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.

I think not vaccinating your children for easily preventable diseases is affectively child abuse and parents should be punished accordingly.

Do what you want with your own health but not vaccinating your kids is neglect and should be treated as such

I'd be in favour of prosecuting parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated full stop. They are putting others in danger.

Yes but they are stupid and shouldn't be listened to.

This is the thing; anti-vaxxers always say they've 'done their own research' (meaning they've watched some YouTube videos). They don't even have the concept of what research actually entails. Scientific and medical research is an academic field, it takes study and training and a level of intelligence, critical faculties and ability to question and analyse that anti-vaxxers don't possess in the first place. They don't even understand what they're claiming when they say they've done their research; they are ignorant of what it is. They're very impressed by charismatic influencers who sound like they know what they're talking about (if you don't know much yourself to start with).

But malicious and destabilising disinformation is on the rise and this kind of problem will get worse. Anti-vaxxers are very worried about the motives of our own government, without ever realising that there are real hostile foreign governments in whose interests it really is to harm us. Russian bots influenced Brexit, they've fuelled the rise of Trump and they leapt on the pandemic as a golden opportunity to spread misleading and dangerous propaganda. There really are dangerous and coordinated forces working to spread harm in the world, but anti-vaxxers are inadvertently the useful idiots assisting them rather than the enlightened truth-tellers they think they are.

I know a surprising number of people who haven’t vaccinated their children. None are immigrants or poorly educated. Off the top of my head:

• a lawyer who thought her kids immune system wasn’t developed enough at 8 weeks for vaccinations so the child at 5 hadn’t had any
• another lawyer whose wife was vehemently anti vax whose kid nearly died of measles
• a very prosperous celeb couple who hadn’t vaccinated any of their 3 children all of primary school age because they also thought 8 weeks was too young and then never got round to it
• a new age person who also would bath her children in tap water (really!) and used only bottled water. Her child was about 7

it is appalling irresponsible IMHO

Well then they need to educate themselves.

It’s just so incredibly selfish.

They're scared and they're wrong.

As a child I was ill for weeks with measles and German measles, in primary school most of my class were off with chicken pox, a man in our street lived his whole adult life in an iron lung machine thanks to catching polio. If you don't vaccinate your DC you are an idiot, a selfish idiot

There was a measles outbreak recently and a reporter went out to interview people on the street. She found a woman who hadn't vaccinated her children " How will you feel if your children catch measles?" "Oh I'm not worried, if they catch it I'll just get them vaccinated". The reporter just let that hang there for a moment or 2 as the woman's brain caught up with what she'd just said . The woman's face fell "Oh , um...." Yes its too late then isn't it.

They are highly likely living off the net contributor tax payer, and expect others to "care about their feelies" when it comes to feeding and housing their children. There should be some social contract in play when it comes to protecting herd immunity.

Totally agree, there far too much misinformation and scaremongering online (often by people trying to sell a "natural" product 🙄) The level of paranoia and distrust of science is alarming.

I was very poorly with measles as a baby and have hearing loss as a result, vaccines really a victim of their own success in some ways

On the one hand, yes. On the other, just imagine the generational stupidity of children been home schooled by these morons. It already seems like evolution is being reversed, probably best not to speed it up.

Children who aren’t vaccinated shouldn’t be allowed to use NHS services, or public schools/transport etc.
If you are willing to risk spreading illnesses that can kill, take the consequences.

If your child dies of a preventable disease because you didn't vaccinate I think you should be prosecuted for manslaughter.

Then they’re idiots.

This has been debunked and Wakefield discredited decades ago.

There really is no excuse for this total lack of consideration

I have not spoken to a single person IRL that has admitted to not vaccinating themselves or their children. Not once. Given 5/6 people are fully vaccinated, it's absolutely not true that people don't care. The vast majority realise how important it is.

Why shouldn't they? By your logic about half of society would be excluded for one reason or another.

Yes they are if it’s impacting on the health of others!

others medical choices are none of your concern

@Ineedcoffee2021 You're wrong. They affect everyone.

Im glad we all have a choice as to what we put in our bodies

@Ineedcoffee2021 but we don't have a choice about contracting a preventable illness from an unvaccinated person.

My only concern is me and my family honestly. I wont do stuff to my body or my kids body for anyone elses feelies

@Ineedcoffee2021 It isn't about "feelies". It's is about preventing the spread of disease. You need educating about herd immunity. I won't put a link on here because I know you won't read it because you don't want to be educated.

I assume you never take your DC to see a doctor because you know better than a person who has spent several years to qualify as a doctor.

Did you fail biology GCSE?

No, they affect others such as babies too young to get the vaccine and the immunocompromised. Vaccination programs often rely on heard immunity to stop nasty diseases such as measles.

Lets not get into blaming immigrants for yet another thing - our vaccine take up for both MMR1 and MMR2 coverage rates are below the 95% target recommended by the World Health Organization.

But I do kind of agree with you - though if we are requiring vaccination of immigrants we should also require it of our own people, unless there are clear medical reasons for not doing it. There is an alternative to forcing people to do so. Make vaccination contingent on access to things. Your free chilcare is only available if your child is vaccinated. Allow venues and services to say that they require evidence of vaccination before children can attend. Then people are free to make their own choices, but at the same time they cannot complain if others choices to protect the group mean that they are denied things.

Because vaccinating your child against preventable diseases is a basic responsibility of parenting. Similarly to providing them with clothes to protect them for the cold. If a parent was an anti-freezer and didn't provide a coat in the winter because of some debunked 80s study that linked being too warm with autism, social services would be involved.

Yes, a GP I worked with, worked in Germany in the late 1990s.
A couple of his patients belonged to a religious cult which was rampantly anti- vaxx.
Their daughter ( brought up in the cult), became pregnant and caught Rubella in pregnancy and with the cluster of other unvaccinated people, including the daughter's husband, the child was born with profound and life- limiting disabilities.
The daughter and son-in-law left the cult but not before their child died of complications due to their disabilities ( flu).
So the decisions of the parents had direct and devastating consequences on their own grandchild.
This is a good example of how Herd immunity works and can be extrapolated to the greater population.

I’m always confused by people not giving vaccines as big pharma and what’s in it
if your child then gets sick and ends up in ICU, are you refusing all medication there too? Or is it different as it’s not labelled a vaccine?

I haven’t had my MMR, I couldn’t have it due to an egg allergy as a child. Now I’m immunocompromised and can’t have it because of that, I need the herd protection