I was a staunch anti-vaxxer and then I went pro-vax - AMA

amother

Peachpuff

Thu, Sep 28 2023, 2:04 am

When you were an anti vaxxer, was it because of research and educating yourself, or it was just something you did and fell into or grew up in and never really looked into yourself?
And now that you’re pro vax, is it because of educating yourself on the other spectrum?
Have any of your children suffered from any side effects from not vaxxing/vs vaxxing? Autoimmune? Pandas? Autism? Diabetes? Ear infections? Asthma?

amother

Thu, Sep 28 2023, 2:35 am

amother Plum wrote:

Is this thread a response to that 1?
What would be a reason to become pro?
What do your families do?
Have you researched vaccines?

Not a response, more like inspired by it.

There are so many AMA threads now, and I wanted to join but didn't know what to offer without outing myself....when I saw her thread I decided to go for it. Figured it might be entertaining.

My family is selectively vaxxed. My husband's family are super-duper-give-every-vax-that-comes-out people (which I don't like, but it's not my business). I don't discuss vaccines with my siblings so I don't know what they do.

I have researched vaccines. It was largely thanks to the research, and an understanding of how research works and how to read it, that turned me pro-vax.

amother

Thu, Sep 28 2023, 2:46 am

amother Peachpuff wrote:

My mother selectively vaxxed. I did not see any reason to vaccinate and furthermore, the research that I was seeing supported not vaccinating and emphasized the risks. My family has a heritable condition that in my sister was brought out by the vaccine (you can't get around it - it started within 24 hours of one of the doses). I carry that genetic tendency and didn't want any of my children to develop that condition. Avoiding the vaccine seemed like a good option. And again, the research that I was seeing - and I saw a lot - seemed to support that conclusion.

I am now pro-vax because I realized that a lot of the anti-vax research is flawed, and that a great deal of the research that is not flawed and that is being quoted by anti-vaxxers, is being taken out of context, misunderstood, or misquoted. I also understood that science is never 100/0, and there are never guarantees, there is only what we believe is correct as of now. And that no matter what politicians say, the actual hardworking scientists behind the research - unless they are being paid to flub it, in which case they should be soundly condemned and their papers pulled - do care, very much, about what they are doing and are working for the good of the public's health.

My children have not suffered side effects from vaxxing, BH BH, other than fevers and the usual not feeling well.

amother

Thu, Sep 28 2023, 7:02 am

amother Silver wrote:

Op, do you trust the CDC?

Would you (hypothetically) follow CDC advice and give the covid vaccine to a 6 month old baby?

I used to trust the CDC but don't since covid. However I trust other nations' health bodies, such as the NHS, various professional medical organizations, and Israel's Health Ministry (not the political decisions necessarily but yes the professional ones). I still do trust the FDA for certain things, and the CDC's website is still a good source for short, sweet explanations for a lot of things.

About the covid vaccine for a baby, it depends on what the vaccine offered and what the situation is in real time. I did give two doses of the Pfizer covid vaccine to my (then-)two children under 5, one of whom was about two years old at the time. I did not give the third dose because the virus had mutated enough that I felt that a third dose would not give much in exchange for the risk. If a relevant vaccine became available now, for my current baby? I'd have to look at the situation on the ground and the efficacy and risks of the vaccine in question before I answer.

amother

Thu, Sep 28 2023, 7:07 am

amother Hibiscus wrote:

Did you consider that all extremes are usually wrong and maybe your mom had it right in the sweet spot?

Yes, I did consider that while typing this out.

However I think my mother's decision-making process for her choice was faulty. While I agree with her on a lot of other "crunchy" things, her thought process for vaccine selectivity was very experience-oriented and very short-sighted. For instance after my sister's vaccine injury she skipped unnecessary/new vaccines (which I support...I.e. none of us were vaxxed for chickenpox because it was a new vaccine back then) but she also chose to simply not vax any of us, ever again, with the vaccine that caused the injury, and at one point we all came down with the virus and some of my siblings were sick for several months (yes months) straight, and the vaccine-injured one ended up in the ER a few times due to the virus itself. It kind of puts things into perspective, that there is no absolute guarantee of anything. As of today some of my siblings have made up the vaccine which my mother chose not to give them.

In short, I do not believe my mother truly found the sweet spot.

amother

Lightyellow

Thu, Sep 28 2023, 7:18 am

amother OP wrote:

In light of the bolded, what's your opinion of the chicken pox vaccine?

amother

Thu, Sep 28 2023, 7:43 am

amother Lightyellow wrote:

In light of the bolded, what's your opinion of the chicken pox vaccine?

We did not receive it as kids. I did not want my children to receive it. My eldest received it because a nurse either didn't listen to me or didn't care what I said. I was very angry for a long time and looked into how to sue the nurse (then decided it would take too much of my energy).

I still am not thrilled with the idea of eliminating chickenpox, or with the idea of vaccinating for such a (relatively) benign virus. However one of the top experts on infectious diseases (he works in Shaare Zedek) said that since the vaccine came out he has hardly seen any cases of complications from chickenpox and before the vaccine came out he saw a lot of them and not all ended well. He noted that the rare chickenpox complications he does see are in unvaccinated kids. When I read that I calmed down a bit.

In the end what I do is ask for two separate shots on the same day - MMR in one arm and V in the other. This reduces by half the chance of a febrile seizure. It's something you have to request in advance, they don't always have the separate vaccines on hand. If it can wait I wait for the separate doses, if there is a bubbling MMR outbreak, I just give the quadrivalent for the MMR component and daven hard (which is all we can do at any rate).

I think the greatest damage of the chickenpox vaccine is that most of us remember chickenpox as a no-big-deal childhood disease. Lumping it together with vaccines like polio makes light of polio and measles as viruses that literally kill and hospitalize children in large numbers.

But chickenpox is a virus that hits your nervous system, so if you can prevent neurological complications, I think that's smart to do that. The vaccine won't stop your child from getting chickenpox, though - it just reduces the likelihood.

amother

Lightyellow

Thu, Sep 28 2023, 8:03 am

amother OP wrote:

It wasn't around when I was a kid. All my kids had the chicken pox vaccine so this isn't relevant to me personally. Supposedly England doesn't offer it because it is more likely to cause shingles later on while complications from chicken pox are extremely rare. I did not research this and don't know if that's true (that the US has much higher rates of shingles), but I was curious how you resolve which country got it right?

amother

Hibiscus

Thu, Sep 28 2023, 9:28 am

amother OP wrote:

She doesn't sound selective, it sounds like she was pro and then went anti.