Why so many anti-vaxxing mums

[FirstTimeMum881]

I have a 5 month old baby and I'm going back to work at 7.5 months and planning on pumping milk at work. I was looking for tips so I joined some Facebook groups on breastfeeding and pumping and also made an account on babycenter as it had a lot of threads on the subject. OH MY GOD. They may as well rename these groups "Batshit mums against vaccines" because the content is insane. My favourite is a mum of a preemie refusing donor milk from vaccinated mothers. Lots of others paranoid their babies have autism because they had their 8 week jabs and they noticed their babies love staring at the ceiling.

I'm aware most of these women are in the US but what the hell is going on??? It's like i stepped into a parallel universe.

This generation and later haven't experienced the times where too many babies and children died of measles and other common illnesses

They have benefited immensely from herd immunity since the majority of people do vaccinate. Instead of acknowledging this, they instead use low mortality statistics to validate their own anti-vax choice.

Another problem is that you do get the occasional doctor or celebrity who embraces anti-vax rhetoric and unfortunately people tend to give them more credibility than they deserve.

They won't, though.

"My kid survived it just fine, these vaccines are just Big Pharma trying to make millions!"

It sucks to say it, but in my experience the only thing that changes someone's position from batshit to sensible in this particular case is if their kid dies or is permanently maimed by the illness. Even then, they'll usually try to find some other reason for it not to be their fault.

I'm anti-vax.

What baffles me most about pro-vax people is how little thought they put into the decision to vaccinate their children.

Edit to add:
I'm anti-vax for my own children, I don't care if other people vaccinate.

Anti-vax and anti-abortion? Who could've guessed.

Perhaps you might want to start a bingo card?

It feels symptomatic of a wider problem that so many people feel they can't trust the people in power. A lot of that is entirely understandable given the behaviour of many of them, but once the trust is gone then it makes it easy for even more untrustworthy sorts to plant their seeds of harm.

No, thank you. I'm not really interested in finding out about anymore of your opinions.

I believe they have a serious outbreak of measles in Texas now.

Yet you're the one taking notes.

With the amount of immigrants coming into the country on a daily basis I think it’s more important than ever to have vaccines.

Yes and I think it will get worse with Kennedy. But FWIW the state where I live requires full vaccination to be able to attend school. If you miss one of those required then you’re excluded from school. My children have had extra due to moving from the UK and the timings being off compared to when they’re required here. They were also required to have the varicella jab.

People are generally quite stupid in short.

Someone I know reposted a post quoting a research study on social media yesterday, it all looked fairly legitimate and the link took you to a website called the public health policy journal. Scrolling through it it's ran by some scientists and doctors across various areas. The study had some obvious (to me) flaws, but if you're a complete novice at reading medical research you could easily be sucked in. The scientists and doctors are all known anti vaxxers/conspiracy theorists. Of course I spent time looking at the post so I've had a whole host of anti vax posts in my timelines today.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will right itself until we have large numbers of unvaccinated children dying from completely preventable diseases.

@ThejoyofNC

I put in lots of thought into whether to vaccinate my children. It went along the lines of.... am I a dr, no, am I a nurse, no, am I a public health researcher, no ... so I'll follow the advice the aforementioned professionals instead of untrained people on the (then rudimentary) internet.

Don't go on TikTok. There are loads of them. Proper fruit loops.

Recognising a username is hardly taking notes. Maybe all the vaccines have just improved my memory lol.

Were you vaccinated?

I will never forget my grandma talking about all of her children who died, more than actually survived. Vaccines all the way, here.

My uncle died of polio at 18 months in the pre vax days, it nearly destroyed my Nan. Anti vaxxers are clueless

No I wasn't

Very few people in the west have even seen the diseases we vaccinate against let or experienced them themselves, let alone lived through an outbreak. When they have (and the way things are going they will) some may think differently and certainly their surviving children might.

@ThejoyofNC I suggest you have a walk round any cemetery and look at the ages of the children on the older graves.

Oh and it's easy to be anti vax when everyone else is vaccinating. Not so much when the clowns all join you.

Sadly we live in an era when many people cannot distinguish between reliable (the consensus of the medical profession) and unreliable (randoms on the internet) sources of information

The vast majority of American parents get their children vaccinated and are fully behind the idea.

The minority who don't tend to be very vocal zealots. They come from the looney fringes of religion and from the extremely crunchy end of Wellness.

What makes you think people put little thought into it?

You know you have the privilege of making the decision to not vaccinate because you aren't routinely confronted with the effects of these diseases on children, down to the majority choosing to vaccinate? I imagine if your infant nephew died of whooping cough, your friend's kid was paralysed due to polio, your baby was covered in measles your opinion would be different.
It baffles me that anti vaxxers have no idea of the great privilege they hold in being able to make that decision.

There is no doubt about it, we live in a vastly more populated world with more opportunities to spread communicable disease than at any time in history. Even if there was any weight to these studies, I'd rather my child be autistic than dead.