So, I was surprised to find out that the Covid vaccine has ended up being the subject of a court case in the Family Court.
I was even more surprised to come across a published judgment on the issue a week after the first jabs were being given. Here:-
M v H (Private Law Vaccination) (2020) EWFC 93
Apparently, they were already in court about the MMR vaccine and the Covid vaccine issue just got tacked on to it. Father said they should, mother said they should not.
The mother had apparently gone down an internet hole of all the anti-vaxxer stuff and the judge said:-
[19] As I have noted, the mother filed and served two detailed statements setting out in clear terms her objection to the father's application. It is clear that those statements represent, in part, the product of what the mother described in evidence as six years' worth of extensive "research" into the question of vaccination. In circumstances where the mother readily conceded during cross-examination by Mr Hunt that she had no scientific qualifications beyond school level biology, it was also clear that the mother used the term "research" to describe the process of information gathering online that had provided her with the material which underpinned her arguments against the vaccination of the children.
The judgment then went on to detail the mother's concerns.
As you might expect, the court ordered that the children should be vaccinated and said:-
[50] ...I am satisfied that best interests of both P and T to be vaccinated in accordance with the NHS vaccination schedule. It is now clearly established on the basis of credible, peer reviewed scientific evidence that it is generally in the best interests of otherwise healthy children to be vaccinated with those vaccines recommended for children by Public Health England and set out in the routine immunisation schedule which is found in the Green Book published in 2013 and updated as necessary since...The mother has placed no evidence before the court to gainsay these conclusions in respect of P and T, either by way of a medical contra-indication specific to either child or new, credible evidence regarding the safety and efficacy of the vaccines set out in the NHS schedule of vaccinations...
The court didn't rule explicitly on the Covid vaccine as, they said, no one has any idea yet what plans there are to vaccinate children.
Though the judge did also say right at the end of the judgment (sort of as an aside):-
[52] Finally, whilst the Court of Appeal did not reach a definitive conclusion on the question of whether, in private law proceedings, the question of vaccination should or should not continue to require court adjudication where there is a dispute between holders of parental responsibility, the observations of the Court of Appeal in in Re H (A Child: Parental Responsibility: Vaccination) summarised at paragraph [40] of this judgment, whilst strictly obiter, make it very difficult now to foresee a case in which a vaccination approved for use in children, including vaccinations against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, would not be endorsed by the court as being in a child's best interests...
This judgment has a lot of good points in it if you ever come across an antri-vaxxer in ther wild.
So, it's great that the court is saying to anti-vaxxers that they just to have to accept vaccination but, really, AIBU to be surprised that anti-vaxxers in this country are still trying to fight this issue in the courts?