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?

My anti vax husband (we are polar opposites on the topic of vaccines) was born in the 1980s and therefore doesn’t have first-hand experience with illnesses such as polio or measles. He believes that reports of outbreaks and fatality rates are fake to pressurise people into get vaccinated. Basically he doesn’t believe that anything more dangerous than a flu exists and any reports whether historic or current are fabricated.

When you state ‘I am very satisfied with my choice’, surely you mean ‘I am very satisfied with the choices of others’, as it is the vast majority of people choosing to get vaccinated that almost eradicates these diseases and protects you through herd immunity? It is through the actions of others that you have what you feel is ‘choice’, as you can gamble with the now low risk of contracting fatal diseases. I wonder what would happen if you were living in a time and place where a particularly debilitating disease was rampant, but you had the choice to prevent catching it by vaccinating you and your family - would you come to the same conclusion quite so readily? Would you feel you had the same number of years available to you that it takes to fully research and understand the ingredients involved?

The comment about not being on the very social media you are currently using, however, makes me wonder if your response was meant to be some kind of satire…

Not understanding what? What the vaccinations do?

I can actually understand this logic. Thank you for explaining. I'm very much a vaccine supporter and me and my kids have had everything recommended (as well as extras like chickenpox and meningitis which my kids were the wrong age to get on the NHS) but I can sort of see where someone with this viewpoint is coming from even if I don't share it

Is this true? We had to have an emergency vaccination added to the schedule in London for kids recently because it was found in the waste water

Which paper did you write?

I have great sympathy for anti vax parents. I have also personally witnessed the deaths of 5 young children due to vaccine-preventable diseases. These children were treated by my colleagues. In some cases the children had already been resuscitated in hospital once or twice before, with warnings being given to the parents. Within weeks or months they returned, usually DOA.

No one say it is. It's about how at risk you are from serious complications from the diseases.

How do you manage to keep your respect for such a person? I honestly couldn’t live with or parent children with someone with so little critical thinking ability.

What did medical professionals say caused your adverse reaction?

There are anti-vax medical professionals who have a medical background so this is just objectively false.

Thanks. I get your side as well. Of course you're going to choose a vaccine if it's 'take this jab or die a horrible death'

I just don't think the horrible death part is that much of a threat, based on statistics alone.

Does the sentence "I had a bad reaction to the MMR" not make sense to you? That's what I was told. How old do you think I was when I had it?

Or serious complications from the vaccine.

These are the cases that would change my mind.

Were the kids totally unvaccinated?

If I saw in the paper 'all unvaccinated children in an area die from a VPD' I'd probably take my kids to be vaccinated tomorrow, but it's usually 'one kid dies of a VPD and it wasn't the unvaccinated kid, he's healthy but we're blaming him'

That keeps me from doing it

The fear that my child will die from a VPD and then my mistake is paraded in the daily mail terrifies me, yet I still can't do it. I just can't find evidence my children are more at risk when they're healthier than their peers.

Risk of complication, I believe is really low, but it's not zero.

For my kids it's zero an I'd like to keep it that way.

So you've never found out what caused that reaction?

I see this as one of the failings which means I don't use vaccines.

We need to know. If it's a totally unknown risk I won't do it.

Whilst I don’t share your views, I find your second paragraph really interesting, as I think it really clearly articulates the choices you’ve made and I can see how someone would believe that reasoning. Out of interest, do you think you’ve been able to come to this conclusion for yourself as a result of the vast majority of people being vaccinated and would you feel differently if you were living somewhere when / where there wasn’t a large uptake, which therefore puts you at far greater risk? I guess that is to say, would you be anti-vaccines generally or on a case by case basis, which perhaps largely depends on the choices others are making? (I hope not to come across as judgmental, I’m genuinely intrigued).

The one friend of mine who chose not to vaccinate either of her children said her reasons were all to do with having measles, mumps, chickenpox and whooping cough as a child and coming to no harm.

However, the truth in my opinion is that she was too afraid to get them vaccinated and decided to rely on herd immunity.

Spectacularly selfish.

My brother almost died from Whooping Cough as a child in the 1970’s.

I looked into each individual vaccine and the ingredients it contained.

What does this even mean? Do you also research the ingredients of paracetamol or not give your children antibiotics? Where does it end? Or is it only vaccines.

I understand that you feel a vaccine isn’t worth the risk because of potential side effects and the low likelihood of your child catching the disease. But that perceived sense of safety only exists because others around you are vaccinated.

It still doesn’t really answer my question. Where does this approach lead? Do we just wait until these viruses become widespread again? You’ve mentioned that most polio cases are asymptomatic. So if polio were rampant, would you feel it’s safer to take the chance that your child would have a mild case rather than risk any potential side effects from the vaccine?

I don’t mean this to sound accusatory, I’m just trying to get my head around this way of thinking.

But no unvaccinated children have died of measles in the UK since 2000. I don't know what you mean when you say that it's always the vaccinated child who dies and the unvaccinated one is fine.

Exactly, I think it's a prophylactic health measure under a blanket policy, which I totally get, but that the NHS don't have the capacity to do it on a case by case basis.

Were I'm living in a country with sanitation and nutrition being optimal, would I rely on vaccines instead?
Yes.

Do I live in that situation?
No.

So, coming back to my original point, I have two children in the developed world on a healthful diet being breastfed to full-term (so, although temporary, the passive immunity and maternal IgA conference) and lack of toxic stress, I believe that my children are a very low risk, even comparatively low to their peers, of severe complications that would warrant a prophylactic intervention, that I choose not to utilise it, even though it's readily available.

And I would love to take them into the surgery and have them jabbed, but I just cannot find it conscionable to do so.

Not getting at you OP but just flagging that in the early 1950s there were 8000 paralytic polio cases (ie not just asymptomatic polio) per year which then reduced following the vaccine take up. My great uncle was in calipers all his life due to polio in childhood.

I know a woman with two children, she's a fierce anti-vaxxer. Same with the covid vaccine, refused it.

She's more than happy jabbing herself with mounjaro, though...