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)?

As someone who had a child who was immunocompromised after chemotherapy, I feel a bit like ''oh well''.

At least those children wouldn't be around children like my child at school.

Exactly this. Sounds mean, but i have little sympathy.

@Jeska7 I don't disagree with your points. It wasn't the chances of a side effect that worried me - it was the complete shutdown of medical professionals to even begin to admit the vaccine was at fault. It took two years - and use of the extremely expensive legal system - before it was admitted. If you are one of the very unlucky ones, this should be quickly identified and treated as such.

Do they realise that adults can die of it too? My DH's grandma lost a 21 year old son to measles.

"Sounds mean"? Education is a human right. Depriving a child of it due to their parents' poor decisions surely isn't the way to go unless ALL OTHER AVENUES have been exhausted to get us back to the 95% vaccine uptake required for herd immunity. I've mentioned a couple of more conservative ones, but we also need to make appointments more accessible - visiting at home in the evenings if necessary - and offer spread out jabs / seperate vaccines for those who need or want them. The cost will be at least 3 x higher than bish-bash-boshing it out at a standard GP clinic in the form of 2 x MMRs, but SURELY these avenues need exhausting before leaving children - of likely poorly educated parents - out in the cold to form an echo chamber of misinformation.

I think I would be comfortable with if they gave them at older age.

I have sympathy to the extent I understand some people of Liverpool distrust the government due to the past and for good reason but my sympathy ends when we start talking about the safety of other children.

It was probably the yellow fever vaccine specifically that caused the illness. That vaccine is known for sometimes having nasty side effects and is not recommended unless you live in or are travelling to somewhere where yellow fever is prevalent. The effects of yellow fever itself are of course much worse than those of the vaccine!

What age?

I'd be more uncomfortable personally. It would mean them staying vulnerable for longer.

It great that you had a support GP.

As a country we are regressing.

Our standards are slipping.

Either there is very very drastic action which is taken to change course or we face chaos.

What is the point of spending tens of billions on the NHS, billions on vaccines and public health prevention and then giving people the choice to behave stupidly and endanger their children's health and spread diseases across society?

The idiocy of some of the people who want to give some lazy/stupid parents the ability to spread diseases across society is beyond me.

Societal collapse doesn't happen overnight but over decades and we can see it happening now.

You're right! We fight off pathogens all the time. All day, every day, and we do it really well. There are just some we need help with. Bundling the vaccinations isn't a problem, it helps with uptake if we have fewer appointments to manage and it's not a problem for the body.

We need to start teaching critical thinking and how to decipher research papers and what makes a reliable study as a core part of the curriculum. It's downright ignorance behind the anti-vax movement combined with naivety - big wellness far outstrips big pharma when it comes to profits but they'll churn out the usual nonsense over money being put before health by the vaccine producers then feed their child hundreds of pounds of supplements and alternative remedies.

Polio is back in some parts of the world. We were SO close to eradication but a few leaders believed a conspiracy theory that research into the polio vaccine had unleashed HIV on humans, and stopped vaccination programs.

You don’t think research will have been done as to the optimal time to protect safely while not leaving a child vulnerable any longer than necessary?

Vaccines are life-saving, however, we do not have enough data on the long effect of vaccines as it is still in its infancy.

Are you smoking crack?

That's just not true!

Vaccines in their infancy? What on earth do you mean?
Plus can you explain any mechanism by which a vaccine which clears the body quickly after priming a natural bodily process could have any long term effects?

Wtf???

In my view, vaccines have not been around long enough to know the implications. I am going to off on a slightly different tangent but there is some evidence that younger people are actually less healthier than previous generation and some diseases are increasing developing in younger adults. For example, Colon cancer. I read that this may be linked to microplastics in the environment.

Vaccines have been around ages.
There are lots of reasons young people may be less healthy now and none are connected to the vaccination schedule.
Care to answer my earlier question about what mechanism you see leading to later vaccine issues?

Many of the vaccines available today was not around when I was a baby, which don't have data over long term effects.

Which vaccinations are those?

How would these long term effects manifest? What is the mechanism? Vaccines leave the system having primed a natural bodily response. And I’m 60. I had lots of vaccinations. At what point do you think my generation will develop these issues linked to vaccines?