"Bring back our #ChildhoodDiseases"

[Lang Spoon]

Andrew Wakefield is a malign bastard. Fucking evil to still peddle his shite.

[Flynnie]

I’m autistic so I have less than zero sympathy for people who would rather have their children die than like trains. Ffs.

[Antepli Ejderha]

When our daughter was born we were offered vitamin K. I'd read that we'd be asked this so tried to find out who refuses this. In short it's a load of Christian fundamentalists who believe that God created us with the right amount of vitamin K so no need for the dose when born.

We have also been through the first three rounds of vaccinations at 8, 12 and 16 weeks. The 8 week jabs were awful, a rocketing heart rate of 180+ for hours and a terrible experience in A and E with no doctor willing to say that our daughter's condition was almost certainly caused by the vaccinations she'd had earlier that day. They believed it was either sepsis or meningitis.

However we're still vaccinating and will do so because it's just not worth the alternative. You are an extremely irresponsible and selfish parent especially when you've had it done yourself.

Diseases eradicated in the UK are making a come back because of the anti vaccination lobby.

Is it Spain that doesn't allow children into school unless they've been vaccinated? Makes a lot of sense.

[WOM]

When our daughter was born we were offered vitamin K. I'd read that we'd be asked this so tried to find out who refuses this. In short it's a load of Christian fundamentalists who believe that God created us with the right amount of vitamin K so no need for the dose when born.

You what now? It's to address blood clotting deficiencies in newborns.

[Antepli Ejderha]

You what now? It's to address blood clotting deficiencies in newborns.

Is it standard to give this in Canada WOM?

In the UK it's all about informed consent.

In reality this means the ill or poorly informed make decisions for their children that could have horrendous consequences.

[WOM]

I recall being asked/told about it at our kids' birth. I don't recall whether it was positioned as optional. But we did it.

That aside, I'm far more curious about your belief in it being some Christian fundy thing.

[WOM]

Wait...sorry...I misread you. You're saying that it's only Christian fundies who decline it. My bad.

[caja-dglh]

I recall being asked/told about it at our kids' birth. I don't recall whether it was positioned as optional. But we did it.

That aside, I'm far more curious about your belief in it being some Christian fundy thing.

I think he meant choosing to decline the offer is. Like many religious beliefs about this kind of thing (transfusions etc)

err yeah. like you worked out

[WOM]

Yes, I misread him. My mistake. He's been restored to the Christmas card list now.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Wait...sorry...I misread you. You're saying that it's only Christian fundies who decline it. My bad.

Yep. That's the only group of people who seemed to consistently refuse it. God created us this way so no need for an extra dose .

[Antepli Ejderha]

Yes, I misread him. My mistake. He's been restored to the Christmas card list now.

Thank you. Please send it care of Mr. T. Gymshorts.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I think the big problem with finding the right way to get this message across is that you can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into. That really only leaves Shame, opprobrium, humiliation and intimidation.

[Amor de Cosmos]

We've a couple of friends who are confirmed anti-vaxxers. Neither of them are fundamentalist Christians, or indeed particularly spiritual (maybe a bit woo on her side). Both are high achievers educationally (he has a PhD from Yale, and is senior faculty at UBC.) They've two children one in her early teens, her brother two years younger. They didn't even get their dog vaccinated ("If I don't vaccinate my kids why would I vaccinate my dog?") Their opinion on this issue perplexes everyone, friends and colleagues. I haven't spoken to them about it for some time (they were next door neighbours at our previous house) but, IIRC their logic was that the diseases that people used to be inoculated for have mostly disappeared, and when they do reappear it's just a temporary aberration and not worth the risk of vaccination. Most of us have agreed to differ and let it drop, as we don't want to strain our friendship. In all other ways they're charming people.

[WOM]

See, this is why you're a much better person than I. If I found out that good friends were anti-vaxxers, I'd mentally put them into the 'Well, you're a fucking idiot' category and not bother with them again. I'm still struggling with a good couple-friend of ours who thinks 'Trump's doing a great job....not like that wimp we have'. She's mortified, but he actually thinks that way.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Perhaps I'm just more of a wimp who doesn't like confrontation? I suppose it comes down to balancing the pros and cons of a relationship. Not on some kind of explicit scale or graph just on how much someone's company and/or friendship means to me. I could probably even deal with a Trump supporter if there were other attributes that balanced him/her out (it'd take quite a few though.)

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/0...-anti-vaxxers/

I read the shorter version in the Guardian today. A good read.

[Stumpy Pepys]

We've a couple of friends who are confirmed anti-vaxxers. Neither of them are fundamentalist Christians, or indeed particularly spiritual (maybe a bit woo on her side). Both are high achievers educationally (he has a PhD from Yale, and is senior faculty at UBC.).

I was in a similar situation and just avoided the subject to be honest.

The anti-vax crowd is unusual in the conspiracy world, as they're generally well-educated and middle-class. These outbreaks of childhood diseases all take place in areas like California and Oregon; not Louisiana and Mississippi.

[ursus arctos]

Also primarily female, which isn't standard at all.

The NYRB piece is very good and written by a great doctor.

[NHH]

I think the big problem with finding the right way to get this message across is that you can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into. That really only leaves Shame, opprobrium, humiliation and intimidation.

You missed off empathy, which is also the likeliest to achieve something.

The reasons people do this are overdetermined. You've got young mothers who have the living bejesus scared out of them with things they shouldn't allow near their body when pregnant; this puts them into a mindset of 'be careful about what gets into their body' from the get go.

And, whilst people can appreciate the situation rationally, love of their child is a far far more powerful force. My mum didn't get me vaccinated in the 70s because of tabloid scare stories about what the MMR vaccine did. I wish she fucking had, and it was cretinous of her, but she was acting solely out of concern, however misplaced. Telling her that she was a fucking idiot is as unhelpful as it is unfair.

That parental concern was able to trump the medical advice in part because, well, medical advice changes. People's experience of medical evidence shows tells them it varies from place to plac and time to time. Now, of course, you'll not find divergence on the issue of vaccination across places or over time, but people don't compartmentalise between medical advice based on overwhelming consensus, balance of probabilities and 'it probably won't do any harm'.

People's apprenhension of these things is mediated by a media which reports every new experiental study as a new piece of advice; fat is fine, then its sugar. Drinking's good for your heart, then it's not. They make no distinction between a report of a limited study revealing a potential marginal benefit or harm and official advice from the Chief Medical Officer. Then, people also remember that the fucking chief medical officer also said Thalidomide was fine, and blood transfusions are safe in the 1980s, until it turned out the CMO was wrong.

I mean, I get that it's fucking stupid, then so is taking drugs, fucking without protection, drinking and smoking. No amount of medical advice demonstrating that these things are not very good for you at all changes the fact that people still do them. In some cases, people cling to minority medical opinions as they provide a figleaf of justification ("a glass of win a day is really beneficial for your heart").

The risk to your child from not having the vaccine is contingent on whether or not in the future something happens (ie, exposure to the disease in question), and parents exaggerate their ability to shield their kids. The risk of something bad happening if you have the vaccine is simply the dumb luck of the draw once the vaccine is in their bodies.

Once the idea starts that something could happen that damages your child, then it's a very difficult emotion to block out. Frankly, the astonishing thing is that given all these decisons are made by people who are massively sleep deprived and completely headfucked from the whole parenting thing that so many people actually allow their children to be vaccinated.

I can't also help noting that the people who are the most vociferous in prosecuting the 'everyone who doesn't vaccinate is scum!' tend to be men (as do many prominent antivaxxers) and in the middle are often women, forced to weigh issues using completely incompaible scales, of reason on the one hand, and perhaps the more powerful emotion humans experience, and one - to be frank - most of the men haven't got the first idea about never having carried a baby nor given birth to one and overwhelmingly never been the primary caregiver to one either.

[ursus arctos]

Excellent post

[WOM]

I mean, I get that it's fucking stupid, then so is taking drugs, fucking without protection, drinking and smoking. No amount of medical advice demonstrating that these things are not very good for you at all changes the fact that people still do them.

Quite. This sentence specifically for me. No matter how rational we believe we are - or should be, when it matters most - we still do irrational things for a variety of reasons. And if we've heard something often enough for it to raise 'reasonable doubt' in our minds, we throw rationality out the window.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Excellent post

Seconded

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

No I thought about all of those things. And came to the conclusion that if I was interested enough to be aware of the risks involved in getting a vaccine, I would be interested enough to actually find out the numbers. Empathy only gets you so far, and it doesn't work half often enough, particularly if that article linked above is anything to go by. It's also a two way street. Maybe it's because as a kid I was dragged to basically every historical building in every town in ireland, but I spent a lot of time in graveyards and noticed how a huge number of the 19th century entries were children who died at the same time. Maybe because I have a keen insight into just how many people are wandering around on immunosuppresants, but this problem is getting worse, and herd immunity is important.

[blameless]

Going back to the original post, Ms. Shine may be interested to hear blameless snr's (a baby boomer and a TB survivor) reaction to her tweet: "I'll swap that silly <expletive>'s lungs for mine, see if she still thinks 20th century diseases are a fun thing to have".

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Yeah, my dad spent 9 months in one of Noel Browne's brand new TB sanatoria, and we were going to get all our bloody vaccines.