To ask you to help me argue with an anti-vaxxer on fb

[GoesDownLikeACupOfColdSick]

I know, I know. But it's Saturday night, DP is out and I am just home whilst our (fully vaccinated!) DD is asleep.

What do I say to someone who is convinced that we should all do our own research, that vaccines are only about big pharma making big bucks, and that the govt hushes up vaccine damage??

Have you read medical papers? They're about the most accessible of all the sciences.

If you're interested enough it's not difficult. If you have a child who is at risk of being negatively affected if you don't read them you tend to find a way to understand them. Not just decide to leave it to the brainy people.

It was much harder to access this stuff 15 years ago without a library or specialist account. It's a piece of piss now.

I was just hanging around waiting for you to quote me on the "informed consent" thing you said I keep going on about....

When I read the title I thought this was going to be a thread about vacuum cleaners... Thought perhaps you had a staunch preference for a Dyson or the like, and your facebook friend disagreed

slowly backs out of thread

Pmsl sunflowers

Nice to know I'm just white noise

Devilish, re: catatonia, before it got serious, was he ever playful/messing around with it? Dd1 has problems initiating (everything, always has, from speech to motor planning), and we are seeing more frequency again (was a big problem as a toddler/preschooler over any thresholds - even subtle floor changes in shops) with eg, refusing to get out of the car, or not entering the house. But she will currently make it seem a joke (and of course whilst she has a very good sense of humour, it could also be inappropriate emotional response). We can currently jolly her along, and historically her refusals have seemed to be more about control (of us - if she doesn't comply then she either gets a reaction, or she gets us to change our request, which is as good as a reaction) than a problem for her, but who knows?

Pandas - threshold issues have come and gone. He has always had the repetitive movements as well that seem indicative of everything bad in autism.

Initiation of eating has always come & gone as well (seems to have completely gone on the meds).

If she gets stuck at thresholds you can try unbalancing her with a gentle sideways push - if that works it might be indicative of catatonia as apparently the stuckness is on one plane (back & forth iykwim). Going across the stuck plane can supposedly help.

And yes floor changes in toddlerhood were a problem here as well. Carpet to wooden floor? Forget it....

Thanks devilish.

As ever (dd1 being the biggest wind up merchant there ever was ) it is nigh on impossible to tease out whether she is just on a wind up, or whether she jokes about it and mucks about to cover up something she can't do/is finding difficult (or scary, or frustrating, etc). But we are currently firmly in 'I'm not ready!' territory (to buy processing time, or to cover up fleeting inability to initiate? Who knows? Only dd1, and she can't tell) for every demand, even the simplest smallest thing, and her list of things she 'just' won't do straightforwardly is ever growing. If it is anything other than her buggering about, it is at its earliest stages, as any stuckness is fleeting. But it did strike me the other day that she is pretty much back to where she was as a toddler, in autism terms - lots of her old behaviours are back, we are seeing the threshold stuff creep in, stuff that hasn't bothered her for years, and she is very full-on, oh, I don't know constant atm.

Repetitive movements are not so bad, although she has started flicking/flipping paper again (another hark back to toddler years) - she has always had verbal/vocal ticks, as opposed to physical movements.

Oh that's interesting - I have said exactly the same about ds1 - that we seemed to go back to toddler years in many ways. He is moving forwards again now slowly but we did see a lot of long lost behaviours reemerge.

He's a wind up merchant as well, but his anxiety is so high now it's easy to tell the difference (only on a wind up when happy).

Thank you everyone for sharing your stories. It may seem like pearls before swine, but not everyone is like the OP.

Thanks atenco

Yes yes atenco. Back to your knitting, dear.

I don't know why some people won't even listen to other people's views, even if they don't agree. It's the height of arrogance. I'm pro vaccination but from listening to others, I have understood very valid reasons for why the small minority choose not to vaccinate. I've heard some reasons that I think are invalid and ridiculous but I've listened.

Apologies devil, I was scan reading the thread in work, I missed your important posts. Apologies again.

Devilish Do you remember when I suggested you might be in a bit of a bubble and that not everyone would be able to read academic literature the way you can.....and you said you thought most people could?

Now it turns out you have a science PhD! Seriously??

Do you think everyone has a science PhD? Do you think everyone possesses the innate skills, ability and intellectual capacity to get a science PhD?

are you on glue?

You need to check your intelligence based privilege on this one and acknowledge that the majority of people cannot do what you can do.

Morphene I know many parents who do not have science degrees who spend just as much time as me (more even) reading science papers, more time than me attending conferences & some have even started research related charities.

I think you underestimate how much people will do for their children.

A number of researchers in autism actually spend a lot of time engaging with parents - they go out of their way to engage with parents to explain their research.

So no I'm not on glue. I have years of experience of the severe disability world.

I'm not sure where this idea comes from that you need to have a science PhD in order to read a paper. You wouldn't be able to get an MSc or a PhD if you couldn't read and understand papers/interpret results etc. A-level students on placements are given papers to read.

hmm so presumably none of these are people are illiterate then?

The functionally illiterate outnumber those with science PhDs 30:1.

You still think that because you know a handful of people who have the ability to engage with the science research (under the exceptional motivation of having a severely disabled child), outnumber the people who have no such history in their family, but heard from that mate that big pharma is evil?

This (unbelievably) isn't a thread about parents of autistic children. It is a thread about the inadvisability of people with no particular history either way googling random anti-vaxxer sites instead of following government guidance.

Do you see the difference?

bubble you need to be able to read though....and more than that you need to be able to read critically.

And the majority of people googling vaccine safety don't have any motivating force in terms of family members with disabilities. So the majority of users of these sites are NOT people looking for serious information to deal with serious possibilities of vaccine damage. You all might be, but on average people aren't, and while you might be representative of those with autistic children, you aren't representative of the general public.

Not sure I'm following your point, Morphene.

Are you saying that a parent in Devilish's position but with lower scientific literacy would have a better outcome for their child by following government advice? That ought to be true on average, but the parent's literacy level will in fact have no bearing on the individual child's reaction to the vaccination if they have it - whereas a family history of severe reaction does.

Morphene, But you don't need an MSc or a PhD in order to be able to read critically. Some people on this thread seem to be suggesting that you can't possibly read and understand scientific papers unless you have qualifications and that isn't the case at all.

My children aren't autistic btw. My only motivation is wanting to make informed decisions.

Lancelottie no absolutely not. I am saying nothing even in the vicinity of that.

I am saying that people WITHOUT the relevant abilities required to come to a more rationally determined position than the professionals at NICE, are better off using NICE as their source of a decision than a bunch of conspiracy heavy antivaxxer websites.

If you have the abilities to outperform NICE then go for it.

If you have a history of vaccine damage, or any other serious risk factors then you are better off seeking less generic advice, and again, if you are better educated than the pros, then you have a better chance of getting it right for your child.

Better parental education is always an advantage to a child.

Whatever morphene. My point has been all along that if you have a non-average child and you want to make a decision then you find out as much as you can. Most of the people I know who haven't vaccinated have an older affected child. Following that they've done their research and made up their mind.

The only people who don't ime are the ones who have significant learning disabilities (not difficulties - disabilities) themselves. But I know plenty of people who left school at 16 who are quite capable of having a sensible discussion about their child. And they even seem to go away and read things (rather patronising to assume they wouldn't or wouldn't be capable).

The point more than anything is that people in devilishs position are the tiny minority of people investigating the pros and cons of vaccines. They have solid reasons to look further than the generic advice and should be applauded for doing so.

The majority on the other hand are victims of alt facts. They should not be encouraged to go their own way, because they don't have the critical faculties to separate fact from fiction.

Just because SOME people are more than capable of working out the legitimacy of an information source, doesn't mean EVERYONE is.

devlish you make my point for me. Most people you know have an older affected child. So (unsurprisingly) your bubble contains a lot of people like you. That doesn't mean the majority of anti-vaxxers are the same as you. It just doesn't. You will presumably have heard of selection bias in your science PhD?

So don't make blanket assumptions that every antivaxxers has any reasonable reason for being so.