To vaccinate newborn or not

[confusedaboutclothes]

I know this is a very sensitive subject, but i’m asking please for FACTS only - I don’t want answers like ‘because the NHS recommends you to vaccinate your baby etc’

Id like to point out i’m not ‘anti vax’ as such, but covid really opened my eyes to researching vaccines etc i’ve done my own research on whether i should be vaccinating my newborn but it’s hard to find unbiased facts.

What I don’t like, is the pressure that is put on us to do as we’re told with our babies. I don’t like the constant reminders, the phone calls and the pressure to vaccinate - it all feels like a box ticking exercise not because the NHS are actually worried about my baby.

Please be kind, I really am confused about this and would love some different perspectives

Well then we'll start making everyone pay privately who is obese, does not exercise, smokes, drinks to excess, takes drugs, takes part in winter sports, drive s a car, falls over on ice because they wore the wrong shoes.

No. It is always a personal choice. And if your children are vaccinated, it doesn't affect you what someone else does. I don't know why people get so emotional about it, it's like the smear test thing. It doesn't affect me whether you get a smear test or not!

I don't agree there's a social contract either - if your child is the one who is vaccine injured, nobody will help you. Ultimately you have to weigh up the tiny risk of the vaccine against the greater risks of getting the illness and make your mind up.

I also think women who are TTC should take responsibility for themselves and make sure they are vaccinated against rubella and chicken pox if they weren't as a child.

Long term side effects are not looked for in vaccines it doesn't mean they are not there.
Like I said before there should be large scale studies comparing overall health of vaccinated vs unvaccinated. There aren't any substantial ones I wonder why?

Actually, not really. And I’m not really getting your point. As I said above, real world evidence, which is a long term follow up and evidence that drugs actually work outside of the clinical trial setting, is needed for all drugs, whether trial lasted two years or five, to be able to declare that a drug has a favourable safety profile. Patients in trials aren’t followed up forever and there is only a very small number of them anyway. You cannot just claim that trial wasn’t conducted correctly based on your “logic”. There are regulations and all sort of scientists working on trial designs, and health authorities that also include scientist that review it all. And yes there are bad trials out there, but COVID wasn’t one of them, perhaps also because of the worldwide scrutiny.

Both these points are untrue.

I gave an explanation as to why long-term emerging side effects are not biologically plausible in my PP (which you quoted but are ignoring!)

There are numerous studies that look at outcomes in vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations - it seems that you are not trying very hard to find this primary evidence? Or are just repeating claims from people who don't bother looking either?

The anti-vaccine industry, and how it is spreading from US to the UK, is deeply depressing.

It doesn’t sound like you’re read the whole thread or even any of my replies. I’m not sure why there was a need to be so rude, but i’ve actually had
more helpful (unfortunately not
yours) and factual responses from MN that any information that has been provided to be from
the NHS.

(sorry, edited as quoted wrong post)

@confusedaboutclothes sadly this has been something has been highly politicised so on the internet you are going to be faced with a tsunami of things that are untrue, including on MN.

I would suggest looking at charities that are focussed on childhood health, like Tommy's. I would also question why you are happy to follow NHS guidance on all other aspects of your health, but are suddenly distrustful when it comes to vaccination.

There is a reason that these vaccines are recommended globally - simply because it is is better for your child to have them than to not.

I would just be aware that there is real issue with the anti-vaccine industry, and how powerful and lucrative it has become, especially in the age of social media. I'm an epidemiologist and it is considered to be a huge threat in terms on undermining public health and the things that we can do to improve health and wellbeing around the world.

I've looked for studies and the only ones I've found are small scale and show unvaccinated are healthier. I'd 100% read any you can link for me please.

Why on earth would you take the anti vaxxers seriously? Those people don't have medical qualifications, they're just gobshites online who think they're intelligent because they're not "sheep" as they like to say.

If you ever use the NHS for help for your poorly child, one of the first things theu do is they will ask you if your child has had their vaccinations.

What explanation will you give if you say no? What good reason will you give? And if your child god forbid have an illness that you could (& should) have vaccinated them against, how would that make you feel knowing you could have protected them but you didn't?

you can do a brief version of this by looking at the numbers of deaths caused by vaccine preventable diseases in countries with poor vaccine provision vs countries with good vaccine provision.

No we don't.

We get no financial incentives for giving baby/childhood vaccines. It's part of our global sum under our contract.

We get QOF points for demonstrating that we've offered them and kept a record of vaccinations. Not for actually giving them.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27544/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2647387/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7846814/

I think all it would take is for a few kids to be allowed to sue their parents for the sequalae of these illnesses if they weren't vaccinated, for parents to get a grip.

I know of a woman at 25 who has cervical cancer at her first smear. Mum didn't consent for her to be vaccinated at 15 as it was 'too early'. Too late now.

Which vaccine? What kind of population? Demographic group?

Yes in general for a lot of vaccines the unvaccinated group will be healthier on average, because higher risk people tend to be offered more vaccines...

I’m still waiting for someone to give me some decent resources. People keep saying ‘Do your own research’ or saying that the Covid vaccine was bad but there’s been nothing provided to support these statements.

Do you have an awareness of your limitations in interpreting complex data during your time as a student midwife?

I’m twenty odd years into a clinical career, with a masters, currently doing a PhD, write and review articles for publication, write national guidance in my clinical area but I would not be more able to interpret vaccination data than the JCVI.

I think we should be very careful about saying we researched something if we didn’t follow a methodology of research analysis/synthesis and have the skills to do this with the type of data we were looking at. It’s more likely that many people are googling and calling it research and others, with a bit more knowledge, are doing some targeted reading. Neither of these things are research. There is a whole committee of experts doing the research and interpretation of this research for us.

Cant wait to see the spurious excuse Ann3347 comes up with for discrediting these peer reviewed, controlled studies despite having suggested she was totally open to reading them.

I'm afraid that many people in the U.K. no longer trust the NHS at all. This all trickles through so that no one takes anything on trust at all.
It's fine if people want to do their own research - perhaps signposting reputable sources of information and statistics etc might be the way to go.

So questions - Why insist on so many different injections in one single visit? Surely much much safer to give a vaccine for one thing, let the baby's body deal with it and then go back for the next one when they're well again?

OK. So I'm not an immunologist and don't draw up vaccine schedules but I believe it's a combination of risk reduction and epidemiological knowledge as to why our schedule is what it is. There is no need to separate them so much as the immune system can deal with thousands of pathogens simultaneously. And let's be honest why would you want to give each element separately increasing the length of time a baby is unprotected and increasing the needle count from 2 to 7+ each time? The schedule is already such that there are 4 weeks between most vaccines to allow an immune response and recovery.

MMR - why oh why do they not still offer single vaccines? A lot of people who currently do not have the MMR would have single vaccines. I definitely would have vaccinated my two earlier if single was available. As it is, I've waited until their bodies were big enough and strong enough in my mind. Both were still poorly after their MMR and neither wants to go back for the booster (they will but you get my point, they're not 'nice' vaccines and do make you sick)

Single vaccines are unnecessary when we have a perfectly safe effective vaccine that gives good immunity against all 3 diseases. The NHS doesn't really offer pick and mix vaccines - it would be expensive, unnecessary and would only reinforce the idea that there's something wrong with MMR vaccine.

But listening to you, it's just get them vaccinated, as many as possible, as quickly as possible.

I think you'll find I said no such thing.

Are you 100% sure that a vaccine you've given hasn't severely affected a child?

Yes, I have never seen a child I've vaccinated with any side effects more severe than those one would expect - fever, malaise, sore limbs etc. The joy of working in primary care is you get to know your patients and families well, so I would know if any of the babies and children I've vaccinated ended up with serious illness, hospital admission, disability or death. I do not agree with your claims that "huge numbers" of adults or children are permanently damaged by vaccines. I have never seen a baby die within days of it's MMR vaccine.

I am all for parents wanting to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination. I will always aim to have a sensible balanced discussion with them and provide them with as much information as I can.

Have you got grandparents alive or friends from developing countries? I am sure they can give details of the diseases that they had to deal with that will kill your newborn or at least give them nasty side effects. Did you know mumps can make your baby boy infertile? Imagine explaining that to a son because you didn't want to vaccinate. It is thanks to vaccines that we aren't so familiar with these diseases. As a parent we put our children first and IMO you wouldn't be doing that and I would consider you selfish.

Don't.

What's the worse that can happen? It's only your child's life at risk.

You don’t even need to be from a developing country. I had a British relative who had TB and it was horrific for them, affected their whole life in ways that people wouldn’t have even expected.

These are only looking at underdeveloped countries and they are not long term studies looking at general health over say 20, 30, 40 years i.e differences in skin problems, asthma, cancer etc etc. they are looking at differences in vaccine disease only. I want to see studies looking at the UK / USA/ French population and the difference in general health between vaccinated and unvaccinated.

And yet you were told that the Covid vaccine was completely safe and effective. The cognitive dissonance must be mind-blowing.