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.

@RafaistheKingofClay
Ah OK, so the age criteria has changed yet again. I wasn’t eligible anyway but paid for one last year and I’ll do that again if I can.

That doesn’t make sense.

I have absolutely no medical knowledge - but surely a detox means getting rid of toxins (ie bad things) in your body - whilst our immune system is what we need to fight infection. I think you are using the wrong words here.

A detox doesn't usually mean something that makes you more vulnerable to catching and sometimes dying from other diseases!

'We wouldn't be here today if it was as deadly...' Honestly, you could say the same about bubonic plague or any disease that didn't literally kill 100% of the population! We're here because many of our ancestors had a child every year or two, which meant that, even with appalling childhood mortality, a few would live to grow up.

The fact is that other people will not always do what you want. Coercing people into invasive medical procedures they don't want has a lot of problems attached to it.

Some things you have to let go of, OP. There is no acceptable way to remove all risk or even most. That's life, hating people over things will just make your life shorter.

I think people have also been really worked up by the media about measles. It's not great that there are these outbreaks, and there are occasionally serious consequences.

But it seems like some people now are actually more scared of the disease than they were before the vaccine became available, when it was common for all kids to get it. Serious bad outcomes from measles became rare before vaccination was available, due to other medical advances, that are still with us. It's simply not the same scenario as it was in the early 20th century or before that.

In any case, I thought we were seeing people become more receptive to vaccination after the Wakefield business, and then covid came along and people fucked that up by doing precisely what medical organisations involved in campaigned with resistant populations say not to do - trying to force it on people. It backfired and here we are.

@Futurehappiness im sure I could find sources and medical studies but I’m not trying to convince anyone to not vaccinate. I completely understand why people vaccinate, after all, I did use to. I equally understand those that choose not to, as I now have my reasons not to.

Also you are free to interpret the extract as you wish. I interpret it differently and I’m also basing this on the fact that my own mother, father, grandparents, great grandparents, aunties, uncles etc etc etc caught most, if not all, of these childhood diseases without any complications. I also know of 2 babies who caught measles while I was pregnant and are thankfully fine. I was told of 2 cases involving rubella in pregnancy with not great outcomes sadly, but I can also see how rubella is a mild illness in itself and it would be better to allow everyone to catch it and develop naturally immunity.

I do appreciate that there are always complications and they are always incredibly sad. I’m not trying to minimise these cases.

Ultimately my belief is we are all trying our best. No mother wants harm to come to their child or other children.

And how would you feel if, with the best of intentions, your child was immunised and suffered catastrophic vaccine damage and you had to fight for years for compensation. This happened to someone I know. Their healthy toddler developed encephalitis immediately following the MMR and was left severely mentally and physically disabled.

By the way I am not an anti vaxxer but everything in the info given to parents suggests all vaccines are absolutely safe and this is simply not true. It should be acknowledged that a tiny percentage of children will have terrible and life changing reactions to vaccines and when that happens being properly compensated should be a straightforward and quick process rather than the vaccine manufacturer being allowed to delay taking responsibility for years and years.

If vaccinating children were to become mandatory this would mean that tiny percentage of children would have been forcibly harmed by the state.

How is wiping out all the antibodies you body has made to every infection you have ever caught a ‘detox’? That’s how kids die from minor infections that are not measles after they have had measles.

Or maybe you’d rather your kid got polio or whooping cough or diphtheria twice because the first time was before measles and after having measles their body forgot they’d had it before and didn’t recognise it. I mean if it didn’t kill you the first time, might as well have a second go and hope you get lucky again the second time round.

Are the babies who developed measles in their teens yet @AnxiousOCDMum?

I do know. Doesn't make them less of an idiot
If you don't know that irl that's due to the company you keep

Yes, all fine thankfully.

It’s reckless not having your child vaccinated. These diseases are serious and can affect children for life or worse, others rely on herd immunity because they immunocompromised. A measles outbreak locally meant my friend’s son whose on chemo had to miss 5 months of school on doctor’s advice.

Usually lazy, stupid or both. Where I live it's mostly lazy, if someone came to their house and gave it, they wouldn't have an issue with it.

If you allow your unvaxxed kids near my children then they are my concern

Something I noticed recently after trips to Birmingham for hospital appointments for DD - there are no posters advertising the gelatine free MMR.

Where I live up near the Scotland/england border there are posters in the Drs surgery and hospitals really promoting that there is that option.

I'm 110% pro-vaxx. But what about bodily autonomy?

and in all honesty, we wouldn’t be here today if it was as deadly as they make out it is now

Do a few family trees and see how many mothers lost multiple children to measles and you'll see how deadly it is.

My Gr-Granny had 3 surviving children. That's how we're here today in my family.

She lost nine - 7 to measles and 2 to TB. Four of the children she lost to measles died within a week of each other.

Babies get some protection from their mother's immunity and breastfeeding, but it's not even close to a failsafe.

No, we recognise that everything carries a risk but the risk of not doing something can be greater than the risk of doing it, as in the case of vaccines.

What a load of BS. I am old enough that I have had whooping cough, German measles, measles, mumps, chickenpox, even scarlet fever. They were horrible.

My aunt had polio as a child. The first time she walked without callipers was down the aisle at her wedding.

Anyone who doesn’t vaccine their kids is incredibly foolhardy. None of this “let’s just support the body once you’ve caught it”. That didn’t work very well for eradicating polio or smallpox or TB.

I'd expect nothing less from an anti-vaxxer.

Our kids are keeping your kids safe.

Crikey, this is genuinely one of the most unintelligent views I’ve come across. So your only concern is yourself and your family but you’re relying on other people being vaccinated to protect you and your family? I would welcome your thoughts behind that reasoning!

You can’t even find just one source?

And if the world worked as you envision, far less children would make it to adulthood.

I have a good friend, smart, well educated, professional guy. Left wing. His baby niece received her vaccinations. It was later discovered that she had a number of serious health conditions. She lived for a few extremely difficult years before sadly passing away just before COVID.

He became convinced that vaccines were responsible for everything and developed a deep-seated mistrust of mainstream medical advice. The pandemic was obviously very difficult for him. He was never combative with it, but he would occasionally share anti-vax stuff on social media, or get into long debates.

It was heartbreaking, because you could see that it came from a place of genuine good intentions; he just didn't want anyone else to suffer the pain that his family had been through, and he couldn't fathom why people were dismissing him or treating him like a nutter. In his mind, he wasn't some terminally online weirdo who'd 'done his research' on YouTube; he was a guy it had actually happened to.

I'm so opposed to anti-vax, we agreed never to discuss it for the sake of our friendship. But I totally and completely understand how his experience put him on that path, and I don't think less of him for it.

The social media anti-vax movement though, I treat with total distain. I have a pretty wide international circle on my SM due to work, hobbies, friends and family. Across such a broad spectrum, it was only ever the thickest, most uneducated, unsuccessful people I knew peddling it, and they were all selling the exact same lies.

I don't believe in coincidences of that size.

Sorry but you don't understand a needle phobia.

I have a friend with a needle phobia, I have been with her to support her having blood tests.

The phlebotomists always say, "Oh you will be fine with me it won't hurt".

Then my friend sits in the chair, starts sweating, her blood sugar drops and suddenly she is cold and shivering.

She ends up covered in silver blankets with a fan on her. They won't let her leave until her BP is normal.

When she had to have an operation the hospital staff let me go with her as far as the anaesthetic room where she 'went under' sobbing in to my chest.

Agree! Kids without routine vaccinations shouldn't be allowed to join state schools.