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.

Absolutely not! That would diminish the role of parent even further into the hands of the state, which is all well and good whilst you agree with the vaccinations but it's a slippery slope.

My children are fully vaccinated and I am a huge advocate for vaccines but parents must be given a choice, education is key here especially in low uptake areas.

This was increasing before the pandemic as a PP said, but there are a number of studies showing increased risk following a covid infection, especially in kids.

If we’re honest many auto immune conditions and cancers are rising in children.. it’s a real concern. Arguably much bigger than measles.

Yes they are. Why either/or though?
Also a proportion of these increases are linked to viruses - another reason why it’s frustrating that some only refer to deaths in the acute phase of a virus as though long term impacts don’t matter.

Because I do think that there is a correlation between the increase in vaccines given to children and the rise of autoimmune conditions/cancers.

I do know some viruses can switch on auto immune disorders but I believe this is largely due to over use of antipyretics and dysfunctioning immune systems.

Ultimately I believe that we cannot cheat nature and in many ways it’s a trade off.

I appreciate everyone is just doing their best and as I’ve said many times, I totally get it as I was pro vaccine until I had reason to question things, but I do feel there is a lot of scare mongering too and it was the fear that led me to vaccinate initally - had I initially seen the data that I found later, I probably would have questioned things.

Are you suggesting that measles is mutating sufficiently that it is evading the vaccine? I don’t believe there’s any evidence of that. If there was, new vaccines would be being produced and rolled out.

Also, why do you think receiving the vaccine is more dangerous than contracting the wild virus?

I don’t think it is more dangerous for everyone. I accept for many it’s not - but it is for some (like my son). When I analysed the data, I decided it’s not worth the risk for us personally. And I do think some newer strains are mutations and I do worry that vaccine evading strains will become stronger than the wild ones, a bit like MRSA.

Maybe you can quote the data from your extensive research showing the evolution of strains that can escape the measles vaccine.

By what mechanism does the measles vaccine cause damage that the wild strain, if caught, would not have?

Why are you convinced that your child would have survived an infection with no disease injury or sequelae, if he was injured from the vaccine?

Listen, I’ve tried to be reasonable.

I can’t be bothered to keep defending myself and my choices, or to go and fetch the data I’ve looked at. I’ve broken down the data a PP shared, that’s all I’m doing.

But just to clarify he wasn’t injured from the MMR because we stopped before then.

OK. But you can’t expect anyone to take you seriously if you make wild evidence-free assertions.

And my question was vaccine-agnostic. Whatever your DS was vaccinated for, how can you be so certain that he would not have suffered worse harm from the disease?

You don’t have to answer, of course, but you set yourself up as an expert on this thread so you can’t expect not to be questioned.

Of course I’m not an expert 😂 and who can be sure of anything? You weigh up your risks based on the the information you have and make a decision. That’s what we did and we are comfortable with that. You don’t need to agree with us but you should accept that it’s our decision.

The measles virus can’t evade the vaccine. It needs too many mutations. Whenever they try to mutate the bits that the antibodies bind to it stops replicating and becomes really weak so it isn’t likely to be causing any outbreaks.

Also, you can’t just pick a random denominator to work out fatality rate. That’s not how it works.

You clearly havent weighed up the risks , as you only seem interested in death rates but none of the other seqaulae. Most of the information you quote clearly comes from tiktok or youtube antivaxxers .
Suggest you read this, it is 10 years old but it clearly lays out the diseases and the research laying adverse effects of vaccines.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK190024/

Then use the one in table provided. 0.2%.

You’re assuming I haven’t read this and where I’ve got my info from.

Me citing the statistics regarding the % of deaths is in direct response to the data provided by a PP.

I think at this point we are all going to have to just move on now. Exhausting.

A link that seems quite timely, a news article from just today. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98jng7j1llo

The level of distorted and dishonest thinking from @AnxiousOCDMum is frightening. Quoting only deaths from measles and ignoring the awful other consequences; pretending the thread is only about measles; ignoring the fact that while there can very occasionally be consequences from vaccines, there are more from not having them.

I think the line

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.

Is the most stupid line I have read on Mumsnet ever. That's the situation we were in before vaccines, where people just got sick and often (eg with smallpox, spanish flu) died in their millions and millions more were negatively impacted by disability or loss of their family members.

I wonder if @AnxiousOCDMumhas ever taken a walk around an old cemetery and read some headstones from before the vaccine age. I know it is almost a cliche now, but it is a heartbreakingly true one: so, so many children and babies buried in their infancy, sometimes more than one in the same family just a few weeks apart.

And it was normal. There was no debate to be had about ‘do we give our precious children this medicine that will keep them catching this disease and alive, or are we concerned about something nebulous?’ They caught it, and either lived, or not. That’s it.

I find the attitude of anti-vaxxers to be generally a quite entitled, Western-centric one. It is only in our affluent societies (by comparison) that we have the luxury of having such a asinine debate.

'asinine' is the right word.

When you have the very rare rare cases where there -is- a reaction to the vaccine or there are reasons not to give it, that's a different case. But the anti-vaxxers seem characterized by the poor thinking, the huge assumption that They Know Best based on a gaping lack of any real knowledge, and the deliberate conscious refusal to consider the reality of what a world with unchecked diseases is actually like.

Indeed. It is that group I am talking about.

I also dislike the continued slander of science/scientists/doctors/any university-educated professional by them.

I'm not an anti-vaxer. I still don't think it's any of my business what medical choices others make though. There needs to be more education around vaccinations and people need to be presented with all the information to make an informed decision, including the risks, otherwise we end up with a lot of people not trusting the government and/or going off and doing their own research which can be inaccurate.

I was in the military when I was younger, several decades ago now. One of the training exercises I participated in involved providing vaccination programmes to remote villages in Kenya. We couldn't get to all villages, so would set up in a central location. Local people would then send runners (literally) to distant villages and over the next couple of days, parents would appear with their children from all directions, having walked for hours and hours with multiple little ones, in order to get them vaccinated.

They understood the life saving importance. No need for internet 'research'. They had seen the effects of not vaccinating first hand and had a far better grasp of the concept of benefit:risk evaluation than any privileged anti-vaxxer.

I spend a lot of time in India as I have family there. India eliminated polio in 2011, after a huge house to house education campaign. Parents in remote villages walk and continue to walk hours to get vaccines. So do rural doctors. I used to see older polio victims in the past. These days, I rarely do.

Anti-vaxxers are often privileged Westerners like RFK.

It's not any of your business, or mine, if others' choices don't impact on you (or me).

You don't live on an island though. Everyone in society is part of that society. They benefit from education, streets, electricity and yes, health care systems. You can't just say that not taking a vaccine doesn't affect anyone else because the fact, the cold hard fact, is that it does.

If you don't want to live in a tribe, then your decision has no impact on anyone else. (Of course, you might not be able to get a vaccine then because they only exist because we had enough reserves in the societal system that people could put time and attention into developing them.)

This over individualism is both worrying and in a black way amusing. Anti-vaxxers think their choice only affects them. It doesn't; like almost everyone they are desperately dependent on society, as proven by the fact they're posting on the internet at all. The level of unawareness is ironic.

@Holluschickie I worked with a Nigerian woman who was paralyzed by polio. It ruined her life in a number of ways, not least that she couldn't marry and have children and was sidelined.

Apparently Bin Laden was tracked down partly using a fake polio vaccination team. The damage that will have done to people's trust in the vaccination program is incalcuable.

I already wrote about my MIL up thread. She had polio as a child because the vaccine only became available while she was in hospital a matter of weeks after she got it. She lost friends to it, and has spent her entire life paralysed in one leg as a result. She has never been able to do so many things that we all take for granted - day at the beach, swimming, cycling, a walk in the country, riding, football etc. Even going upstairs. She has severe osteoporosis from the lack of exercise, falls over and breaks bones very regularly. She missed about 2 years of her education in recovering from it and never caught up, so her life opportunities have been further restricted. My husband has had to care for her from being a very young child himself. (On a lighter note, this does mean he is very domesticated and does his share round the house!).

The impact of diseases is so much greater than death.