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

I preface this by saying I fully support vaccines and do not hold any of these views. I live in Liverpool and there’s a massive anti-establishment rhetoric that goes around. They think the GP’s are receiving money for vaccinating kids, they genuinely believe the ingredients in the vaccine will be harmful to their kids.

Plus they also think that if the vaccines work so well, if your kid has had their vaccines - what difference does it make if their kid doesn’t? A lot believe in homeopathic remedies if their little one does get sick - the list goes on and on. Either way there’s a massive distrust in the “establishment” - I honestly don’t know what we can do to fix the problem, calling people anti vax idiots won’t work and I think people with genuine concerns should be able to voice them and have their questions answered in a respectful way. It’s a vicious circle because they don’t believe or trust medical reports and evidence that gets presented, but how else do you evidence that vaccines are safe? Will it take more kids getting sick to prove the point, hopefully not but I’m genuinely at a loss on how to convince people other wise.

I agree all Children who can be vaccinated should be before they are allowed to start school. I also think all people emigrating should have proof of full vaccinations as well unless they have medical proof they cannot be. Including asylum seekers should be vaccinated unpon arrival if they cannot provide proof vaccination status due to missing paperwork.

People have become far too complacent because the vaccines work. Without proper herd immunity we cannot protect those who cannot have the vaccines because of the people who believe licking rocks will save them while letting their children eat so much UPF crap ironically. Lip fillers/botox/tattoos fine. Vaccine oh no.

One thing that won’t change anti-vaxxer’s minds is calling them stupid.

i am 100% pro-vaccine—mine have always had the full schedule plus private (chickenpox) when we lived in UK. But people are distrustful of Big Pharma, which actually is very understandable. That’s what needs to be addressed and it’s not clear how.

@poohbear333 I would love a link to those research papers you mentioned. I trust they're peer reviewed?

There are over 50 papers and reports — not just one link— and they span several disciplines, including child psychology, family law, and trauma-informed practice. I spent months independently reviewing not only peer-reviewed research but also court judgments, witness material, and safeguarding guidance to ensure a comprehensive understanding.

I won’t be replicating months of in-depth research for the purpose of having it dismissed or debated in bad faith or ignorance. If you’re genuinely interested, I’d encourage you to explore the available academic and legal literature directly - it’s all out there and accessible with a bit of effort.

@Slimagain It’s 73% uptake in Liverpool. I suspect this puts vaccinated dc at risk too. They are seeing lots of cases. We are a very foolish nation.

So nothing medical or immunological? Because the claims you made in yesterday's post were both inaccurate and far fetched, especially the nonsense about foetal cells. I trust you're aware that the cell component of vaccines comes from foetuses aborted in 1960?

The fact that you made the foetal cell claim without qualifying it leads me to take the rest of your post with several tons of salt.

The irony is that the huge success of vaccination over recent decades means that modern parents have no memory or awareness of deaths and disability as a result of measles. Sadly, it may take more deaths/outbreaks to actually convince people that measles is a serious and dangerous disease.

I did put off my youngest having her 1 year vaccines for a few months. She was so little, she wasn't very well and I did worry that it would completely overwhelm her because she was so poorly after her earlier jabs.

Now I'm not a daft woman (or so I think!) but I did think quite a lot about asking for individual jabs on a different timescale because one in each limb just seemed like so much all at once but we did eventually just do it as per the schedule.

It was also an absolute ball ache trying to get the time off work. They would only do childhood vaccines on a Thursday, and DH and I were at work. She couldn't go in to nursery after she'd had the jabs because they advise to give calpol because they feel a bit grotty, so nursery was a no. I eventually had to book a day of holiday just to take her for her jabs, when if she could have just had them on another day (literally any other day and me or DH could have been with her but Thursday is the one day of the week we're both at work!) if would have been fine.

What are your scientific qualifications @Poohbear333 ?
I'm curious as to how, despite "months of in-depth research" you appear to have dismissed the many, many peer reviewed papers, meta analyses and systematic reviews disproving your claims?

I can see that's awkward but seriously protecting your child against life changing and life threatening illnesses is worth a day's leave. What greater service could you do them?

I remember being lined up at school for the polio jab. I swear they didn't even sterilise the needles between kids and God help you if you were last to get it as the needle would be blunt. Nothing like the fine once use needles now.

@Cynic17 That’s totally my view. They don’t see child deaths and don’t understand the stats on these illnesses either. Parents were so grateful for vaccinations decades ago when so many dc did die. Now we think it’s someone else's dc.

Liverpool at 73% is awful and I would be wondering what the NHS is doing about it. I believe in Australia you cannot start school without the required vaccinations. We should do that here because non vaccination in large numbers means no vaccination at all for everyone. We need to get a grip.

Vaccine injury exists, I don't think anyone is trying to deny that. However the point is that serious, life changing reactions to vaccines (I'm not talking about a snotty nose for a few days) are far, far less likely to happen than the life changing results of even a fairly mild case of measles (I had a mild case, the side effects are for my whole life). You so have to do a risk/benefit analysis but the numbers are overwhelmingly in favour of vaccinating.

I “lectured” both my DC to ensure their DC had the MMR because my DH’s uncle lost both his DS to measles. Neither of their DP recovered from the losses. As soon as my eldest was born, the uncle was on my case to ensure my DS had all his vaccines. Until I met him I, mistakenly, thought measles was like chickenpox, not that serious!

One of the most insidious things about contracting measles is that it makes your immune system 'forget' how to fight off infections, even ones you've already encountered, and this immune amnesia can last several years. So not only are you taking on all the risks associated with measles, you're also vastly increasing your chances of catching multiple other illnesses and all the risks associated with each of those too.

Measles vaccine antibodies lasts for about 10 years, if yours was more than a decade ago (which is the case for most adults)- you too are unvaccinated. “A 2019 Italian study estimated that circulating anti-measles IgG antibodies decrease 10–15 years after the second dose of MMR” .

You idiot, just because the Covid vaccine hasn’t eradicated Covid (in the same way the flu vaccine has not eradicated flu) doesn’t mean that (i) it’s not beneficial for the vulnerable to have both or either vaccines, or (ii) that other vaccines for different diseases have not eliminated, or effectively eliminated those disease.

God you’re a moron.

It may be understandable in other countries with private healthcare and insurance, it's much less understandable in the UK.

Well done for fighting the fear - i can understand it but it really isn’t matched by the balance of evidence which is extraordinarily on the side of these vaccinations. I personally do think it’s sometimes unhelpful that medical professionals are now so “it’s your choice” when they should be making it clearer which choices are ones where the evidence is overwhelmingly on one side. I remember feeling infuriated when my kids were born that the midwives weren’t more emphatic about the importance of the vitamin k injection (I knew how important it was and so had it for both of them but it almost felt like I was having to chase them for it).

Everyone should just download the WHO data sheet, adjust all the published statistics into comparable data and then it just becomes a maths decision rather than an emotional one. No name calling, no calling the other 'side' stupid, when everyone is just trying to do the best thing for their kids.

I’ve just been looking at the stats here in Alberta as we currently have close to 1600 confirmed cases across the province. Take up is roughly 71%, but as low as 24% in some areas in the south.

Not everyone is anti-vax. I think some people really find it hard to organise the vaccinations. I struggled to get my youngest her booster, because it had to be done by a nurse at our surgery and she only worked two mornings a week. They were difficult days for us with work, nursery etc. This is in the middle of a big city. We got it done, but I really believe we need to make it easier for people.

You say that these studies are from child psychology, legal documents etc, but they are stating incorrect facts.

"any level of aluminium" - aluminum is found in many foodstuffs like tea, herbs and cereals. The level of aluminium in our bodies is low but not zero

Mercury (or more correctly thiomersal) has not been a constituent of vaccines for 20 years - thiomersal was removed from vaccines (at least in the UK) by 2005, and this was considered to be a precautionary measure aimed at reducing lifetime exposure to mercury, rather than because of evidence of harm). A meta analysis of vaccine data of over 1 million children https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24814559/ did not find any link between thiomersal and autism.

A study in Finland carried out over 14 years with 1.8 million children participating did not show evidence of a link between MMR and autism (Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal 2000;19:1127-34) - and there are many other large studies that show this as well.

Your comment that injecting "bypasses the body's natural defence system" is not really correct either - injecting bypasses our skin and gut, which have their own defences, but our body and blood is literally teeming with immune defences, which is why it's fortunately rare that a minor scratch or graze (which also then allows germs to bypass the skin) turns into serious infection.

There's a good reason @Poohbear333 hasn't come back to this thread.

My son contracted measles a couple of months after his first MMR (as one doesn't always confer complete protection) he was very unwell for a couple of weeks, but now has an amblyopic (lazy) eye.