Not to give my child Flu jab

[Binjob118]

My son is 6 and has been offered the nasal flu jab at school. He has had it the last 2 years and had no problems, but I now feel reluctant to give it to him. Does a healthy child really need this? I have to admit this change in my thinking has come about since the COVID vaccine rollout and the many vaccine injuries that seem to be being ignored by the MSM.

Because it's not 100% effective. Which then seems pointless but it's not a black and white situation like MMR.

It will generally lessen symptoms as it helps the body prime its immune system but you may still catch it -it will be more like a cold.

As we now well know with covid, you can catch viruses all the time and not have a reactive immune response that leads to feeling ill. Some people are lucky and rarely get immune reactions to anything. Others get bad ones. I do know that the immune systems of children, adults and the elderly are very different too.

I don't know much about viral loads etc but it probably also means less infectious spread, if fewer or no symptoms of snot, sneezing and coughing.

They have to create new annual flu jabs based on study of the previous circulating strains; they know based on data in Australia if we've a bad flu season coming. Sometimes unfortunately a vax just isn't as effective as they hoped, it's really variable from year to year.

I won’t, though it is a gamble as flu can also be nasty. Was always very pro-vaccine to protect others (had the flu jab for this reason mainly) until I got seriously ill with the Covid vaccine and know a young child who also did (both hospitalized). Now cautious and look at the worst side effects - even though rare, having been the unlucky case it has changed my perception.

That’s a genuine question - sorry not phrasedawell, I’m feeding!

By the way, they believe that breasts evolved from the immune system 👍 😃

Oh I've thought twice about the covid jab. But it's not the covid jab.

You are being deliberately disingenuous. This is the whole passage from NHS Scotland. They don't begin with 'protecting the elderly' - in fact, benefits to children are the focus. (Summermeadowflowers linked to the very last paragraph.)

Why should I have my child vaccinated?
Flu can be serious. Even healthy children can become seriously ill from flu. In some cases, flu can lead to complications. These can include bronchitis, pneumonia, painful middle-ear infection, vomiting, diarrhoea. In the worst cases, flu can lead to disability and even death.
Flu can be even more serious for children with health conditions such as:
• asthma
• heart, kidney, liver or neurological disease
• diabetes
• a weakened immune system
• a spleen that does not work fully
The flu vaccine will reduce the risk of your child getting or spreading flu to friends and family who are at greater risk from flu. For example, grandparents or people with health conditions. It'll also help prevent your child getting sick with flu and needing time off school or nursery.
www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/immunisation/vaccines/child-flu-vaccine#:~:text=The%20flu%20vaccine%20will%20reduce,time%20off%20school%20or%20nursery.

My friend is a bit of an anti-vaxxer (she'd never openly call herself that but has refused all vaccines for herself and her kids) and her, otherwise healthy, 6 year old was off school for just over 3 weeks in January with the flu. It was miserable. They were in and out of hospital with her because of how unwell she was. She's now saying "oh well, at least she's immune now" 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ Not quite how it works.

Oh and also, after she got the flu other kids in the class ended up with it too but didn't get it as severely. They were vaccinated but that might genuinely just have been a coincidence - it's a bit of pot luck with the flu!

My point is just that even a healthy child can get very unwell with it.

Exactly this
Prevented an estimated 10,000 excess deaths last year in UK
But you do you....

As soon as anybody use the expression, “MSM”, you just know they have a fetching range of tin foil hats in their wardrobe 😫

Genuine question here from someone who doesn't live in the UK: to what level in school is science a compulsory subject? I'm just noticing a distinct lack of basic knowledge.

Because it protects children and their wider circle from getting ill. Flu isn't mild it can be a serious respiratory illness causing distress in young children why wouldn't you want to vaccinate.

All vaccines have side effects. Always have had, always will do.

There's no big cover up imo so I don't think that's a great reason personally.

It's your choice on behalf of your child.

He may or may not get flu.
He may or may not be ill with it.

These kind of vaccines are always a choice for you to make. No one will force your child to have it.

That isn't why children get the flu vaccine but hey, still your choice whether to give your child the vaccine or not.

Yes I am. I'm in a more vulnerable group, along with the elderly and children, so I have a free one annually.

Dh doesn't qualify but his workplace gets him a free one and he takes this up annually. He works with a lot of elderly and/or vulnerable clients so it helps reduce the risk ti then.

21y Dd doesn't qualify either but we pay for her to have one. She got flu during her GCSE mocks and was quite poorly with it. Since then she's always asked for us to help organise one.

@Summermeadowflowers older adults/the elderly don’t tend to respond as well to vaccines, their immune systems are old and so they develop as robust an immune response after vaccination compared to younger people. So they are doubly vulnerable, because they are also more susceptible to getting seriously ill from infections.

This is something often deliberately misinterpreted @Binjob118

Children (and everyone else) were offered COVID vaccines until recently. Now they are not. This is not because the NHS have decided it's too harmful or doesn't benefit them personally.

The decision to roll out a vaccine to groups of people is based on weighing up the benefits and the costs. Costs include things like side effects - which is what the individual is concerned about - but also the financial and logistical costs of including another 12 million or so people in a health intervention.

A vaccine can still be beneficial on an individual level, but not at the population level. So a child would benefit, but for the government it's just not worth it considering the overall benefits to population health. The chickenpox vaccine is a good example of this, which is why a lot of parents pay to have it privately.

I’m certainly not being deliberately disingenuous. I don’t think a vaccine is the medical equivalent of charitable giving: it’s a medical procedure.

This may be your opinion but if we lived in a world where everyone healthy (whatever that means) refused all currently avaible vaccines, life would be unrecognisable @Summermeadowflowers

As someone wise once said to me, they're one of the most frustrating health interventions to advertise, because when they work, people don't notice anything at all.

I don't think anyone should feel coerced into having a vaccine they're not comfortable with, but this is the world we're slowly slipping towards with the rise of anti-vaccine disinfo campaigns.

It isn’t about my personal opinion - only in the sense that we do what we feel personally comfortable with as parents - it’s about who actually benefits from the vaccine. If the purpose of giving it to children is to protect the elderly then that’s not great but many feel it’s a small ask, so to speak, an act of unselfishness that children should willingly undertake. I am not sure how comfortable I am with it.

I think flu is the least of her worries if she hasn't vaccinated. Measles is on the rise.

For what it’s worth I have been left disabled following the COVID vaccine (currently pursuing compensation from the vaccine damage scheme with the support of my consultants). I remain in favour of most vaccinations, and my DS will most definitely be having the flu vaccine, as will I and DH.
I has flu when I was 17- took me weeks to get over then, and I couldn’t bear for DS to go through that.

I see no reason to decline the vaccine for my kids. It's safe, they've never had any side effects, and it gives them some protection against flu. I had the flu only 3 times in my life but it was awful, for me it was way worse than covid. So we all get the vaccine and hope for the best.

GCSE/ 16.

I have found it interesting that my niece in the states who has started a history degree is still doing maths and sciences!

@Summermeadowflowers I do feel like this has been covered now - protecting vulnerable people is just one of the listed 'pros' if you like.

My mum never had scans when she was pregnant… should I not have? She did have an amniocentesis- presumably that means I should have? She didn’t have the mmr or the polio vaccine- why did I have them?!

Do you expect all your child’s medical history to reflect yours? Or might there be some room for medical progress?

@SaltyOne there is a lack of basic knowledge, but I think the bigger issue is that schools churn out people who have passed exams but haven’t really been taught to think. People lack basic research skills and analysis skills to understand the difference between facts and evidence, and anecdotal faux scientific rhetoric.