Parents choosing not to vaccinate their children

[MidnightPatrol]

A child has died in Liverpool as part of an outbreak of measles. 17 are currently hospitalised with it in the city, as part of a wider outbreak.

73% of children in Liverpool are vaccinated against measles - vs an England average of 84%.

A rate of 95% immunisation is required for herd immunity. No child in the UK needs to be getting measles - we can vaccinate against it.

In Liverpool, there is a risk of a widespread measles outbreak due to this low rate of immunisation - it is very infectious, so the risk to the population is significant.

If you are a parent that doesn’t get your child vaccinated, why?

Should the government not be using further incentives to encourage people to take up vaccination - are a third of Liverpudlians really against vaccinating their children?

Should non-vaccinated children be limited from accessing nursery or schools (as in other countries)?

It not unheard for babies not be registered at the GP or they haven't had any contact with health visitor. I remember a case where a baby hadn't been register at the GP for two years - I assume the GP received the notification the lady had given birth. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a safety net for vulnerable families. Issues are often come to light when the children start school etc

Here’s where this whole thing becomes ridiculous. Nowhere in the (now wholly debunked) Wakefield study, was it suggested single vaccines would eliminate the (non existent) risk of autism. This little nugget was given to the media by (shock horror) a doctor from a private clinic who just happened to offer vaccines at £100 a pop.

I have no time for anti-vaxxers, and agree that unvaccinated children should not be allowed in schools, nor unvaccinated people of any age in hospitals. The selfishness and stupidity is astounding.

Unvaccinated people are not just in danger themselves: they are disease vectors and the more disease vectors you have, the more a disease can circulate. The more it circulates the higher the risk of mutation which would render the vaccine less effective, possibly useless, so the vaccinated are then also compromised.

And let's not forget that there are people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons or who have lost their previous immunities due to medical reasons or for whom the vaccine hasn't taken (because no vaccine has 100% efficacy).
The more the disease circulates amongst the willfully unvaccinated, the more likely it is they will infect one of these people, too.This is the selfishness inherent in vaccine resistance and vaccine refusal.

Take your choice not to be vaccinated but accept that a side effect of this choice will be restrictions placed on your ability to access specific venues and events.

Not unheard of, but not common enough that it could account for a 15% reduction in people vaccinating their children.

Why quotation marks around expert? Do you think they’re making it up?

@BoredZelda my child is fully vaccinated.

That doesn't prevent me appreciating there are barriers in the way of other people accessing vaccinations for their children. Mostly boring, but surmountable ones.

Yes and they don’t give a crap if your child can’t have the vaccinations due to severe reactions! The control the government have in Australia is scary! My child nearly died after his 12 months vaccs and stopped being able to speak within hours of having them. He has autism but the autism symptoms were made way worse by the vaccines. The specialists we saw know that children with autism have a thinner brain barrier that protects the brain from damage and makes them more susceptible to side effects but in Australia it’s all or nothing. They also give vaccines to babies just because a small group of ethnic minorities are prone to but they don’t want to just give the small group the vaccines so everyone suffers.

Of course we didn’t “all survive it” 🤯

Having actually nursed a child who died of measels and been the one to take them to the mortuary many years ago.
My opinion on this is pretty black and white.
This illness ( and many others) can maim and kill. It is also PREVENTABLE with immunisation.
There is little you can say to a parent when a child dies due to something they had the opportunity to prevent. It's not like a tragic accident, they sadly happen with children, it's not like cancer, cruel but again nothing a parent could have done to prevent.
With measles they had the option to give the child protection provided free by the government but declined so yes it is the parents fault that child died. And boy is that guilt hard to live with!

I would back rules that children should be fully immunised to attend nurseries and schools in this country.
We have many fools in this country who thinks doing research is a quick Google looking at often foreign conspiracy sites, tic toc etc.
They have no idea what peer reviewed scientific based research is or how to access it and understand it.
The NHS does have information available which is readerble and easily understood though.

The spectrum of antivaxx opinion does feel like a social contagion. Ironically.

I had measles as a baby, a few weeks before I was due to have the vaccination. So it’s always scary when posters talk about how much more ‘comfortable’ they would ‘feel’ if vaccinations were delayed, by an unnamed number of weeks or months, according to zero evidence. So that more children could die?

It perhaps helps that I grew up on a steady diet of Victorian and early 20th century children’s books. It is truly incredible how many of those books involve children being ill, dying and a constant drumbeat of tension about ‘wasted time’. Childhood disease was simply known to be likely to take anything up to ALL your children. At least half was quite normal. And they spent weeks and months being ill.

I do listen to experts, because if it were up to me I would happily have given ds every jab in the book before leaving hospital after his birth. I’ve paid to have vaccinations that weren’t on the schedule as well. Experts have determined that it is probably better to do the schedule of vaccinations for babies relatively late, when they’re a few weeks or months old, so I bowed to their well-considered recommendations.

Measles is one of the contagious human diseases,it has been around decades and we all survived

It seems the ant vaxxers are comparing measles with covid. Covid is imo responsible for the explosion of anti Vax sentiment. Partly because it transpired that most people didn't get too ill when they got covid and partly because, unlike some vaccines, the covid Vax didn't stop you getting it, just made it milder.

Measles is very different from other common childhood illnesses like chicken pox. Serious complications in chicken pox are rare. Measles makes most children quite poorly and even without hospitalisation can leave long term damage such as deafness. So those of us who had it before vaccination was available, we didn't "all survive" it unharmed.

I haven’t read all the posts just the first page but @SheepInMyShed has summed it up pretty nicely.

Im from & in Liverpool & no one I know is anti vax. From my kids in school when they’ve had vaccinations there’s one or two kids in each class who hasn’t been sent for their vax.
I’m very pro vax and the kids had their Covid jabs when they first came out.

However I do think trust is a major issue for communities left behind (for various reasons) & the vaccines appear to “come from the government” and after 15 years of austerity and our city being stripped off funding (stripped more harshly than more affluent places- it’s in the top spot for council funding being taken whilst also being in the top five of places of deprivation) it’s obvious why families don’t trust what “the government” tell them.

So trust needs to be rebuilt, education needs improving, plenty of opportunities provided to get vax and maybe even yes people need motivating; no vax no school. However, in practice this will mean kids will be missing vax and school. Just like many of the care home staff walked when they were forced into covid jabs.

Fair enough, I’m sure your super secret legal case is exactly as you’ve described. 👍

I believe you're likely correct. However, many vulnerable families chose not to vaccinate their children, even when they brought them to the GP. Negative experiences with public services or difficult life circumstances can heighten a person's vulnerability to misinformation and propaganda.

"We" certainly did not all survive it!
MIL recalled children dying in the 30s and 40s when she was a child. A distant cousin died of measles and the extended family went to see the child laid out (think that might have been s Catholic thing?) Anyway, another small cousin was instructed to kiss the dead child. That child contracted measles by doing this, and also died! Horrific.

Someone always brings up the vitamin A crap I've noticed on SM. So many thick twats kids ended up in hospital with vitamin A toxicity not so long back. 🙄

and even if your child gets something you can't prevent such as cancer as my son did last year and thankfully, he is doing well now. As a parent, you still somehow find a way to blame yourself and be convinced that you could've prevented it or got them diagnosed earlier.

I just can't fathom putting my child in danger when it's preventable. I'd never forgive myself. As you said, it's bad enough when it isn't preventable.

Everyone should have free choice. If you & your kids are vaccinated then it’s no skin off your nose, why get in such a knicker twist about something that absolutely won’t affect you - because you are vaccinated.

Exactly. I mentioned to the nurse that my DS had cried his eyes out at his previous vaccine appointment and it was very difficult to console him. She offered to give the vaccines over separate appointments. If it’s possible to do it for a relatively trivial reason, I’m sure parents can ask if they’re worried about overloading.

It does effect them, we need vaccination along with herd immunity, it also protects the small number of people who genuinely cannot have certain vaccines, and those going through chemo, radiotherapy etc.

I appreciate there are perceived barriers, and in some extreme cases, actual barriers, but when the list of those things just don’t add up it’s open to question how valid they are.

I’m sure if you ask someone who just never bothered, couldn’t be arsed, or hadn’t done it for some other reason they didn’t want to admit, blaming poor GP access sounds plausible on the face of it.

What is true, is there are barriers to healthcare generally for some groups of people. Lack of trust, lack of local provision etc. This is primarily the case for non white populations, but can also impact on some low income families. Lack of vaccinations in those areas is only a very small part of a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed.

I feel outraged and heartbroken at the same time

children walking to get water killed in Gaza and people won’t take this “no risk” privilege and are risking others health

so blo**dy outraged!

Because not everyone can be vaccinated and the last thing children on chemo need is children with measles who wouldn’t have it if they had been vaccinated

Anti vaxxers are idiots. I’m usually more articulate than this, but frankly it’s all that needs to be said. There is no point in arguing with them, because they are too stupid to understand reasonable points or science.

@skippydoodle the absolute libertarian position doesn’t work (imo it hardly ever does) because there is a percentage of children who genuinely can’t be vaccinated and must rely on the extraordinary enterprise that is public health vaccination. It’s also not really ok that an increasing number of parents are risking long periods of suffering and ill health on other people (their children).