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)?

To anyone who is anti vax, I ask this. If there was an outbreak of measles on your doorstep, children were dying or being injured by contracting it, and the local GP was offering a vaccine, would you be in the queue to get it? If your answer is yes, then why wait? If your answer is no, what would you do to keep your child safe and why don’t you do that every day?

I find it funny that my son was a month late having his MMR booster and his health visitor threatened to call social services on me for it, yet all these people haven’t vaccinated their kids (im not on about those who geuniely cant have it for medical reasons) have never been reported to social services. I think they ought to be.
Now my son has a low immune system thanks to type one diabetes even though hes vaccinated he can still potentially catch measles which is life threatening to him - thanks to the selfish CFs who have been spent years spreading misinformation.
something needs to be done either social services get involved or these children are banned from
attending state schools. The risk they are putting certain families under is unforgivable.

Hmmm. I was fairly blase about vaccines until a friend of mine had a startling (and life changing) reaction to one - watching what her and her family have gone through to be 'believed'... The medical gaslighting was unbelievable. She was told it must have been something she'd eaten, must be in her head, must have been caused by (insert random straw clutching here).

Finally, after a number of years plus legal intervention she has medical evidence the vaccine was the cause of her injury.

It's made me think very differently about accepting a vaccine like covid etc. There needs to be more open honesty from the medical community about the side effects and how they are taken seriously. Covid destroyed public perception and there has been very little done to reassure people.

That said, the pros still outweigh the cons for measles, meningitis and so on.

Same as those who said hospitals weren’t overrun by covid cases when each hospital has records of each admission. Did they really think that they were collaborating in falsifying records !

I struggle to understand anti vaxxers, just don't make much sense.

I struggle being part of the home ed community as I’m the only one who vaccinates and on many occasions I’ve been asked to leave groups due to my child apparently ‘shedding’. I think if there was a law to say you cant access nursery or school unless vaccinated these home ed pockets of unvaccinated children would just increase massively

Honestly I would rather that than my child with a low immune system catching measles from an unvaccinated child attending school. At least we can avoid them.

Because “autism”. Thats all they ever seem to go on about. They lack the intelligence to understand autism is something one is born with.

I understand this from the lay person's perspective, but honestly your child's immune system will deal with it quite happily and as you say, the immune system is constantly being challenged on a daily basis, something I think people are largely unaware of, unless they become immune-compromised.

Please get your kids vaccinated - measles is awful (had it myself at 5 long before vaccines were available) and can result in deafness and worse. It also results in 'immune amnesia' after having it - that is, your child's immune system will forget the diseases it's already encountered and it'll have to 're-learn'. So say your child had chicken pox 6 months before measles, their immune system would 'forget' that and your child could catch chicken pox again as they'd have no immunity.

It’s also so insulting to anyone with autism to suggest that you’d rather risk your child dying than to risk them being affected by autism.

I am not anti-vaccines, however since I am bi more sceptical about them. I support vaccines - I do question if too many of them are being administered at once and whether the age we give them is appropriate. I had measles as a baby - so I understand risk of certain diseases.

Neither of my children would have been vaccinated if the nurse in our GP practice wasn't so brilliant. DS had an adverse reaction to one the rounds of imms, and ended up admitted to hospital quite poorly from them. On discharge, the hospital advised me to book him into the GP to discuss a plan going forwards. He was very dismissive, and basically said I had the choice to manage the symptoms afterwards, or not have him immunised. I was seeing the nurse about another issue shortly afterwards, who was NOT happy. I don't know what went on in the background, but after that, DS went as a day patient to the hospital and had them separately on a revised schedule that was put together for him. He was extremely late in getting them all, which has had a knock on effect to when he is due boosters etc, but it meant he was vaccinated.

I traced the reaction to the result of a gene mutation which I had him screened for privately (not just because of this reaction, it impacts him in a lot of ways). When I had DD, I had her screened as well, she also has it, so was put on the same schedule as DS was on from the start.

If it hadn't been for that nurse, neither of my children would be vaccinated, as I was worried about how ill the vaccines made them. I'm very grateful to her for whatever she did and whoever she spoke to for those arrangements to be made, as it didn't even occur to me that this would be an option. I can understand people opting out if their child reacts on he way mine did, and they don't have the correct support.

To April 2024, there’s also been 7 million deaths from Covid. There would have been many more without the vaccine.

All vaccines are tested scientifically and are safe prior to their release. There’s standards are high. However, vaccines are not 100% safe and there are side effects, but the benefits outweigh the risks.

People don’t understand probability and risk anyway which makes the science tricky. It could be explained in a much better way.

People also don’t understand about the probability of things happening at the same time or patterns. For instance, the probability of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 all coming up on the lottery is the same as any other set of numbers but people generally would spread their numbers out. It would seem too unlikely for those numbers to come up together for most people. Things do happen to people that are unassociated. They are people every day that have blood clot, heart attacks, strokes etc. There are children diagnosed with specific conditions or falling ill everyday Some of these people will have invariably had a vaccine a few days or a week prior to this. It’s easy to “link” events when there’s no association. Most humans want an answer of why this happened and if a vaccine occurred a short while prior to that - for some people it’s easy to accept that rather than it being random or due to genetics or lifestyle etc.

There have been a few “scares” with different contraceptive pills in the past such as one type doubling the risk. Everybody rushed to the GP to change brand/type but it was doubling the risk from 1 in 10,000 to 2 in 10,000. So statistically significant in the sizeable population but a small absolute increase. It was a much more sensational newspaper article to say it doubled the risk. Not sure the even stated the underlying risk.

Quite a few do not take up the vaccine due to the effort of getting an appointment, changing an appointment, getting time off work, travel cost and other pressures on time. This is particularly the case in bigger cities and populations living in most deprived areas like Liverpool. However, I know from my area of work, it’s really tricky to increase uptake. Much is related to apathy, and as other posters have said likely associated with lack of knowledge associated with the severity of these diseases. Some people also have the attitude “it won’t happen to me / to my child” and think it’s more effort (attending an appointment) than they can be bothered. There are many anti-vax people too, and probably with most of them, their mind is probably made up and unfortunately whatever someone says (even if it’s a death of a child) won’t change their minds.

It is a huge challenge increasing uptake. People are trying out there to do that but not having much success. It doesn’t help that NHS England is going.

Why do you think the age we give them isn't appropriate?

I absolutely think non vaccinated kids should not be allowed in nurseries, play groups and schools. Sadly, we can't exclude them from the rest of everyday life (although tbh, and i know human right and it would be going down a slippery slope - but I wish certain vaccines were compulsory). If I found out a child was unvaccinated, I'd be doing everything in my power to keep my kids away from them!

We were classed as measles free in 2016/2017 what has changed since then that it's suddenly been reintroduced

i split them all for my dc as was worried it was too much at once and my gp said its becoming a popular choice which they have no issue with as they just want babies and children vaccinated one way or another

It’s just as well there is ample scientific data to answer your question 👍

Obviously on about kids aren't vaxxed because of their parents stupid choices, not the ones who can't because of medical issues. They're the ones we need to be protecting

The vaccine causing sometimes fatal blood clots in young healthy people isn’t a conspiracy, the makers of Astra Zeneca admitted it. In court,
not on TikTok.

I was lucky not to catch any bad diseases throughout my childhood because my parents were against vaccination. As an adult I had to travel and received a galaxy of vaccinations without problems. Anti-vax propaganda and misinformation should be banned. Of course there are very exceptional cases but mass vaccination is highly desirable.

I've reacted to every vaccination I've ever had, but am of an age before some of the childhood vaccinations, but had all those availableas and when. Did I benefit from some help from maternal antibodies as I caught measles, mumps before starting school, possibly and that'ssomething that will disappear. Did the few benefit from the herd immunity of the majority of us, but now that's significantly decreased, the diseases will do their worst? I've seen Post Polio and Post Measles Syndrome, had to nurse DH from an horrendous bout of Chickenpox and see a friend nearly die of Chickenpox as his parents had never had him vaccinated and kept him at home as a child to stop him being sick! All that happened was he caught the infection from his children and had to be hospitalised as a result. These diseases don't just target children, so vaccinations are a much longer tailed issue. Education is key.

People have been refusing the vaccine...

A rise in anti vax influencers on social media which saw vaccine rates dropping, coupled with an outbreak in Europe. We were again measles free in 2021, when hardly anyone was travelling anywhere. When we achieve measles free status, the only thing that will keep us that way is high vaccine rates.

Unfortunately Covid itself has also caused heart problems in previously healthy people.