to want the anti-vaxxers to explain themselves?

[Goldfsh]

My Facebook feed is full of GP practices etc. promoting the flu jab, and EVERY response is from people saying they are full of poison, giving everyone flu, part of a government conspiracy, Bill Gates, big pharma, etc.

It doesn't matter where the GP surgery is in the country, the responses are all the same.

Just... WOT IS GOING ON????

It's literally 100% of the respondents. Please can someone explain to me why the general public (on my feeds anyway) have become convinced that the flu jab is part of a conspiracy... to what end?!

Antibiotics and vaccinations are the two most incredible inventions, saving billions of lives since their introduction and eliminating most of the diseases that plagued human civilisations.

Yes, a tiny percentage of people are sadly harmed by them. I nearly died from an antibiotic reaction. I still take antibiotics, just not that type, and I have every vax going.

Agree that you'll never get them to explain in any way that makes sense objectively, OP. Their objections are emotional; they seek out authoritative-sounding reports that seem to give substance to their fears; they dismiss everything else. "You can't reason with the unreasonable", as the saying goes.

Aĺ I know is I get the vaccine free at work and I'm the only member of my household currently not in bed with flu looking dreadful..

Hmm on the point of the old people " letting" doctors pump them full of us , many of them don't get given a choice. They are told " we will give you such and such drug" Rarely discussed before doing so. Even if patient says no theyre often " persuaded".ie bullied .

My mum had an advance directive refusing treatment in case of certain events. The trouble getting hospital staff to abide by it was awful. . They kept saying that she didn't have capacity to decide ( this was what the directive was set up for) Whenwe pointed this out then they telling us she wasn't refusing treatment at the time ( she couldn't speak due to a stroke)

So no all old people don't want to be " pumped full of the drugs"

Funmily enough she had her first covid vaccine, a few days before the stroe so she wasn't antivax

I find stories like this upsetting for a number of reasons. I hope you're all sorted now, Berlin, and feeling okay.

The most common symptom of uterine (womb) cancer is abnormal vaginal bleeding. The unusual bleeding you experienced was a warning of the cancer. The fact that you had your Covid jab at the time is a coincidence, not a cause.

There are other things you will have done for the first time around then, too. You might have tried a new food or drink, visited somewhere, started a different gym class, switched vitamin brands, all sorts of things. You could just as well blame any of them for the bleeding. But what caused it was already going on in your cells - it wasn't started by anything you did at all.

It happened to many people after the jab. I'm sure they didn't ALL have other things going on

Facebook is shite, full of scammers, why are you even on it OP?

Fair enough. But public health policy can only be built on quantitative research results. Experience is too subjective to be able to be applied to millions of people.

I was referring to the younger children of older people - so say a daughter telling her 84 father not to be vaccinated because she was anti-vaccine. If the daughter ended up in hospital with say, pneumonia, she’d likely accept all possible medical treatment to survive.

I do agree that older people’s autonomy often compromised by both medical staff and their families.

Did I miss anyone with an explanation? Do most people who get flu end up in hospital? There's Influenza A going round a local school, too early for the flumist to have been administered, only one child hospitalised.

I’ve only ever had flu once and it was three days after my only ever flu jab.
I decided that the jab doesn’t work for me, so have never had one since and don’t allow my DC to have it at school either. We are a healthy household, generally, and have no contact with immunocompromised people. We don’t need it.

Having said that, we’re not anti-vaxxers.
DC had all MMR etc when little, and DD had the HPV vaccine etc.

This! I mean, seriously, as if 'going to the gym' would cause this hemorrhaging!? People really will believe any old bollocks!

It takes 14 to 21 days to be fully effective. You were already 'cooking' your flu bug when you had the vaccine. Unfortunate timing, that's all.
Unless you avoid people all the time, you don't know if you've been in contact with an immunocompromised person.

The whole thing was handled appallingly. Shrouded in so much secrecy - if Pfizer wanting 75 years to release data regarding its Covid jab wasn't a red flag for people, I don't know what would be!

But surely that same logic can be applied to those who require hospital treatment following a vaccine-induced event?

But that is a tiny amount compared with the reduction of hospital stays that would occur without the vaccines.

True, though I base my decisions on my own research (I do know how to do it properly), my own experience and will happily decide against following recommendations if I don't believe following them to be in my or my family's best interests.

Thanks for letting me know. You’re not an ‘antivaxxer’ though so it wouldn’t apply to you anyway.

Quite a lot of women had menstrual irregularities after the covid vaccination. I don't know that it would cause cancer but it could certainly have tended to hide irregular bleeding. I had it, my daughter did, and several friends and family. It lasted for a good while too, something like 6 months to a year later my daughter and I were still having irregularities.

I think they did investigate this and decided it was basically harmless, but at the time I think many people found it quite disconcerting because there was no warning and no explanation.

The whole claim it was well tested seemed to be challenged by the fact that they didn't realise it would have effects like that. Because presumably it should have been observed when they did the testing if it was common.

It was just another thing that made people lose trust.

This post hits the nail on the head IMO. Only half the UK’s eligible population is on it, with a higher proportion of women than men. And only somewhere between a quarter and a third of users are degree educated. Facebook users seem to be less educated in general. They are also more likely to be in the middle or lower income demographic, and more likely to be millennials than any other group. So why would one would want to even be on it? Let alone read or engage with the drivel that seems to be there. It’s just a platform for people to say ‘look at me’, and fill a gap in a life that’s clearly missing something ;)

When you come across a nutter in the street or a bar raging against something or other, would you ask them to explain themselves, or would you do what everyone else does and just walk on by and ignore them? Posting on Facebook doesn’t give it any more legitimacy than an average nutter! What sort of arrogance makes anyone think that they have the right to ask another random person to explain themselves, and what sort of idiot would even try 😂

I would miss a lot of local community information without Facebook. It's the only reason I stay. For the information.

Well, I’ve never had flu since and nor has my family. We’re good without it, thanks. Our own immune systems seem to be quite strong.

How have they squandered it?

Yes me too. I'm always uninstalling it but then it's the only way to contact a local business (literally happened to me this morning) or I want to get rid of something on freecycle groups, so I'm off and on it all the time. Very annoying but don't think there's any kind of wholesome online alternative!

Possibly .

Alternatively it could be considered a cost-cutting exercise. And given the amount of people currently reporting feeling quite ill with the current round of COVID, may be one which they will regret.

Not suggesting that healthy people in their 20s/30s should have the vaccine, but that there are many people in the 65-75 age group plus people with certain illnesses who were entitled to the vaccine on NHS previously but no longer get it this year. Plus, offering the vaccine to health and social care workers is IMO, sensible. I certainly don’t agree with the forced vaccinations of a few years back but the opportunity for those working with the elderly and vulnerable to be vaccinated freely makes sense to me.

My understanding is that the booster doses are only really effective in the short term.

You missed the point. Going to the gym didn't cause it, a curry didn't cause it, a vaccination didn't cause it. The poster I was replying to had uterine cancer. That's what caused it.