SIL has not vaccinated my nieces

[Pittcuecothecookbook]

My baby has been booked in for her vaccinations soon. I asked my sister in law, who has primary school aged kids, about the experience and I was flabbergasted when she said she didn't get their jabs. I can't quite believe it!

When I asked why, she said the risks outweighed the pros but she struggled to articulate what the risks were beyond 'potential death'. I said that that was also the downside of not getting the jabs too! She said she was persuaded when her friend said that the jabs couldn't be undone if her kids had a reaction.

AIBU to be shocked and quite disappointed about this? I'm not looking forward to it by any means, but the eradication of many awful diseases and protection against those still prevalent is surely a non negotiable?

When her kids don't get these diseases, she'll be vindicated but that will likely be because the majority have had their jabs rather than proving jabs were unnecessary.

I imagine I'll get over this - my child will be protected - but I'm just at hearing this news.

I once heard vaccines explained like this.

What if a big TV station came out with a blockbuster story claiming that infant car seats were implicated in cerebral palsy (CP)? After all, something like 99.7% of babies diagnosed with cerebral palsy had been brought home from the hospital in a car seat. In fact, every single time they went anywhere in a car, they were strapped into them. That’s an impressive number. There has to be some connection!

Imagine a video of kids crying piteously as they’re buckled into the wretched contraptions. After all, car seats are restraining and uncomfortable. Kids hate them. But parents have been duped into using the damn things claiming it makes their children safer. Pshaw! How could a baby be safer anywhere other than in its mother’s arms?

Suppose this idea gained traction. Cerebral palsy is a dreadful thing. Why take the risk? Don’t use those nasty old car seats. Besides, don’t you know that the doctors who recommend them are all getting kickbacks from the manufacturers? (Less preposterous than kickbacks from vaccine manufacturers. Far more money in car seats.)

Some Playboy celebrity reality centerfold comes out as the spokesperson against car seats. Suddenly there’s pushback from new parents who want to decide for themselves what the safest way is to transport their precious bundle. Never mind decades of car seat research. They may not be automotive engineers, but their parental gut feelings are good enough. Besides, no automotive engineer ever had to listen to their baby cry whenever she gets strapped in.

Facebook communities emerge where car seat refusal is supported and celebrated as the newest way to keep babies safe. Parents are carefully steered to “research” that hypes the dangers of CP. “Why take unnecessary risks?” becomes their mantra. Because the hype is scary. Parents of kids with CP conspire to sue the car seat manufacturers, because “Someone’s got to pay!” Why did this happen to their child? No one has any good answers and vague discussions about prenatal injury to the brain like, “sometimes these things happen,” is just not good enough.

Of course, there’s no plausible connection between car seats and cerebral palsy. But that doesn’t matter. Studies are done to try and prove car seats don’t cause CP, which is technically impossible, since you can’t prove a negative. The anti-carseaters deny that they’re against car seats. They just want “safe” ones: defined as ones that don’t cause cerebral palsy. Do a large double-blind trial: Randomly assign some babies to car seats and some to be held in mom’s arms and see how many in each group develop CP, they cry. It will take nothing less to convince them.

What happens? By and large, nothing much. Most kids don’t develop CP, however they travel in cars. And the vast majority of babies who ride in mom’s arms arrive safely at their destinations. There is a small uptick in infant fatalities that steadily grows as more and more people refuse to use car seats, but not many people take notice. The occasional family is devastated by the loss of a baby in a crash, and vow to tell their story high and wide. They do, but the only minds it changes are the ones that weren’t already made up.

Far-fetched? Sadly, not so much.

I have given my children all the vaccinations including giving them the chicken pox vaccination which is not available on nhs. But I did loads of research and I thought long and hard about certain vaccinations such as MMR - all vaccinations include some sort of heavy metal. I have aspergrs in my family and there are links made with children who struggle to get the heavy metal out of their bodies which can in turn trigger autism/aspergers. The government had a lot of problems with the mmr when it first came out but then they changed the heavy metal in this vaccination and things improved. Some vaccinations like flu vaccinations are made in chicken eggs - get one of these and you are getting a dose of unidentifed chicken dna straight into your blood stream. America is moving away from egg based vaccines and has been trialling new non-egg flu vaccinations. While I think it’s unfair that the general population vaccinates and this keeps the illness levels down - at the end of the day it’s their children and their choice.

My children are fully vaccinated, but the thought of it being legally enforceable to carry out non-emergency medical intervention on people's children makes my blood run cold.

If that’s a comment on my post I’d just point out that neither me nor anyone else has suggested forcible vaccination. What I do argue is that choosing not to vaccinate should carry consequences for parents’ access to organised activities like schooling and consequences for eligibility for state benefits. If you want to freeload on the protection provided by others, then you should accept a degree of exclusion.

As for legal liability for encouraging transmissible disease, what could be wrong with that?

This country has high levels of hygiene. Polio was fierce before hand washing. The number of cases went down when hand washing came in, before the vaccine.

I know that I'm really overtired, but I suspect that even if I'd slept this still wouldn't make any sense. As a PP noted, good hand hygiene helps diminish the risk of contracting polio given its transmission method - but handwashing isn't much use against bodies of water where people swim: hence the closures of pools/lidos & warnings against swimming in rivers/lakes during outbreaks.

The importance of good hand hygiene to prevent disease transmission had become accepted throughout the medical profession by the 1880s following Ignaz Semmelweis' 1847 research being confirmed by Pasteur's germ theory (& Koch's further development thereof); & Lister's development of hygienic surgical techniques.

Good hand hygiene wasn't always easily accessible to everyone before the polio vaccination was developed, but its importance was understood & children had it well dinned in at school, at Sunday School ("cleanliness is next to Godliness", anyone?), & even through groups like Scouts/Girls Guildry/Boys Brigade/Campfire Girls. So yes, regular & thorough hand-washing had been A Thing for the vast majority of the UK population (& indeed the US population & much of the rest of the world) since long before the polio vaccine came in in 1955.

I've met someone who had polio. They saw some of their friends die & they've lived their whole life limited by the damage it did to their body. Funnily enough, the idea of people not vaccinating their children made them both angry & upset.

Both my dcs were vaccinated. However when dc1 was 2 years old they were quite ill.

After lots of blood tests to find out what was wrong it was found that the MMR vaccine hadn’t taken. (Dc illness unrelated to MMR). 10% of those vaccinated MMR it’s ineffective. Not many people know that. So you may be in contact with a child who’s had the vaccine but isn’t protected anyway!

Then dc1 had to have a booster at 2. The reaction to the booster was extreme.

Would I still give the booster? Yes. But it would be a hard call.

There are also dcs (like dc1 bf) who had to have vaccines separately under hospital conditions due to severe allergies.

Sadly becoming far too common with dr Google making idiots incapable of true critical thinking or who don't even check who wrote what they're reading (and their agenda) think they're bloody experts who know better than the ACTUAL experts.

What would piss me off in your position would be my bro not telling me as soon as i told him I was pregnant! So I could avoid them until baby born and vaccinated and repeat for subsequent babies.

People like this benefit from herd immunity while demonising its existence! Bloody nerve!

"Her baby, her choice" except it's NOT that simple is it? Because her CHOICE impacts many others who had no influence on that choice.

It IS op's business as it could directly affect her child!

"I never had any

I am not dead." Luck rather than judgment - and if you had any of the diseases that are vaccinated against you could well have infected others who DID die as a result - but hey you're alive so what do they matter? 🤔

political
"Most people who don't vaccinate are university educated, many are GPs. People who don't vaccinate usually research it quite thoroughly, probably more than those who do vaccinate." Source for this please? I'm uni educated, dd was a baby due mmr at the height of the mmr/autism controversy, I researched the hell out of it as well as talking to dr and hv. I vaccinated. I've yet to meet a GP (hv, hospital dr, midwife, nurse...) who hasn't vaccinated their child (and I've met a lot), but I've read/heard it claimed frequently by anti-vaxxers - who usually go silent when asked to prove/name these GP's that don't vaccinate. As an ex nurse I was lucky I had a pretty good idea of which research was valid and which dubious.

The dr concerned, the study, the claim were all discredited over 15 years ago!

"Yeah? Wait until polio comes back. The anti vaxxers will be trampling people underfoot to get to the vaccination clinic." I hope this doesn't happen, but agree. I think a big reason anti-vaxxers feel safe doing so is they have no real life experience of seeing an unvaccinated child seriously ill or worse with these diseases.

Op does she travel outside uk with her DC?

My advice op would be to ask your GP when would be a safer time for your baby to have contact with the cousins - not only because you cannot guarantee the wisdom/qualifications of us on mn, but they'll have local knowledge on what if any of these diseases are going about in your area, assuming from the tone of your posts that you don't live far from bro & sil so the local info will apply.

"They do pay out rather a lot actually" oh come on! If it were costing them more, hell if it was even nearly the same, in compo than it does to pay for the vaccinations and in reducing the cost of the amount of babies/children needing treatment especially hospital admissions for these diseases they'd stop the vaccination programme quicker than you can say "bean counters"! Especially THIS govt!

MumofTwoYoungKids - I think you're a vaxxer, but your post at 2034 also concerns me - do you think mmr are somehow less serious, less dangerous than polio and diphtheria ? Cos it ain't necessarily so. They can be extremely serious even disabling or fatal.

"but spare a thought for the sick children who could become severely ill if they were to come into contact." Not just children - anyone with compromised immune systems - HIV+, transplant recipients, cancer patients...

Vaccine damage exists but it's VERY rare. Plus I'll bet these anti-vaxxers don't hesitate to use other medication - inc otc painkillers, indigestion remedies etc which also carry very rare but potentially serious risks. Maybe ask sil what medication she last took/gave the DC and look up the risk stats for the most serious side effects of that and compare to the stats for one of the vaccinations.

I personally think parents should have to declare to schools, nurseries, group childcare facilities whether their DC are vaccinated or not - and let those schools etc accept or reject them on that basis! I reckon if it started affecting them getting childcare, the school choice they want they'd soon vaccinate then! I wonder if they HAD to tell people they chose not to vaccinate if the ensuing ostracisation that would be likely (due to people protecting themselves and their DC) would FINALLY convince them. I've never met anyone irl who's admitted to being an anti-vaxxer/not vaccinating their kids but I'm sure I've met them and they've not admitted it- which is so unbelievably selfish and irresponsible.

Because it removes MY choice to protect myself (I have asthma and scarred lungs, certain illnesses even though I'm vaccinated could be dangerous), my child (both prior to her being fully vaccinated, plus she has asthma and a disability that makes her more vulnerable than others with any disease that affects the heart, mucous membranes or muscles), or certain relatives (at various points immunocompromised due to transplant or cancer treatment).

CoolGirls - I for one would be interested in how many unvaccinated DC choose to be vaccinated as adults. I'm an army brat and purely due to a house move plus booster timing discrepancy between 2 different health authorities I missed a booster as a kid which my parents weren't alerted to. Discrepancy was discovered when I was getting even more jabs at start of nurse training - so I ended up with 1 more than everyone else

"DS is at university age and he is in the age group of children due their MMR when Wakefield spouted his bollocks so a more than normal number of his fellow students did not get their MMR. Two of his friends have had mumps this year, both young men, that is really not something young men want to be having." Yes my dd is about that age too, she's not headed to uni, but I've been thinking I won't be at all surprised if several unis don't have issues with mmr, or meningitis - more than they usually do.

Even worse - these idiots also have a tendency not to quarantine their kids! THAT should be legally enforced in some way - or certainly have public advertising on it. Seen too many threads on here 'my DC has m/m/r surely it's ok if we only go to the densely populated with immunocompromised people and unvaccinated babies soft play/park/supermarket for a short while" argh! No!

EssexMummy and TheBeast - vaccination doesn't just lower the risk of catching in the first place it also in most cases makes the effects of the disease less severe.

EssexMummy a pp seems to have discredited your claim anyway!

Nagaram - spot on!

"I do think MN should ban comments by anti-vaxxers. They wouldn’t tolerate posts by people saying that children should be exposed to the risks of fire, physical abuse or car accidents, so why indulge people who argue that we should encourage the risk of pain, suffering, disability and death from disease?"
Excellent post. Completely agree.

Vaccines, clean drinking water and decent sewers are the big public health successes. As a pp pointed out there are countries where these things are not universally available and that is a falling.
Im guessing the anti vaxxers would agree though, after all they want others to have the vaccines. Selfish.

My aunt lost twins to measles caught from unvaccinated relative.
I have Crohn's disease so my nieces and nephews had mmr separately by GP but they still had them.
My husband caught whooping cough as an adult and now his lungs are affected.
Choices are important but can negatively effect others for life and responsibility has to be taken for that.

This bullshit about personal parental choice is just that : bullshit.
I used to think softly softly educate people away from their ignorance. More inclined now to think- don't let them start school without it unless their is a GP formally authorised reason.

"there is" not "their is". Also tough on spelling

Parental choice is fine but children are also little people in thier own rights AND they have the right to healthy and properly cared for upbringing. They do not 'belong' to us.
If my asthmatic daughter caught whooping cough she is very likely to have a severe asthma attack and yes - obviously this could lead to death. (I've nearly lost her enough times).
In fact, there was a case of whooping cough in my son's nursery a few weeks ago and I was petrified!

Maybe the anti vaccers need to have a good look at the 'Rights of the child legislation'.

Also, My kids are mixed race. Although they may never (and have not yet been back to Africa) we were offered extra jabs in case they did.
Obviously, they had all these but if I had chosen not to and they did go back to Africa, they are likely to bring it back into this country.
I bet SIL would be blaming me then?

Think of all the people who exit and enter this country every day from all over the world. Places where they don't vaccinate (often though no fault of their own).

Political correctness
Most people who don't vaccinate are university educated, many are GPs. People who don't vaccinate usually research it quite thoroughly, probably more than those who do vaccinate.
Oh yes? and you have evidence for this? Having worked in health for many years I would dispute this vigorously

It's not about parental choice, it's about indulging stupid idiots and not being firm enough to tell them to sod off expecting to go to state school.

all vaccinations include some sort of heavy metal

None of the childhood vaccinations in the UK contain thimerosal.

there are links made with children who struggle to get the heavy metal out of their bodies which can in turn trigger autism/aspergers

The study you're talking about is interesting but it looks at levels of lead found in baby teeth. There is no lead in vaccines and those involved in the initial study have said a lot of additional research is required and a much larger sample group is needed as theirs was to small to draw any firm conclusions.

Some vaccinations like flu vaccinations are made in chicken eggs - get one of these and you are getting a dose of unidentifed chicken dna straight into your blood stream

And what do you think will happen there? Children will randomly sprout feathers and start pecking the ground? DNA doesn't work like that, I could inject my DNA into someone's arm and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to them other than "why the hell did that woman inject me!?'. There may be trace amounts of chicken protein in vaccines which is why people with egg allergies are advised against them, the alternatives currently being developed and trialed are not due to chicken DNA (the more I say chicken DNA, the more ridiculous it sounds) being present in the vaccines, the alternatives being developed are so that people with egg allergies can have vaccines. The other reason is to make it faster to develop vaccines and faster to produce themin bulk as there are then several places where vaccines can be grown, e.g., chicken eggs, insect eggs, and so on.

Personally i make no bones about it; to me, if you refuse (not REFUSE not are medically unable) to vaccinate your kids, you're an imbecile. And a selfish prick. I flat out refuse to have my kids knowingly near anybody who is unvaccinated - DS is only 7 weeks old so more risk than DD. DD is 100% up to date, DS is due his schedule. I hate the crap anti vaxxers spout about 'my kid hasn't caught...' yeah cos the rest of us are protecting your kid, whilst your kid is putting the vulnerable folk amongst us at greater risk. Wonderful job, well f**king done. I have several compromised friends who struggle if they catch a cold; something as 'simple' as measles could literally kill them. Vaccinate your kids or stay the hell away from other people

Ffs meant to say NOTE refuse. Fat fingers

Graphista Don’t worry - both of mine have had all the vaccines.

I was just shocked as I’ve met quite a few people who are concerned about the MMR / had the vaccines separately / delayed the MMR but I have never met anyone whose child hadn’t had the early vaccines.

Polio was fierce before hand washing. The number of cases went down when hand washing came in, before the vaccine

The last polio epidemic in the UK was in 1949, just a few years before I was born. I'm pretty sure the importance of handwashing was known then, my mother certainly washed her hands several times a day and taught us to do the same. Although there were many homes without bathrooms or indoor lavatories, most had at least a cold tap and a kitchen sink.

There were still smaller outbreaks later than that, there were 2 children (in different families) in my neighbourhood who were disabled because of polio, one of them was younger than me.

Due to excellent take up of the polio vaccine by parents who grew up knowing children who were polio vaccine, Polio was irradicated from UK. Like smallpox vaccine, it might have been possible to stop the vaccination, but people visit countries that have polio, and no herd immunity so it is still a risk

To the person who naively thinks that good hand washing removes the risk of polio, I am aghast. Most of the problem of the anti-vaxxers is that they have never seen a child suffering from these avoidable diseases that devastate children's lives. Such is the problem in Italy that they are looking at legislation to improve take up. Let's not let the idiots take us down that road

It’s of people don’t vaccinate and that’s up to them.

It can impact others though, and if herd immunity falls below a certain percentage those children will be at risk of illnesses that can cause lifelong disability.

In my opinion if children are not vaccinate they should not be allowed to attend nursery or school.

Draconian? Yes but it’s not fair on those pupils who have weakened immune systems or other issues that make them
Vulnerable.