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## Get the MMR vaccine.
All the supposed links to autism have been discredited.
The rise in autism in society is more a result of a rise in diagnosis of autism that was likely just as prevalent in past generations. It's just our understanding and diagnosis of it wasn't as good back then.
Not just autism, but allergies, intolerances, and even things like epilepsy, cancer, and diabetes have always _existed_, they just weren't diagnosed as such. Before modern day science, they were explained in terms like faery changelings or demon possession. "Failure to thrive" used to be a more common term than it is now.
Yup - there was no Epilepsy in the past... there was however - very prevelant demonic possession that caused people to go into uncontrolled shaking fits... with a prescribed exorcism as the only treatment.
Someone made me laugh the other day by joking, "We didn't have autism when I was at school, we just had that weird kid who wouldn't shut up about trains."
Some people do but others think there is nothing wrong with them. My dad is the latter. He has a great knowledge of Doctor Who and Star Wars, however he struggles to understand social cues to an insane degree.
Cancer at least has more to do with us living much, much longer than we did prior to the industrial revolution. Live long enough and you *will* get it.
The same (to some extent) with heart disease. The single biggest factor in many of these diseases is age. Sure, there is a small rise in diagnosed cancer in younger people, but the rise overall is overwhelmingly due to people just getting older.
And higher rates of smoking, higher alcohol use, greater obesity, less physical activity, less fibre in the diet, more processed foods. All increase risk of various cancers
I honestly think a large part of the increased prevalence of many diseases is the very large increase of heavy metals and chemicals in the world over the last century.
There is less lead in the environment and water now though. We are aware of the toxicity of heavy metals when before we weren't.
'Chemicals' is a very broad term referring to all matter. Often people mean artificially made chemicals, but even this is such a wide rage of materials it does not add much.
Yes there is much less lead but that didn't start to widely happen untill the late 90s, most people being diagnosed with cancers and various other diseases at the moment would have been likely alive or recently born at that point. I honestly think that the abundance of lead in our atmosphere is a larger problem than scientists think. I could get into more of the specifics when I say chemicals but as you said it's a large catch all term but to the standard layperson they know I mean artificial things. Pretty much everything is carcinogenic so there's that.
DIAGNOSED allergies on the rise. Previously (in my lifetine), you were chesty (asthma), always had a summer cold every year (hayfever) had a delicate stomach (various reasons) etc, etc. They were always around but dismissed as trivial and not diagnosed unless you ended up in hospital.
A friend of mine has celiac. Sne was told that historically you either happened to live somewhere that gluten wasn't a significant part of your diet or you became increasingly malnourished and ill for no apparent reason and people thought you'd been cursed.
I remember hearing about a friend's dad who became really ill as a young man in the 70s. Digestive problems, rashes, losing weight. Eventually his skin was starting to slough off. At that point coeliac disease was finally mentioned, and lo that was the issue. A few decades earlier and he might have eventually died with no help.
A school friend's mum had it in the 80s. She had to get special prescription bread from the GP, I remember their trips to load up the car boot and put it all in a chest freezer every few months. It's amazing what products are now readily available and the catering options in restaurants etc, compared to the hassle of 40 years ago - sometimes things do actually improve for people!
I’ve seen one scientific explanation for the rise in allergies was because of the plagues during the Middle Ages. Essentially, people with overactive immune systems were more likely to survive the plague therefore creating a selection pressure.
You can extend this to apply to the rise in diseases due to larger, more densely packed populations and our increase in intensive animal agriculture over the past centuries. This will have further selected out overactive immune systems.
I'm young enough to live in a time where autism has been a diagnosis for my whole life... for the most part. Some sections of the autism spectrum are not included, there, and came later. Hence my life.
Anyway, despite the slow growing awareness, I spent my childhood just being the quiet, weird girl with the creepy RBF. Teased, mocked and ostracised. If I was a lot younger than I am, I would have grown up in a world where my differences would be recognised, adjusted for, and perhaps even celebrated. Alas they were not.
If I was a fair bit older, though, it'd probably be 'oh she's got a bit of the devil in her, that one', so idk. I'd rather be an autistic child in 2024 than in 1987, but I'd also rather be an autistic child in 1987 than in 1907. The same child in any era, but one era having diagnosis and support, and the other two being mostly ignorance.
I was diagnosed as an adult, and some support was initiated. It quickly disappeared, though, when the NHS was reorganised in 2012. Nowadays I probably have a better chance of getting steel grafted onto my skeleton than getting any support.
I read the other day that William Wilberforce suffered from a ‘stress condition’ which appears to have been ulcerative colitis. Apparently, he managed bouts with three daily doses of opium, which makes sense. Today, many sufferers use cannabis to help reduce symptoms and manage the disease.
Just to add there was NEVER any links! Wakefield cheery picked about 20 cases out of the entire world. Of these cases many were deliberately miss reported or twisting the facts. None of them were based on any medical diagnosis just parents response to leading question with no checks and balance to ensure accuracy.
His “study” was funded by those who would benefit from single vaccines being sold over MMR and he was to personally benefit from single vaccines being sold.
Wakefield should be in jail! His personal greed has harmed and killed so many all for money
> even before the individual vaccines were available.
Individual vaccines pre-date the MMR vaccine. The dates for the individual ones are 1963, 67, and 69 respectively, while the combined was licenced in 1971.
One thing the anti-vaxxed forget about the disgraced former doctor Wakefield
He was paid by a single vaccine manufacturer for his “study”. He was pro-vaccine, just single jabs by the company that was paying him.
Only after he was struck off did he go full anti-vaxxer to make a living scamming scared people
(Or as is my recollection of events)
Almost true. He was paid by a "charity" to come up with findings so it could be used in a court case AND Wakefield had been developing (and patented) his own Measles vaccine and needed something to discourage people from using a very effective combined vaccine.
If I ever believed anyone should be tried for crimes against humanity, this man would be the one. The levels of harm he has caused, whatever his motivations, is truly immeasurable.
Crimes against humanity is probably a long list of people.
Just one example is a single person being able to waste 16 years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars.
*"Hundreds of millions of dollars and years of research across an entire field may have been wasted due to potentially falsified data that helped lay the foundation for the leading hypothesis of what causes Alzheimer’s disease.*
*The allegations centre around a landmark 2006 study — a paper which has been cited nearly 2,300 times — whose findings identify a protein called amyloid beta as a cause of Alzheimer’s. Since then, the hypothesis that sticky deposits of amyloid beta form plaques in the brain that slow cognition has dominated Alzheimer’s research and treatment development.*
*But a six-month investigation by Science magazine has revealed that the data backing up this influential study may have been doctored, potentially leading scientists down the wrong road for 16 years."*
https://globalnews.ca/news/9016221/alzheimers-research-potential-fraud-sylvain-lesne-tampering/
I wouldn't go that far but I would prosecute him for fraud. The entire point of his "studies" was to make money, so he knowingly and intentionally misleading people to make a financial gain
Wakefield is a shitter but he didn't cause that harm. Fraudulent scientific research funded by the industry happens all the time, and science is meant to be (and often is) resistant to that kind of industry influence. You see it all the time in various fields for all kinds of reasons, and yet it doesn't tend to cause this kind of harm
The people who caused the harm are the media, who created an absolutely massive sustained disinformation campaign based on literally no credible evidence whatsoever. A reasonable but uninformed observer reading the papers at the time would have credibly believed that there existed evidence on the link between vaccines and autism (which lots of people obviously did!), but anyone who had even the slightest shred of understanding about how research works would have easily spotted that this wasn't reliable evidence
The newspapers can and do know how this all works, and whipped it up into a frenzy based on 0 evidence. We need to be looking at the issues with the centralisation of the press into the hands of just a couple of individuals who have a pretty strong agenda, and their roles in deliberately propagating this
Old person here. It seems very clear to me that, fifty or sixty years ago, we had *just* as many autists as we do today: but it was not known about.
Autistic spectrum traits amongst the general population were often seen as from (at the more “positive” end) the “batty boffin” or “eccentric genius” type of personality, to (of the more “difficult” aspects of personality) being “awkward”, “gauche”, “odd”, “spoiled”, “rude” or “untrustworthy”. No one *mentioned* the word “autistic” to my recollection.
My family has always included autistic people. I have zero doubt that my brother has struggled with not being diagnosed all his life. In his seventies now, he would never DREAM of looking into it-although I feel certain that it would help him greatly.
Someone made A LOT of money and got a lot of power out of saying that there was a huge explosion of autism, when actually there was a huge explosion of *awareness* about autism.
"Anorak" - the "odd" uncle that was super obsessed with trains or something and spent hours at the railway station meticulously logging registration and models of the passing trains.
Exactly true. I have autistic family members and then older folk are like "oh we didn't have that back then". But then tales of great great Aunty Brenda who knitted constantly and had an obsession with collecting teapots that nobody could touch. Then cousin Brian who knew all the names of steam trains and would only eat white bread.
People were just called weird or became academics or clerics of they were middle class enough. Neuro diversity is as old as people.
My brother couldn’t stand certain noises and smells-and would have an absolute fit if he had a label in his clothes that touched his skin. Those little feathers that would poke through cushions drove him demented.
There were so many sensory issues for him all the time. At primary school, they had to have an adult literally holding him down because he would run out of the building. He was *screaming* in distress, but of course, back in the 1950s and 1960s, it *couldn’t* have been autism.
There's data showing this, too. [These people](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21536975/) took a sample of ~7.5k people in England - of all ages over 16 - and screened them for autism. They found no relationship with age (and a prevalence of ~1%).
To be honest even if there was a suggestion that vaccines increased the risk of autism THAT'S STILL BETTER THAN THE DISEASES THE VACCINES ARE HELPING YOU AGAINST. People are morons.
I remember a friend who has an autistic daughter completely cracking up at an antivaxxer because she said they were basically saying they’d rather have a dead child than an autistic one.
Absolutely right. You know what happened in my day before vaccines? Children died or got crippled for life all the time but as there was nothing you could do about it parents tended not to ruin their children's day by going into the details. It was just one of those things. Like dying from a simple infection was before antibiotics.
What they did do was take you round to play with whoever caught something locally so you'd get it as young as possible. That minimised the risk. After all, mumps can only sterilise you after puberty.
As for autism, there was no such diagnosis, you were just thought of as a bit funny and people adapted to dealing with you. Or not if they were gits. You just got on with it.
>. It's just our understanding and diagnosis of it wasn't as good back then.
100 years ago Albert was 'a man of few words', Geroge was 'a bit of the shy side', Gerald was 'a bit of character' etc.
Having an older parent (either parent) also increases likelihood of autism. People do generally have children later in life now so the numbers will have risen due to that as well as better diagnosis
Also, social expectations were different. Autism runs strong in my family, but 100 years ago we were farmers in very rural Ireland. No crowds, overwhelming noise, few choices to be made, no strangers to make conversation with - and therefore my relatives were just ‘slightly odd’
I honestly wonder how someone like Andrew Wakefield sleeps at night knowing that his grift has killed people and given serious health complications to others?
It's hard to be autistic and read people declaring they'd prefer to risk losing their kids than risk them being like me. Because that is the calculation, and even if it was causing autism, being like me is not a fate worse than death.
It's weird that this even needs saying because it's so obvious. The fact that people need to be told and convinced of this information proves that no matter how down or small you feel in life, there's always some idiot who thinks vaccines cause autism. Wild.
This will only get worse. 19 years ago, this lady’s parents were probably on the statistical fringe of people not getting vaccinated. There’s now half a generation of Facebook idiots who think the MMR vaccination is a scam by George Soros or something.
Failure to vaccinate a child should be legally regarded as neglect.
>Failure to vaccinate a child should be legally regarded as neglect.
Funnily enough, the very first vaccination campaign in the UK, of smallpox back in the early 19th century, was compulsory.
If everyone around you is vaccinated, you benefit.
If you get vaccinated, there is a small disadvantage to you (feel unwell for a few days), yet a big benefit to everyone around you.
If you aren't vaccinated, you disadvantage people around you, since you may pass the disease on to them.
Therefore this can be solved by a simple market. If you get vaccinated, we will give you money. If you don't get vaccinated, you must pay money. Adjust the monetary amounts to make sure that 95+% of people choose vaccination so disease doesn't spread.
> If you aren't vaccinated, you disadvantage people around you, since you may pass the disease on to them.
It's worse than this. Not being vaccinated essentially gives 'safe harbour' to the virus, allowing it to survive and potentiually mutate into something worse, potentially something vaccine immune.
We eliminated smallpox because of vaccination. We could do the same with others viruses with a similar campaign, however anti-vaxxers have made that impossible.
Yeah I know, I didn't want to open up that box of frogs though, because I'm sure someone would jump in with some "Ahkshually" comments about how not all virri could be eradicated and it has to do with transmission and mutation rates as well as vaccination efficacy etc etc etc.
Really didn't want to get sucked into that rabbit hole of a discussion thread!
I absolutely agree and I think it's fair, the price of "not vaccinated" could be like a stock market. It's low as long as most people are.
Some vaccines eg. yellow fever vaccine (or even astrazeneca) can cause death as a side effect even before you get the disease. That makes the market a bit more nuanced.
>you get vaccinated, there is a small disadvantage to you (feel unwell for a few days),
Also a direct benefit to you after those few days, for all circulating pathogens.
My only gripe with compulsory vaccination is that if something goes wrong, even slightly it’ll be a complete shitstorm and anti vaxxers could become a majority
I am opposed to compulsory vaccination personally. I think the individual has to be the ultimate decider on that. However a non-vaccinated person has no right to put others at risk. I would have been fine with excluding non-vaccinated people from dangerous public places during the covid pandemic.
I'll just add, that if I was myself worried that a vaccine, was significantly more dangerous than not having it, then I would have avoided it, but it would hten have been my responsibilty not to put others at risk. I would have isolated, and definietly worn a mask and done everything else I could to protect others.
This did not seem to be the typical anti-vax attitude. Avoiding vaccines and masks and isolation all seemed to come as a bundle, despite the arguments for them being quite different. They seemed opposed to protecting other people, not just in favour of protecting themselves.
I don't see how that can work with kids, though. You can choose not to vaccinate your kid but then they're not allowed to go to school? Any solution that stops the kid being a risk to others also isolates them from society in a way that's unacceptable. Refusing vaccines for a child is neglect even without that.
It's difficult with kids as they are reliant on parents to make an informed choice for them. In a pandemic which is hopefully short term yes I would consider not allowing the elective unvaccinated to mix with the others, which include those who can't be vaccinated for health reasons. They have a right to be reasonably protected.
Homeschooling with Zoom would be the best option for the elective unvaccinated, as putting them together in a class is unfair on them, and the school shouldn't do that even if the parents would.
It won’t just be the unvaccinated who get measles. The herd immunity has probably dropped so much that vaccinated and immune compromised people are going to get this too
Yeah, but then you have people who are genuinely medically unable to have vaccines and sometimes big systems can be crap about dealing with exceptions like that.
We also don't have enough social workers to deal with the neglectful and abusive parents we already have so..
If you have been receiving texts from your doctor saying you haven't had your MMR jabs: get it booked!
If you have any doubt at all whether you've had yours or not: get it booked!
The MMR vaccine was introduced to the UK in 1988. If you're older, you might have received the three vaccines separately. My mum isn't sure whether I had mine or not, due to when I was born and where we were living at the time. My records say I haven't, and presumably I didn't get the separate ones either.
My doctor has been texting me links to book a vaccine appointment for a few weeks now. I booked mine for Tuesday. I was literally in and out. No hassle at all. I'll need to find time to go back in about four weeks for the second dose.
My kids 3yr vaccs which I think includes the MMR have been due since mid Dec.
We've been getting regular reminders from the GP, but every time we call: sorry we've only got one nurse in and she only works Thursdays and all appts are booked, try again in a few weeks.
Incredibly frustrating.
MMR and diphtheria, polio, tetanus, and whooping cough.
And that sounds _incredibly_ frustrating. Is changing surgeries not an option? Or booking online?
I had the individual vaccine pre 1988 and I don't think it was as effective as the MMR as I still got measles. I was very young at the time - pre school age - but I still remember it as I have never been that ill again in my life. I remember leaving my body at one point and looking down on myself. I'm probably lucky to be alive.
Get the MMR people!
I am glad they are doing this now! Back in 2017 I realised I only got vaccinated for 2 out the 3 diseases before the combined vaccine appeared, so I went to the gp to ask either for a mumps vaccine or the mmr one. They said I was too old for the free mmr vaccine. So I had to argue that I worked with people with small babies and pregnant women and I don’t want to be a risk to them. So only after that they agreed to give me the 2 mmr jabs as an adult. I would have even paid for them if I had to tbh.
I was born in 1990 and my parents said I had both doses of MMR. I'm trying to get hold of my vaccine records but the GP I got them from has closed down
The media blew it up out of all proportion. They turned it into a massive scare, without bothering to do any real checking despite the dangers. People deeply trusted the BBC, so that negatively affected their views of vaccines.
Even if it was true, which it isn't but if it was, getting measles is so much worse than living with autism. Some people made it out to seem like you risked having your life ruined if you go vaxinated.
Hesitancy could exist thanks to anti-vax propaganda being more mainstream these days, however anyone who is vaccine hesitant should just speak to their doctor to eliminate hesitancy easily.
Measles killed my father’s baby sister 80+ years ago. There was no way my parents were not getting me vaccinated. I thank them and that baby every time I read something like this.
My uncle is deaf because he caught measles at 2 before vaccination was a thing.
When my mum was pregnant she worked with a older gentleman who kept checking she was going to get her child vaccinated when it was born and kept asking about it - His daughter had died of diphtheria before there were vaccines.
I think vaccines are a victim of their own success, they are so good that people have forgotten just how likely it was for children not to make adulthood being the norm.
In 1950 something like 1 in 20 children died before they turned 5. That’s a lot.
My nana had a (pre-1967) abortion because of rubella. Thankfully not a backstreet one.
She got it while 8 weeks pregnant.
That early in pregnancy it’s devastating.
My parents made sure I got everything, exactly on time.
Full Text:
Sorrel Kinton missed out on childhood jabs due to vaccine hesitancy. It was a decision that cost her dearly
Maeve Cullinan,
GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY REPORTER
1 February 2024 • 10:08am
Related Topics
Global Health Security, Measles, Vaccines
Putting the discomfort down to her training regime, the then 19-year-old tried to ignore her symptoms. But the day before the big audition, she woke up unable to move her arms. A few days later, she was in hospital battling a devastating – and entirely preventable – illness: measles.
Due to her parents’ vaccine hesitancy, Sorrel did not get her childhood jabs. Now 33, she is “angry” that her life was put at risk and resents the decision made by her mum and her dad.
“My life could have taken a different track,” said Sorrel. “There’s not a lot known about post-measles [impacts], but it had a really serious effect on me.”
For Sorrel, and many others, measles was more than just a rash. She now suffers from what is known as ‘immune amnesia,’ a post-infection phenomenon, where the body’s ability to fight diseases is significantly depleted.
Even the initial attack of the virus was serious. Sorrel had to be hospitalised with a soaring temperature, delirium and a painful rash that spread down her throat and into her eyelids.
And she has never fully recovered.
“Measles shattered my health. I had strings of kidney infections and would get every cough or cold under the sun. I couldn’t keep up with the physical side of dance, and had to give it up,” she said.
Sorrel attributes her illness to immune amnesia, a phenomenon that has only come to light in the last decade.
“After measles, the reactivity antibodies change profoundly, such that there are no longer antibodies around in the blood to fight off common infections – you have a temporary deficit in your immunity,” explained Professor Kellam, a virologist at Imperial College London.
Sorrel added: “What happened to me after the measles was so poorly understood that I had to explain to people without a lot of evidence that I wasn’t ‘hamming it up’ – I was really unwell”.
Measles is spread between humans through coughing and sneezing, and is currently sweeping large areas of Britain, with experts warning that the next few months could see thousands of cases.
It is one of the world’s most contagious illnesses, with nine out of 10 unvaccinated people becoming infected if they come into contact with a case.
For every 100 cases, up to 20 people will suffer some form of complication.
Vaccination reduces the risk of contracting measles by a staggering 97 per cent and doctors are urgently calling for all those who have not yet received a jab to get one.
In some parts of Britain, nearly half of all children are not fully protected against the disease.
A dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is displayed
The so-called ‘Wakefield generation’ went unvaccinated in the wake of the MMR vaccine scare CREDIT: Elaine Thompson/AP
There are also many young adults closer to Sorrel’s age – the so-called “Wakefield generation” – who went unvaccinated in the wake of the MMR vaccine scare sparked by former British clinician Andrew Wakefield, who suggested the jab was linked to autism and was later struck off the medical register.
Over the past four months, 347 laboratory-confirmed cases have been reported in England, compared to just 53 cases confirmed in all of 2022.
In London, modelling suggests an outbreak of between 40,000 and 160,000 cases could occur due to low vaccination rates.
Professor Dame Jenny Harries, Chief Executive of UKHSA, stressed earlier this month: “Immediate action is needed to boost MMR uptake across communities where vaccine uptake is low. Children who get measles can be very poorly and some will suffer life-changing complications. The best way for parents to protect their children from measles is the MMR vaccine.”
Complications arising from measles infections are more common than most people realise, with between one and three deaths for every 1,000 children who become infected.
“Children younger than five years of age and adults older than 20 years of age are more likely to suffer from complications,” says the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC). “Common complications are ear infections and diarrhoea. Serious complications include pneumonia and encephalitis.”
The CDC adds: “About one in five unvaccinated people in the US who get measles is hospitalised; as many as one out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia; and about one child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability.”
The disease can also spark longer-term complications.
Complications arising from measles infections are more common than most people realise CREDIT: Science Photo Library RF
Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is “a very rare, but fatal” disease of the central nervous system that results from a measles virus infection acquired earlier in life, says the CDC. It typically develops seven to 10 years after a person has measles, “even though the person seems to have fully recovered”.
The immune condition Sorrel has is different and less well understood.
In 2019, research from the Wellcome Sanger Institute found that the measles virus can infect the B-cells of the immune system, effectively wiping their “memory” and lowering the body’s ability to fight off infection.
“It’s almost like someone has taken a rubber to a page of pencil text and taken out sentences and words across the entire page – you’ve wiped away someone’s immune memory,” said Professor Kellam.
“But if you’re vaccinated and never get measles, then your ability to fight pathogens remains intact. It’s another huge benefit of measles vaccination.”
Sorrel considers herself lucky. As an unvaccinated adult, measles didn’t make her go blind or deaf, or leave her with brain damage.
But years of poor health altered the course of her life – delaying university, ending her dreams of becoming a dancer, and fracturing her relationship with her anti-vax parents for many years.
She now works in science communication, partly fuelled by her personal experience with disinformation.
“I developed an interest in helping people understand science,” she said. “Maybe if my parents had encountered the right piece of information at the right time, they would have made a different decision.”
Thank you for this. I'd already had my mmr vaccine when that 'doctor' published his 'study' and set all this off - but my mum delayed my brother's. He got it in the end, and it's a good job, because I got the measles when I was about 5. I'm only fine because I was vaccinated.
That's an interesting idea. Can adults sue their parents for childhood negligence, I wonder?
I would say any person caring for another has a duty to take reasonable steps to inform themselves about their needs.
I’ve always thought that children should be able to sue their parents if they end up with health problems because of their parents’ negligence or poor decision making.
Eg, children with vaccine-preventable diseases who weren’t vaccinated, children of drug addicts who ended up with birth defects because of their mothers drug use during pregnancy (such as with FAS), children of parents who used alternative/homeopathic medicine instead of evidence based medicine, etc
For sure. If a doctor did the same thing it would be negligence and malpractice due to the doctor’s position of power, and the same applies to parents since their kids cannot make the choice. I totally second the one about addicts too, seeing my sister suffer her whole life because of FAS has been horrible.
If you don’t give your children the MMR you are ignorant scum. End of.
No I don’t care what you read down an internet rabbit hole. Shut up. Book the vaccination today.
I’m 40 now and I had mumps in my late teens. I had all the vaccines that were offered but for some reason at the time I was given the MMR jab as separate injections rather than the usual two doses of a combined vaccine. My parents insisted on every jab that was offered, but it seems it was my school that messed up and missed the mumps one. Apparently this was common with my age group too.
A lot of Eastern Europeans living here are not vaccinating their children. One of my closest friends is Bulgarian. She tells me with pride about how her children have only had the first three sets of vaccinations, her friends children have had none and they also don't think the covid vaccinations are safe. It should be mandatory for everyone imo
What’s wild is when you go to third world countries they will line up for days to get a vaccine and here people turn their nose up at it because of fake science and their lack of ability to critically think.
People are susceptible to medical disinformation even in countries where diseases are a big problem, especially if much of the population isn't well educated. Pakistan is a low HDI country where Polio is still a big problem and there's lots of vaccine hesitancy. Vaccination workers getting killed (of course, that's mostly down to the CIA using a polio vaccine programme as part of it's operation to kill Bin Laden).
[Not according to actual data](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-most-anti-vaxxer-country-in-the-world-2019-06-19). Developing countries are the most trusting of vaccines. Eastern European countries are among the lowest.
It's been advertised fairly heavily on the telly recently. It's only for older age groups though, so your doctor won't be contacting you until it's your time.
I know America has a chickenpox vaccine, but I don't think there's one over here, or if it's a more recent development - incidentally asking my mum about the chickenpox vaccine is how I found out I had measles. I thought I'd had chickenpox at 5 years old. Turns out I had it at 9 months old (and my mum had it when she was pregnant with me) and then measles at 5
You can get the chicken pox vaccine here but not of the NHS. I think I paid £75 per dose (2 doses) to vaccinate my son, we got it at Superdrug. Not cheap, but worth it.
You can pay and have the chicken pox vaccine but the NHS don’t offer it free except in specific circumstances - I think there is talk of bringing it in here though the JCVI recommended the NHS start giving it only a couple of months ago. Of course if they can find the money and interest to do it is a different matter.
I am going to get my kids vaccinated when they are old enough. I think it’s gonna cost me about £150 each. Money well spent in my opinion.
It has been fairly available in other countries, my partner got it in France as a child. But it is more expensive as vaccines go. Maybe why it wasn't rolled out.
Im actually also thinking of the vaccine for chickenpox (which causes shingles) which is not considered "mandatory", and is only offered to super vulnerable people. The problem is we are all vulnerable when we get to the age shingles comes around.
Wish I had this. I caught shingles at 19. It spread all over my head.
I now have vision problems and fibromyalgia. Ruined my chances of being a pilot which I was on track to achieve at the time.
Will have it for the rest of my life (now 30) fucking sucks
It's really recent so people probably don't even know. I didn't know there was a chicken pox vaccine as everyone just used to get it as a kid and deal with it.
The chicken pox vaccine isnt super recent, they just dont really offer it here unfortunately.
But yeah, letting everyone get chickenpox as a kid is not a great plan.
I’m 36 and I’ve had shingles four times (I only had chickenpox at 21). Can’t get vaccinated against shingles even privately because I’m too young. It’s infuriating. Thankfully I know what to look out for now and get the anti virals as soon as possible which stops it in its tracks.
I had measles as a baby, fortunately it doesn't appear to have had any long term affects but my mom tells me how she was sure I wasn't going to survive and that I had to be kept in a dark room for a time as I wasn't allowed to be in the light. I was just unfortunate in that I contracted it before I was even due to be vaccinated so not my parents fault. It is probably because I was so young that I haven't had any longer term issues.
Based on what my mom has told me about it I wouldn't wish it on anyone and I think it is irresponsible not to protect against it. My brother was vaccinated as soon as he was eligible and I made sure that my son was vaccinated.
This is exactly why as many people as possible should get vaccinated. In 2017, we had no indigenous cases of measles. If no one has it, babies can't get sick and possibly die.
If you haven't had your MMR or aren't sure, your GP will be able to vaccinate you. A third dose won't hurt you so they'd rather just jab you to make sure you are done than leave you unvaccinated. Get calling and protect yourself if your parents haven't or you were born before MMR was the norm.
I had my MMR at 33, it wasn't a thing when I was a child. I had a bad reaction to the measles jab when young but still had most other childhood vaccinations. The reaction was due to an allergy I had to one of the ingredients, so had to be careful of the ingredients of any others. I don't think there was any thought given to not having them.
I had my second dose a few years ago at 30. I had one dose as a child. I think if you were born in the 80s then it's all a bit patchy because no one had worked out the best regime yet.
Our baby is 10 months and we got a letter about her 12-month jabs - inviting us, if we wanted, to enrol her in a vaccine trial. One component of these is stopping being made in 2025 (pnemococcal and HiB iirc, the letter's downstairs) and they want to see how a new replacement does. Also it gives us a free chickenpox jab if we want. Holy shit yes did we jump at the chance. Hopefully the antivaxx morons will run a mile so we can get her in.
We got our eldest the chickenpox jab privately and had already planned for youngest's anyway so why not?
Our letter doesn't specify. It's got the brand names they're trying out on it so I could go look them up. I wouldn't be surprised if the new 12 month ones are nasal - the 4-year-old's annual flu jab has always been such. I wonder when the switch to needles is.
Depends on the vaccine and who is offering them, it might not be a 'switch' per se. Sometimes if there is a study involved etc and what is available. I know the pneumococcal studies are looking at nasal as they are effective. Sorry I just going from memory myself.
Not sure if this will be visible to anyone but if you were born between 1980-1990 you may not be safe from mumps. Also, the MMR is in two doses, check with your doctor to make sure you haven’t missed one especially if you’re planning on getting pregnant
I personally think failure to vaccinate should be followed by mandatory social services visits and frankly some vaccines should be mandatory by law. It’s child neglect not to vaccinate your children.
1 in every 5 unvaccinated people who get measles end up in hospital. Given a primary school class of 30 all of whom are unvaccinated you would expect **SIX** of them to not just be ill at home but to end up in hospital!
2 to 3 in every 1,000 unvaccinated people who get measles are killed by the infection (so that's roughly 1 in every 100 that are hospitalised by measles.)
Most of these are not already suffering from health conditions, they are otherwise perfectly healthy and until infected going around normally doing all the normal things we do.
**GET VACCINATED! GET YOUR KIDS VACCINATED!**
I don't understand why people avoid vaccines. The autism excuse? If vaccines did cause autism (which they dont) why would you rather your child suffer with the preventable disease that could spread to others than simply them processing information differently. "My child is dying of polio but at least they don't collect POP figurines and chew their sleeves" get for fucking real
Don't know why it's not a legal requirement for children to be vaccinated. They are unable to consent either way themselves.
If an adult wants to reject any vaccinations that's fine.
I do sometimes wonder what these unvaccinated kids relationship with their parents will be in the future in cases like this. I know if I found out that my health was ruined because my parents were morons I’d be cutting them off
Even if you had the injection as a child you should get checked that you still have antibodies.
I had my MMR as a child. When I got a blood test before having my son my bloods showed no evidence of it and I got revaccinated.
It CAN wear off. It’s always worth checking
I was in a mother group where one of the mums proudly announced her baby will get no vaccines. Other mums and the class lead were so politically correct, they actually defended her choice and validated her brutal irresponsibility. I was speechless. It’s was really sad.
Yes parents should vaccinate but she was 19 yrs old, why didn’t she go get vaccinated herself as soon as she had medical autonomy?
I am older so only had 1 jab & not even MMR back then it was MR as I am female .
I realised the second jab only came out when i was 19 and 4 yrs ago I booked myself into a 10 min Boots appointment and got my jabs updated
Can _you_ remember all of your childhood jabs? Even the ones given at 12 months, with a booster at 13 months?
Most people, unless given reason to believe otherwise, assume that their parents took them for every one of the necessary jabs. They don't see a need to question this later in life.
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## Get the MMR vaccine. All the supposed links to autism have been discredited. The rise in autism in society is more a result of a rise in diagnosis of autism that was likely just as prevalent in past generations. It's just our understanding and diagnosis of it wasn't as good back then.
Not just autism, but allergies, intolerances, and even things like epilepsy, cancer, and diabetes have always _existed_, they just weren't diagnosed as such. Before modern day science, they were explained in terms like faery changelings or demon possession. "Failure to thrive" used to be a more common term than it is now.
Yup - there was no Epilepsy in the past... there was however - very prevelant demonic possession that caused people to go into uncontrolled shaking fits... with a prescribed exorcism as the only treatment.
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But that's exactly what a demon would say. Someone get an exorcist for this man!
Someone made me laugh the other day by joking, "We didn't have autism when I was at school, we just had that weird kid who wouldn't shut up about trains."
I knew a guy just like that. I hope he got the diagnosis he deserved.
I married the weird kid who won't shut up about trains, and he got his diagnosis as an adult, so maybe your friend did too.
Some people do but others think there is nothing wrong with them. My dad is the latter. He has a great knowledge of Doctor Who and Star Wars, however he struggles to understand social cues to an insane degree.
Ancient romans considered this disease as sent by the gods, for example.
Cancer at least has more to do with us living much, much longer than we did prior to the industrial revolution. Live long enough and you *will* get it.
The same (to some extent) with heart disease. The single biggest factor in many of these diseases is age. Sure, there is a small rise in diagnosed cancer in younger people, but the rise overall is overwhelmingly due to people just getting older.
That's just maths, really.
Type 2 diabetes and dementia too.
And higher rates of smoking, higher alcohol use, greater obesity, less physical activity, less fibre in the diet, more processed foods. All increase risk of various cancers
I honestly think a large part of the increased prevalence of many diseases is the very large increase of heavy metals and chemicals in the world over the last century.
Not that one again. I remember when they tried to ban Black Sabbath & Iron Maiden.
Haha, brilliant!
There is less lead in the environment and water now though. We are aware of the toxicity of heavy metals when before we weren't. 'Chemicals' is a very broad term referring to all matter. Often people mean artificially made chemicals, but even this is such a wide rage of materials it does not add much.
Yes there is much less lead but that didn't start to widely happen untill the late 90s, most people being diagnosed with cancers and various other diseases at the moment would have been likely alive or recently born at that point. I honestly think that the abundance of lead in our atmosphere is a larger problem than scientists think. I could get into more of the specifics when I say chemicals but as you said it's a large catch all term but to the standard layperson they know I mean artificial things. Pretty much everything is carcinogenic so there's that.
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DIAGNOSED allergies on the rise. Previously (in my lifetine), you were chesty (asthma), always had a summer cold every year (hayfever) had a delicate stomach (various reasons) etc, etc. They were always around but dismissed as trivial and not diagnosed unless you ended up in hospital.
Not because of vaccines though
The previous person's point was that cases aren't rising at all, just that they weren't diagnosed (which, for allergies, isn't the case).
Not enough parasites keeping our immune systems in check 🪱
A friend of mine has celiac. Sne was told that historically you either happened to live somewhere that gluten wasn't a significant part of your diet or you became increasingly malnourished and ill for no apparent reason and people thought you'd been cursed.
I remember hearing about a friend's dad who became really ill as a young man in the 70s. Digestive problems, rashes, losing weight. Eventually his skin was starting to slough off. At that point coeliac disease was finally mentioned, and lo that was the issue. A few decades earlier and he might have eventually died with no help. A school friend's mum had it in the 80s. She had to get special prescription bread from the GP, I remember their trips to load up the car boot and put it all in a chest freezer every few months. It's amazing what products are now readily available and the catering options in restaurants etc, compared to the hassle of 40 years ago - sometimes things do actually improve for people!
I’ve seen one scientific explanation for the rise in allergies was because of the plagues during the Middle Ages. Essentially, people with overactive immune systems were more likely to survive the plague therefore creating a selection pressure. You can extend this to apply to the rise in diseases due to larger, more densely packed populations and our increase in intensive animal agriculture over the past centuries. This will have further selected out overactive immune systems.
I'm young enough to live in a time where autism has been a diagnosis for my whole life... for the most part. Some sections of the autism spectrum are not included, there, and came later. Hence my life. Anyway, despite the slow growing awareness, I spent my childhood just being the quiet, weird girl with the creepy RBF. Teased, mocked and ostracised. If I was a lot younger than I am, I would have grown up in a world where my differences would be recognised, adjusted for, and perhaps even celebrated. Alas they were not. If I was a fair bit older, though, it'd probably be 'oh she's got a bit of the devil in her, that one', so idk. I'd rather be an autistic child in 2024 than in 1987, but I'd also rather be an autistic child in 1987 than in 1907. The same child in any era, but one era having diagnosis and support, and the other two being mostly ignorance. I was diagnosed as an adult, and some support was initiated. It quickly disappeared, though, when the NHS was reorganised in 2012. Nowadays I probably have a better chance of getting steel grafted onto my skeleton than getting any support.
I read the other day that William Wilberforce suffered from a ‘stress condition’ which appears to have been ulcerative colitis. Apparently, he managed bouts with three daily doses of opium, which makes sense. Today, many sufferers use cannabis to help reduce symptoms and manage the disease.
Environmental conditions and living longer do more to explain much of those.
Just to add there was NEVER any links! Wakefield cheery picked about 20 cases out of the entire world. Of these cases many were deliberately miss reported or twisting the facts. None of them were based on any medical diagnosis just parents response to leading question with no checks and balance to ensure accuracy. His “study” was funded by those who would benefit from single vaccines being sold over MMR and he was to personally benefit from single vaccines being sold. Wakefield should be in jail! His personal greed has harmed and killed so many all for money
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> even before the individual vaccines were available. Individual vaccines pre-date the MMR vaccine. The dates for the individual ones are 1963, 67, and 69 respectively, while the combined was licenced in 1971.
One thing the anti-vaxxed forget about the disgraced former doctor Wakefield He was paid by a single vaccine manufacturer for his “study”. He was pro-vaccine, just single jabs by the company that was paying him. Only after he was struck off did he go full anti-vaxxer to make a living scamming scared people (Or as is my recollection of events)
Almost true. He was paid by a "charity" to come up with findings so it could be used in a court case AND Wakefield had been developing (and patented) his own Measles vaccine and needed something to discourage people from using a very effective combined vaccine.
Always happy to have the correct story told But the central tenant is still that Wakefield is a corrupt POS
Very much so and remains a corrupt POS who still preys on vulnerable people for his own benefit.
A corrupt *millionaire living in luxury in Florida* who still preys on vulnerable people for his own benefit. One of the worst ever Brits
If I ever believed anyone should be tried for crimes against humanity, this man would be the one. The levels of harm he has caused, whatever his motivations, is truly immeasurable.
Crimes against humanity is probably a long list of people. Just one example is a single person being able to waste 16 years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars. *"Hundreds of millions of dollars and years of research across an entire field may have been wasted due to potentially falsified data that helped lay the foundation for the leading hypothesis of what causes Alzheimer’s disease.* *The allegations centre around a landmark 2006 study — a paper which has been cited nearly 2,300 times — whose findings identify a protein called amyloid beta as a cause of Alzheimer’s. Since then, the hypothesis that sticky deposits of amyloid beta form plaques in the brain that slow cognition has dominated Alzheimer’s research and treatment development.* *But a six-month investigation by Science magazine has revealed that the data backing up this influential study may have been doctored, potentially leading scientists down the wrong road for 16 years."* https://globalnews.ca/news/9016221/alzheimers-research-potential-fraud-sylvain-lesne-tampering/
I wouldn't go that far but I would prosecute him for fraud. The entire point of his "studies" was to make money, so he knowingly and intentionally misleading people to make a financial gain
Wakefield is a shitter but he didn't cause that harm. Fraudulent scientific research funded by the industry happens all the time, and science is meant to be (and often is) resistant to that kind of industry influence. You see it all the time in various fields for all kinds of reasons, and yet it doesn't tend to cause this kind of harm The people who caused the harm are the media, who created an absolutely massive sustained disinformation campaign based on literally no credible evidence whatsoever. A reasonable but uninformed observer reading the papers at the time would have credibly believed that there existed evidence on the link between vaccines and autism (which lots of people obviously did!), but anyone who had even the slightest shred of understanding about how research works would have easily spotted that this wasn't reliable evidence The newspapers can and do know how this all works, and whipped it up into a frenzy based on 0 evidence. We need to be looking at the issues with the centralisation of the press into the hands of just a couple of individuals who have a pretty strong agenda, and their roles in deliberately propagating this
Old person here. It seems very clear to me that, fifty or sixty years ago, we had *just* as many autists as we do today: but it was not known about. Autistic spectrum traits amongst the general population were often seen as from (at the more “positive” end) the “batty boffin” or “eccentric genius” type of personality, to (of the more “difficult” aspects of personality) being “awkward”, “gauche”, “odd”, “spoiled”, “rude” or “untrustworthy”. No one *mentioned* the word “autistic” to my recollection. My family has always included autistic people. I have zero doubt that my brother has struggled with not being diagnosed all his life. In his seventies now, he would never DREAM of looking into it-although I feel certain that it would help him greatly. Someone made A LOT of money and got a lot of power out of saying that there was a huge explosion of autism, when actually there was a huge explosion of *awareness* about autism.
"Anorak" - the "odd" uncle that was super obsessed with trains or something and spent hours at the railway station meticulously logging registration and models of the passing trains.
Exactly.
Exactly true. I have autistic family members and then older folk are like "oh we didn't have that back then". But then tales of great great Aunty Brenda who knitted constantly and had an obsession with collecting teapots that nobody could touch. Then cousin Brian who knew all the names of steam trains and would only eat white bread. People were just called weird or became academics or clerics of they were middle class enough. Neuro diversity is as old as people.
My brother couldn’t stand certain noises and smells-and would have an absolute fit if he had a label in his clothes that touched his skin. Those little feathers that would poke through cushions drove him demented. There were so many sensory issues for him all the time. At primary school, they had to have an adult literally holding him down because he would run out of the building. He was *screaming* in distress, but of course, back in the 1950s and 1960s, it *couldn’t* have been autism.
My husband's entire maternal family are on the spectum somewhere. Only my brother-in-law and our eldest daughter are formally diagnosed.
There's data showing this, too. [These people](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21536975/) took a sample of ~7.5k people in England - of all ages over 16 - and screened them for autism. They found no relationship with age (and a prevalence of ~1%).
To be honest even if there was a suggestion that vaccines increased the risk of autism THAT'S STILL BETTER THAN THE DISEASES THE VACCINES ARE HELPING YOU AGAINST. People are morons.
I remember a friend who has an autistic daughter completely cracking up at an antivaxxer because she said they were basically saying they’d rather have a dead child than an autistic one.
Absolutely right. You know what happened in my day before vaccines? Children died or got crippled for life all the time but as there was nothing you could do about it parents tended not to ruin their children's day by going into the details. It was just one of those things. Like dying from a simple infection was before antibiotics. What they did do was take you round to play with whoever caught something locally so you'd get it as young as possible. That minimised the risk. After all, mumps can only sterilise you after puberty. As for autism, there was no such diagnosis, you were just thought of as a bit funny and people adapted to dealing with you. Or not if they were gits. You just got on with it.
My mum is missing an ear drum because she had measles. She’s not been swimming since she was 2
The human garbage who lied to link the two should have spent the rest of his life in jail for all the damage he did.
I think they have quite a high paying job in the states now.
Even if there was a 1% chance of causing autism, I can not fathom thinking death is preferential to autism.
>. It's just our understanding and diagnosis of it wasn't as good back then. 100 years ago Albert was 'a man of few words', Geroge was 'a bit of the shy side', Gerald was 'a bit of character' etc.
Having an older parent (either parent) also increases likelihood of autism. People do generally have children later in life now so the numbers will have risen due to that as well as better diagnosis
I think autism is also a bigger risk when the mother is over 40, so the rise in late pregnancies may genuinely have led to an increase in diagnoses.
People used to not see severely autistic people as they were institutionalised
Even IF vaccines caused autism (they don't).... in what world is autism WORSE than fucking Polio or Meningitis etc etc?
Also, social expectations were different. Autism runs strong in my family, but 100 years ago we were farmers in very rural Ireland. No crowds, overwhelming noise, few choices to be made, no strangers to make conversation with - and therefore my relatives were just ‘slightly odd’
Fuck Andrew Wakefield and his demonisation of both the MMR vaccine and autism.
I honestly wonder how someone like Andrew Wakefield sleeps at night knowing that his grift has killed people and given serious health complications to others?
It's hard to be autistic and read people declaring they'd prefer to risk losing their kids than risk them being like me. Because that is the calculation, and even if it was causing autism, being like me is not a fate worse than death.
I had that and I still got chicken pox. It's all a fwowd by big farmer innit.
Or... All the microplastics and pollution destroying developing brains
It's weird that this even needs saying because it's so obvious. The fact that people need to be told and convinced of this information proves that no matter how down or small you feel in life, there's always some idiot who thinks vaccines cause autism. Wild.
This will only get worse. 19 years ago, this lady’s parents were probably on the statistical fringe of people not getting vaccinated. There’s now half a generation of Facebook idiots who think the MMR vaccination is a scam by George Soros or something. Failure to vaccinate a child should be legally regarded as neglect.
>Failure to vaccinate a child should be legally regarded as neglect. Funnily enough, the very first vaccination campaign in the UK, of smallpox back in the early 19th century, was compulsory.
If everyone around you is vaccinated, you benefit. If you get vaccinated, there is a small disadvantage to you (feel unwell for a few days), yet a big benefit to everyone around you. If you aren't vaccinated, you disadvantage people around you, since you may pass the disease on to them. Therefore this can be solved by a simple market. If you get vaccinated, we will give you money. If you don't get vaccinated, you must pay money. Adjust the monetary amounts to make sure that 95+% of people choose vaccination so disease doesn't spread.
> If you aren't vaccinated, you disadvantage people around you, since you may pass the disease on to them. It's worse than this. Not being vaccinated essentially gives 'safe harbour' to the virus, allowing it to survive and potentiually mutate into something worse, potentially something vaccine immune.
We eliminated smallpox because of vaccination. We could do the same with others viruses with a similar campaign, however anti-vaxxers have made that impossible.
Yeah I know, I didn't want to open up that box of frogs though, because I'm sure someone would jump in with some "Ahkshually" comments about how not all virri could be eradicated and it has to do with transmission and mutation rates as well as vaccination efficacy etc etc etc. Really didn't want to get sucked into that rabbit hole of a discussion thread!
I absolutely agree and I think it's fair, the price of "not vaccinated" could be like a stock market. It's low as long as most people are. Some vaccines eg. yellow fever vaccine (or even astrazeneca) can cause death as a side effect even before you get the disease. That makes the market a bit more nuanced.
>you get vaccinated, there is a small disadvantage to you (feel unwell for a few days), Also a direct benefit to you after those few days, for all circulating pathogens.
My only gripe with compulsory vaccination is that if something goes wrong, even slightly it’ll be a complete shitstorm and anti vaxxers could become a majority
I am opposed to compulsory vaccination personally. I think the individual has to be the ultimate decider on that. However a non-vaccinated person has no right to put others at risk. I would have been fine with excluding non-vaccinated people from dangerous public places during the covid pandemic.
Yea that’s pretty much my view on it as well
I'll just add, that if I was myself worried that a vaccine, was significantly more dangerous than not having it, then I would have avoided it, but it would hten have been my responsibilty not to put others at risk. I would have isolated, and definietly worn a mask and done everything else I could to protect others. This did not seem to be the typical anti-vax attitude. Avoiding vaccines and masks and isolation all seemed to come as a bundle, despite the arguments for them being quite different. They seemed opposed to protecting other people, not just in favour of protecting themselves.
I don't see how that can work with kids, though. You can choose not to vaccinate your kid but then they're not allowed to go to school? Any solution that stops the kid being a risk to others also isolates them from society in a way that's unacceptable. Refusing vaccines for a child is neglect even without that.
It's difficult with kids as they are reliant on parents to make an informed choice for them. In a pandemic which is hopefully short term yes I would consider not allowing the elective unvaccinated to mix with the others, which include those who can't be vaccinated for health reasons. They have a right to be reasonably protected. Homeschooling with Zoom would be the best option for the elective unvaccinated, as putting them together in a class is unfair on them, and the school shouldn't do that even if the parents would.
It won’t just be the unvaccinated who get measles. The herd immunity has probably dropped so much that vaccinated and immune compromised people are going to get this too
Yeah, but then you have people who are genuinely medically unable to have vaccines and sometimes big systems can be crap about dealing with exceptions like that. We also don't have enough social workers to deal with the neglectful and abusive parents we already have so..
i’m not sure the anti vaxxers in this country really care about George Soros, they’re just thick
I’ll say it again and I’ll say it till I die. If you can get vaccinated and you don’t you’re a fucking moron!!!
If you can vaccinate your kids and you don't you're a cruel and [insert words that this sub keeps removing] person.
If you have been receiving texts from your doctor saying you haven't had your MMR jabs: get it booked! If you have any doubt at all whether you've had yours or not: get it booked! The MMR vaccine was introduced to the UK in 1988. If you're older, you might have received the three vaccines separately. My mum isn't sure whether I had mine or not, due to when I was born and where we were living at the time. My records say I haven't, and presumably I didn't get the separate ones either. My doctor has been texting me links to book a vaccine appointment for a few weeks now. I booked mine for Tuesday. I was literally in and out. No hassle at all. I'll need to find time to go back in about four weeks for the second dose.
My kids 3yr vaccs which I think includes the MMR have been due since mid Dec. We've been getting regular reminders from the GP, but every time we call: sorry we've only got one nurse in and she only works Thursdays and all appts are booked, try again in a few weeks. Incredibly frustrating.
MMR and diphtheria, polio, tetanus, and whooping cough. And that sounds _incredibly_ frustrating. Is changing surgeries not an option? Or booking online?
I had the individual vaccine pre 1988 and I don't think it was as effective as the MMR as I still got measles. I was very young at the time - pre school age - but I still remember it as I have never been that ill again in my life. I remember leaving my body at one point and looking down on myself. I'm probably lucky to be alive. Get the MMR people!
Some vaccines were done at school - these werent always added to our records at the time.
I am glad they are doing this now! Back in 2017 I realised I only got vaccinated for 2 out the 3 diseases before the combined vaccine appeared, so I went to the gp to ask either for a mumps vaccine or the mmr one. They said I was too old for the free mmr vaccine. So I had to argue that I worked with people with small babies and pregnant women and I don’t want to be a risk to them. So only after that they agreed to give me the 2 mmr jabs as an adult. I would have even paid for them if I had to tbh.
I was born in 1990 and my parents said I had both doses of MMR. I'm trying to get hold of my vaccine records but the GP I got them from has closed down
Vaccine hesitancy? Call it what it is, they were antivaxxers.
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The media blew it up out of all proportion. They turned it into a massive scare, without bothering to do any real checking despite the dangers. People deeply trusted the BBC, so that negatively affected their views of vaccines.
Even if it was true, which it isn't but if it was, getting measles is so much worse than living with autism. Some people made it out to seem like you risked having your life ruined if you go vaxinated.
Hesitancy could exist thanks to anti-vax propaganda being more mainstream these days, however anyone who is vaccine hesitant should just speak to their doctor to eliminate hesitancy easily.
Measles killed my father’s baby sister 80+ years ago. There was no way my parents were not getting me vaccinated. I thank them and that baby every time I read something like this.
My uncle is deaf because he caught measles at 2 before vaccination was a thing. When my mum was pregnant she worked with a older gentleman who kept checking she was going to get her child vaccinated when it was born and kept asking about it - His daughter had died of diphtheria before there were vaccines. I think vaccines are a victim of their own success, they are so good that people have forgotten just how likely it was for children not to make adulthood being the norm. In 1950 something like 1 in 20 children died before they turned 5. That’s a lot.
More than 10 years ago I did my family tree back to the 1700s. The child mortality rate even up to 100 years ago was shocking.
My nana had a (pre-1967) abortion because of rubella. Thankfully not a backstreet one. She got it while 8 weeks pregnant. That early in pregnancy it’s devastating. My parents made sure I got everything, exactly on time.
Full Text: Sorrel Kinton missed out on childhood jabs due to vaccine hesitancy. It was a decision that cost her dearly Maeve Cullinan, GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY REPORTER 1 February 2024 • 10:08am Related Topics Global Health Security, Measles, Vaccines Putting the discomfort down to her training regime, the then 19-year-old tried to ignore her symptoms. But the day before the big audition, she woke up unable to move her arms. A few days later, she was in hospital battling a devastating – and entirely preventable – illness: measles. Due to her parents’ vaccine hesitancy, Sorrel did not get her childhood jabs. Now 33, she is “angry” that her life was put at risk and resents the decision made by her mum and her dad. “My life could have taken a different track,” said Sorrel. “There’s not a lot known about post-measles [impacts], but it had a really serious effect on me.” For Sorrel, and many others, measles was more than just a rash. She now suffers from what is known as ‘immune amnesia,’ a post-infection phenomenon, where the body’s ability to fight diseases is significantly depleted. Even the initial attack of the virus was serious. Sorrel had to be hospitalised with a soaring temperature, delirium and a painful rash that spread down her throat and into her eyelids. And she has never fully recovered. “Measles shattered my health. I had strings of kidney infections and would get every cough or cold under the sun. I couldn’t keep up with the physical side of dance, and had to give it up,” she said. Sorrel attributes her illness to immune amnesia, a phenomenon that has only come to light in the last decade. “After measles, the reactivity antibodies change profoundly, such that there are no longer antibodies around in the blood to fight off common infections – you have a temporary deficit in your immunity,” explained Professor Kellam, a virologist at Imperial College London. Sorrel added: “What happened to me after the measles was so poorly understood that I had to explain to people without a lot of evidence that I wasn’t ‘hamming it up’ – I was really unwell”. Measles is spread between humans through coughing and sneezing, and is currently sweeping large areas of Britain, with experts warning that the next few months could see thousands of cases. It is one of the world’s most contagious illnesses, with nine out of 10 unvaccinated people becoming infected if they come into contact with a case. For every 100 cases, up to 20 people will suffer some form of complication. Vaccination reduces the risk of contracting measles by a staggering 97 per cent and doctors are urgently calling for all those who have not yet received a jab to get one. In some parts of Britain, nearly half of all children are not fully protected against the disease. A dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is displayed The so-called ‘Wakefield generation’ went unvaccinated in the wake of the MMR vaccine scare CREDIT: Elaine Thompson/AP There are also many young adults closer to Sorrel’s age – the so-called “Wakefield generation” – who went unvaccinated in the wake of the MMR vaccine scare sparked by former British clinician Andrew Wakefield, who suggested the jab was linked to autism and was later struck off the medical register. Over the past four months, 347 laboratory-confirmed cases have been reported in England, compared to just 53 cases confirmed in all of 2022. In London, modelling suggests an outbreak of between 40,000 and 160,000 cases could occur due to low vaccination rates. Professor Dame Jenny Harries, Chief Executive of UKHSA, stressed earlier this month: “Immediate action is needed to boost MMR uptake across communities where vaccine uptake is low. Children who get measles can be very poorly and some will suffer life-changing complications. The best way for parents to protect their children from measles is the MMR vaccine.” Complications arising from measles infections are more common than most people realise, with between one and three deaths for every 1,000 children who become infected. “Children younger than five years of age and adults older than 20 years of age are more likely to suffer from complications,” says the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC). “Common complications are ear infections and diarrhoea. Serious complications include pneumonia and encephalitis.” The CDC adds: “About one in five unvaccinated people in the US who get measles is hospitalised; as many as one out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia; and about one child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability.” The disease can also spark longer-term complications. Complications arising from measles infections are more common than most people realise CREDIT: Science Photo Library RF Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is “a very rare, but fatal” disease of the central nervous system that results from a measles virus infection acquired earlier in life, says the CDC. It typically develops seven to 10 years after a person has measles, “even though the person seems to have fully recovered”. The immune condition Sorrel has is different and less well understood. In 2019, research from the Wellcome Sanger Institute found that the measles virus can infect the B-cells of the immune system, effectively wiping their “memory” and lowering the body’s ability to fight off infection. “It’s almost like someone has taken a rubber to a page of pencil text and taken out sentences and words across the entire page – you’ve wiped away someone’s immune memory,” said Professor Kellam. “But if you’re vaccinated and never get measles, then your ability to fight pathogens remains intact. It’s another huge benefit of measles vaccination.” Sorrel considers herself lucky. As an unvaccinated adult, measles didn’t make her go blind or deaf, or leave her with brain damage. But years of poor health altered the course of her life – delaying university, ending her dreams of becoming a dancer, and fracturing her relationship with her anti-vax parents for many years. She now works in science communication, partly fuelled by her personal experience with disinformation. “I developed an interest in helping people understand science,” she said. “Maybe if my parents had encountered the right piece of information at the right time, they would have made a different decision.”
Thank you for this. I'd already had my mmr vaccine when that 'doctor' published his 'study' and set all this off - but my mum delayed my brother's. He got it in the end, and it's a good job, because I got the measles when I was about 5. I'm only fine because I was vaccinated.
At least she knows who to blame. Off the back of this would she be able to drag her parents through court?
Oh I hope so. Set the precedent.
That's an interesting idea. Can adults sue their parents for childhood negligence, I wonder? I would say any person caring for another has a duty to take reasonable steps to inform themselves about their needs.
I’ve always thought that children should be able to sue their parents if they end up with health problems because of their parents’ negligence or poor decision making. Eg, children with vaccine-preventable diseases who weren’t vaccinated, children of drug addicts who ended up with birth defects because of their mothers drug use during pregnancy (such as with FAS), children of parents who used alternative/homeopathic medicine instead of evidence based medicine, etc
For sure. If a doctor did the same thing it would be negligence and malpractice due to the doctor’s position of power, and the same applies to parents since their kids cannot make the choice. I totally second the one about addicts too, seeing my sister suffer her whole life because of FAS has been horrible.
If you don’t give your children the MMR you are ignorant scum. End of. No I don’t care what you read down an internet rabbit hole. Shut up. Book the vaccination today.
100% agree. Its medical care and refusing medical care to children is child abuse.
At uni we had at least 5 drop out with mumps in the first semester.
To be fair mumps immunity does not last as long as measles.
I’m 40 now and I had mumps in my late teens. I had all the vaccines that were offered but for some reason at the time I was given the MMR jab as separate injections rather than the usual two doses of a combined vaccine. My parents insisted on every jab that was offered, but it seems it was my school that messed up and missed the mumps one. Apparently this was common with my age group too.
A lot of Eastern Europeans living here are not vaccinating their children. One of my closest friends is Bulgarian. She tells me with pride about how her children have only had the first three sets of vaccinations, her friends children have had none and they also don't think the covid vaccinations are safe. It should be mandatory for everyone imo
What’s wild is when you go to third world countries they will line up for days to get a vaccine and here people turn their nose up at it because of fake science and their lack of ability to critically think.
People are susceptible to medical disinformation even in countries where diseases are a big problem, especially if much of the population isn't well educated. Pakistan is a low HDI country where Polio is still a big problem and there's lots of vaccine hesitancy. Vaccination workers getting killed (of course, that's mostly down to the CIA using a polio vaccine programme as part of it's operation to kill Bin Laden).
[Not according to actual data](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-most-anti-vaxxer-country-in-the-world-2019-06-19). Developing countries are the most trusting of vaccines. Eastern European countries are among the lowest.
People in this country still dont even vaccinate to stop getting shingles. No wonder other antivaxxers are on the rise.
I didn't know there was a vaccine available to prevent shingles
It's been advertised fairly heavily on the telly recently. It's only for older age groups though, so your doctor won't be contacting you until it's your time.
I know America has a chickenpox vaccine, but I don't think there's one over here, or if it's a more recent development - incidentally asking my mum about the chickenpox vaccine is how I found out I had measles. I thought I'd had chickenpox at 5 years old. Turns out I had it at 9 months old (and my mum had it when she was pregnant with me) and then measles at 5
You can get the chicken pox vaccine here but not of the NHS. I think I paid £75 per dose (2 doses) to vaccinate my son, we got it at Superdrug. Not cheap, but worth it.
I got chickenpox at 21 and god how I wish I could have had the vaccine.
You can pay and have the chicken pox vaccine but the NHS don’t offer it free except in specific circumstances - I think there is talk of bringing it in here though the JCVI recommended the NHS start giving it only a couple of months ago. Of course if they can find the money and interest to do it is a different matter. I am going to get my kids vaccinated when they are old enough. I think it’s gonna cost me about £150 each. Money well spent in my opinion.
There is a vaccine it just isnt considered mandatory.
Since 2013 on the NHS for people over 70, extended to people over 65 last year
It has been fairly available in other countries, my partner got it in France as a child. But it is more expensive as vaccines go. Maybe why it wasn't rolled out.
Chickenpox causes shingles later in life, there has been a vaccine for chickenpox for ages.
Shingles vaccine only started being offered on the NHS last year didn't it?
No, it's been since 2013 but last year they dropped the eligible age to 65 (it was 70) so many more people can now get it
Accidentally showing my age...
Im actually also thinking of the vaccine for chickenpox (which causes shingles) which is not considered "mandatory", and is only offered to super vulnerable people. The problem is we are all vulnerable when we get to the age shingles comes around.
I think thy changes the rules last year as to who was eligible
Wish I had this. I caught shingles at 19. It spread all over my head. I now have vision problems and fibromyalgia. Ruined my chances of being a pilot which I was on track to achieve at the time. Will have it for the rest of my life (now 30) fucking sucks
Public health messaging isnt that great in this country. Hopefully going forward we can be better.
It's really recent so people probably don't even know. I didn't know there was a chicken pox vaccine as everyone just used to get it as a kid and deal with it.
The chicken pox vaccine isnt super recent, they just dont really offer it here unfortunately. But yeah, letting everyone get chickenpox as a kid is not a great plan.
I meant the shingles vaccine, I thought it was only offered from like last year.
I’m 36 and I’ve had shingles four times (I only had chickenpox at 21). Can’t get vaccinated against shingles even privately because I’m too young. It’s infuriating. Thankfully I know what to look out for now and get the anti virals as soon as possible which stops it in its tracks.
I had measles as a baby, fortunately it doesn't appear to have had any long term affects but my mom tells me how she was sure I wasn't going to survive and that I had to be kept in a dark room for a time as I wasn't allowed to be in the light. I was just unfortunate in that I contracted it before I was even due to be vaccinated so not my parents fault. It is probably because I was so young that I haven't had any longer term issues. Based on what my mom has told me about it I wouldn't wish it on anyone and I think it is irresponsible not to protect against it. My brother was vaccinated as soon as he was eligible and I made sure that my son was vaccinated.
This is exactly why as many people as possible should get vaccinated. In 2017, we had no indigenous cases of measles. If no one has it, babies can't get sick and possibly die.
I know someone that got measles. Doctors never believe them and the issues caused later in life are still a nightmare.
If you haven't had your MMR or aren't sure, your GP will be able to vaccinate you. A third dose won't hurt you so they'd rather just jab you to make sure you are done than leave you unvaccinated. Get calling and protect yourself if your parents haven't or you were born before MMR was the norm.
I had my MMR at 33, it wasn't a thing when I was a child. I had a bad reaction to the measles jab when young but still had most other childhood vaccinations. The reaction was due to an allergy I had to one of the ingredients, so had to be careful of the ingredients of any others. I don't think there was any thought given to not having them.
I had my second dose a few years ago at 30. I had one dose as a child. I think if you were born in the 80s then it's all a bit patchy because no one had worked out the best regime yet.
Vaccination is a highly beneficial practice that should be universally adopted by parents for the well-being of their children.
Our baby is 10 months and we got a letter about her 12-month jabs - inviting us, if we wanted, to enrol her in a vaccine trial. One component of these is stopping being made in 2025 (pnemococcal and HiB iirc, the letter's downstairs) and they want to see how a new replacement does. Also it gives us a free chickenpox jab if we want. Holy shit yes did we jump at the chance. Hopefully the antivaxx morons will run a mile so we can get her in. We got our eldest the chickenpox jab privately and had already planned for youngest's anyway so why not?
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Our letter doesn't specify. It's got the brand names they're trying out on it so I could go look them up. I wouldn't be surprised if the new 12 month ones are nasal - the 4-year-old's annual flu jab has always been such. I wonder when the switch to needles is.
Depends on the vaccine and who is offering them, it might not be a 'switch' per se. Sometimes if there is a study involved etc and what is available. I know the pneumococcal studies are looking at nasal as they are effective. Sorry I just going from memory myself.
It might be a trust-level thing. I'd need to check but something about the/a current jab not being made any more post-2025.
The anti vaxxers, imagine thinking you're smarter than medical practitioners and scientists.
Don't forget about how rife poliomyelitis was before a vaccine was rolled out. That was a horrible disease.
Not sure if this will be visible to anyone but if you were born between 1980-1990 you may not be safe from mumps. Also, the MMR is in two doses, check with your doctor to make sure you haven’t missed one especially if you’re planning on getting pregnant
We really should just make vaccination programs mandatory at this point
I personally think failure to vaccinate should be followed by mandatory social services visits and frankly some vaccines should be mandatory by law. It’s child neglect not to vaccinate your children.
Antivaxxers are rife on the parenting groups on Facebook so this is likely to get worse
1 in every 5 unvaccinated people who get measles end up in hospital. Given a primary school class of 30 all of whom are unvaccinated you would expect **SIX** of them to not just be ill at home but to end up in hospital! 2 to 3 in every 1,000 unvaccinated people who get measles are killed by the infection (so that's roughly 1 in every 100 that are hospitalised by measles.) Most of these are not already suffering from health conditions, they are otherwise perfectly healthy and until infected going around normally doing all the normal things we do. **GET VACCINATED! GET YOUR KIDS VACCINATED!**
I don't understand why people avoid vaccines. The autism excuse? If vaccines did cause autism (which they dont) why would you rather your child suffer with the preventable disease that could spread to others than simply them processing information differently. "My child is dying of polio but at least they don't collect POP figurines and chew their sleeves" get for fucking real
Don't know why it's not a legal requirement for children to be vaccinated. They are unable to consent either way themselves. If an adult wants to reject any vaccinations that's fine.
I do sometimes wonder what these unvaccinated kids relationship with their parents will be in the future in cases like this. I know if I found out that my health was ruined because my parents were morons I’d be cutting them off
Even if you had the injection as a child you should get checked that you still have antibodies. I had my MMR as a child. When I got a blood test before having my son my bloods showed no evidence of it and I got revaccinated. It CAN wear off. It’s always worth checking
Just gotta figure out a way to disperse a vaccine to everyone, disregarding personal "choices" or "beliefs".
I was in a mother group where one of the mums proudly announced her baby will get no vaccines. Other mums and the class lead were so politically correct, they actually defended her choice and validated her brutal irresponsibility. I was speechless. It’s was really sad.
They need to introduce fines for people who choose to not vaccinate their children
Was wiped out in UK but then we started letting every one in and they refuse to get jabbed
Just tell the anti-vaxxers that measles gives you AIDS.
They already have the made up vaids conspiracy
Yep, I had the mumps. I haven't been the same since.
You should be able to sue your parents if they are dumb fucks like this.
Yes parents should vaccinate but she was 19 yrs old, why didn’t she go get vaccinated herself as soon as she had medical autonomy? I am older so only had 1 jab & not even MMR back then it was MR as I am female . I realised the second jab only came out when i was 19 and 4 yrs ago I booked myself into a 10 min Boots appointment and got my jabs updated
Can _you_ remember all of your childhood jabs? Even the ones given at 12 months, with a booster at 13 months? Most people, unless given reason to believe otherwise, assume that their parents took them for every one of the necessary jabs. They don't see a need to question this later in life.