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.

I've ended a friendship with an antivaxxer.
The rest of our friendship group also stopped inviting her and her children to meet ups.

They just didn't do it as officially as I did.

She would bombard them with messages asking why her children hadn't been invited to X meet up or Y party and that they were crying at the exclusion.

Eventually one of the others told her that they didn't feel safe with her kids near theirs.

She kicked off but oh well.

What do you do about adults that have not vaccinated? I expect there are far more unvaccinated adults around than childrenas vaccination was only routine for things like polio when a lot of the now adult population were children.

Most adults will have had a lot of the same vaccines that children have now as in the 1970s and 80s children were routinely vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, and rubella.

This is when the common UK vaccines were introduced:

Hib/MenC - 2006
Measles - 1968
Mumps - 1977
Rubella - 1970
MMR (to replace the above three) - 1988
Pneumococcal (PCV) - 2006
Diphtheria - 1942
hepatitis B - 2017
Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) - 1992
Polio - 1955
Tetanus - 1961 (this is when it was added to the childhood schedule, it was available from 1950s)
Whooping Cough - 1950s
Rotavirus vaccine - 2013

Many of the adults who were children before various vaccines were introduced will have either caught the disease and have immunity that way, will have been picked up in catch-up programmes or as a result of circumstances (e.g., being given a tetanus vaccine after a wound breaking the skin), for some women they'll have been caught up in pregnancy (whooping cough vaccine) or postnatally (MMR vaccine if 10wk bloods showed no immunity to rubella). They will also be protected by herd immunity.

would you feel differently about this situation: parents who had vaccinated their child and due to a severe (and admittedly extremely rare) reaction, chose not to vaccinate their subsequent children?

No, my husband is adamant sd severe reaction to a vaccine caused her brain damage and other conditions, we still vaccinated our ds because the risk of what happened to sd were a lot lower than the risk of him catching any of the numerous vaccinated illnesses.

Adults also tend to have better hygiene than children and are more likely to say "don't come visit, I'm not well". There aren't swathes of unvaccinated grannies infecting children with measles, children are more likely to get it from their peers because children are more likely to do things like sneeze directly into one anothers faces or touch their mouths and then touch objects (and visa versa) or go to the loo and not wash their hands.

@AskingforaBaskin
That is a disgusting joke!

I have remained FB friends with an acquaintance who turned out to be an anti vaxxer, because I find her FB posts very entertaining. She has moved on from her bonkers anti vax posts to anti mask stuff. At the height of lockdown she was posting pictures of herself with a megafone in the deserted town centre pontificating about the great Covid conspiracy. Now we’ve got masks being described as ‘muzzles’.

I find it fascinating and wonder which conspiracy she’s going to start on next.

Could I maintain an actual friendship with her where I had to converse and interact with her? No, no I could not.

would you feel differently about this situation: parents who had vaccinated their child and due to a severe (and admittedly extremely rare) reaction, chose not to vaccinate their subsequent children?

It’s their children that are at risk though? as a child I had measles and chicken pox (I had been vaccinated) so if your child gets sick and passes it to a child that isn’t vaccinated, that’s the danger?

It's not very accurate though is it, to claim that children who are unvaccinated are basically going to die by the time they are ten.

If that was true everyone would vaccinate, risks or not. The fact it's not is why there are people who don't. So it's not especially helpful in a discussion about motivation and/or how to deal with unvaccinated children of friends.

I worry that it'll reach a stage where we'll basically have to watch a bunch of unfortunate children die needlessly for people to finally get the message and vaccinate their kids and learn to wash their friggin' hands. People take these things for granted and don't know how lucky they are too have soap and water and vaccines available to them.

I mean, there have been several measles epidemics across the US and Europe over the last couple of years, so that has already happened.

Well no, it's not a case if vaccinate your children or else they will die. However it is a case of informing parents that if they do not vaccinate then they are risking various side effects including death and that those side effects have a greater chance of occurring than side effects from the vaccine.

www.who.int/news-room/detail/05-12-2019-more-than-140-000-die-from-measles-as-cases-surge-worldwide

I would probably keep my (vaccinated) children away from (her) unvaccinated children. And if asked why, calmly state why.

It’s a difficult one. Some countries permit parents to chose whether to vaccinate BUT make vaccination a precondition to school entry

Most parents do the usual childhood vaccines and the UK health authorities are very committed to voluntary vax only as that works very well in the UK so I don't think we have a major issue other than in trendy hippy areas infected by Wakefield a few years ago, as it were.

i had measles vaccine in the very early 60s.

I agree however that we need to keep a check on what is happening. I wonder if my son caught mumps at university despite having the MMR (which gives you 90% chance of immunity compared with 100% chance had he caught it as a small child) was because someone at university's parents had not given the child the vaccination.

I think there are two key flaws in anti-vaxxers'* thinking. The first is responding to present (if remote) risk over theoretical/remote (if in fact much larger) risk. I've been a bit about giving my children some of their vaccinations. They had MenB when it was very new, not on the schedule where we live, and there had been some reports of Kawasaki disease being a rare complication. I think some 'nervous' anti-vaxxer types are responding to the present risk of the vaccination (and there is a risk, albeit usually tiny, with all vaccinations) rather than thinking ahead to the much higher risks of adverse outcomes if their child caught one of the diseases.

Then there's the worldview the 'conspiracy' types seem driven by, which appears based on the assumption that nobody could ever actually want, or work for, the public good just because - there has to be some kind of nefarious conspiracy behind it. It seems to me to be a fundamental each-one-for-themselves attitude which manifests again in the decision not to vaccinate.

*I mean explicitly 'anti-vaxxers' here and not 'non-vaccinators on medical grounds'

*I mean 'theoretical/tempoally remote' risk in the above. Have used 'remote' in two senses - a bit confusing.

Whooping cough and polio are making a comeback.

Such a shame stupid usually don't feel shame...

You do nothing. By all means cut contact if you prefer: nobody is entitled to your friendship.

I have very strong opinions on vaccination - my baby brother caught whooping cough as a newborn and nearly died as neighbours didn’t vaccinate. This was early 90s.

So I would be telling them that I think they’re ridiculous and would decline to spend time with them and their children. And if they think that’s overkill they can deal with it. I don’t agree that reading blogs and watching YouTube is meaningful research.

@Yippeeforme

I worry that it'll reach a stage where we'll basically have to watch a bunch of unfortunate children die needlessly for people to finally get the message and vaccinate their kids and learn to wash their friggin' hands. People take these things for granted and don't know how lucky they are too have soap and water and vaccines available to them.

Remember the queues for vaccination during the 2013 Welsh measles outbreak?

Yes, it'll take an outbreak (and possible deaths and/or life-changing complications) to shift thinking from it being a 'remote' risk, rather than a theoretical risk.

I wonder what the overlap is between anti-vaxxers and those who don't social distance of wear masks (when they have no reason not to), on the grounds that the harm is more likely to fall on others? It really is monumentally selfish, and strips the genuinely medically vulnerable of the only protection they have.

Friends of mine's daughter reacted badly to the rotavirus vaccine in the 90's, it was withdrawn shortly after. Does make you think. My kids were partially vaccinated, we didn't consent to the new one offered or chickenpox as it's not lifelong protection. We also delayed dd2's at the suggestion of our family dr as dd1 is autistic and she was concerned (the trace mercury was a concern then!).

Apart from chickenpox which they both caught, they had all the other vaccines just at a time where my dr thought it was better

I would struggle to maintain a friendship with anti-vaxxers, too. Because I do find it very selfish, as well as stupid. The risks from the vaccine are so much less likely to happen than the risks of the illness the vaccine is protecting your child and other people from.

There's a potential risk in most medical intervention anyway.

I have MS. Never had measles. Too old to have got MMR. They can fuck off.

I cannot be arsed with such selfish attitudes, I’d rather different friends who have similar interests and priorities