vaccine (for instance) most would decline and herd immunity would fall. It is, after all, human nature to put the welfare of our own before that of hypothetical strangers, and I would argue that is reasonable. I know some will argue that the ends justify the means, but it does make a nonsense of informed consent and parental choice, especially when it's often not accepted that vaccines can cause damage.

ffs just ask the mother of the child how she feels about it. Chickenpox vax is fairly new and we all came down with it more or less growing up. If a vax suddenly appeared for a bruise half the population would panic a bruise would kill them.