What can you do about parents who won't vaccinate

[mirandatempest]

I've discovered that three of my friends have not vaccinated their children. I am normally very live and let live but this has really upset and bothered me. I've challenged them all but very gently as I
am useless at confrontation but can these friendships survive? I feel so angry.

You do nothing. Why are you angry, let it go, be glad that we live in a country where citizens have agency to decline.

All you can do is keep your own babies away from their kids til yours have had their jabs. Luckily for their kids they're protected by herd immunity and if that doesnt work, well they'll have to live with it (they'll probably blame the Chinese and 5G).

I'm not sure OP, but it's terrible and makes me feel very sad too

Keep your babies away from them until they’ve had all their jabs.

They're selfish arseholes. We have a very young family member with late stage cancer who had to stop going to school (ks1) because so many there were unvaccinated and he was very very vulnerable and treatment meant that the protection his previous vaccinations had once given him protected him no more.

It's becoming more common (at least in our local school) which is crazy to me.

Yes flibberty that's how I would normally feel. I have friends who's politics and activism is not in line with my own values and I support them and I love the freedom of expression in UK. But this is just so selfish and irresponsible. How can I be friends with people who would take these risks with the safety of an immuno suppressed child or person? I am just aghast.

Squirtle for you and your family. That's absolutely terrible and exactly the sort of outcome that you would think that educated adults might be able to imagine and feel some iota of compassion about.

It reveals such a parasitic, "I'm alright Jack(though not due to my own efforts), screw everyone else" mentality. I don't think it's as simple as "live and let live" specifically because people who could vaccinate but choose to benefit from herd immunity without doing their bit are more "live and let die" than live and let live.

Herd immunity should be maintained for the benefit of the few unable to vaccinate due to rare conditions and those too young to have been fully vaccinated.

I'd find it impossible to be genuinely good friends with an antivaxer because it's so staggeringly selfish and illogical.

Obviously it's pointless to be anything other than polite, but finding that out about a friend would cause me to lose respect for them and the friendship probably would slide.

Yes yes yes PP. Staggeringly selfish and irresponsible sums it up.

Keep your kids away from theirs until they are vaccinated. Some parents are so selfish.

I genuinely couldn’t be friends with them, I just couldn’t. I accept different views in politics, sport, religion etc. - no issue at all. But I couldn’t be friends with somebody I knew to be an anti-vaxxer (unless for genuine medical reasons).

My experience with an anti-vaxxer friend is that as soon as her eldest DD turned 18, she got all her vaccinations. Her second DD (16) has told my DD that she intends to do the same.

So their own children disagree with them!
It makes me hopeful that this movement will eventually die out.

Have they refused all vaccinations or some? We do still have, allegedly, bodily autonomy in this country and that means that people cannot subject is to medical interventions without our permission. My children had some, but not all, vaccinations. All vaccinations have an element of risk and, due to some heredity issues, that meant, on balance, that the risks of vaccinations were greater than the risks of the illness. Some vaccinations I had at a later stage when I was more confident that one of my dc wouldn’t have the reaction (didn’t with the other one which has since proved the right choice). Please don’t assume that all people who don’t vaccinate do so on the basis that their dc won’t get the disease because every one else has been vaccinated, some of us actually balance the risk of the disease against the vaccination given our particular experiences.

You do nothing. Never mid what you believe or know every one else has their reasons for their choices and it,s not up to you to impose. Yes mine are generally vaccinated. But I am not up to date completely sure I am due a tetnus does that make me a bad person?

There is nothing you can do, providing you do the best for your own children that’s all you can do.

@Pixxie7. I agree. I’ve told my anti-vas friend that we shouldn’t discuss the subject ( she’s raised it a couple of times in the past) because we fundamentally disagree. We agree on other matters and have other things in common.

*anti-vax

Nothing; it's none of your business what prophylactic treatment other people do or don't choose to have. There are plenty of unvaccinated/not fully vaccinated adults as well; do you avoid them too? Or do they magically stop being poisonous the second they reach 18?

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/childhood-inoculation-rates-are-falling-but-are-anti-vaccine-campaigns-really-to-blame-anti-vaxxers-measles-medicine-health

I’d cool it off with them. I don’t have time for numpties.

I'd struggle not to say anything.

In some countries children aren't allowed into school if they are unvaccinated because of parental stupidity rather than a sound medical reason verified by a doctor.

Same should happen here. Selfish aresholes.

Herd immunity should be maintained for the benefit of the few unable to vaccinate due to rare conditions and those too young to have been fully vaccinated.

And for the benefit of those small few who have played their part and gotten vaccinated but not developed immunity as no vaccine has 100% efficacy.

My children had some, but not all, vaccinations. All vaccinations have an element of risk and, due to some heredity issues, that meant, on balance, that the risks of vaccinations were greater than the risks of the illness.

I would class that as medical reasons rather than anti-vaxx. To me, anti-vaxx are the people who don't get vaccines for reasons like "they give you autism" or "its poison" or "your immune system alone is enough" or anything related to a conspiracy theory, that sort of thing.

One of my DC has had an allergic reaction to a vaccine. Aside from a few days of discomfort and worry there have been thankfully no long lasting effects but we've been told there may be a more severe reaction next time and further vaccines will have to be risk-balanced and delivered in a hospital setting rather that at the GP or school.

The unvaccinated children can self consent in high school, as long as the nurse thinks they are Gillick competent.
They don’t have to wait until they are 16.

God I had a friend who refused to vaccinate her children. I had to stop seeing her as I couldn't get past the fact that she was so easily duped by the anti vaxxer conspiracy. She couldn't see the irony that they labelled everyone as sheep when she was following some bollocks she read on social media started by a discredited doctor. Have you got other friends? if so I would just dump them.