I met a real life full on anti vaxxer today

[shiningcuckoo]

And some of her opinions were so out there and aggressive I had to walk away. Apparently if we hadn't vaccinated against measles we'd all be ok because measles provides immunity. And actually measles never hurt anyone. And polio never hurt anyone either. People being seriously ill was a conspiracy designed to get us to accept vaccines back in the day, al" heading towards the greatest conspiracy of all and that is population control and the existence of Covid. She apparently knows loads of "elders" who nursed people through polio. Apparently it's very mild. I asked her to define "elders" and she talked about my generation. My generation were vaccinated. No one had polio, never mind nursed others. And there is no Covid in Africa. And no Covid in Nepal. She knows this because she once went on holiday to Nepal. And she is applying to remove her children from Steiner to homeschool them because vaccinated teachers (it's mandatory here) are a poor moral example. Either that or are being forced . When I said that I didn't know a single teacher who had been vaccinated against their will (and I know loads having been a teacher for 20 years) she said that was just my opinion and one opinion counted for nothing. I had to leave her company.

The cramming five years of research on the vaccine into 5 months perhaps has worried some people.

The vaccines are built on existing work into SARS/MERS so were not started from nothing. Most of the delays in research are down to finances. But you know this, don't you?

And the fact they're now going to be looking at boosters every 3-6 months is insane. The health service needs to operate as a health service, not a jabbing useless rubbish into people's arms constantly.

We don't know that this is going to be constant. We are responding to a new, highly mutated and very contagious iteration of a virus that is in itself very new.

Talking about 'useless rubbish' suggests that you are a) unable to understand how vaccines work, b) an antivaxxer by stealth or c) both.

You can't kill the economy for a cold. But we have.

It's not a cold. It has a mortality rate significantly higher than flu and it has a devastating impact on hospital/ICU capacity. Long COVID will also have a significant impact on the economy with people needing benefits for long periods of time as they recover - if they recover fully.

But nice try.

@mumda

The cramming five years of research on the vaccine into 5 months perhaps has worried some people. And the fact they're now going to be looking at boosters every 3-6 months is insane. The health service needs to operate as a health service, not a jabbing useless rubbish into people's arms constantly.

You can't kill the economy for a cold. But we have.

Well every lab in the country refocused their work to the Covid vaccine. So whilst it is faster, it's due to the amount of people and man hours that went into the research. Normally not every lab in the country works on the same vaccine. It's also not a cold. It's mutating now into a milder version of the virus. It is a respiratory illness whereas a cold only affects your upper respiratory tract, not lungs.

@pointythings

The cramming five years of research on the vaccine into 5 months perhaps has worried some people.

The vaccines are built on existing work into SARS/MERS so were not started from nothing. Most of the delays in research are down to finances. But you know this, don't you?

And the fact they're now going to be looking at boosters every 3-6 months is insane. The health service needs to operate as a health service, not a jabbing useless rubbish into people's arms constantly.

We don't know that this is going to be constant. We are responding to a new, highly mutated and very contagious iteration of a virus that is in itself very new.

Talking about 'useless rubbish' suggests that you are a) unable to understand how vaccines work, b) an antivaxxer by stealth or c) both.

You can't kill the economy for a cold. But we have.

It's not a cold. It has a mortality rate significantly higher than flu and it has a devastating impact on hospital/ICU capacity. Long COVID will also have a significant impact on the economy with people needing benefits for long periods of time as they recover - if they recover fully.

But nice try.

👏🏼

Primary school friend had to wear a leg iron as a result of polio. She couldn't run around never mind climb trees like the rest of us. So sad.

She sounds brilliant! Can she be hired out as a party entertainer? Ive not heard anything this funny in years

she's so out there and so unbelievable that she is doing the anti vax movement no favours at all

DS (13) somehow got mixed up in a Anti Vac rally - long story.

One of their posters was - 'If pants can't contain a fart, how can a vaccine contain Covid.

The only point of theirs that I somewhat agree with is that we cannot keep getting vaccines for each new variant.

Meanwhile chez pointy, my kids are about to go out to our local walk-in centre to get boostered.

She wouldn’t say that if she’d had measles- I got it when I was 12 . Two weeks in a darkened bedroom (gp visited daily , those were the days and advised I needed to avoid light ) felt absolutely dreadful , it certainly was not mild and after having my hearing damaged by meningitis at 7 - it left me with hearing loss in both ears resulting in me finally being given hearing aids at 40 . I was more than happy for all my dcs to have their Mmrs

My husband's great aunt lost both her sons to measles, at separate times. She took on my DMIL (she was one of 4 and a poorly child). She was thoroughly spoilt but was wrapped in cotton wool. When she left home her DAunt was devastated and her husband told me she died of a broken heart not long after (my DMIL told me she had cancer).

It’s exhausting trying to counter any of these claims made by anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. I had some experiences with conspiracy theorists a few years ago and figured it was safer to not argue with some of them.

People often say ‘we’re all entitled to our opinions’ but how valid is an anti-vaxxer’s opinions on COVID and treatments?

Dame Sarah Gilbert spoke at the Richard Dimbleby lecture last month.
She worked and developed the AZ ( Oxford ) covid vaccine and she said that research was going on a few years before about these vaccines because of the SARS outbreak in Asia a few years before and the Ebola outbreak in Africa in 2014.
The problem with any vaccine research is funding and they often have to wait over a year to get an answer if they can carry on with it or not. Once they were told to go ahead with these ones the funding wasn't a big barrier anymore.
So the research was there previously.
It was a fascinating lecture from one very clever and erudite lady who gave me a bit of reassurance about the work involved in getting these vaccines out to the public.
Of course, the anti vaxxers would not listen to any of this.

[quote Pensieve]@Legoninjago1

Yes I think that’s right. I was replying to @DaisyNGO who was ‘correcting’ a poster up thread 🙂[/quote]
90% of people in ICU admitted for Covid are unvaccinated is how I read it, too. And a third of ICU beds being filled by Covid patients.

That's still a massive proportion of our ICU beds (90% of 1/3 of our ICU beds) being taken up by people who might not have been so seriously ill or even ended up in hospital at all if they had had the vaccine.

@ilovemydogandmrobama2 Fact-checking the 'facts' of the anti-vaxxers.

The fart point was if you can smell a fart through a mask then the mask is useless strangely enough they can't even get their own alternative truth 'facts' straight !

@the80sweregreat

Dame Sarah Gilbert spoke at the Richard Dimbleby lecture last month. She worked and developed the AZ ( Oxford ) covid vaccine and she said that research was going on a few years before about these vaccines because of the SARS outbreak in Asia a few years before and the Ebola outbreak in Africa in 2014. The problem with any vaccine research is funding and they often have to wait over a year to get an answer if they can carry on with it or not. Once they were told to go ahead with these ones the funding wasn't a big barrier anymore. So the research was there previously. It was a fascinating lecture from one very clever and erudite lady who gave me a bit of reassurance about the work involved in getting these vaccines out to the public. Of course, the anti vaxxers would not listen to any of this.

I would love to hear from her about whether we will need 6 monthly boosters for ever. Maybe it is too early to say this given Omicron. I agree with some posters that boosters may not be a sustainable solution for years, though I am quite happy to take mine for now.

To be clear though, if it is 36% of people in hospital with covid are unvaccinated, that means that unvaccinated people have more than double the risk of being hospitalised compared to vaccinated people, given the vaccinated are 80%+ of the population.

I think that someone did ask Dame Sarah Gilbert about boosters in the future etc but I can't remember what she said now. It might still be on I player ( bbc)
I spoke to a nurse when I had my smear done and she thinks it will be boosters every year as they do for the flu jabs.
So more to come no doubt.

My dad's cousin caught whooping cough as a toddler from her brother and due to lack of oxygen with that because mentally and physically disabled.

I agree with PPs that a lot it anti-vaxxers are so privileged that they can't imagine what these illnesses could (and still) do

Shes a complete fucking moron! My nan had polio as a young child and spent months in hospital and even longer wearing leg braces! My youngest child caught measles a week before he was due to have his mmr. He was very very ill and in hospital isolation for over a week, he now has bilateral hearing loss. People who spout that kind of shit make me so angry.

I’m fairly chilled about covid. Double vaccinated but fairly moderate in activities.

But, anyone who says it is a cold is ridiculous.

I’ve had it after being vaccinated and am healthy and fit, but I struggled for breath as walked upstairs. I would have been very scared if I had been unvaccinated and/or elderly and vulnerable caught it. I felt like I was partially choking the whole time.

Covid is not like a cold, or even the flu, it really hinders your breathing capacity.

Anti-Vaxers will probably think I’m a secret agent typing in Whitehall.

I've spent a lot of my life ill and had post viral issues previously, so covid and long covid surprise me. I've got autoimmune conditions so I know my immune system doesn't always work in my interests, so I won't just trust my immune system. I do take my vitamins, before and since covid, to support my body which often fails me in little ways. But I can see that for people who mostly are well, who don't experiences illnesses like these in themselves or people close to them, who don't see the evidence of pre vaccination illnesses like polio around them anymore, that it would be more reassuring to believe that covid doesn't exist or if it doesn't Exist it can't hurt them than to believe the truth. Vaccinations are painful and come with side effects, I can see why people would rather find reasons not to get vaccinated. I can see why people might become anti vaxxers. I can see, also, that for people who have never had any health fear, who have always felt strong and healthy it seems impossible that something they can't even see could hurt them or kill them. We mostly over inflate our own senses of importance, because we see things from inside ourselves looking out. We think that our impact of greater than it is. If we realise just how inconsequential and tiny we are it can drive us mad. People who get to go to space often look down and can't believe how small it all is. A lot of people can't cope with that. They would rather think that the world is flat and they are at its centre than that it is spherical and that it's centre is something they cannot see. Some people would rather believe that the bomb was never dropped on Hiroshima than that life is so fragile. They would rather believe the US government blew up the twin towers intentionally than that they fell down due to such a 'small' impact. What is more human than trying to find some design to the chaos? What is more reassuring than to find a design and other people who believe in that design too and huddle together and wait the storm out together? The religious and non religious alike want to believe that they are not alone and that they have an impact. Everyone in the mainstream want to believe that wearing our masks and getting our jabs and doing our hand washing and social distancing and social isolating and LFD tests and PCR tests and home working is going to make an impact too. We huddle together under the umbrella of science and public interest and wait the storm out together too. We are all looking at some hope to cling to in the face of uncertainty. We all over inflate our own sense of importance and our place in it all, because very few people can face up to the reality of being just a speck on a sphere spinning in space with no control over invisible forces which can kill us in an instant, and that there is nobody controlling it and no way of stopping it. How terrifying is that? We are all sheep in the end, just sheep in different herds, who huddle together and whistle in the fake hoping that the wolf doesn't pick us off one at a time (in this case a wolf we cannot see and which some choose to pretend does not exist).

@shiningcuckoo

And some of her opinions were so out there and aggressive I had to walk away. Apparently if we hadn't vaccinated against measles we'd all be ok because measles provides immunity. And actually measles never hurt anyone. And polio never hurt anyone either. People being seriously ill was a conspiracy designed to get us to accept vaccines back in the day, al" heading towards the greatest conspiracy of all and that is population control and the existence of Covid. She apparently knows loads of "elders" who nursed people through polio. Apparently it's very mild. I asked her to define "elders" and she talked about my generation. My generation were vaccinated. No one had polio, never mind nursed others. And there is no Covid in Africa. And no Covid in Nepal. She knows this because she once went on holiday to Nepal. And she is applying to remove her children from Steiner to homeschool them because vaccinated teachers (it's mandatory here) are a poor moral example. Either that or are being forced . When I said that I didn't know a single teacher who had been vaccinated against their will (and I know loads having been a teacher for 20 years) she said that was just my opinion and one opinion counted for nothing. I had to leave her company.

I find this really odd. In all the last 22 months of this thing I've never met a full on anti all vaccinations person, ever.

I've met people who are hesitant of covid vax, or who don't feel their kids need it, or who have concerns that it's under emergency licence, but never one who is anti vax in principal. In fact in my whole life I've only met one anti vax person and that was for the MMR vax because they believed the Andrew Wakefield study linking it to autism

I must lead a sheltered life 🤷‍♀️

Twenty years ago I knew someone who paid privately to have their child vaccinated with the MMR in three separate vaccines.
She believed the research about MMR and autism. The internet wasn't as accessible as it is now.

@Thickasmincepie

I don't think the mmr existed for those of us in our 40s, did it? I had rubella one in school. I caught measles, mumps and chicken pox all before the age of 10.

My eldest dd had it in 1990 and it was reasonably new then. I was born in the 60's and remember vividly how awful Measles was. Horrible

My dad had Asian flu and mumps in the 60s and he nearly died:(
I had German measles as a kid aged 3 and was very poorly apparently ( late 60s)

What’s her Mumsnet username?