What do you think of Australia's vaccine policy?

[rampy]

I'm born and bred Aussie. We live in WA and kids here can't go to kindy or school
without having been vaccinated. I have a couple of British friends who were so offended that they needed to vaccinate their kids they home schooled because 'well we'll just go back to the uk' but they've stayed and now need to get their kids vaccinated because they have no friends their own age and can't go to school without vaccines.

You can't apply for child related benefits if your kid isn't vaccinated either here.

Having seen NZ have just declared a whooping cough epidemic Id say I agree with WA stance I'm honest!

Oh please
You know this is ridiculous - nothing is added to vaccines
And being excluded for 'religious reasons'. That 'religion' should be outlawed.
It is happy to see children and adults suffer? Some fuck8ng religion that is

School is a community. If you are going to put your child in school, you need to accept that all of the children need to be safe. If the school says that they needed to be vaccinated (or provide a very good reason why not) you agree or you don’t put your child in school.

I don't think they stop you attending though. My ds school friends dad is an anti vaccer. He seemed so normal up until then. He thinks our immune systems are better now so we don't need them 🤦‍♀️

I‘m not necessarily opposed to it. But I do strongly believe that education is a child‘s right.

Which is why I would be somewhat concerned about the state denying certain children that right simply due to their parents‘ choices.

Exactly my point.

This! coercion is wrong. Especially when most of the vaccines haven't been tested against a placebo. All my children have had their vaccines but seeing how the state and pharma companies behaved during covid has made me question everything. Remember them tell8ng us to get the vaccine to save Grandma - and yet they'd never even tested whether it stopped transmission. Why should I trust proven liars?

Because IMO not vaccinating your child for the “basic” but potentially very dangerous illnesses like Polio and Measles is akin to saying “I don’t give a shit about other children in the community”

I highly disapprove of this policy. Body autonomy.

I'm sufficiently pro vaccination to have paid privately for my DC to have some vaccines the NHS wouldn't offer. Still a no from me.

Children's right to education shouldn't be contingent on decisions their parents have made, and I now have enough experience of the state designating my children as the collateral group not to believe that their welfare is necessarily going to be the priority.

Schools around me take unvaccinated children, so that's a non-issue. We opted out of schools anyway.

I think it's a disgrace and I wouldn't want to live there.

I don't think there should be laws/ coercive measures to do with what we choose to do with our bodies/ children's bodies or medical decisions. I think it's as important as free speech.

If you have good, clear, evidence based public information then the vast majority of people will come to the same conclusion. Some won't, that's ok.

Me too.

You can care, but if you think you'll be harming your child by doing something, of course you won't do it. People are always going to do what they think is best for their child first anyway.

We would never have eradicated smallpox - which was a horrific scourge that killed (I think) up to a third of people who got it and disfigured many more - without mandatory vaccination. There were vaccine sceptics, and plenty of them, back in that day too. Polio's another one (although that was never mandatory, I think). We shamefully haven't managed to eradicate it yet, but we're not seeing children and young adults struck down and on ventilators for years or left without the use of their limbs. If we were actually seeing this, I think people would be thinking differently.

Germany makes entry to daycare and schools contingent on measles vaccination, which de facto means MMR. As school (as opposed to education) is also mandatory, it's basically compulsory. I agree that coercion (if you can call it that) isn't ideal, but measles in particular is a dreadful disease (look up SSPE), extremely contagious, and vaccination if you can is also what protects those who can't be. I'm sorry for those who have struggled to get medical exemptions. I think it's right that these should be rigorously checked, but there should be a clear route available to appeal/a second opinion.

Beyond medical exemptions, I get a bit uncomfortable, tbh, when people start talking about parental rights and choices in this context. There's also the child's right not to be at risk from a horrible disease which could cause deafness, encephalitis, or cognitive and neurological decline suddenly starting years or decades later and leading inevitably to death.

The problem is that there is plenty of clear, evidence based research. But there is still a significant amount of people who’d rather listen to someone talking shit on TikTok.

I've got 3 kids, never been asked to show proof of vaccines.

My youngest was late having his pre-school jabs as I'd moved a couple of times and forgot to update my address with the surgery. Got them done asap but he'd been in school a good few months by that point.

I am a scientist with a PhD in Immunology. I work in the pharmaceuticals industry and have worked on the development of several vaccines. I am as pro-vaccine as they come, my children are fully vaccinated following the NHS recommended schedule.

However. Mandating vaccines does not work. It entrenches positions and isolates those who don't vaccinate. We have only ever mandated one vaccine in the UK, the smallpox vaccine in the 19th century and we're unlikely to do so again. If you want to increase vaccination rates you need to listen to those who don't vaccinate and address their concerns and reasons for not vaccinating, not call them nutters and exclude them from mainstream society.

Deeply disturbed at the number of people in favour of this policy. It will come back to bite you.

I think you can be respectful to people and their concerns while still insisting that particular vaccines happen for particular purposes. I'd never call someone a nutter. The problem is when you have people moving in discursive spheres that effectively close them off to others' respectful engagement with them.

Worth pointing out too that the UK has a problematic record when it comes to some vaccine access for children.

We've lagged behind in making the chicken pox vaccine part of the normal schedule, and one of the reasons for that was a belief that doing so might mean more cases of shingles in older adults. Basically, the kids were kindly invited to take one for the team. I wasn't up for that, so paid privately, but plenty of people wouldn't have that option.

This is changing now, and I suspect the covid experience may be part of it.

My concern with this policy is that, like many things, it would damage the children who would be affected by their parents’ bad choices.

So children whose parents are anti-vaccine would miss out on a state education through no fault of their own. And these parents would be quite uneducated probably to believe a lot of the Internet misinformation about vaccines, so I don’t think they would be the best at home schooling.

But are more kids withdrawn from state education in Australia than in the UK?? Vaccination is not compulsory in UK state schools. I work in a school and, when it comes to parents radical enough to withdraw their children from state scrutiny, they do that at the level of feeling nagged, not at compulsion. These parents will pretend their children are ill on the day of flu vaccinations, or even openly state they do not want them risking being around the vapours and “shedding” from other children. They will object to being sent warnings about the measles. They will threaten to home educate, or home educate, at any sign of challenge of their beliefs. They will not accept that some children have genuine medical reasons not to be vaccinated whereas others are better off, and society is better off, if they are vaccinated. Compulsion has absolutely nothing to do with their conspiracy theories and paranoia - that comes from their personalities.

I also don't think many people who support mandatory vaccination are thinking 'oh, I love coercion'. I think it's more that they've come to the conclusion that it's a 'least worst' option.

Mandating vaccines does not work. It entrenches positions and isolates those who don't vaccinate.

It does work in numerous countries. WhereI grew up they even did our TB vaccines at school. Only exceptions for state school are mwdical reasons or you have to go through court.
It's mindbogling to me in UK that there are so many measels cases for example. It's a developed country.