Why vaccinate?

[ailbhe]

I have to get this out or I will burst.

I vaccinate so that my children don't kill anyone. My children are strong enough to withstand most of the illnesses against which they have been vaccinated, lucky me. This is why I vaccinated - if they were weak, I might have thought twice.

Comments

[rmc28]

I think I am not nearly so selfless. I vaccinated my son so I didn't have the screaming heebeejeebies about him catching any of these horrible illnesses. But then for our family, measles is not a harmless little childhood illness, but the thing that nearly killed my mother when she was 5.

There is also the "not passing on rubella to any pregnant women" aspect.

[piglet]

OMG, yes!!

I just went through a rant about this last month on one of my mommy mailing lists. Someone there routinely posts "vaccination information" workshops. I finally lost my shit and objected vociferously. Any vaccination information workshop that doesn't include a heaping dose of science, and talk about herd immunity, is a vaccination *dis*information workshop, as far as I'm concerned.

[serene]

Exactly.

[ailbhe]

Well, I had measles and rubella as a child (aged 2 and 14) and I was grand. So they didn't scare me.

Meningitis scares me, because my aunt died of it when she was 8, and a girl in my school died of it when I was 14.

[aphrodite]

The social responsibility thing is actually why I decided to vaccinate. I have several "woo" friends, who were urging me not to, and some vociferously mainstream friends who were arguing back the other way, so I read up, asked around, discussed, and concluded that we live in a society, we have a Duty Of Care to the other members of said society that trumps the minimal risk of insane reaction.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Exactly. You immunise the strong and healthy ones, to protect the weak. Some children cannot be vaccinated, therefore you vaccinate your own, in order to protect those children.

I wrote this on DW, and it told me it neede email address and stuff. I'm not up for that level of complication on a comment...

[feetnotes.livejournal.com]

and to get "herd immunity" for all kids - which the tabloid scare-mongers've succeeded in destroying in some parts of the uk; but hey, that's ok, isn't it - it sells more of that truly fine merkin, rupert the dirty digger's (and others') tabloids, so it must be good...

see ben goldacre's "bad science" columns...

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

T has had most of his vaccinations but has not had the MMR but not actually because I didn't want him to have it. Round here the procedure is that they send you an appointment from a central department and if you can't keep it you ring the surgery who have no power to make an alternative appointment they can just cancel the oringial one. The first appointment they sent T was in hospital with a chest infection, the second he was in hospital with gastro (his two only hospital admissions) and the third appointment he had a hospital appointment that we'd been waiting months for. Then they stopped sending them. I'm told that if we now ask at the surgery they should be able to make the appointments as it's out of the "routine".

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

He's now had his "pre-school" booster vaccinations and after a discussion with the nurse about the fact he hadn't had MMR he's had the first dose and will go back just before Christmas for the second dose. Which means he's pretty well caught up since "pre-school" booster vaccinations are anywhere between 3yrs 4months and 5 yrs.