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)?

less people vaccinating that’s why it’s been re introduced

But yellow fever isn't a vaccination given routinely in this country - it's only needed for travelling to certain African and South America countries, and you have to pay privately for it. My husband and I also felt pretty rubbish after it, which we had been warned to expect as it is has a reputation for it (but obviously much better than getting yellow fever!). It's stories like yours that scare people unnecessarily and contribute to putting them off vaccinating their babies, when the vaccinations involved are totally different.

Vaccines are not 100% safe and probably never will be. In a handful of cases for every 1,000s or 10,000s or 100,000s etc of vaccines administered, there will be serious side effects to a vaccine. For the disease itself, there will be a far higher percentage with serious side effects of the disease.

Just because your friend was very “unlucky” (or had some genetic or other condition) that affected the virus, it won’t affect your probability of a side effect to the vaccine.

Doctors are probably working on that likelihood that vaccines are safe, but quite a lot of them also don’t understand risk and probability either!

@MidnightPatrol it could even indicate a shift to a less intelligent population.

It's quite frightening to think that people are favouring social media speculation and not vaccinating their child vs long standing scientifically proven and peer tested vaccines.

I do think we need to see a shift towards Australia where no vaccine means no public entry. Schools, nurseries etc... I also think that private venues should be permitted to restrict entry to those who have been vaccinated.

I cannot fathom WHY a parent would not vaccinate their child against measles. I would be interested to hear a parent say why they would not vaccinate their child with such a valid vaccination.

(we are NOT talking about covid vaccines here. we are talking about a historic proven vaccine)

Yes. It’s weird how it seems to have become the accepted narrative that the Covid vaccination was a bad thing. Sure there were some instances of harm caused. But Covid itself killed many, many people, and no doubt would have killed many more had it not been for the jab. Not to mention the many people who sustained damage to their organs from having Covid, or developed long Covid - I know someone who caught it right at the start and has been desperately ill ever since. No-one talks about any of that any more, just the (pretty rare) occurrences of reaction to the vaccine.

Covid, and people questioning whether vaccines are safe.

When I had my first child 20+ years ago I was against the mmr. I went looking for research to back up my claim. I’m not a scientist, I had a BSc in a stem subject but I still couldn’t find any credible research to back up my “ideas”. It was clear that all the claims about the mmr were made by crackpots.

Vaccine injury does occur, there no doubt about it but it’s incredibly rare and far less likely than the illnesses they prevent. I’d feel pretty fucking murderous right now if I had an infant that was too young to have the vaccine.

It’s the “sometimes” bit that’s problematic. Ten in one million is the number. Not people dying, just developing a clot. It has only been linked to that one vaccine type, which is why despite the tiny risk, young people are not routinely given the AZ vaccine.

You know what else causes clots in much higher numbers? Smoking, flying, pregnancy, birth control pills, poor diet, Covid. Yet somehow we target this one much lower risk thing to shape our views on vaccines.

Nothing is ever entirely without risk, anyone can have a rare reaction to any health intervention. My point was if the covid vaccine in general was very dangerous to young people, we would see far more people being vaccine injured.

I'm a scouser, lived here my whole life. I know numerous anti vaxxers. What I am about to say is anecdotal, from my own experience, I am not saying this applies to all people who choose not to vaccinate their children.

The parents I know who are anti vaxxers all smoke weed, use a lot of social media to support their claims about the dangers of vaccines, feed their children a diet almost exclusively of UPFs. They don't use sun screen on their children and wont give them vaccinations because they don't know what's in them! Yet not knowing what's in the UPFs and their skunk doesn't bother them.

Their is a huge distrust of government in Liverpool going back decades. Stopping unvaccinated children from going to school and nursery as a sole measure will only feed that distrust. Also, it will mean that these vulnerable children who are being raised on fast food, in homes where pot smoking is rife will become further entrenched into this mindset of distrust of the government and authority.

There needs to be more education in this area. Transparency of what is in the vaccines and how they work. Detailed information on the dangers of measles, mumps, etc. Start it in antenatal classes. In areas with this way of thinking it can't just be assumed that everyone will vaccinate as the norm. People need to be educated and encouraged.

For clarity, my children are fully vaccinated and I do not share this mindset regarding vaccinations, however I am surrounded by it.

Edited to correct a spelling mistake.

they also don’t get their “ child payments “ but like our child benefit if they don’t vaccinate well that used to be the case.

I just can’t phantom it as a patent not protecting them from harm. Like how do you ever get over the fact that of your child died from measles it was your choice not to protect them

@SheepInMyShed Even if ridiculed over the covid vaccine, decent parents should still be capable of understanding that vaccinating against measles is a tried & trust process.

I had 4 covid vaccines, bad reactions to two of them (one requiring an ambulance) and I now won't have any more covid vaccines, with my GP's agreement. But just because one thing clearly causes me as an individual, a problem, that doesn't mean I would reject anything else or for anyone else.

None of those parents will want their lids at home all day and cutting benefits like Australia I’m sure they will all change their mind
when they can’t afford their weed

Their children often have low school attendance anyway. They don't care about having them home, they just give them a screen.

I'm not saying that cutting benefits and stopping school admission won't work for a few parents, bit I think it could have the opposite effect and cause more distrust.

As I said, I absolutely don't share this view, but unless you know these people and understand how entrenched the distrust of authority is, you cannot even start to try to get your head around their mindset. It's crazy.

Your cohort of parents are the only ones I have sympathy for when it comes to vaccines. This was at the height of the Andrew Wakefield stuff. My sister was having to decide whether to give my nephew the MMR vaccine at the time and she was terrified. She has no science background and wouldn’t know where to find a double blind study if her life depended on it. She previously had no qualms about vaccination, my nephew had all of them up to that point, but she really struggled. The reports were so amplified, it became the only talking point for months then reduced to only a dull roar. It was the first time I had noticed news outlets going down the “balanced” route with interviews, for every properly qualified person saying it was fine, they had some kook saying it wasn’t. In the end I was able to convince her that even if it were true, a child with autism was preferable to a child who had died of measles. She did delay it, but he still got the vaccine.

That’s fine but prison is where they belong if those children are injured or killed by a preventable disease

see I have a diff mindset here because in our area it’s not those types who don’t vaccinate. It’s the alternative free healing mums

I remember when I had pfb and the amount of conflicting advice was insane
(I wasn't on the net then but you still get an enormous amount of info as a first time parent)
I remember some lady scaring the fuck out of me at some baby group about how vaccines where poison
I asked my father-hes the most intelligent and 'a spade is a spade' type of person if it 'was worth getting her done'
'Yes,just get her done-they don't give snake oil out on the nhs-its very important she gets done'
She was done within the fortnight (I got my mother to take her in due to a needle phobia)
The rest of my babies followed in her footsteps
Anyone who doesn't get their child done (medical exempt is understandable) is a fool

Last year just before Xmas my daughter who is entitled to the flu jab due to complex health was booked in for her flu jab ( can’t have nasal )
she caught influenza A 4 days before it was due and was sooo poorly. She was admitted in to the hospital for a week and discharged in to isolation for a further 3 weeks because it effected her bone marrow so badly. I remember the guilt that the jab wasn’t 5 days earlier and how guilt ridden I was.

Unfortunately several members of my (extended) family are antivaxx. They started out being anti MMR jabs because 'they cause autism'. Then they moved onto COVID, which was apparently a conspiracy by Big Pharma and contravened the Magna Carter (which clearly none of them have any understanding of)!

They're now back on the MMR rants..oh and flat earth theories, and the bloody Freeman of the Land bollox. I've unfollowed about six or seven now, because I kept getting into SM arguments with them before realising you can't argue with stupid!

To be clear these are all cousins and aunties and their conspiracy theories all started being posted at the same time so they'd clearly had some kind of deep discussions about them. Two of them even posted on support of David Icke's theory about the royal family being lizards!

Sorry, I realise I haven't made much of a point. I suppose my point is that ignorance and distrust can be catching I guess. I mean all of my dad's side (except him) are so caught up in various conspiracy theories - I've tried to explain to them that several studies have proved the MMR autism thing is a myth, that the COVID being created by Big Pharma is likewise (I do genuinely know this to be true, I know a senior lawyer who was working for Pfizer before and all through COVID and there's no way he would do anything like that!) and tried to explain in layman's terms how the Magna Carter and Freeman of the land won't hold up in court (I'm a lawyer!)

Sorry, went off on a massive tangent there 🤣 think I'm just a bit gutted at losing an entire half of my extended family (and that they're putting their own and other people's kids at risk for the sake of not properly lookingn into it - rather than just deciding not to vaccinate any of them!

I think you have nailed it with the mention of Liverpool culturally distrusting the government. I live in a similar northern city and it's the same, the government (are perceived to) care only about the Southerners so why should we fall in line with what they say? Things like the anti-Brexiteer rhetoric with a side order of head tilting "well they're thickos, they don't understand" have not helped. Covid was an absolute joke, the way some cities (Leicester, Manchester) were treated in the lockdowns was deplorable.

I vehemently disagree with stopping child benefit payments for families who are anti-vax, what's that got to do with the price of fish? I get that the "carrot" (encouragement and support to recognise that this could save your child's life) approach isnt working... as a mum of several youngish children I haven't ever seen any simple marcomms around vaccines for kids, just the very dry, NHS-y leaflets. We need to try carrot first - paid time off to take your child to the appointment, a £30 supermarket voucher for completing the course in areas where uptake is particularly low - before we move on to "stick".

The idea of stopping the child accessing education because they don't have a vaccine is absolutely abhorrent to me. No no no.

I think this shows that the approach to vaccinations needs to be different depending on the area, demographic, take up rate. A one size fits all approach is not working.

I don't usually comment on threads in such detail, but just wanted to give my experiences as I live in the city being discussed in the OP :)

My late grandmother used to tell me that the fear parents had during summer that their children would catch Polio. Absolutely alien to use today.

I don't think people should have a choice about vaccines. Make it simple no education without a vaccine, no child benefit without a vaccine.

People don't vaccinate for many reasons:

Wakefield/other misinformation
They are working and need time off

They can't get a GP appointment

Transient (having to move/temporary homes) so don't register with a GP

They have morning sickness with baby two so child one gets theirs late.

Egg allergy. (If severe)

Medical reasons

Don't realise how important it is as they are too young to remember or don't know anyone old enough who remembers and passes it on.

It's scarier to actively do something (vaccinate) and it harms your kid than to not vaccinate it just happens, but it might not because noone I know has. (Not understanding risk)

Life's are too difficult to get round to it (don't realise how important it is)

"Stopping unvaccinated children from going to school and nursery as a sole measure will only feed that distrust. Also, it will mean that these vulnerable children who are being raised on fast food, in homes where pot smoking is rife will become further entrenched into this mindset of distrust of the government and authority."

I agree with this. If we exclude children that are not vaccinated then we marginalise this group and they will become more entrenched in their views. Plus children will be home-educated and only exposed to the same views which make it more likely that it is maintained down generations. I think this is true whatever the reasons behind not vaccinating but more so if it's a distrust or religious reasons. I can understand why people want to exclude, but I fear it could do more harm than good.

So what happens to all these unvaccinated children who aren’t allowed to attend nursery or school? Do we expect their parents to home educate them? How do we think that’ll go, given the parents are most likely to be poorly educated themselves?

I completely understand the thinking but in reality it cannot be implemented.

People dont reliese how important it is?! Maybe we should wheel out the iron lungs - they’d soon remember!
If measles is making a come back, it won’t be long till polio is back.