Son has measles

[melodiousmoan]

Why do people not vaccinate their kids? My child has been vaccinated but only had his first lot as is 20 months. He has contracted measles. I chose to vaccinate him against this. Ill advised people that think if they dont vaccinate there's only a slim chance your child will get this disease you're wrong. You're increasing everyone's chance of contracting the illness by ruining the herd immunity that this country had created. Not only are you doing this, you're increasing people with compromised immune systems' chance of death. I feel terrible that my child has to go through this because of others lack of understanding.

Corus i agree with much of what you have said.

It's late and I'm off to bed.

Do you have an official diagnosis?

Corus - From your post, it sounds like you are familiar with Game Theory concepts. So I think you will know what I am talking about below.

"If vaccinating 1000 children resulted in 1 death and 2 disabilities, and not vaccinating those children resulted in 5 deaths and 10 disabilities, then the vaccine should be worth doing."

That is the state's point of view. Not only that, they also consider the costs involved - the cost of just a few disabilities is nothing compared to the cost of treating all cases of measles & mumps, including complications, and the economic cost of their parents' absence from work for two weeks. It is not surprising that the state advocates and pushes for the MMR.

However, the parents are separate 'players' than the state, with a different POV and priorities. To parents, the cost to the NHS of their sick child matters not one bit. What matters to a parent is the health of their child, not only now but going forward. The only reason a parent will take the risk of a vaccine for her child is because she believes the risk of having the disease is higher. When vaccine risk is perceived to be higher, disease risk is very low, or probability of catching the disease is very low (as with 'herd immunity') it is inevitable that more people will opt out of the vaccine.

Quite a few Game Theory studies have been done on this subject, like this one.

"I would have no problem in someone telling me that I didn't give a rats arse about society because that would be the truth of it."

You make it sound abhorrent that a parent thinks about the safety of her child first and foremost, above that of a hypothetical non-immune stranger who might or might not come in contact with him, when he might or might not be contagious.

It is completely normal.

"If you accept that rubella immunity is desirable in women, not to protect them but to protect their foetuses, then you are accepting a risk taken by vaccinating one person in order to benefit another person. Which is the same thing as vaccinating the boys so that they can't give rubella to their pregnant partners or sisters, in order to protect the foetus."

Absolutely not.

A grown woman freely deciding to have a vaccine for her own benefit as well as that of her future baby is a very different thing than forcing this risk on a small child with no benefit whatsoever to him, just for the society.

The latter is ethically indefensible.

LaVolcan - re "I suspect that by vaccinating boys against rubella, when a boy by definition can't bear a child, that what they would really like is to eliminate the disease"

They can't. See the conclusion of the game theory study I posted:

This finding formalizes an argument that has previously been made qualitatively; namely, it is impossible to eradicate a disease through voluntary vaccination when individuals act according to their own interests. In situations where vaccination is perceived to be more risky than contracting the disease (r > 1), one would expect, even without the aid of a model, that no parents would vaccinate their children.

And I believe 'they' are smart enough to know this. As I said below, the state's goal is not to eradicate the diseases but to minimise their costs including their complications. And the cost of a few damaged children is the small price to pay for this.

I agree with the people who have pointed out that your son may not have contracted measles from an unvaccinated person so it is unreasonable to single them out as a group. As you've found out yourself, vaccination is not completely effective. I think you have already been corrected about the 'half immune' thing so I won't bang on about it again. Clearly your son must have fallen into the ~10% of people for which the first vaccine is not effective.

It seems a bit silly to point out 5 different groups of people who may be affected by contracting measles without accepting that the person who infected your son may have fallen into one of those categories. Is it ok for someone to infect your child if they have a 'valid reason' for not having had the vaccine/being immune? I don't think you have thought this through.

I hope your son feels better soon.

Actually I think the best solution is going to be identifying the people for whom the vaccine is more likely to be a risk. I dislike 'one-size-fits-all' approaches.

Yes, that's why I said that the best solution is trying to identify the people who are at risk in my last post. If you are able to identify them then people may be more reassured because they can make an informed decision rather than just basing their decision on 'oh, it's usually fine'.

In my limited medical knowledge the reason you have 2 MMR jabs is because the body only copes with measles or mumps at one time. Therefore if the body "recognises" measles then you will be vaccinated against measles, if the body recognises mumps you will be vaccinated against mumps. You cannot get measles and mumps at the same time. Feel free to put me right.

Dd had measles at 5 months and thought long and hard about giving her the MMR.

Two things happened which made me decide not to vaccinate and neither had anything to do with autism.

The first was df took her baby for the MMR. 24 hours later she was arranging her funeral.

The second was a doctor on tv who was telling mothers to vaccinate.
He said that mothers today were too young to remember the 50's and 60's when if you got measles you died.

I do not know anyone who has had measles who has been damaged by it but I do know of 2 deaths and 3 hospitalisations after the vaccination.

You are extremely unlucky Annie. That's really horrible.

Here us a link to the statistics regarding complications from the new MMRV vaccine from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA. It doesn't get more reputable than the CDC. The whole world looks to the CDC on public health issues. The statistics are for the new MMRV, rather than just MMR because they have now loaded on varicella as well.

www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/vis-statements/mmrv.html

You'll see that a lot of children get a mild rash. Only 4 in one million get a serious complication. And in those cases they can't be sure whether it was the vaccine or coincidence. Unless you have a known risk, it's in your own best interests, statistically, to be vaccinated. The fact that you are making the world safer for those who are vulnerable and cannot be vaccinated is just icing on the cake.

the vulnerable who rely on everyone else being vaccinated.

People in this category are vulnerable, full stop, not just to diseases that we happen to have a vaccine for. The immuno-compromised are at just as much at risk from someone with a cold, which the majority of us will shake off with a few days inconvenience.

So what do they rely upon; in some cases they will keep anti-biotics in their fridge to ward off bacterial disease, otherwise ask people who were within a sniff of getting an infection to stay away, are a couple of options.

He said that mothers today were too young to remember the 50's and 60's when if you got measles you died.

He was lying, and he knew it, and furthermore peddling rubbish like that does no-one any favours. Parents have only got to say, 'Well my Mum and Dad both got measles in the 50s and suffered no long term damage. If he's lying about that, what else is he lying about? Is he lying about vaccination?'

Corus, you've acknowledged that vaccines are not safe for everyone. How do you propose that we identify the ones for whom it is not safe?

Bumbley, the OP is not saying that the she blames the individual from whom her son contracted measles (who as you say, might or might not have been vaccinated). She is saying that when x percent of people (say 95% for the sake of argument) are vaccinated in a population, there is herd immunity, measles doesn't get a foothold and both the effectively vaccinated, the 10% or so for whom the first vaccine does not work and the minority who cannot have the vaccine for medical reasons are extremely unlikely to encounter it. If vaccination rates falls to, say 80%, then measles can get a grip, and the minority who cannot get vaccinated, and for whom the vaccine does not work are put at risk.

"OP is not saying that the she blames the individual from whom her son contracted measles"

Is that what you have understood from the OP's rant "I feel terrible that my child has to go through this because of others lack of understanding" and her blaming "not the world. Just the idiots that don't vaccinate their children"?

Corus, you said in your first post : " It's still the fault of the unnecessary non-vaccinators..." How do you determine whether someone is an unnecessary non-vaccinator or someone who is 'vulnerable and can't be vaccinated'? Sadly, most people only find out that they are in the second group after vaccine damage has occurred. I'm not sure why you feel that you are in a position to tell people whether or not they should take that risk for their child. If you feel comfortable taking it then that's your decision but I really don't think you should judge others who make a different decision.

No, I'm not 'against vaccination'.

Corus - The existing problem which bumbley was trying to draw your attention to is that doctors don't know how to identify children who should not be vaccinated. There are some indicators, but we are far from being able to properly identify the children at risk.

And it doesn't look likely that this subject will be attracting any funding or scientists anytime soon - I'm guessing that no scientist in their right mind would risk the public flogging that Wakefield received.