How to deal with school pushing flu shot

chipmunks

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 4:24 pm

My daughter is immune compromised. Any risk to which you may or may not be exposing your child by giving him a flu shot (yes, it is dead!) is all but guaranteed to be miniscule compared to the risk at which you may be putting a child like her, an elderly person, a chemo patient r"l, and on and on, by not giving the shot and sending your child to school and other public places during flu season.

I know many people are nearly if not completely impossible to convince. I also know that many people would vaccinate if they understood that it's not just about whether your kid catches the flu or chickenpox, but about whether someone who could cv"s develop life-threatening complications from such generally mild diseases will be exposed to them.

Amarante

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 4:35 pm

amother [ Goldenrod ] wrote:

If the flu vaccine was a good product, it would speak for itself and most people would not need to be pushed ,forced , or influenced into getting it. It’s a failure of a product. Flu is rampant as ever. Saying you get a less severe case or a flu like case is a way to rationalize and make sense out of something that you really want to say works, but just doesn’t work.
Committing to a yearly shot for life is quite a big commitment for a shot that is not reliable and has the track record that it has.

Actually in situations in which it becomes almost the default, most people do get a flu shot. For example, I have worked in places where they had on-shot vaccinations and there was almost complete participation. Similarly there are other on-site clinics and most people participate.

I am passionate about getting my flu vaccine every year - for me, it's free and as posted, it's available in every drugstore. However, for some reason I wasn't in a drugstore for many weeks and so I didn't get it until about two weeks ago. I counted down the 14 day period in which the vaccine becomes effective and breathed a sigh of relief last Tuesday when I had passed that date. Very Happy

It's very sad that there is so much misinformation and pseudo-scientific justifications and even outright paranoia that prevent people from taking measures which can significantly lower the odds of getting a disease - at best, it's very uncomfortable but for some people it can lead to hospitalization and dire complications.

Will those who eschew vaccination start vaccinating when they become older and the risks of dying from the flu increase precipitously?

amother

Periwinkle

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 4:37 pm

chipmunks wrote:

Unfortunately not. They are not willing to place their child at a minuscule risk in order to protect anyone else. "Healthy people will be fine, if you're not healthy stay home" they say.

chipmunks

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 5:02 pm

amother [ Periwinkle ] wrote:

Unfortunately not. They are not willing to place their child at a minuscule risk in order to protect anyone else. "Healthy people will be fine, if you're not healthy stay home" they say.

I hope they don't say that. I'm afraid you may be right, but I hope. Because it would be pretty terrible to think that an immune-compromised child shouldn't have the right to go to school or play at the park. And if their kid cv"s ends up in the hospital for whatever, even something unrelated, with a whole lot of immune-compromised people they are endangering many lives. I doubt anyone can say those fragile people should have stayed home rather than get life-saving surgery in the hospital.

southernbubby

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 5:08 pm

chipmunks wrote:

The bigger question is whether or not the flu shot allows contagious people to colonize the flu while not experiencing major symptoms. Some vaccines only protect the person who received it but doesn't render the person non-contiguous.

chipmunks

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 5:20 pm

southernbubby wrote:

I haven't formally researched that, but when my daughter was too young to get a flu shot her pediatrician made the nurse stay late just to give the rest of us one after a visit for something else so that she would be protected. Based on that, I get the impression it does prevent contagion.

southernbubby

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 6:13 pm

chipmunks wrote:

I would suggest verifying that. The flu shot doesn't always work to begin with. The DPT unfortunately, only protects the one who receives it and apparently that's not 100% either.
When I had a preemie at 27 weeks, every germ had to be prevented.

amother

Babyblue

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 6:20 pm

chipmunks wrote:

When my daughter was severely immune compromised, her doctors didn't let us take her to the park or any other indoor public place for that matter. When we got permission to start taking her to stores and such, it was implied that her doctors were comfortable with whatever level of risk was involved. There was definitely still risks involved, and we took plenty of precautions to prevent infections, but we didn't put that on anyone else. It was on us.

Oh and good hospitals take all kinds of precautions to protect immune compromised patients from contagious patients. A person with the flu (or even the measles!!) has as much right to be treated in a hospital as an immune compromised person.

chipmunks

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 6:35 pm

amother [ Babyblue ] wrote:

Of course it depends on the level of compromisation. There are kids who literally have to live in a bubble, poor them! And there have been times that we couldn't take her anywhere. We've always understood we have to be more careful than others. She has older siblings but people often think she's our first because we look overly cautious. At this point, B"H, she is allowed to go to the park and attend gan, although she must be kept home much more often than the average kid -- if she's even slightly under the weather, another kid in the class has bronchitis, etc.

Someone with the flu or the measles has the right to be treated in a hospital. I never, ever meant to suggest otherwise. Someone who refuses to give their child a vaccine against flu or (especially!) measles and then ends up with a child who cv"s infects others in a hospital setting has acted irresponsibly at best. My daughter was not allowed to receive a measles vaccine until much later than other children. She had to be hospitalized many times before being given permission for that vaccine. It was terrifying to have to take her to a hospital but obviously we had no choice.

Good hospitals take all kinds of precautions. They do. They are also still one of the most dangerous places for an immune compromised person. We had to consult her pediatrician for a risk-benefit analysis many times when the obvious course of action had it been any of our other children would have been the emergency room.

amother

Babyblue

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 6:38 pm

chipmunks wrote:

If it was that risky your hospital should have put you in an isolation room right away

chipmunks

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 6:46 pm

Maybe this will be a clearer illustration. When my oldest was a toddler, his grandparents often babysat. One of them has a health issue that makes chickenpox extremely dangerous for him. We had a chickenpox scare at one point (turned out to be something else), and that is how we found out that this grandparent had never had it and I think could not receive the vaccine. Our kid had been given the vaccine, but there are very rare cases where a vaccinated person gets it anyway. If cv"s it had been chickenpox, the grandparent would have been exposed before any symptoms appeared. If we had not vaccinated our child and that had happened, I cannot imagine not having to take very painful responsibility.

chipmunks

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 6:50 pm

amother [ Babyblue ] wrote:

If it was that risky your hospital should have put you in an isolation room right away

Isolation rooms are limited and the oncology ward is overflowing. B"H she is not an oncology patient and didn't get the same priority. We were given private rooms when at all possible and only certain roommates were allowed. The point is that while it is devastating where proper precautions are taken on all sides if something happens anyway (G-d forbid), the responsible thing to do is make sure you are doing what you can reasonably do to prevent harming others. Vaccinating your children against measles and flu is reasonable hishtadlut.

chipmunks

Thu, Dec 26 2019, 6:53 pm

amother [ Periwinkle ] wrote:

Unfortunately not. They are not willing to place their child at a minuscule risk in order to protect anyone else. "Healthy people will be fine, if you're not healthy stay home" they say.

Also want to make clear I was talking about people who do vaccinate in general but don't see the need for the real or imagined tiny risk of a vaccine against a minor illness as being the reachable ones. I can't tell you how many people I've heard say they give vaccines but not chickenpox because they had it when they were a kid and so what if you itch for a week.