Genuine question for anti-vaxxers

[Raisinmeup]

I see a lot online about anti-vaxxers and I’m trying to understand where they’re coming from, so this is a genuine question, not rage bait.

My understanding is that some parents choose not to vaccinate their children because they believe vaccines cause harmful side effects, or they just don’t trust the government and big pharma in general.

But what’s the alternative? If everyone stopped vaccinating, wouldn’t we start seeing diseases like polio coming back? That would mean more infant deaths and lifelong disabilities. It just doesn’t seem like a rational trade off?

From what I’ve seen, there seems to be a belief that immune systems can deal with these illnesses naturally, but I wonder if part of that belief comes from the fact that parents of today haven’t actually seen what a world without vaccines looks like. We’ve grown up in a time where infant death from preventable diseases is almost unheard of, so maybe it’s easy to forget how serious these infections really are.

And lastly, if you haven’t vaccinated your child and they then catch one of these illnesses, do you not end up turning to the same big pharma for the medicine or treatment anyway?

I recall an article about a resurgence of the Black Death - bubonic plague - in a 1900s city. Such was the panic that residents were indeed gathered in a crush outside the Health Department’s door for many days for the limited amounts of immunisations available. (If you’re interested, the infection chain was cut off for this plague by using fire - quite literally burning city lots, houses, rubbish, vermin, and possessions.)

German measles isn't measles. I lived in a small village but there were 2 children who had brain damage caused by measles encephalitis. German measles was considered important for girls to have young so they weren't at risk during pregnancy. Chicken pox parties were a thing as it's more serious in adulthood.

It would be interesting to read opinions of an anti vaxxer whose child died from a preventable disease and see if they still hold the same views or regret their decision. As most can’t regret anything as their child has remained healthy. I guess some may find out in the future if their adult daughters develop cervical cancer when they declined the HPV vaccine. Obviously I hope no-one ever finds themselves in this position but when you make the decision not to vaccinate, you must weigh up how you’d feel if your child succumbed to the illness they chose not to vaccinate against. I guess that’s a whole different feeling than if your child had complications or died from vaccine reaction when you’re simply following medical advice. In the case of not accepting vaccines you’ve gone against medical advice so sure that must feel completely different.

A friend's DH didn't get it as a child and caught it from their 3yo. He doesn't 3 weeks in intensive care and was lucky not just to survive but not to lose a leg die to complications. It was months before he could start a phased return to work.

I think the whole pox party thing was going out of fashion even then.

I can remember being sent to play at my next door neighbour's house when I was about 12. She had chicken pox and as I'd had it years before I was 'safe'.

As for rubella, I was not impressed with having to have it when I was about 12 because only girls got the jab and I knew I would not be having children.

Saying “oh but I don’t trust the data because Big Pharma” is not a reasoned debate either.

Isn’t it? Surely we SHOULD be questioning the source of information and looking at what motivation might be behind it. That’s called critical thinking.

One of the main points is that the ‘data’ we are provided with can be manipulated, and pharmaceutical companies that fund research have skin in the game.

If pharma didn't sponsor clinical studies there'd be hardly any clinical studies!
Most medical journals now require a data availability statement to be included in manuscripts reporting clinical trial data, informing readers where they can access the trial datasets.

Sorry, misread your post! I know German measles isn't measles.

I remember feeling so ill, as a child, with measles, mumps, and whooping cough, and German measles was not so severe. Eczema made it hard to tell if I had a rash or not 😂

The only fact stated to support anti vax is that rarely there have been negative side effects and injury.

Sorry but you can't dismiss that as a 'minor' concern/reason as to why people might choose not to vax. Even the smallest chance of injury is enough to put people off - surely that's evidence enough!?

Exactly. It's Big Pharma who will claim that side effects/injuries/deaths are 'rare' - but they would say that, wouldn't they? However, based on what we've seen on this thread alone, it seems these events aren't nearly as rare as they'd have us believe.

I'm older so grew up pre many of today's vaccines being available. I have known many people permanently injured by illnesses for which vaccines are available. DHs nan was deaf from measles, as I said before there were 2 children in my small village brain damaged by measles, also one born deaf after her mum caught German measles while pregnant. A school friend's sibling was stillborn, damaged by German measles. I've known 2 adults end up in intensive care having caught chicken pox. Growing up I knew many people with damaged limbs from polio including a cousin and a friends mum. My dad lost 3 friends in a diphtheria outbreak. I don't know one single person damaged by vaccines, not one. I have no doubt that there are people who have suffered in this way but I think many people grilossly overestimate the risk compared to the illnesses.

You are making a basic mistake - the data on established vaccinations is public health data, compiled over many years by all aspects of our health services and medical researchers, and freely available to everyone. “Big Pharma” only do initial drugs trials for their own products. But we have vaccine safety and epidemiology data for lots of different products, all from different companies and producers and different countries, from many decades of medical research (even more than a century of public health statistics in the case of some vaccines).

Have you ever actually looked at, for example, the epidemiology data available on our government public health websites? This is not compiled and analysed by “Big Pharma”. It’s compiled, produced, analysed and made use of by our health service and civil service, as well as used by many different academic and commercial researchers. Every country publishes this data . Start with:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immunisation

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/uk-health-security-agency

https://www.nhs.uk/vaccinations/

This is a complete misunderstanding of how vaccines are developed and monitored. We have one of the most extensive legal regulatory regimes around public health in the world. Take a good read of all the information available here, for example:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ukhsas-vaccine-development-and-evaluation-centre-vdec

This is a government department in our civil service which evaluates vaccine safety data in one of the most advanced labs in the world. Do you think they are conspiring with “Big Pharma”? What would be the point of that? Their job is to prevent and fix public health crises. If they allowed a dangerous vaccine to go to market they would be the people who had to sort out the mess!

I also know many people who work for pharmaceutical companies, from drug discovery startups to big companies like GSK. These are people with PhDs and extensive scientific career experience, who see their jobs as lifesaving scientific work (and who publish their own research under their own names too, so don’t have any interest in crapping up their own scientific reputations); and there are hundreds and thousands of them. They are not all sitting around conspiring together to unleash evil on the world for profit.

1,500 measles cases in 42 US states. Worst outbreak since 1992. This is what happens when people don’t vaccinate their children.

Data from "Big Pharma" is peer reviewed and independently tested in totally separate laboratories and companies, sometimes in other countries. There is more research done over many years and this costs £millions. Covid was a virus, of which some parts were already under research, and many laboratories all over the world were collaborating at the same time as it was an urgent and dangerous situation.

Testing on humans is rigorous. Exceptions always occur as we, as humans, are not uniform. It is the same for animals.

Research by antivaxxers is not undertaken under laboratory conditions with placebos. They also do not have £millions to test their "theories". We have only their words as evidence, which are not proven evidence. It all only gossip and supposition.

Hi! I get what you’re saying and it sounds reasonable but I feel like there is a key difference. Choosing not to get a vaccine impacts the individual concerned and also everyone around them. I think this is especially important for people who have medical reasons not to have a vaccine. So what we are now seeing is too many people are opting out and we have some children very sick in hospital with measles and occasionally they even die. A few years ago, we considered measles to be eliminated.

So that is why people tend to feel justified asking about a no vaccine decision. And the other reason is because there is lots of pseudoscience floating around on the internet and also in general conversation - for example a friend of mine told me a few months ago that she feared that her nephew had got autism as result of having the MMR. That research was proven to be fraudulent more than 20 years ago but she just wouldn’t have it. Another friend, told me that she had done about 100 hours of ‘research’ online (this was during the covid years) and had discovered that there is a conspiracy among doctors across the world to keep it a secret from everyone that vaccines are dangerous. This is quite obviously absolutely ridiculous. She believes that it is good advice on the (Amrerican) Dr Mercola website to take his pills and potions - which very conveniently were for sale on the same website.

i think anyone deciding not to have a vaccine should get personal advice from a qualified medical professional and not rely on what they find on the internet. I do not believe it is possible for the average person to make an informed decision by googling. Anyone who has not got a degree in medicine, pharmacy, virology or whatever, is unlikely to be able to understand all the ins and outs. In the end, this is why all these people have to train and study and take exams endlessly because it is very complicated.

But vaccination is the recommended course of action by specialists in that field, you can't give equal weight to a layperson who has 'done their research' because they don't have the same level of academic qualification or training.

So if you are making a conscious decision to go against expert advice, it's perfectly reasonable that the onus is on you to explain your reasoning behind that decision.

Ok I'm very much pro vax but i will (again) try and explain how I understand this 'own research'.
The statements that are put out by PHE or the NHS or the CDC are scientific. Of course they are. But they're ALSO political. There have been multiple examples where it's been obvious that what we are being told is for the good of SOCIETY rather than the individual. For example when covid vaccinations were offered to youngsters. On the whole people in their 20s are at extremely low personal risk of covid. They are also (at least with the AZ jab) at relatively high risk of vaccine injury, the main reason to vaccinate the. Was to lower the levels of virus circulating to protect elderly or vulnerable people.
Or take the NHS deciding NOT to vaccinate kids against chicken pox until very recently. It wasn't really explained that the reason for this was not for the benefit if those kids (who still risked potential complications from CP) but actually to protect elderly people from shingles because children would be effectively giving them a 'booster' by getting sick themselves, thereby saving the NHS money on treating elderly with shingles. As I said I am personally very much pro (most) vaccines but I can see why some people feel they absolutely can't trust or believe what they're told. Can't you?
And if you DON'T trust it, then you are actively putting something into your child's body that could potentially harm them. So that's on you. Rather than just on the 'Universe' if they became naturally infected with one of these viruses.

Horrifyingly, it happens and this couple are beyond belief. It must be brainwashing:

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/20/texas-measles-family-gaines-county-death/

There’s somebody earlier on this thread saying they hope that it doesn’t happen to them and that they end up in the Daily Mail because of it. I can only think they’re being flippant because they’re so sure these diseases won’t happen to their children. I find it fascinating that the very thing they’re benefiting from - herd immunity - is the very thing they seem to think doesn’t exist. The cognitive dissonance is stunning.

Specialists have to give advice that is best at population level. Parents have to make choices based on what their believe is best for their individual child. The two things are different.

Ans if someone chooses not to vaccinate, they don’t owe anyone an explanation. They are free to make their own choices without having to justify it to random strangers or anyone else.

But don’t you think the NHS and government have certain axes to grind also?

For example, most GPs will push for women to be on the pill, regardless of whether it is the safest and best option for them. It’s cheap and reliably prevents pregnancy, so it’s a tick from them.

They also seem hell bent on recommending the Mirena coil, despite it clearly not suiting many women.

It’s in the NHS and government’s interests to get people vaccinated en masse - it creates herd immunity and eradicates illness on a large scale. Again, a tick for them.

What they’re not interested in is the effect on the individual. Or the small but significant number of vaccine injuries each year. Which is why we all have to try to make as informed a decision as we can and not (necessarily) rely on the data that’s given to us.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything; I just think it’s a lot more complicated than it seems.

This.

And it’s exactly why I didn’t have my children vaccinated against Covid.

This is really naive.

This is really naive.