Compulsory immunisation

[Parker231]

“Health secretary Matt Hancock has said he is willing to look at "all options" to boost England's vaccination levels, including compulsory immunisation.

Mr Hancock told the BBC he did not want to "reach the point" of imposing jabs, but would "rule nothing out".

I hope this goes ahead. In the States you can’t start public state school without up to date vaccination records.

It is superficially attractive but ethically it is a minefield. There are medical reasons not to vaccinate and there are medical reasons to avoid the unvaccinated.
If you have a medically excepted unvaccinated child in class with a child undergoing chemo which one do you exclude?

I suppose the question posed was: should vaccinations be compulsory, and I don't think they should be. It's ultimately a question of weighing up risks. Nothing is risk free. Forcing medical procedures makes you the property of the state. If this was North Korea or Stalinist Russia then maybe it's acceptable, but we're not there yet.

I caught whooping cough 4 years ago and I’m still not recovered properly.

My mother, who is now nearly 80, caught whooping cough in her mid 60s and it was also a missed diagnosis for a long time until someone twigged that of course, she'd never had vaccines and asked if she'd had whooping cough or if anyone could remember her having it (no, her parents were long dead and she was the eldest sibling).

Surely witholding benefits or free education from families who don't vaccinate still hurts the child who didn't make the decision.

And i would hope that medical exemption would include my two, who, as autistic teens, won't let anyone anywhere near them with a needle. DS2 wouldn't even take the flu-mist which was offered in his special school, this winter.

Not vaccinating your child is selfish. Herd immunity is essential to protect babies, the elderly, people who are immunosuppressed and people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. I don't know how they would police compulsory vaccinations but not allowing unvaccinated children into schools or refusing passports or entry into the country or cutting benefits would increase uptake which would go to show how seriously people take their anti-vacation views.

Yubaba, so you were then spreading it, not unvaccinated children! Why blame unvaccinated children when you could easily have caught it from any other adults whose childhood vaccines had worn off.

I have a permanent 30% loss of hearing as a sequelae from a childhood case of measles. When I started school I couldn't hear what the teachers were saying and they thought at first that I was learning disabled.

I wish I had been vaccinated.

The courts in the US have consistently found that requiring vaccination as a condition of school attendance is perfectly acceptable. The state has a compelling interest in protecting the health of children and school staff.

newrepublic.com/article/120950/courts-have-upheld-governments-constitutional-right-vaccine-laws

I just wanted to say, my children are homeschooled and I guess off the radar but they have been vaccinated with all the childhood vaccines plus another 3 we payed for on top of those (meningitis B, TB and chicken pox). Whilst I know some homeschoolers who haven't vaccinated I also know quite a few whose children are in school and haven't been vaccinated.
It's become more popular to not vaccinate, someone I know has 5 children, her last child who is under 2 is the one who hasn't been vaccinated. It's really quite worrying in what a trend it's becoming and I really do think the government need to step in and do something.

Where I live you lose your family benefits , and can't send your kids to school or child care, if they are not vaccinated. It's amazing how people with strong anti-vax views, suddenly change their minds when they realise that they are going to lose money because of it !

MumUnderTheMoon if it was adults being forced to have the same number of vaccines as children do these days and threatened with being banned from their job, removal of benefits, banning from public spaces etc, there'd be an uproar! Why is it acceptable to force children to undergo a medical procedure? Many families have vaccine damaged kids already, and stop vaccinating their younger ones. There's no medical exemption on the basis of family members having vaccine damage. You'd force them to have it despite family history?! If you had a sibling who died from a reaction to paracetamol but your GP said you had to take paracetamol or face losing your job/benefits etc, you'd happily take it?

It's not unvaccinated children that pose a risk it's those that do not stay at home whilst ill spreading the disease, some of those just vaccinated with a live virus like mmr or whose vaccination has worn off. Vaccinated people have the potential to spread disease more because the symptoms are mild and they don't know they are infectious.

I see little point in stopping unvaccinated children from going to school as they will still be in shops, gardens, streets and surgery's etc where if they have measles it can be caught.

Also why would you take the risk of a vaccine if you've had the disease itself. It cannot offer any benefit. There was a good segment on this morning

triangled I’m a HCP, I probably caught it from a patient and it took 4 dr visits to diagnose. I was still working for quite a few weeks whilst I was infectious, I may well have spread to to someone unvaccinated, I don’t know.

It's not unvaccinated children that pose a risk it's those that do not stay at home whilst ill spreading the disease

Except that they can spread the disease for four days before showing any symptoms

www.cdc.gov/measles/about/transmission.html.

Unless you are never going to come into contact with other people then I think not vaccinating without reason is incredibly selfish. Leave relying on herd immunity for those who need it. I totally support the policy where I live (Aus) in linking Centrelink benefits and childcare enrolments to following the childhood immunisation schedule, measles outbreaks have increased here recently mainly when people contract the disease overseas and travel home. As someone above said it's amazing how many people's attitudes changed once it started costing them.

In the US state I live in access to all schooling public or private requires either a vaccination record be handed into the school nurse or an exemption certificate if you are unable for a specific number of reasons to vaccinate your dc.
It means only hard core anti vaxers don't inoculate as you have to educate your dc yourself if you don't vaccinate.

I know the vaccine topic seems to make people shout but recently this video came up on my feed, I don't know how because my YouTube history is off but then again maybe that's why. And I can see why people do not vaccinate. There is a whole other side out there and a lot of people do a disservice to themselves by not researching both sides and only focusing on one side.
I've been vaccinated and my children have had a few but not all. They're still small and I'm looking into it but I wonder if someone would make a thread on this channel that came up on my feed. This is one video but there are many from the UK and the US. It has made me wonder but I'm someone who actually listens to the parents rather than just attacks with a blanket statement.

I wish we could talk about the individual videos of the other side to see where they are coming from.

I am not sure quite what you are trying to say but the medical evidence for vaccination is clear. It isn't an even two sided debate. The is why even the USA a country that highly values individual freedom, is less concerned with public safety and has no NHS equivalent still insists on vaccination.

"But I wouid vigorously support the Australian system which cuts family benefits for those with unvaccinated DC"

Totally disagree with any scheme which disproportionately affects the poor.

Especially on this subject as in my experience it tends to be mc types that are anti vax so it wouldn't even work that well to achieve its aim.

"Public health education is probably the best option but it needs to learn lessons from the Wakefield scandal and subsequent drop in vaccination levels. It needs to be more savvy about countering misinformation put about by anti-vaxxers" this instead!

Yubaba - I had whooping cough 2 winters ago, similar story first gp put it down to an asthma flare up, 2nd older GP dx correctly. Took ages to go!

I'm pro vax but I think making it "compulsory" could seriously backfire.

One way alone is if we refuse children who aren't vaccinated a place in school and they're then taught by the very people who are anti vax they're likely to develop the same view and not vaccinate their kids etc etc

I think rather than make it compulsory so the idiots in society have yet another thing to gripe about, there needs to be a compulsory attendance vaccine education programme delivered as part of antenatal care, so that people have the intelligence and the knowledge to understand exactly how vaccines work and why they are so very, very important.

@PetraOne

You didn’t answer the question a poster asked you about MMR.

@Triangled
I wouldn't force anyone to do anything. I would suggest laying out options to people in my original post I was wondering how strong People’s beliefs would be in the face of losing something they wanted. Most people don't vaccinate because of junk science off the internet not because a family member has "vaccine damage". I happen to think that cutting benefits wouldn't be acceptable because that is fundamentally affecting an entire families existence and I think would be a step to far given that it would leave people with no other option but to vaccinate. But not allowing unvaccinated children into schools actually protects other kids and not allowing unvaccinated people to have passports prevents the spread of a very dangerous disease. And being homeschooled or travelling to other countries isn't fundamentally detrimental to anyone's existence whereas hearing loss, brain damage and death from measles obviously are.

If you have a medically excepted unvaccinated child in class with a child undergoing chemo which one do you exclude?
Neither. They’d both be kept safe by herd immunity. But when others can vaccinate but choose not to, both of these children are put at risk by reduced herd immunity.

Surely witholding benefits or free education from families who don't vaccinate still hurts the child who didn't make the decision
Yes but it’s necessary to protect the majority. Patents make a lot of decisions that negatively affect their kids, we can’t police them all.

It's not unvaccinated children that pose a risk it's those that do not stay at home whilst ill spreading the disease

Except that they can spread the disease for four days before showing any symptoms

The premise is the same. You have to have the disease to be able to spread it. One poster on this thread, a HCP had an infectious disease and possibly spread it. I expect the HCP to have been vaccinated but they still got sick and where able to maximise potential to spread through work.

Newly vaccinated people can spread disease if they received a live virus like MMR.

Vaccines do not last forever for everybody and some never take. We are also seeing that there is no such absolute thing as vaccine induced heard immunity, even in communities wherebover 90% have been vaccinated measles an outbreak still occurs.also we see cases like outbreaks at universities where the vaccine has worn off. More and more boosters are being introduced.

So the position that is let's ban children from school or stop their benefits to help prevent your child from catching disease whilst their teacher, HCPs and other vaccinated children can pass the disease to them lol. Flawed premise. Outbreaks will still happen.

P.S. in a lot of states in the US you can exempt your children from vaccination on religious grounds. Oh and a study showed it was the wealthy and highly educated in the states that formed a very high percentage that were not vaccinating.

It only affects poor people though. Why are rich people allowed to have bodily autonomy?