I hate anti-vaxxers

[An89]

How can anyone in this day and age be an anti-vaxxer? London and West mids currently suffering from a meassls outbreak. DS is under 1 so cannot yet have vaccine, I know of someone whose 10momth old contracted measels as they were too young for vaccine.
Ridiculous that reckless and tardy parents are putting all our children at risk. Actually terrible.

This.

Huge assumption here that I’m an anti vaxxer. As I said I even had my kids as babies vaccinated against TB. I doubt many others do. The point is that we saw and read about many during Covid that felt their lives were more important than putting others in danger. We had MNetters laughing and the rules and boasting about flagrantly ignoring them. Including those precioys ones that didn’t like masks. That’s what people do and too many of them. Ignoring the very real threat of spreading flu because you aren’t concerned about dying from pneumonia is a case in point. If it can kill the vulnerable we should all take precaution to stop its spread. Mouth ulcers aswell is an issue if you come into contact with a pregnant women. Just because some only seem concerned for children does not make that our only concern . We should care about all in society and do what we can to keep all in society safe. I think we can all agree it’s not that difficult

Most anti vaxers aren’t actually anti vax per se. They’re quite happy for everyone else’s kids to be vaccinated because that keeps their kids safe.

My partner has seen a child die from Measles in a UK hospital.
So stupid to ignore the advice.

If you are concerned about your family no doubt you have them all vaccinated. Measles isn’t the only concern. What about meningococcal meningitis? Tetanus? Why on earth would someone deliberately choose not to protect their child from these diseases which can kill?

The same way vaccines do, albeit naturally (obv not all but the viruses that provide long term immunity). If this is not possible, then vaccines wouldn’t be able to do this either.

The JCVI have absolutely gutted the Covid vaccine program for this year so I would double check you are eligible for one this autumn and pay for one now if not.

Sadly, I am not surprised about this.

Having seen how my DS suffered with measles , thankfully, he was not a young child but a robust healthy sporty 15 year old.
It was so frightening. What seemed to make it more worrying is that the GP was also very obviously concerned, to the extent of talking about isolation in hospital.

I agree @GarlicMetre there’s a bad strain going round nicknames Frankenstein. I met with a friend yesterday you thinks their daughter has it after a positive test. Telling me as she sat right next to me.! People really don’t care do they. Can you get a Covid vaccine privately even if not in the vulnerable group? @RafaistheKingofClay

Except (as those of us who were children in the 60s and had these horrible now-preventable diseases), the ‘herd immunity’ from the actual virus comes at the cost of many people, mostly children and young people, becoming ill with a high proportion of long term impairment and deaths. The whole point of vaccines from Jenner onwards is to gain the benefit of immunity without the full-blown disease.

does anyone seriously not understand that?

Boris didnt

And don’t assume that private schools will be happy to take your kids.

There was an immunocompromised child in DDs primary school, other parents were all expected to ensure their children had all the standard recommended vaccines and also to keep them off school if there was any likelihood of them being infectious with other diseases such as chickenpox (it was before the vaccine for that was available here afaik). We weren’t required to provide proof but I sincerely hope no one was arrogant enough to ignore the request.

(problem is kids through no fault of their own are then liable to be homeschooled by people with little grasp of science, statistics etc)

@Ineedcoffee2021 ‘I’m all right, Jack!’ eh?

Our personal medical choices on the whole don’t affect others. You are welcome to refuse chemo or blood transfusions for yourself and that won’t affect the wider population. You are also welcome to smoke like a chimney, become an alcoholic and eat nothing but junk food- those choices also won’t affect the wider population (apart from the fact we’d all be paying for your NHS treatment, but that’s how the system is).

But refusing vaccines doesn’t only affect you as PPs have explained. We all love our families, we all love our children. It’s natural to want to put our own family first of course, but when this takes the form of refusing vaccines, you’re not only disadvantaging your own children, but other people’s children too. I know it’s probably not something you’ve ever considered, but other parents love their children as much as you love yours and don’t want them to be killed or disabled by preventable diseases. There is nothing special or unique about your family vs all the others.

And as for thinking that people don’t give a shit IRL, I can assure you that if you are open about your stance, there will be people who avoid you because of it. You won’t care because your family comes first, and you won’t want friends like those, but there are plenty of us out here who have cooled friendships or avoid acquaintances who don’t vaccinate and give stupid reasons for their choice.

You're entitled to your opinions and I'm entitled to mine without having to resort to it being 'bollocks'!

And I'm not talking about flu or covid, I'm talking about long standing vaccines of diseases that were either eradicated in the UK or nearly unheard of.
If you've seen the suffering that measles and polio caused many millions of children previously, then I'm sorry, but why would you risk it?

The modern pattern is for people to say they're "not antivax", invariably followed by the caveat that their children have had "some" vaccines, but to demand a list of a la carte solutions: certain vaccines without other vaccines or particular combinations or personalised dosing schedules (which the NHS can't provide). Or to say they've "done their own research" and list lots of spurious reasons why certain vaccines are better than others. Invariably followed by a story about a distant relative who was hospitalised after a vaccine, conveniently ignoring the fact that correlation doesn't equal causation.

Bottom line is that these are all people who think they know better than the people who have spent decades researching this. They don't.

They then go on to say vaccine advocates are arrogant or don't respect bodily autonomy in an attempt to spin this as being society's problem. But the bottom line is if you refuse vaccines for yourself or your children for highly transmissible and dangerous diseases you are deliberately choosing to put other people at risk. There's no debate here.

Yes, you can now from pharmacies. They are about £100 though.

I was assuming I’d be able to get one through work but apparently they aren’t even giving it to HCPs this year. This will end well when we have the entire department off.

Part of the problem is that how it was without vaccines is passing out of living memory. My mum ( 78) had a childhood friend who died of measles and I had a friend whose mum had a built up shoe due to Polio. Dh had an uncle who was severely disabled by Polio. My parents are very pro vaccine and this got passed onto me.

I agree

when researching some parish registers there were 3 particular deaths entered and normally the vicar didn't put what the deaths were caused by but in this case he wrote in the margin next to each child - pox

the family buried their first child on Monday - their second child on Wednesday and their 3rd child on friday, one of the volunteers who was indexing the register showed m, its something that stayed with me. The horror of boring three children in one week and how fortunate we are now to have vaccines to prevent this happening. I do remember in 1977 my mum cheering at the news when pox was irradiated

ExquisiteSocialSkills · Today 14:31
Most anti vaxers aren’t actually anti vax per se. They’re quite happy for everyone else’s kids to be vaccinated because that keeps their kids safe.

Thats the part they are wrong about - as children under the age of 2 may well not have been old enough to be vaccinated - and some children are unable to have the vaccination, so they run the risk of having a their child mix with someone who passes it on to them and they have a bad reaction and go deaf or end up in a wheelchair, or worse die.

Same OP. Same

That is absolutely heartbreaking

are people who are opposed to vaccines also against anti-biotics, after chemical processes make all the latter and they can have serious side effects. I am severely allergic to penicillin; it caused my face to swell and affected my breathing, I also cannot tolerate erythromycin and have been really unwell when taking it. However, I don't go around proposing that people do not take anti-biotics simply because I have been hosptalised as a result of side effects.

,

This reminds me of the beginning of Great Expectations. Pips graves seen through the fog and all children’s graves. Those graves exist at the parish church in Cooling Kent. All from the same family and all tiny children dying from diseases preventable today. I’m attaching an image.

Could you provide the literature review for the research you’ve done to help us out?
I don’t think you have one. I don’t think you know what research is.

I found it so, this was around 20 years ago and probably shaped my views more strongly on this matter.

The gentleman indexing was born in 1913 (he was an ex MP and I just checked, my memory isn't that good) he told me his mother was immune to the pox so she would be called on to nurse those suffering. He certainly understood the gravity of it and enough to show me, or possibly share the heartbreak

The burial index would have been from pre 1870s