Measles vaccination.

[Slimagain]

Just heard the tragic news from Alder Hay children’s hospital . This post is not about this specific heartbreaking case as none of us no the reason for none vaccination. There are very specific circumstances where it is not advised or should be delayed .. (immunosuppressant, thrombocytopenia, allergy to Gelatine etc) .. but given the fact that MOST children do not fall into that category. What on earth reason can parents be thinking if not vaccinating against this serious, life threatening disease .. ? I worked in a developing country in the 90s with MSF.. administering this life saving vaccine. Each camp we worked in had a 100% take up from those children clinically advised to have it. Do we really need to see hundreds of kids suffer deafness, brain damage and death before parents stop believing nonsense on SM ..

Our average uptake is at a three year low for first dose . 88.9%. Way below the WHO target of 95%. The worst area is London at 82%. why ?

AIBU - I don’t want my child vaccinated
YANBU - Of course I do./Have

YANBU. It’s literally the triumph of foolishness over common sense to not get your children vaccinated against measles.

I always wonder if parents tend to think it will never happen to their child, and the (possible misinformed) risk of the vaccines outweigh the possibility of catching the illness.

This is what herd immunity does, so those who are unvaccinated are usually protected by those who are - but as vaccinated children numbers drop lower, the herd immunity becomes less of a protection. You can’t rely on that for measles anymore in the UK. The only way is to get vaccinated.

My DC are vaccinated and I have never thought that the vaccines were a higher risk compared to the disease. I assume people do think this though

Absolutely @MaggieBsBoatcomplete idiocy. People hear the word ‘side effects’ and instead of actually looking at the medical evidence choose to trust their child’s health and life to bloody tictok etc .. also @StresHed agree . I think there is a lot of that sort of weird thinking . I’m also a little bit concerned that as London is one of the places that has the lowest uptake .. that it may be a degree of undocumented residents that are scared to put their heads above the parapet.. thinking that Govt is so joined up .. that they will risk being ‘found’ … I just want to say - as a civil servant .. the chances of getting ANY information from one Govt department from another .. is beyond painful .. even when you are looking at Organised Crime (my area ) .. so the idea that the NHS would part with info Willy-nilly is just fanciful .. just get your child vaccinated !!

It's tragic. Any child death is tragic, but a preventable one so much more so. And the news content mentioned other medical conditions, so it is quite plausible that this poor child could not be vaccinated. I pray that some good may come of this horrific loss, and that it encourages parents to protect their own children, and also vulnerable and too young children. Oh, and Wakefield can burn in the darkest pit of the deepest hell. There is blood on his hands.

Yanbu
Need some TikToks or instagram or whatever is used by parents from people that have been affected by measles.
I’m sure when I was growing up there were appeals for charities to vaccinate abroad. I suppose that kept parents getting complacent when we had herd immunity and didn’t see cases here.

I’m sure the reason the take up in the camps I worked in during the 90s had such a high take up for 2 huge reasons ..

1. The parents had actually seen the result of measles .. that would be enough for me to..
2. No ridiculous social media ..especially from non medical professionals.

Parents these days don't believe it's serious or deadly. Thanks to vaccination many haven't seen the effects of the illness, but they have heard crap on social media about vaccination danger.

I'm old enough to have had measles as a child and have suffered the side effects my whole life. People are very surprised, almost disbelieving when I tell them measles was the cause. Some still have the cheek to tell their antivax views. It doesn't land well.

That poor child 😢 whether they weren't vaccinated through parental choice or due to illness it's absolutely tragic. If it's the latter I can't imagine how resentful I'd be towards parents who choose not to vaccinate and have destroyed herd immunity

Many people are stupid and don’t think about protecting their child from life threatening avoidable illnesses. I bet that the parents have been vaccinated. In America there was an outbreak that saw the anti vaccination idiots rush to get their kids vaccinated. This is what it takes - these people need someone to die that they know and then they rush to get the vaccine. It’s better to get the vaccine before the death, and even avoid the death, but these idiots can’t work that one out. It’s a shame that those who can’t get vaccinated are put at risk by the lack of herd immunity.

A variety of reasons. Complacency among the settled population caused by the successes of a century of 85 years of public health vaccine programmes. The difficulty of reaching some non-English speaking immigrant communities. Then with MMR there was fear spreading among some parents c.20+ years ago, but I think that’s largely gone, as the MMR has been used for nearly 30 years now. Possibly the issues with the covid vaccine have increased vaccine reluctance more generally.

A quick glance at any social media platform will show you the MMR scandal has had lasting effects and is still used as a reason not to vaccinate, with Covid only building on that. Wakefield has a lot to answer for.

This generation of parents have never seen the devastating effects of not immunising , which, I feel makes them complacent

Covid, if it taught us nothing, taught us we need herd immunity. For Measles that's 95%, so that 5 % who can not be immunised are protected

Do you think that’s increased in recent years or been consistently high for a long time? My rough memory is that it was a big cause for concern 20 years ago, then really wasn’t for some time, but has been in the press again more in the last couple of years.

It’s Andrew Wakefield. I come across vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaxxers in my job a lot and I have to explain the nuances of that ‘study’ and that excuse of a Dr every week. Misinformation based on that and spread through communities because they’ve never seen a child with measles/meningitis/pertussis.

I will always remember a woman saying to me when I was unpicking their vaccine hesitancy, ‘but we don’t get those diseases anymore do we’. Sure, BECAUSE OF VACCINES. Apart from the fact that we do, as this tragic case shows

So important to vaccinate. I had measles as a child and was so, so poorly. I also had German measles and whooping cough. I think the whooping cough damaged mine and my brother’s lungs as we were both diagnosed asthmatic shortly after. My 4 had all their vaccines (actually one had double mmr due to a mix up but that’s a whole other story!).

Between 2000 and 2023, there have been 9 deaths of UK people born after 1968 (measles vaccine introduced). This is part of a continuing downward trend. This does not point towards an increase in deaths since the 1998 Lancet paper.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-deaths-by-age-group-from-1980-to-2013-ons-data/measles-notifications-and-deaths-in-england-and-wales-1940-to-2013

The number of cases per year, also continues to fall..

And vaccine rates have been increasing... since 2003.. which does not support the argument that more people are not vaccinating than before.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/378638/measles-mumps-and-rubella-immunisation-completed-by-year-in-england/

This is a tragic case of an ill child who has died, because their immune system was compromised due to treatment for another illness

I’m in Liverpool (shocking ha!) and DS’s school have been sending emails about if for a few weeks.

YANBU- anti vaxxers are stupid and have blood on their hands. I honestly think a lot of them don’t realise how bad these illnesses are - because of vaccination. It’s awful that they are willing to
endanger their own children, as well as others

My neighbour has 4 kids and she proudly told me when I told her I was pregnant that none of hers are vaccinated and 'you won't, will you?'.

Her fb is full of anti vax and anti covid nonsense. One son is 10 and has quite severe developmental delay which she is completely convinced is down to him being vaccinated. The fact he couldn't be diagnosed until he was older and was showing multiple signs of autism before the vaccine doesn't register with her.

Wakefield has blood on his hands and we'll be giving them all a very wide berth when baby arrives.

I live in hackney where uptake is 60% It's terrifying. A large part is down to ethnicity. The black community was experimented on in the past and that memory lingers. The CIA used the vaccination program in Pakistan to spy when they were hunting Bin Laden-huge suspicion there still. Some ethnicities don't trust western medicine and would prefer to trust doctors in their county. As grateful as I am for the COVID vaccine and accept it was a good thing, we should have been open that there were some people that had severe side effects, as is possible with a vaccine. And yes, fucking Wakefield has so, so much to answer for.

It's important to remember that people who refuse vaccines are doing it out of a (misplaced) love and concern for their child. We have to work harder to overcome hesitancy.

My DC have had all their routine vaccinations and more, such as the Hep B because they were too old for when that was brought out for babies. Also travel vaccinations.

I wouldn't call my parents anti-vax but for some reason I wasn't given the measles vaccine. That was before the MMR vaccine came out but I don't know if my parents had heard scare stories at the time. I had all manner of childhood illnesses, including measles, german measles, mumps etc. Yes, in most cases they may be mild illnesses but I wouldn't take the risk on my DC.

To be honest the theories that the mmr causes autism has been going around for years. My sister born in the 70s was autistic (sadly no longer with us) and my Mum absolutely believed the supposed link. Subsequently myself and my other siblings weren't vaccinated against anything as she believed this is what caused my sister's autism. I remember secondary school not going for the vaccinations that all my friends went for. I however absolutely do not believe this, I am now fully vaccinated and so are my dc. This is not just social media but a myth that has hung around since the beginning. Unfortunately sm seems to spread those nonsense far and wider than ever before. Thank goodness I didn't get measles but did have mumps as a child.

There are a lot of extremely stupid people in this country (and the world). You only need to scan the comment section of Facebook to see this.

My personal theory is this is natural selection in reverse, stupid people reproduce with stupid people and their offspring are even more stupid.

But MMR was only introduced in 1988, in the UK?

Look it up 1970s

From a number of studies

• “vaccines contain harmful ingredients such as aluminium, mercury formaldehyde, human Fetal cells, dna, animal proteins & dna, glyphosate, polysorbsyes, other carcinogens, neurotoxins and toxins. When injected it bypasses the body’s natural defence system and becomes far more potent. Formaldehyde has been banned from injectables in most European countries but not in the uk. Any level of Aluminium is linked to Alzheimer’s, seizures, dementia, sids and cancer. It also accumulates in the brain. “ please ask your gp or HV what the ingredients are within the vaccine that you are injecting into your child, you may be surprised at the response. Do the research. Make your decision based on informed consent, not from sm hype.