Unvaccinated children shouldn't be allowed in mainstream childcare or school

[ApronSprings]

To think children shouldn't be allowed in nurseries or schools if their parents refuse to vaccinate them..

I'm excluding children who medically can't have them for some reason, and this will be too rare to cause a problem, and they deserve the benefit of herd immunity.

But I'm growing tired of the nutcase conspiracy theorists who failed GCSE science but think they've somehow found something missed by experts.

The only argument against this is that it keeps them home with their quack parents and reduces the opportunity for them to be exposed to normal people. But I don't think we should risk other people's lives for it if their parents aren't willing to do the same.

It also makes the right to choose a privilege of the wealthy enough. Those inclined to home educate and not use preschool won't do so anyway. They also have the means to do that already, so it won't make any difference there.

You might see it as just a figure of speech. I see it as a fundamental misrepresentation of what parental responsibility means.

"Belongs to" denotes ownership. Ownership is about rights. Parental responsibility is - self evidently - about responsibilities.

Parents do not have absolute rights over their children. Where there is abuse or neglect etc, the state can intervene.

The children's rights should be considered as paramount. There are, of course, valid debates about what is in the children's best interests and who should make the final decision. But we should be clear that children do not actually belong to their parents, they are people in their own right. And they have rights which may sometimes need to take precedence over the preferences of their parents.

It is a danger move to give the government power to make decisions that would normally be parental.
Imagine how that could be misused. D
Would you be happy with the government insisting vegetarian households must cook meat and make sure their children eat it? Or that girls must wear pink clothes have waist length hair in 2 braids and wear head coverings outside of the home. Boys must have short hair but not shorter than a grade 8 at the sides. They must only wear blue.

Removing parental choice is a downward slope and no one wants where that heads

This. Ah, but then we can’t bash the naysayers 🤣🤣

You would punish children for their parents decisions? Do you have chikdren of your own? I struggle to understand how a parent could want to punish an innocent child.

The bitterness that some people have on here always shocks me.

The vaccines do work, but they don’t guarantee 100% protection. So some vaccinated children may pick up the disease. Also, some children and adults with chronic conditions can’t be vaccinated and rely on herd immunity. My little boy was one such child.

Linguistic choices are telling. No human belongs to another and the fact that you use that language with regards to your children is highly revealing, no matter what you say.

The risk of vaccine injury from any approved vaccine is so minuscule as to be statistically insignificant. The risk of severe harm from contracting any of the diseases that vaccines seek to prevent is anything but statistically insignificant.

Take measles - approximately two people out of every million who receive the measles vaccine suffer serious harm or injury. By contrast, one out of every five unvaccinated people who contract measles suffer serious illness requiring hospitalisation. One in twenty develop pneumonia. One in a thousand die.

You are not making an ‘informed decision.’ You are actually just being incredibly selfish, relying on other, more responsible parents to protect your child by vaccinating their own children - hopefully in sufficient numbers to generate herd immunity and prevent the harmful pathogens your child has no protection against from circulating.

As more and more parents, like yourself, make the selfish (and statistically illiterate) decision not to vaccinate your children, there will be more and more outbreaks of measles, mumps, polio etc and children like yours will suffer serious harm on a regular basis (like the 50% of children who didn’t reach adulthood before modern medicine). I imagine your evaluation of that 2 in a million risk will look rather different at that point.

I have a friend that doesn’t believe in western medicine. She opts for an alternative. She is vegan and kids are veggies and they are literally always sick with something. I don’t comment on her beliefs or get drawn into her chat about it. I don’t agree with her either. What annoys me is the superior attitude but I just choose to ignore it. Her choice I guess.

I don’t think they’re idiots - well, not all of them. First and foremost, I think they’re selfish. They are free riders, relying on the majority of parents to vaccinate their children so that their own unvaccinated children are protected via herd immunity.

This is the kind of stupidity that is rife amongst antivaxers. People aren’t concerned about their vaccinated children catching diseases. People are concerned about arseholes not vaccinating their children, and those who are immunocompromised and unable to be vaccinated no longer being protected by herd immunity, because ignorant selfish parents have made their child a risk.

Likewise, adults who have immunity waning as they age (against mumps for example) are at risk of totally preventable diseases because children are being offered as disease incubators by their parents who will not vaccinate them, when they can.

Of course, it will always be a balancing act, and nobody is advocating that parental choice should be removed where this is not strictly necessary.

But I still think it's important for us to be clear that children are not the possessions of their parents, and that they have rights which may sometimes trump parental choice.

I read it on a coroners inquest into a homebirth death.
In the time between the death and the inquest, they had 34 requests, approved 29 and of those 29 50% ended up with transfer to hospital.

No vaccine is fool-proof, and some illnesses are incredibly contagious. In the case of measles, herd immunity only works if at least 95 percent of a community are vaccinated. Some can't be because they're immunocompromised or too young so the loonies with a belief exemption end up endangering the entire community as has been happening in America over the last two years.

Yes, it was considered routine. As was mumps-induced hearing loss.

It takes a special kind of idiocy to speak with such confidence about things you know nothing about.

I’m not worried about my vaccinated kids catching diseases from your unvaccinated superspreaders. I’m worried about babies too young to have received their vaccines and immunocompromised folks - cancer patients, transplant recipients etc.

When vaccination rates remain above 95%, herd immunity kicks in ensuring that these diseases cannot circulate and thus babies who have not yet been vaccinated, immunocompromised people and the unvaccinated children of idiots like yourself remain protected. But when it drops below 95%, the pathogens can find enough hosts to circulate, placing everyone who doesn’t have antibodies and a functioning immune system at risk.

Other countries do this and it seems to work fine. The only thing I would say that there has to be a system where children can catch up. I moved to a country which had mandatory vaccines and DS hadn’t had one as it wasnt on the vaccine schedule in U.K. at that time but is now. He couldn’t have it late and was a right faff getting exemption so he could go to nursery.

This is exactly right. Placing the burden here also has the potential benefit of persuading parents who may not be quite that committed to actually vaccinate their kids. If there are no negative consequences of not doing so, they’ll never do it.

@Forgedsnak

There are real cases in history where vaccines and other medicines have caused real harm to people. Not very often but it does happen, so as a parent, I am very happy with having the freedom to make an informed decision about anything that gets injected into my children.

There are real cases in history where diseases have caused widespread harm and death to people. It happens often on a micro level and occasionally on a macro (pandemic) level, where millions across the globe are killed. As a parent, I am very happy there are vaccinations available against these diseases, to protect not only my children but children who are young, sick or vulnerable. As an immunocompromised person myself, I am also grateful for the choices people around me make.

I find this an interesting subject, so looked it up. I live in France :
In France, the vaccines required for a child to attend school depend on the child's date of birth. The rules below reflect the official French government guidance in force in October 2026.
Mandatory vaccines for school attendance
Children born before 1 January 2018
Only the following vaccinations are generally mandatory for school admission:
Diphtheria
Tetanus
Polio
Children born between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2022
The following vaccinations are mandatory:
Diphtheria
Tetanus
Polio
Whooping cough (pertussis)
Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib)
Hepatitis B
Pneumococcal infections
Meningococcal C
Measles, mumps and rubella (MMR)
Children born on or after 1 January 2023
The mandatory vaccinations are:
Diphtheria
Tetanus
Polio
Whooping cough
Hib
Hepatitis B
Pneumococcal infections
Meningococcal groups A, B, C, W and Y
Measles, mumps and rubella (MMR)
These requirements are subject to recognized medical contraindications.

No because the vaccines aren’t a cure and don’t actually protect the single child from anything. Hence the whole “herd”
immunity

Children who are a danger to others get excluded from schools, even when it is through no fault of their own, such as SEN (which can occasionally result from parental choices, like heavy drinking during pregnancy). These children are excluded because the other children have rights, too. Parental preferences do not trump the rights of other children to a safe education, and vaccinated children pose a lethal danger to their classmates.