To think perhaps schools should insist on vaccinations.

[Lovestonap]

Good animal boarding kennels etc will not take animals without their vaccinations up to date.
Should our schools be able to insist on a completed course of childhood vaccinations (up to age appropriate) before giving a space at a school? Obviously children who are unable to be vaccinated would have a medical exemption certificate. I think this would be a good idea, but then I'm wondering if this is a nanny state too far thing. Probably implications for human rights I haven't considered.

YABU

If this were the case kids like my DD who is reliant on herd immunity due to being unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons wouldn't be able to be in school.

@KissingInTheRain Uh no, I looked at the data provided to me about deaths from vaccine preventable illnesses. Most of them (95%) occurred in places where good nutrition/sanitation and healthcare are lacking. Why ignore that?

I have no reason to lie about my families vaccine status. I honestly don't give a shit about you enough to do that. The fact you think it's something I would need to say, to what? Impress you? is ridiculous. Just seeing how your cognitive dissonance deals with it I guess.

From what I can see, everyone on this thread is ok with daddy government controlling almost every aspect of their lives despite the potential cluster fuck of negative consequences that can arise from it. Have fun with that.

@BishopBrennansArse OBVIOUSLY medical reasons ARE AN EXCEPTION fgs

@BishopBrennansArse actually if you read the thread you will realise the discussion is mainly about keeping children like yours safe. That's why people want to push to vaccinate

@Onehandinmypocket
Well here is a thing. It's not "being ok with gov doing it". Many here actually WANT gov to do something about potentially deadly situation.

so the drug companies should continue to offer the single measles vaccination which means those who have concerns about MMR will have choice. They can protect themselves and others. Back to freedom of choice.

There’s no single vaccine for mumps though, is there?

I make no apologies for being vehemently pro-vaccine since, as I’ve mentioned, my son could have died.

It is nonsense that pro-vaxxers are scaring people to death - the entire anti-vaccine mentality is based on fear.

It is nonsense that pro-vaxxers are scaring people to death

I would actually say we are scaring them away from the death.

@SinkGirl In case you hadn't noticed, so is the 'pro vax' side, coupled with threats/abuse/doxxing. As I said, keep doing what you're doing and it will only get worse.

@SinkGirl There’s no single vaccine for mumps though, is there?
Not any more. My point exactly.

Seems fair enough to me - if somebody doesn't want their child vaccinated, that's fine. Just sort their education out yourself, rather than sending your two and half foot tall vector of disease into the state funded primary.

I previously worked in the NHS and now work in a school with a very high BAME population, most of whom have African heritage. Strangely, their parents all get them vaccinated - it seems that, rather than the stereotypical first things immigrants say being 'how can I get benefits?' that EDF types claim, the first thing that is asked of us as a country is 'how can I get my child vaccinated?'.

All I can think is that people who actually have experience of what happens to children when vaccines aren't available are capable of appreciating the real dangers of not doing so.

But then again, maybe I'm slightly biased due to having caught TB as a child (and am about to start a six month course of treatment to enable me to have medication for another condition/not transmit it to others), personally knowing kids who ended up in hospital due to easily preventable diseases - and one whose baby brother died because she hadn't been vaccinated and infected him with Whopping Cough.

Sadly, the only thing that will cause an increase to former levels of vaccination takeup is either making it compulsory for education/child benefits or a widespread outbreak with the resultant disabilities and deaths of many children in the process. I don't want to see Diptheria sweeping the nation. I don't want to see children dying or disabled due to Polio. I certainly don't want my previous TB infection to reactivate and cause the deaths of others (and I'm highly likely to have lots of unpleasant REAL side effects from the treatment, but I'll continue the course because it's as important for others as much as it is for me).

Oh, and although everyone I know who is Autistic either hasn't had the vaccination or was like it long before they were, if it were true (which it isn't) that vaccines cause Autism, the idea that a dead child is preferable to having an autistic one is fucking offensive - that's far too near to practising a covert form of Eugenics for comfort.

@SinkGirl

"Seems fair enough to me - if somebody doesn't want their child vaccinated, that's fine. Just sort their education out yourself, rather than sending your two and half foot tall vector of disease into the state funded primary."

Case in point about people referring to kids this way. This is certainly not the first time I've heard this kind of thing. I wonder if this person was also the one who referred to children as 'disease bags'?

@trancepants

Jumping ahead quite a few pages to say well said about this entire conversation needing to be reframed.

I completely agree with your point about selective honesty on both sides.

It also seems fair to point out that a great many anti-vaxers were once staunchly pro-vax until their own child was injured. We all have a great deal more in common than we think; namely to have healthy kids in our family and our community

@trancepants @Dutch1e agreed. Greater honesty would create more trust. Informed consent plus freedom of choice are the issues. Lack of trust means polarisation on both sides, with some people being put off vaccines altogether and others believing that the valid concerns of a few are not worth considering. Neither result is helpful.

No matter where you stand on vaccines, perhaps we can agree that there is some pre-jab care missing.

This guy has an immune issue that took the inactive polio vaccine and turned it into live polio. He was unknowingly pooing out polio for 30 years. The chances of catching polio from his waste is vanishingly small, but it doesn't help the one-size-fits-all gungho approach to vaccines
www.bbc.com/news/health-34082627

There isn't any pre-jab allergy screening as far as I'm aware.

No assessment of an individual's heavy metal load or their ability to process heavy metals.

No titre test to even attempt to see if they're already immune.

No administering of high-dose Vitamin A with the MMR vaccine (as recommended by the World Health Organistion, even though we're happy to use their numbers about global measles deaths).

The duty of care to the individual is missing, so YABU to expect that individual to cheerfully say yes to all jabs just to go to school.

It also seems fair to point out that a great many anti-vaxers were once staunchly pro-vax until their own child was injured.

That can’t be true unless the number of such anti-vaxxers is utterly minuscule. In which case they make an awful lot of - ill-informed and dangerous - noise on the internet for their numbers.

Informed consent plus freedom of choice are the issues.

Neither is lacking.

@Onehandinmypocket High five.

@KissingInTheRain perhaps they're pretty quiet about it. I'm only speaking anecdotally, mind. Still, it stands to reason that most of the pro- and anti-vax families avoid debating it and just get on with their lives

My Ds had his year 10 vaccinations last week. He felt quite poorly the next day with high temp, nausea and headache but has said that definitely wouldn't stop him from having any again if needed.

Interestingly there were many in his year group whose parents are anti vaxers and those children did not have the jabs. It has been good as we have been able to talk about the whole vaccination debate. He is firmly in the pro camp as we are. He is currently being assessed for ASD and like us cannot understand how anyone can still think that a vaccination can cause a neurodevelopmental condition.

Yes , unless there’s some medical reason why they shouldn’t .

Interestingly in our US state you cannot send your dc to any formal education state or private unless you are vaccinated or have a formal exception certificate. You also need dental and eye checks at certain times. This is just basic childcare but because the state doesn't provide it in the same universal way it has to have other checks to make sure it has been done.
I am surprised that the UK doesn't do the same and think it is time it caught up with other countries.

I wonder if this person was also the one who referred to children as 'disease bags'?

Nope. I'm using epidemiological terminology. It refers to any agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism.

The child who put me into hospital on oxygen because they transmitted chickenpox to me was a vector of disease transmission.

The cat who bit my thumb when I was rescuing her from choking ungrateful madam was a vector of disease transmission however, I had the sense to keep my Tetanus jabs up to date so I didn't end up in HDU as a result.

If I didn't deal with my latent TB and coughed over unvaccinated offspring, I'd be a vector of disease transmission but only to the middleclass white/British ones as the ones with families from poor countries have been vaccinated.

The bloke who had issues with polio was no different (and it's just as well that most people have their kids vaccinated against Polio, as without that herd immunity, there could be an awful lot of kids needing iron lungs or calipers as a result). He didn't have the inactivated version, though - he had the live, attenuated version that was used until recent years - so it's inaccurate to claim that he had received an inactive virus.

I'll be sad when I read about kids or people who genuinely cannot have a particular vaccine dying. But at least I won't be directly responsible for it. Just a shame that innocents have to pay the price for parental ableist attitudes towards Autism and their belief that they know more from a bit of internet surfing through conspiracy profiteers' sites than qualified professionals whose main interest is in not seeing kids needlessly dying.

Like I said, the only thing that'll change attitudes are conditions to receive a free service/money or deaths. Lots of them.

Vitamin A supplementation is only recommended in countries/communities where Vitamin A deficiency is a considerable problem. This does not include the UK, as we don't depend upon rice in the way that some populations do.

Why would us not needing supplementation be taken as a reason to disbelieve the WHO recommendations to vaccinate?

MitziK I'm not sure I said we shouldn't vaccinate. My point was about a lack of attention to whether a jab is truly a good option for that person.

Without that attention it doesn't balance out to make the jabs mandatory for school enrolment.