To ask why people don't vaccinate their DC even though we know that it doesn't cause Autism?

[TheHouseOnBellSt]

www.thespainreport.com/16953/six-year-old-boy-with-diphtheria-in-catalonia-dies/

A 6 year old boy in Catalonia has died of Diphtheria. Why are people still anti-vaccinations?

Why? My SIL has not and is not vaccinating her DS. He's 14 months now and MIL is so worried.

MrsDV had been very measured and balanced I think.

Vaccine damage is very very rare and every case is obviously a tragedy but if everybody stopped vaccinating we would see far more children damaged by disease. Spain's first case of diphtheria in almost 30 years has resulted in death. People are very confident that modern medicine will make sure that their child suffers no long-term damage from these diseases but actually our hospitals aren't geared up to deal with outbreaks. The closest country with any anti-toxin to treat the boy was Russia. A significant outbreak in Europe could have tragic consequences as we wouldn't have the supplies of medicine to treat the unvaccinated children.

Great post, MrsDeVere.

I delayed ds's initial vaccinations because he'd been very ill as a baby and was hospitalized for some time I wanted to give him a chance to recover and gain strength and consoled myself with the fact that it ws very unlikely that he would come into contact with anything. It was on the health board on here that i then came across more the one thread about whooping cough and came to realise that it's actually still around, it's just less severe in older children and adults. Apparently the protection offered by vaccination is short-term but enough to protect a baby at its most vulnerable.

Every cough i came across i worried about.

I finally did have him vaccinated and breathed a sigh of relief. That might his temperature went up to 40oC and he was inconsolable. He was out of sorts for the next few days too. So then i worried about that, and questioned whether i should continue with the vaccination schedule. I did and each time it was the same. Now I'm already worrying about and deliberating the mmr.

Being a parent is shit sometimes. We have to make choices for our children and only time can tell us if we made the correct one. It's bloody hard.

Anti-vaxxers aren't deliberately putting the health of their or any other children at risk.

Pro-vaxxers aren't deliberately risking their child's health by injecting them with what is sometimes unhelpfully referred to as 'shit' or 'poison'.

We are all trying to make the best choice for our children and it's bloody hard enough without each side slinging mud at the other

And reading the experiences of pandasand MrsDeVere and others on this thread is just so awful.

I'm so sorry for those people whose children have been vaccine-damaged and those whose lives have been affected or lost through childhood illnesses.

pickle

great post.

sorry your dc was so ill

Oh I have heard it all now.

'Vaccinations are stoopid because the risk of catching and dying from measles is so low'.

Trazzletoes in answer to your question my honest answer is i don't know. A friend of mine has a dd currently going through chemo, she knows we haven't vaccinated our children and is happy to still be around us, but at the first sign of illness we (and everyone else) stays away from them. If it was my child I dont know what I'd do. As I say I realise my decision is not risk free. I live in south Wales where we had a measles outbreak quite recently. Of course it worried me. I'm not insane or am in the business of willfully and wantonly putting children - my own or other people's- at risk just for shits and giggles. It's a thing I struggle with.

NoStannis - Nobody said that. Straw Man is a logical fallacy.

grumpysquash
A key reason for concern about other people's vaccination choices seems to be the concept of herd immunity (and how non vaccinators are not contributing to herd immunity; are considered to be taking advantage of others' immunity; are thought to be disregarding the health of other people's children etc).

As an immunologist, can you explain why virtually all focus on increasing vaccination uptake against diseases in the childhood immunisation programme is on children and not adults? If herd immunity is thought to be key, why are adults and their immune status generally not a consideration or concern (unless e.g. they work in specific occupations)?

My child exists, and she has a pretty shitty life because of routine vaccination.
My child exists. She doesn't have a shitty life, but she's picked on almost daily for having Asperger Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy, she also has a somewhat fucked immune system. Not caused by vaccines. She's picked on for her Narcolepsy, that one makes her a real target. It was caused by a vaccine. I would do the same again. The risk is minimal, and the risk of unvaccinated people causing serious illness or death to said dd is really quite high.

"Do many adults chose to travel abroad to high risk areas without being vaccinated?"

I doubt it. If you know that you are going to an area where an infection is rampant, you get vaccinated.

The reluctance to vaccinate babies for diseases that are either not dangerous to them or not prevalent in their country (especially for the sake of other people) is a different kind of animal altogether, imho.

MrsdeVere, I haven't screeched. (At you or anybody) Nor have I tried to tell you to stop discussing any of your children.

I haven't had a child who died. I cannot imagine that situation.

inhavent put any words in your mouth. I haven't said that you posted all non-vaxxers are idiots.

I have posted my situation, and the likely future for my child once I am no longer here.

There are posters who claim vaccine damage is not worth consideration. That collateral damage is, essentially, ok. There are posters who claim that vaccines (all, not just mmr) do not cause autism. There is inbviously some semantic debate over 'cause' and 'trigger'. It doesn't really matter which side of the debate you fall on. My child had vaccines, was damaged by them, and now (yes, now - not all autism is genetic) has severe autism. and I am regularly called all kinds of names because I won't do the same to my other children.
That is all the comment I made. I made no judgement on you, nor did I claim you had made one of me. I did not comment on your situation before because (having been in these threads with you before) I knew that if I did that would also be torn apart.

This is my an easy decision from either side, but it would be eased if the discussion was kept away from personal comment.

Dawn, I'm glad your ds doesn't have a shitty life. Mine does. MMine will never achieve the kind of independence (of thought or life) that your dds can and does.

Vaccination may still be the obvious choice for you, it isn't for me.

Panda that's the point I was trying to make. It's different for all of us. I'd also like to point out that Dds twin didn't have all her innoculations, various reasons, but that was the sensible decision at the time.

Cote sadly you've no idea whether the illness will be dangerous to your child until they get it.

Widespread and numerous allergies in my family. My mother was advised that I should have the smallpox ( now defunct) vaccine or BCG. I had measles, chickenpox and rubella as a teenager and was not that ill (measles was worst). With my own children they had only one lot of MMR, polio, diptheria and tetanus but no BCG. I got the vaccinations spread over a longer period than usual and rather than go to the practice nurse I saw our GP and insisted he went thfrough the risks with me before making the final decision, I recorded this just in case. I think I was justified in being concerned and doing the best I could to ensure vaccine damage was not caused to my sons.

Well, rubella isn't actually dangerous to anyone except fetuses of non-immune pregnant women. I actually want DD to get rubella and be immune for life, so you are not scaring me there.

Has anyone here seen rubella? Just a two-day "fever" that is so low that many parents don't even notice it. Pinprick rash that disappears within 24 hours. Child in no visible discomfort.

It's not meant to be about scaring anyone. I'm just stating just as vaccine damage can occur with no rhyme or reason so can damage from many diseases we immunise for. You can't expect someone to respect your view without accepting the other side of the coin

"just as vaccine damage can occur with no rhyme or reason so can damage from many diseases we immunise for. You can't expect someone to respect your view without accepting the other side of the coin"

I'm happy to respect your views but they are uninformed in this case. Rubella is not dangerous for anyone except the fetuses of non-immune pregnant women. The best way to make sure DD will never be in that position is for her to actually have this very benign and short-lived childhood disease, and not to vaccinate her as a baby when that immunity is worth nothing to her and risk waning vaccine immunity when she is pregnant decades later.

We can go over this as many times as you like, but the facts are not going to change.

"mother contracting Rubella. She didn't know she wasn't immune."

That is very sad. Here in France, women are sent off for blood tests as soon as their pregnancy is confirmed to check for, among other things, rubella immunity.

It would be an idea to campaign for such health measures to be covered by the NHS rather than expect the whole world to vaccinate their babies (girls and boys) to protect that rare non-immune pregnant woman they may never come in contact with.

What if your child was not yet showing the outward signs of rubella and met that hypothetical non-immune pregnant woman Cote?

But hey, you'd probably never know, would you, random woman in the shopping centre....hardly even pregnant yet, random kid already contagious but with perhaps such a tiny rash she hasn't even spotted it herself yet.

MrsD. How you maintain your dignity in the face of utter twatblathering on here day after day is awesome. You rock lady. x