Has anyone else pulled back/ended friendships with unvaccinated friends?

[mowly77]

This feels right to me but I’m not sure how she’s going to take it, & wondered if anyone else had similar experiences? I’m fully vaccinated; but antibody test tells me I’ve had covid in last 6 months. I’m ill a lot - crappy immune system. Really sick this last week, rivers of snot, endless coughing. My DD is at nursery & had milder version first. I get everything she gets. Could be covid again; could not be. Either way I’m bloody ill & self employed so lost loads of money. Fed up of being ill all the time.

Recent friendship with someone & we’ve been working on my allotment together. She’s a bit lonely, single mum, now wants to be my BFF & invited me & DD to her DS birthday (big) party in a few weeks - indoors. She’s cheerfully told me she’s unvaccinated. Didn’t really sink in before. I’ve been in her car; she’s been round for a cuppa a few times.

Now I’m fretting; plus thinking how idiotically selfish she is. I’m going to tell her no more indoor stuff, no birthday party. Outdoor allotment socially distanced is fine.

This winter is going to be a car crash & I don’t have any more truck with it. I know I’m not BU but it still feels like a delicate line.

no, the opposite, i've reached out to her MORE because I know she's had some horrible responses from her SIL so I need her to know she can count on me.

People keep bringing up the daughter in nursery like thats relevant.

OP has judged that sending DD to nursery is a necessary or unavoidable risk. Socialising indoors with unvaccinated people is unnecessary and completely avoidable.

Accepting one risk doesn't mean she loses the right to decide about other risks. On the contrary, she is already quite exposed via her daughter and nursery and so it makes sense to reduce other risks to make up for this.

Newsflash: you can respect someone's right to make their own choices while thinking they are a fuckwit.

People have the right to get white nationalist tattoos on their face, they have the right to blast their music over the neighbours garden, to sit in a playground smoking cigarettes near children etc etc. I respect their right to do it, but I'm also thinking they are fuckwits and wanting to limit my interactions with them.

If you want to refuse this vaccine, increasing not just your own risk but the risk to the public. I respect that you have the power to do that. Fill your boots. But don't whinge when people don't want to hang out/hire you/serve you. Own your choices and live with the consequences.

@DifferentHair exactly. In my head it’s like being on a diet, you can allocate the bulk of your calories to food that nourishes and sustains you and any extra left you can choose a treat. It’s budgeting your risk allowance for covid.

Reducing risk is exactly that, reducing the odds. The more risks you take the higher your odds of contracting covid. You may never catch it all or you might catch it immediately but you can reduce the odds.

"Newsflash: you can respect someone's right to make their own choices while thinking they are a fuckwit.

People have the right to get white nationalist tattoos on their face, they have the right to blast their music over the neighbours garden, to sit in a playground smoking cigarettes near children etc etc. I respect their right to do it, but I'm also thinking they are fuckwits and wanting to limit my interactions with them.

If you want to refuse this vaccine, increasing not just your own risk but the risk to the public. I respect that you have the power to do that. Fill your boots. But don't whinge when people don't want to hang out/hire you/serve you. Own your choices and live with the consequences."

Exactly this.

Does everyone on this thread who severs contact with the unvaccinated fo the same for flu year on year? Or even take it themselves? If you're vaccinated, have faith in your vaccine to protect you.

Peteycat I am not the one being divisive. I , along with the majority of society, have taken a safe vaccine, using technology developed over many years and that has passed all the usual safety checks, to protect myself and others, and have helped enable us to open up the economy without our hospitals being overwhelmed (hopefully in the months to come as well but if not at least vaccination will minimise future measures needed).

I respect the right to decide not to be vaccinated but I don’t respect the decision (unless it is on medical advice). In making that decision people need to accept that others will want to avoid them as having a greater infection risk, and will think that decision is selfish and immoral, and frankly in many cases where people have been sucked in by misinformation and conspiracy theories on the internet downright ignorant and stupid. Your choice.

ohhdear Completely irrelevant. Covid is not flu, it is both more infectious and more deadly, and we are not in any case in the middle of a flu pandemic.

I don’t underestimate how serious flu can be either, it killed my grandfather in the 1957 pandemic. Fortunately then a vaccine was developed in months, the majority got vaccinated and so many more lives were not lost. There was a near miss in 2009 with swine flu too and all contacts were offered vaccination and Tamiflu If there was another flu pandemic then a vaccine would be made available and the majority would take it. It is what societies do to protect public health. And yes I would avoid the unvaccinated just the same.

My grandfather incidentally was 40 years old, with no underlying health issues. He should have had at least 40 more years with my grandmother and lived to meet me. A story repeated too many times in the last two years.

I did avoid an old friend's kids for a period when they were school age without MMR and the had a baby preMMR.
It was tricky!

..we had a baby..
They came and met our baby when new as I was told baby was likely covered by maternal immunity at that stage. But subsequently I kept avoiding contact. 🤷

@Emilyontmoor

My grandfather incidentally was 40 years old, with no underlying health issues. He should have had at least 40 more years with my grandmother and lived to meet me. A story repeated too many times in the last two years.

That's very sad. My grandmother lost her mother at a very young age in the 1918 from Spanish flu.

@ohhhhdear

Does everyone on this thread who severs contact with the unvaccinated fo the same for flu year on year? Or even take it themselves? If you're vaccinated, have faith in your vaccine to protect you.

Covid isn’t flu and flu isn’t a novel virus with no residual community immunity to genetically similar viruses.

If this was a pandemic of mumps and I knew you were unvaccinated I would absolutely avoid you. I’ve had the MMR twice and for whatever reason don’t make antibodies - which is why I’ve had it twice. I was tested for antibodies on starting an NHS position and found to have none so was given it again - still none. It’s about 88% effective.

People ‘relying’ on vaccines generally understand that there is a failure rate and need for caution even with a vaccine. They don’t need faith, they have facts.

I am not the one being divisive. I , along with the majority of society, have taken a safe vaccine

@Emilyontmoor this is a good point. We’ve reached the point of 89% of the over 16 population with at least one dose of a covid vaccine. Whilst there will be a very small percentage of the remaining 11% who don’t have a choice in whether they can have a vaccine (allergies, other substantiated medical reasons) the rest have made the conscious decision to refrain. I’ll save my sympathy for those who don’t have the choice rather than those hijacking their situation to make a point.

If you're vaccinated, have faith in your vaccine to protect you.

No vaccine is 100% effective, and many of the conditions that make a person more vulnerable to Covid can also mean their immune response to vaccine is also lower.

Vaccines are not an article of faith; they are based in science with all the imperfections that real things have.

Yes, double vaccinated people can spread it but

1. Unvaccinated people are more likely to contract it in the first place.

1. Unvaccinated people's bodies then have to start from scratch in learning what it is and then fighting it, so they have a longer period of being infectious than jabbed people do (whose immune systems know what's going on, so can react more quickly to fight it)

1. Unvaccinated people, unless they're part of the tiny number who can't be jabbed (at the moment) for a good medical reason, are blase about the whole thing, will be less likely to wear masks or take precautions, so are more potentially dangerous.

All my friends have been vaccinated, but we're still being careful, only meeting outdoors still. If I had one who hadn't then I would be extremely careful, or would end the friendship if they didn't have a good reason, because I'd think they were selfish, not wanting to protect others around them.

None of my friends is stupid, therefore they were all vaccinated at the first possible opportunity.

Unvaccinated people are more likely to get and transmit covid. They also take up beds urgently needed by people for other health care. They have blood on their hands and they increase the risk of lockdowns so also have some responsibility for business failures, lockdown and tax increases.

I have a list of people I know to be anti-vax or anti mask wearing and I wont employ them or shop with them.

@MinesAMassiveSalad

No I'm not but in your situation YANBU. You have to look after your own interests here.

This. You have had cancer and other poor health. You do what you feel comfortable with. Ignore the ignorant comments, it's what you feel safe with. I think I'd avoid her.

Good luck.

Absolutely not. What a horrible attitude. I've chosen the jabs and I wouldn't dream of asking someone their vaccination status. It's none of my business!

I don't know when people got so rude and entitled to actually think that someone else's medical history was in any way their business. It's totally odd.

OP, id hate to live in your world. Im fully vaccinated and wouldn't dream of throwing a friendship away because somebody wasn't vaccinated. How odd!

@Peteycat @madmomma Didn’t ask, she told me.

I know. It was directed at other posters.

Peteycat I haven’t asked anyone their vaccine status either.

We, as in my friends and family, have all shared it though, but then we are all, whatever the socio economic backgrounds and politics (some otherwise right wing Tories), vaccinated. We mainly shared it on our networks in the process of communicating when bookings opened up ahead of the official announcements of the extension to a new age group because we were all so anxious to protect ourselves and others as soon as we were given the opportunity.

As highlighted above only 11 % of the population are not vaccinated at all and some of those will not be medically able or just not have got round to it so those determined not to get vaccinated are a small minority. Most of us won’t ever encounter them in a setting where they would be a threat to us, mostly on the internet when they come out spouting their anti vax rubbish or clogging up London on their sad days out marching with six packs of Stella in ever decreasing circles brandishing manky bits of cardboard with FrEEdom scrawled on them.

My DM did stop using her chiropractor after he started to come out with the anti vax nonsense including informing her that her generation had measles parties for their children. She pointed out that not only had she lost her DF to Hong Kong flu but had seen Primary school classmates disappear from class never to reappear lost to diptheria, and that nobody who raised their children before the MMR jab would refuse it, let alone have measles parties, because they knew how serious those illnesses could be. I don’t think she was the arrogant entitled one in that exchange…….

Or indeed on this thread where the minority are being really unpleasant to OP when she is simply seeking to protect herself given a rubbish immune system.