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.

@HidingFromDD

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.

The thread title is clear that this is talking about parents who won't vaccinate, not those who can't

I actually threatened to ban my unvaccinated BIL from being invited at Christmas when DD was a baby but thankfully it just motivated him to get his vaccines done.

Nothing because it’s none of your business what medical decisions they make?

The only thing you can do is decide if you want to stay friends with idiots or not. If you do remain friends with them, you can gently signpost to the children once they reach 14 that they are able to access their vaccinations independently through their GP or school nurse, or due to Andrew sodding Wankfield there are a lot of unvaccinated people now becoming adults so many universities offer a comprehensive vaccination programme at their health centres.

The ones I’ve met are all quite thick so friendship wise not a great loss

@june2007

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?

Pointless comparison, given that you don't risk spreading tetanus to other people.

@OwlBeThere

Nothing because it’s none of your business what medical decisions they make?

But is is OP's business if they put her children at risk. She's also fully entitled to make a judgment call about whether she wants to spend any more time around people who are that selfish and dim.

@MsTSwift

The ones I’ve met are all quite thick so friendship wise not a great loss

Yes this is what I was going to say. I don't see what I'd have in common with someone so stupid anyway.

I once met a chap who's parents had fallen for the Dr Wakefield shit about autism and MMR jabs. They did not vaccinated him and he caught mumps (I think it was this one) as a child. As an adult he has no relationship with his parents, the mumps left him infertile and he felt that they had robbed him of his chance of a family. Slightly off topic and I don't know what you do in your situation, but I just thought that story was such a shame

Ask them what colour of coffin they'd like for their child. Or show them the article of that woman who was an antivaxxer until all 4 of her children got meningitis.

You can only be blunt with these people. They are too daft to accept a reasonable argument. It's quite scary that people would rather their child died or had issues for the rest of their life than get a vaccine. They have no reason not to other than some other idiot on the Internet told them not to.

And yet there have been plenty of threads on here where people have quite openly said they won’t have the COVID vaccine when it becomes available, or allow their children to have it.

I vaccinated my DC and to the best of my knowledge have had whatever vaccinations were available in those days (interestingly most adults over the age of about 40 haven’t had MMR, and the vaccine for some of those illnesses can wear out by the time the child reaches student age, hence the numbers of mumps in students,) but people do have their reasons.

Interestingly when I first joined MN several years ago i posted a thread saying that I felt that parents who didn’t vaccinate were completely irresponsible, and the response was totally opposite to those we now get on here, it was basically a pile-on of parents saying that everyone has their reasons for not vaccinating and it’s not up to anyone to judge, and yet several years on that narrative is entirely different, so it seems that opinion is changing in some quarters.

People say they won’t get the COVID vaccine because they don’t know whether it’s reliable/hasn’t been tested properly etc etc. It wasn’t that long ago that people had the same concerns re MMR, the cervical cancer jab, and the majority of my DS’ class had severe reactions to their y8 vaccines and about ten of them had to be sent home, one was admitted to hospital.

While there are any reactions to vaccines, there are going to be people who are reticent to let their children have them.

Look at how we are responding to COVID, the death rate is low now, and yet people are being very cautious, and yet the same can happen with a vaccine and people are apparently breaking friendships over it...

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.

Then you are ignorant of the reasons many people are hesitant to vaccinate. The vast majority that I've come across have not made a snap decision based on "autism" but have considered the risks and benefits and decided they are happier with the risk of disease.

I think a lot of them are working on false information, unfortunately, but I do respect their decision and their right to make that decision based on whatever evidence they personally trust.

I personally think vaccines are the lower risk but I know not everyone does. It's also not objective - you're not comparing the same kind of risk and therefore people may come to different conclusions. I'm not comfortable with rules being made to try and force people to vaccinate, for this reason. However although I live in a country where this happens (not UK) I don't feel strongly enough about it to challenge it, I just don't like it.

Possibly it would be useful to have risk management and comparison taught in schools? Most people have an extremely poor understanding of it and this probably contributes to strong feelings about vaccination either way.

I don't think it's possible to create vaccines without any potential reactions at all, that doesn't seem medically possible. This is a lie perpetuated by "big" alternative health, if you like.

Every medical intervention has the potential for a bad reaction, paracetamol, anaesthetics, dietary supplements, birth control, even a simple plaster. It's up to us to decide (or let medical professionals advise us) which of these things are worth the risk.

@june2007

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?

You getting tetanus has no impact on anyone else

Then you are ignorant of the reasons many people are hesitant to vaccinate. The vast majority that I've come across have not made a snap decision based on "autism" but have considered the risks and benefits and decided they are happier with the risk of disease.

Are you talking about people who claim to be "vaccine sceptic" or "vaccine hesitant"? Because, in my experience at least, they're anti-vaxxers trying to appear rational and when they try to explain why they're skeptic or hesitant their reasoning quickly boils down to the same rhetoric as the out-and-out anti-vaxxers - fear based on pseudoscience and the mistaken belief that vaccines are inherently harmful.

decided they are happier with the risk of disease

Yeah, the risk to who? Themselves or that poor immunocompromised child who actually can't be vaccinated.

The thing that really gets me annoyed with anti-vaxxers is that they don't seem to get that they are literally relying on other people doing the thing they refuse to do in order to keep their children safe. If everyone took their stance, well we'd be pretty screwed wouldn't we. The only reason it's even possible most of the time for someone to weigh up and be 'happier with the risk of disease' is because other people are mostly vaccinated against it making your child's chance of contracting it lower.

You can't make Them do anything. Most of them are thick as cement so wouldn't listen to you anyway. But you can stop being friends with them, which is what I would do.

If you’re that judgemental about other people’s valid choices then there’s a good chance they won’t want to be friends with you when they know either.

My children are vaccinated, but I can understand the fear amongst some parents about vaccines because vaccine damage is a real thing that does happen. Surely it’s not hard to understand why some parents would choose one risk over another risk for their own reasons or worries? We all have different opinions on how worried we need to be about the virus at the moment and those should all be respected, I don’t see why it’s any different for vaccines.

Parents having a genuine worry that something could damage their child and avoiding it doesn’t seem like a good reason not to be friends to me. They aren’t making the choice they do because they don’t care about other people, they’re making their choice because as good parents, they do what they genuinely think is best for their children, like we should all do.

The risks of the disease are so far removed from us as we don't see the side effects of them on a regular basis thanks to vaccination.

The risks of measles include deafness, blindness, neurological damage, encephalitis, SSPE which can develop 7-10 years after recovering from measles, and death. 1 to 3 of every 1000 children infected with measles will die. In addition that that, measles makes your immune system 'forget' diseases it has already encountered and lowers your immunity for up to five years following infection.

How are any of those risks lower or better than the very small risk associated adverse effects associated with vaccination?

I'm not sure I could be friends with an ant-Vaxer. I'm normally so "live and let live" but this is off the scale, same as the flat earth brigade.

Nope the more I think about it the more I don't think I could be a friend. It won't just be the anti-bad there is bound to be other weird stuff.

The peer reviewed research shows it is safe.

Their mad Facebook friends say it isn't, could I be friends with something that doesn't understand science?? No don't think I could.

For what it's worth I don't have the flu vaccine even though I'm recommended for it, I read peer reviewed research (not google) and decided it was not a route I'd take.

If you're happy explaining to your child why they are missing limbs, can't hear things, can't see, or suffer in any other way through life because they caught a disease that you could have prevented at the right time with a vaccine, as in when they are eligible for a vaccine, then go right on ahead and don't vaccine them. But be sure you're happy explaining to your child that it was your fault. And that's just if they don't die.

Im not sure what you can do.

I do know however, my dc just spent 2 years going through test after painful test to find an immune system problem because it wasn't behaving right.

They found a problem, dc had lost 11 of the 14 immunities in the pneumococcal vaccine given as a baby, why, were not sure, but dc had a booster and a year later dc immune system is now perfect.

So in essence, my dc was sick constantly, issues with immunoglobulin levels (antibodies) because those vaccines that people are scared of not working right for him.

If you’re that judgemental about other people’s valid choices then there’s a good chance they won’t want to be friends with you when they know either.

But, unless their children can't have vaccines for genuine medical reasons, these are not valid choices. People who make these choices in those circumstances ignore all the available genuine evidence and are basing them on pseudoscience, they put their own children at risk, and most seriously they put immunocompromised people at risk.

Parents having a genuine worry that something could damage their child and avoiding it doesn’t seem like a good reason not to be friends to me. They aren’t making the choice they do because they don’t care about other people, they’re making their choice because as good parents, they do what they genuinely think is best for their children, like we should all do.

It depends what you mean by "genuine". Is it really a genuine choice when you don't bother to inform yourself properly?

My younger sister caught rotavirus before it was routinely vaccinated against (this was late 80s). She was so terribly ill and nearly died, she spent her first Christmas in intensive care.

Why on earth you’d risk that happening to your child is beyond me. So I’m answer to your question OP, no I couldn’t be friends with people like that.

Non vaccinated kids shouldn't be admitted into state schools unless it's because of medical issues.
State should keep vulnerable (children with medical issues) children safer.

Pretty sure many of the "vaccines are bad" parents would suddenly be ok with vaccines🤷🏻