To think there shouldn't be measles outbreaks?

[fatandhappy47]

Surely we shouldn't be having an issue with measles?
Had an email from school (secondary) 'reminding' us to keep kids off with measles, which got me thinking

All my kids band my friends kids of the same age had their MMR (however my youngest did get measles before this)

So why is it an issue in secondary schools of all places? Are people just not vaccinating their kids?

Ah ok, I wasn't sure how well you knew them.

Yes he does.

When I was training as a midwife, a colleague was diagnosed with SSPE secondary to the measles infection she’d had as a baby. The issue with measles is that even if you escape the immediate complications like hearing loss, you won’t know for years whether you’ll be the unlucky one with SSPE.
Her mum talked about it here: https://vaccineknowledge.ox.ac.uk/files/sspe-serious-complication-measles

To be fair, staying away from the the news is the reason we're in this mess. The people not vaccinating are unlikely to be watching or reading it either, they'll get their "information" from God knows where.

I listened to a whole segment on the R4 today programme yesterday and it wasn't until the end of the segment that I realised they mean unvaccinated teens/young adults etc should get vaccinated as well. At no point did they say how to check your vaccination status either. How would you know you've not been vaccinated ? I think the gov need to work on how they get this message across.

Because there are sadly always a subset of incredibly selfish nihilists who think they know better than everyone else despite having zero understanding of the subject matter (this is true of any subject). Not helped by the internet making it incredibly easy for people with extreme views to no longer be on the fringes of society.

The Antivaxx movement is criminal. What’s really tragic is that most of them don’t realise that the people they follow push these narratives for clicks, ad revenue and product sales, not because they believe in it.

They’re just incredibly stupid. I think that’s what annoys me the most. They can’t think beyond ‘my choice’ and ‘freeeeeedom’ or whatever nonsense slogans they parrot from others. Many of them genuinely can’t get their heads around the idea of public health and that vaccines work at scale to protect not only the vaccinated but those who can’t be for health reasons. They think their choice is for them and them alone and won’t affect anyone else.

Because they’re selfish. Because they’re nihilists. Because they’ve been conned and they won’t accept it.

I know that in the country where I was brought up, you had to share your vaccine history when you started nursery/school- I can't remember if it was a requirement to have had all the childhood vaccines- but surely some sort of awareness for schools would be good?

The current generation of parents of school age kids have not seen how bad Measles can be and they are going to get a big shock if this outbreak really is a thing.

YANBU, OP, not at all.

I had measles when I was 2 (this was long before the vaccine was developed). I was so unwell, that the GP was visiting twice a day and seriously considering having me admitted to hospital. I started to improve the next day, so it wasn't necessary.

When the vaccine became available in the late 1960's, I can remember my DM saying what great news it was, and how no-one would have to go through what she and I had gone through 10 years or so earlier. She had been genuinely afraid that I might die, I was so ill (and she had been a nurse, and wasn't given to unnecessary panicking).

I think that as measles became uncommon, thanks to the vaccine, people stopped appreciating how very dangerous it can be.

On the news just now, they said this outbreak has been declared a national incident because the number of cases in Birmingham is now so high, and they fear this level of infection will spread nationwide.

I really don't understand anyone who doesn't have a child vaccinated, providing there no medical reasons for it. We'd still have smallpox and polio if everyone had thought like that when those vaccines were developed.

I don't think that's far to call them scum. We have a genuine reason for not vaccinating out DD any more.
She had her first ones up until just before 1 and had a server reaction which left her really ill for 2 years and went through rigorous testing. Even though we knew it was a result for the vaccines. We were also apprehensive about giving them as my mum nearly died having hers when she was a baby and there's a lot of people on my family who are allergic to ALOT of medications.
But we still decided to. But after her severe reaction we won't risk it again.
So am I scum for not giving it to my DD?

Reading the news won't help with anti vaxxers, they don't trust the "mainstream media" who are all corrupt and being funded by "big pharma".

Honestly it doesn't matter what research you show them because they claim anything contradicting their own view point is funded by big pharma.

Idiots who risk their child having life changing damage such as deafness, blindness or brain damage. It beggars belief.

Exactly this

Secondary school children would have had the MMR before Covid, that's just an excuse.
Two of my children had the vaccine not all that long after Wakefield's paper was public knowledge. My third had his despite being born in the pandemic..
It's ridiculous. Two of my children actually have autistic but I know it wasn't because of the vaccines.
Some people are ridiculous and selfish.

No vaccination, place on at risk register. No questions, no excuses (unless valid clinical reason child cannot be vaccinated)
Why would any parent deliberately expose their child to risk. If you don't want vaccinations, then why should you have any other medical intervention? If you don't trust vacc, what makes you trust other meds?

If you were born after 1970, and either know you have not had 2x shots of a vaccine containing the measles component (the older single and doubles do count) or you don't know your vax status; then you can have MMR on NHS

(If born before 1970, you are assumed immune because of the high levels of circulating disease)

There's a large pool of adults in their mid 20s to 30ish who were unimmunised because of the Wakefield bollocks (other jabs were available on NHS until 1997, so its the few years following where there are the big gaps). Not every parent will have got round to catching their DC up when the further evidence that ended the scare emerged. If you are that age, worth checking - not least as you DC won't have maternal antibody protection in their first year of life.

There are always little clusters of measles cases, usually under about 30 per location, a few times a year. It's never gone away. But those clusters usually fizzle out (if surrounded by a population that is largely immune). There have been warnings about the size/frequency of these clusters over the last couple of years. The concern is that one will spill over into a larger outbreak (as happened in Wales a few years ago)

You were very unlucky as it is usually a mild illness. The reason for the vaccine is because it can cause disabilities for the baby if caught by pregnant women which is why only girls were originally vaccinated. All children are now vaccinated to establish herd immunity.

I caught all of measles, mumps and rubella (remember we used to call it German measles then) as a child before I was then vaccinated. But, just checked, the measles vaccination was developed in 1963. Seem to be quite a few posters saying there were no vaccines when they were children.

MN was rife with anti-vaxxers when I joined over 20 years ago. And my eldest was due her MMR just as the Wakefield stuff was in the news. Quite an anxious time to try to find rational information but depressing to see the damage that man caused still lingering on.

Oh trust me the Wakefield report still has an effect on people even today when I was vaccinating my ds whos 5 a relative questioned me about why I'm vaccinating when it causes autism strangely enough the one child that she had that isn't vaccinated has autism so does my child when I told her that the report was discredited and the effects of not vaccinating a child can actually be deadly and to me even if the report was true (it's not) I'd take a child with autism anyway over one who has to go through the dreaded illness that is measles.

I've also helped her son who is now an adult get the mmr vaccine as he did his own research and was horrified that he wasn't vaccinated against such a deadly virus

In developed countries, the risk of getting blinded or killed by measles is very low, thank goodness. But measles is great at wiping a lot of your immune "memory" clean so that you lack proper immunity to almost everything else for years: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211112-the-people-with-immune-amnesia#:~:text=Essentially%2C%20when%20you're%20infected,is%20near%2Dtotal%20and%20permanent.

So, people of the UK, if you really want a kid who is constantly off school with diarrhoea and sniffles and flu and everything else so that your entire life has to be arranged around their illnesses - by all means go ahead and forego the measles vaccine. I am sure you and your poor kid will have loads of fun.

@Shiny88 clearly you're not an uninformed/badly informed person with a general 'antivaxx' stance, instead one of the genuine cases where vaccination presents real medical issues. More uptake of the vaccine in the general population helps to protect the limted number of genuine cases in your child's position.

And this is exactly why vaccines shouldn’t be optional. Some people just can’t be trusted to do the right thing.

You did, a wide range of infections can cause croup, most of which do not have an associated vaccine. Croup isn’t a bacterial or viral infection, its inflammation of the larynx and surrounding area, the common cold can cause croup.

When I was nursing children in the 1990s, I remember one particular deaf-blind toddler whose mother had developed Rubella during pregnancy. It was heartbreaking.

I have no time for anti-vaxxers. None at all. Vaccination is a miracle of the modern age.

^^^ This!