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.

They piss me off too,but ultimately,it's their body,their choice. Not much I can do about it.

Don’t be silly. I don’t actually agree with compulsory vaccination in order to attend schools because I think it punishes the child (anti vaxxers are really not the people who should be home schooling their children), but people can definitely be called thick and/or ill informed for their decisions.

I know someone whose son was too young to have been vaccinated and is now deaf from measles. It’s absolutely his concern that other people are fucking thick.

Had to think about this for a while - you mean people whose body doesn’t respond to the vaccine. Yes, that makes sense, thank you.

Yes they absolutely did. The gaslighting around this is something else. The Pfizer ceo tweeted out that it was "100% succesful" in preventing covid, Joe biden said “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.” the head of the CDC at the time said that vaccinated people "don't carry the virus, don't get sick". There are many more examples of similar statements. The way any side effects were downplayed and people were shamed and painted as a crazed conspiracy theorists for talking about their experiences was also ridiculous.

Either way, forcing something on the population that carries the risk of death or severe injury is not ok and is responsible for much of the current resurgence of mistrust in all vaccines.

As I said, I don't have an issue with other vaccines and my child is fully up to date on everything. I just didn't want a covid jab due to the novel and untested nature of mrna technology and the blood clot risk of the j&j one. I generally avoid taking unnecessary medication, even paracetamol, and every instinct in my body told me not to take them. I would have taken a traditional vaccine like novavax if it was available during the time it was a requirement but it wasn't. I dont know why this winds people up so much. I caught covid once years ago, it was fine for me and I didn't kill anyone because I caught it from my child and had been at home before and for the duration of my illness.

Can I just ask what you mean here? Are you saying there won’t be any vaccinations available for people to buy privately in the Autumn?

It was effective at preventing transmission of the strain it was originally created to protect against. But then it became less effective at prevention as the virus mutated (wholly predictable) so then they couldn’t say it was effective against transmission but just that it was effective at reducing symptom severity.

You weren’t gaslighted. People keep trotting this out but I remember exactly how this happened. They said it was effective against transmission when it first came out, because it was to begin with.

Disagree. The Covid vax is the same. Pretending it isn’t is pandering to conspiracy theories.

I don’t think you understand herd immunity.

Measles is known to have been causing human disease for at least 1,000 years and herd immunity had not developed by the time the vaccines were introduced. How are you expecting that to change?

And even supposing it was possible to achieve herd immunity in this way, why would you want to effectively vaccinate everyone with the live wild virus rather than the safe attenuated vaccine?

The only way to get herd immunity without vaccination is to let a disease spread through a population
Of course, some people will get ill and some will die. Those who haven't died should have immunity to the disease. But they could have very serious side effects from the disease.

And then a new generation get born - and immunity to a disease is not passed on.

So the new generation have to be exposed to the disease (if it's still prevalent in the population).

The disease might eventually die out as more people develop herd immunity but it's one heck of an approach to get it.

The alternative is to give a vaccination.

Which is the preferred option for people?

I think because eventually all the dead people wouldn’t be passing on the disease to the other dead people.

Sounds about right!

Agreed

a collaborative approach could still yield results. Iron fist policies would have an effect but would probably reinforce the social fracture

One of my DDs has a friend who has a medical condition which prevents them having any vaccinations. They are totally dependent on others having vaccinations to protect them from disease. I know the parents and know that they are very pro-vaccine.

But if it doesn't stop transmission surely it's not the same.

My DH has low platelets and white blood cell count and I would have the vaccine if it would stop me passing it to him as it's impossible for us to isolate from each other. As it won't (and I'd have to pay privately) we've decided I'm not going to at the moment.

I presume I had all the childhood vaccines other than whooping cough (there was a scare around it at the time) - I can remember being given a sugar lump after the polio one!

While the vaccines may offer some protection we can’t disregard things like plumbing and sanitation playing a vital role in the reduction of preventable deaths.

Truthfully, I don’t believe true herd immunity exists. If it doesn’t work in nature, it won’t work artificially either. Not long term anyway.

It seems you understand that viruses mutate and no matter how clever science is, nature will find a way around it. Which is why we have these epidemics sometimes. Which is why we have antibiotic resistance. Etc.

In the end, I think there will always be viruses in circulation - the focus should be on supporting the body to deal with them. For most, they are natures way of priming and detoxing the immune system. Sadly, some will always have complications. I don’t think the answer is to try and stop these viruses artificially, but to understand them and support the body through them, because if you really understand the laws of nature, you will know you can’t.

I think the worry with doing through vaccination, besides the side effects, is that you run a very real risk of eventually stronger mutated strains. I do also believe when we try to “cheat” nature, we pay for it somewhere else hence the rise in auto immune conditions and cancers. A lot of the childhood illnesses do offer some protection against cancers.

Anti-vaxxers just make me sick tbh. The ones who have shown themselves up on this thread mostly confirm what I think of them. I have a vulnerable disabled DS and I would rather not have any of them anywhere near him, or me. If I found out a friend of mine was an anti-vaxxer I would find it hard to continue the friendship, would not see them as very different from a drunk driver.

My DS was born shortly after the MMR controversy....he was premature and brain damaged. We did have concerns about the vaccine and discussed whether to give them separately rather than together ie measles/mumps/rubella as separate jabs on separate occasions, just to avoid the perceived risk.

What we never dreamed of doing was denying him the vaccine altogether....it was always a question of how (rather than whether) to administer the MMR. So I do understand being fearful but parents really need to get their children vaccinated as overall this overwhelmingly minimises the risks both to them and other people's children.

Just to be clear I am not talking about the parents of those children who would be placed at risk by vaccines due to being exceptionally vulnerable. It is up to the rest of us to keep those children safe by vaccinating our own DC. In our case we had medical clearance to vaccinate DS so we respected and went ahead with the advice we received. Trusting and respecting expert medical advice is the best option we have.

But they don't. Autism is genetic.

Oh come off it. Plumbing etc certainly helped with cholera but measles, mumps etc were ubiquitous in the western world with good sanitation in the 60s. They’ve been quashed by vaccination, but rear their ugly heads again when people get complacent and have luxury beliefs like antivax.

and re the ‘laws of nature’ - viruses are natures way of propagating viruses, nothing more. They don’t have a ‘purpose’ . They don’t exist to ‘prime our immune system’ - our immune systems evolved to combat them and other intruders. You’ve got causality the wrong way round. Vaccines otoh do exist to prime our immune systems - because human intelligence has enabled us to design them to do so.

That’s what happened with the Spanish flu

more people died of Spanish flu than in 1st WW,

dead people can spread the disease to living people but not dead

Plumbing and sanitation helped with cholera and polio. Measles and mumps were never considered crazily deadly diseases before. Rather a rite of passage for children and yes, measles is a complete detox of the body and other childhood illnesses (chicken pox for example) prime the immune system and have protective factors against other diseases.

FFS.

When this thread started, a number of people complained that immigrants did't vaccinate. I very much doubt that the anti-vaxers on this thread are immigrants. Stupidity is common in all communities.

I don’t vaccinate as my son is vaccine injured as I stated earlier on. This is confirmed by doctors not a figment of my imagination. This led to me researching in great detail and deciding to cease all further vaccines for all of my family. This was an informed decision. I was very pro-vax previously.

Ok, carry on with your research. The rest of us will vaccinate so your kids don't get polio or other such rite of passage diseases.

YANBU. There was a notice on my LO’s door at nursery saying there was a suspected case of measles in the baby room, which is ages 6 months to 24 months, so naturally anyone under 1 won’t have been vaccinated yet. The whole point of us all being vaccinated is it not only protects ourselves but also other kids who genuinely can’t be vaccinated. It’s infuriating.