Anti-vaccination friends around newborn

[Originalusernameunavailable]

Hello, NC for this.

I am going to start by stressing this is not a thread for opinions on whether to vaccinate children or not. That’s an individual decision for everyone.

I do vaccinate my children because I believe the pros outweigh the risks.

My newborn obviously isn’t old enough for any jabs yet.

The subject came up with a friend as to whether I would allow our friends who are anti-vaccinations to be visiting my newborn in my own home due to risks of them being carriers of any of the ailments the vaccinations cover.

I can honestly say it’s not something I had considered before. My thoughts are my baby could come into contact with lots of people who have various illnesses, germs etc.

However, I was wondering if I’m being too laid back or whether my friends are just being neurotic in terms of the visiting/contact?

As I’ve said, please don’t make this into a slanging match about pro/anti vaccinations, please take the question as it is -

Is it unreasonable to think unvaccinated visitors are putting a newborn at extra risk?

Unreasonable - don’t be ridiculous!
Reasonable - don’t risk it!

No. We have a couple in our NCT group who chose not to vaccinate their daughter. I have decided that if we have another baby we simply won’t see them until baby has had the necessary vaccinations to protect him/her. My simple thought is: why risk it?

I also think that if you think people who are not vaccinated should be staying away from babies, then you need to be able to provide evidence for that, at the same standard you are expecting people with a different opinion.

There is an absolute mass of evidence out there, in the shape of the incontrovertible massive fall in the incidence of the diseases in question after vaccination was introduced.

Absolutely no way I would knowingly let anyone who is anti vaccination in my home when I had a newborn. Just not worth the risk in my opinion, particularly given how vulnerable newborns are (a simple cold virus put my friends baby in hospital) and also given how many outbreaks of preventable disease there have been around the world recently. If people want to choose not to vaccinate, that's their choice. But my choice will be to keep them away from my newborn until he/she is old enough to be vaccinated.

There is no added risk of an unvaccinated person passing on germs compared to a vaccinated person. Vaccines don’t stop you from picking up germs and passing them around, they just stop you from getting sick

Rubbish.

Some 'germs' can live outside a host for ages, TB does. Others, like HIV don't live for very long outside the body, which is why you can't get HIV from everyday contact.

Measles is airborne, making it highly contagious.

I wouldn't let them in my house, whether I had a newborn or not

Sheesh
HIV is a sexually transmitted infection for which there is no vaccine. Not a good example to use in your post rubbishing the existence of vaccinated asymptomatic carriers.

Also - newborn babies enjoy immunity from their mothers, so are not as vulnerable as people make out on MN. Otherwise we'd be vaccinating at birth (as they do in some countries).

The reason we dont vaccinate b4 3 mk the is because it’s not effective but from 3 months all babies are offered vaccinations among with boosters at 4 and 5 months.

I wouldn't consider allowing it. Not for a single second. My DD had pneumonia at 3 weeks. It's not worth it and I would not risk it. Even a mild cold can lead to pneumonia.

Whooping cough- vaccinated asymptomatic carriers study
Asymptomatic transmission and the resurgence of Bordetella pertussis

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4482312/
“Results: We find that: 1) the timing of changes in age-specific attack rates observed in the US and UK are consistent with asymptomatic transmission; 2) the phylodynamic analysis of the US sequences indicates more genetic diversity in the overall bacterial population than would be suggested by the observed number of infections, a pattern expected with asymptomatic transmission; 3) asymptomatic infections can bias assessments of vaccine efficacy based on observations of B. pertussis-free weeks; 4) asymptomatic transmission can account for the observed increase in B. pertussis incidence; and 5) vaccinating individuals in close contact with infants too young to receive the vaccine (“cocooning” unvaccinated children) may be ineffective.”

PlanDeRaccordement

I'm actually rubishing the post I was replying to. It's not just sexually transmitted it can be acquired via blood transfusions and mother to child.

I'm also old enough to remember kids with hemophilia be banned from attending high school.

That was my post sash which you rubbished.
Thankfully we have progressed in science in regards to a haemophiliac being barred from school. Though that might have been more to do with the safety of the haemophiliac than any silly fears of “catching” a genetic disease.

Generally, people self isolate when they feel sick. Or parents bar then from being around their children, especially newborns. So an unvaccinated person who has fallen sick will not usually be near a newborn.

So the transmission of disease to a newborn is most likely to occur when people do not feel or appear sick, but are contagious. This occurs in both unvaccinated and vaccinated people after exposure to a pathogen. Many diseases have an incubation period where an unvaccinated person is contagious but not yet sick. For a vaccinated person they have a period of being infected but an asymptomatic carrier until their immune response destroys the pathogen so they do not get sick at all. The vaccine only stops the vaccinated person from getting sick (excepting vaccine failure rates). It does not stop other unvaccinated people who come into contact from catching the disease.

They used to believe that cocooning (surrounding an unvaccinated newborn to have only contact with vaccinated adults) would protect the newborn from catching the disease. This has been shown to not be effective. Herd immunity is proving in reality to be more complex than originally thought and in some cases, impossible to reach.

The best protection for a baby is to get them vaccinated as soon as possible and for all adults (even vaccinated ones) to practice rigorous hygiene around the child in the interim.

Some of the posts on here seem to have an overly simplistic and wrong view that vaccinated visitors are safe but unvaccinated visitors are not safe. The truth is that all visitors regardless of vaccination status pose a risk to newborns.

For a vaccinated person they have a period of being infected but an asymptomatic carrier until their immune response destroys the pathogen so they do not get sick at all.

This is interesting. I'd have thought that, in order to spread the disease, the pathogen would need to have multiplied enough inside the host to reach sufficient quantities to be shed. I'm surprised that the immune system of the infected person cannot fight the pathogen off quickly enough to prevent this. Can you please provide a link to where you got because this information? I'd like to learn more but can't find a reputable source online.

No. I wouldn't let unvaccinated kids near my 4mo DS. Measles could kill him. I always remember this reddit post from a bereaved mother of an 8 month old who died from measles encephalitis contracted from someone's unvaccinated child -

www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/5na3ry/please_please_please_god_vaccinate_your_kids/

An bit of her post:

"Then when she was 8 months old, too young yet for an mmr shot? she got sick. She was sick for a while and I'd never seen anything like it. I took her to the doctor. She was in the hospital and she looked so bad, she was crying and coughing and there was nothing I could do. I felt like the worst mother in the world. After I got her to the hospital she got worse, got something called measles encephalitis, where her brain was inflamed. I hadn't believed in god in years but you better believe I was praying for her every day.

She died in the hospital a week or so later. I held her little tiny body and wanted to jump off a bridge and broke down in the hospital. The nurses were sympathetic and I was, well I made a scene I'm pretty sure.

I found out later via facebook of fucking course that the neighbor I'd had watch my baby was an anti-vaxxer and had posted photos of her kid sick and other bullshit about how he was fine.

He was fine? He was FINE? My kid was DEAD because she made that choice. I went over and talked to her and she admitted he'd been sick when she'd had my kid last but didn't think much of it. I screamed at her. I screamed and yelled and told her the devil was going to torture her soul for eternity you god loving cunt because she took my baby from me. I'm sure I looked crazy, at the time maybe I was. I'm crying writing this now, and in my darkest moments I'd wished her kid was dead and it makes me feel worse."

That says it all, doesn't it OP?

Claus- I posted a study on this thread of asymptomatic vaccinated carriers of whooping cough.
There are other studies if you want to go to pubmed or nih and do a search.

Claus- I posted a study on this thread of asymptomatic vaccinated carriers of whooping cough.

Whooping cough isn't really an issue here though, surely, given that mothers are vaccinated in pregnancy for that one, conferring immunity until the eight week jabs? Besides which, the jab immunity only lasts around a decade, so unless the people studied had received top up vaccinations they shouldn't be considered to be vaccinated against it anymore, I'd have thought. I went on pubmed but only found that top up vaccinations are necessary for some diseases.

Please don't risk an un vaccinated child that you know of. I've seen a little 5 year old girl being carried out of her house with her parents screaming, and that's the last time we saw her. It's heartbreaking. Her poor mother had a breakdown in the school yard months later picking up the little brother.
This was just before the vacs. Why anyone would take a risk, its beyond comprehension.

Besides which, the jab immunity only lasts around a decade, so unless the people studied had received top up vaccinations they shouldn't be considered to be vaccinated against it anymore

That is my point Claus. That just because an adult has all their vaccines, it does not automatically mean they cannot transmit a serious disease to a newborn as evidenced by the example I gave of whooping cough which can be fatal. They only just started giving pregnant women top ups because they had numerous cases of dead babies who had caught whooping cough from their vaccinated parents or even older siblings (which is why they introduced the 5th jab booster at 4-6yrs old). The top up allows the antibodies to be transmitted via the placenta and gives the newborn some passive immunity for a few months. But don’t forget whooping cough takes more than one jab to get immune. They are not fully immune until the 4th jab at 15-18mos old. The 5th jab at 4-6yrs old is also a top up came in because of deaths in 2000 at day cares one in Israel if I remember correctly where 100% vaccinated 5-6yr olds infected newborns and several died.

So, yes, with each discovery of a loophole that a pathogen exploits we change our vaccines and schedules. But it is naive to think we have all the loopholes closed and that even though in human history we have not once gotten vaccination perfect, we now do and vaccinated visitors are magically safe around newborns.

They aren’t. No one is automatically safe to be around a newborn which is why hygiene and not being around them when even slightly ill is so very important no matter what vaccines the visitor has had.

You're being unreasonable to be friends with anti-vaxxers at all in my view. These cranks are going to end up causing the deaths of innocent people.

And no, they wouldn't ever be allowed near my baby.

They are not fully immune until the 4th jab at 15-18mos old.

I don't think they have jabs at that age. I was told it's 12 months and three years with nothing in-between?

I get what you're saying, but I don't think anyone is advocating allowing vaccinated people to touch a newborn with unwashed hands or kiss them etc. They're just saying that it's riskier to allow unvaccinated individuals around the newborn- that the risk is greater with unvaccinated visitors than with vaccinated ones, not that there's no risk with vaccinated ones.

YABU to be friends with these people in the first place. Though I say that as someone with a DD who has an autoimmune disorder so this is always a sensitive subject for me.

How anyone can be anti vaccines in this day and age I don’t know. Even when presented with research they’re not interested.

Then when she was 8 months old, too young yet for an mmr shot? she got sick.

During the massive measles outbreak earlier this year in NYC the Health Dept. authorized a change in the guidelines and we started vaccinating at 6 months with no adverse events reported. Just something to keep in mind if you have an infant and there's a local outbreak.

q

Planderaccordement. I can't make sense of your arguments. At all. A child who hasn't, for example, been vaccinated against measles may be at the pre symptomatic (But still infectious) stage of measles. Not so with the vaccinated kid. Of course that doesn't mean their are other germs about. Maybe I'm stupid but can you put your argument across in one or two simple sentences?

One particular friend is very open that she hasn’t allowed any vaccinations for her children since birth aged 10 and 8

I briefly knew someone like this. She was a woman I met at a baby group and arranged to meet for playdates. Then she told me her views on vaccination and all the reasons why I was wrong to vaccinate my son. I never spoke to her again.

I don't know what I was more angry about:
That she was lecturing me on my parenting?
That she was assuming I hadn't done my research?
That she was neglecting to protect her own children?
That she was putting my son at risk?
That she thought she knew better than medical professionals?
That she blamed the grieving parents who lost their child for causing their death by vaccinating them?

No. You are not unreasonable at all to keep anti-vaxxers away from the most precious person in your life.