The reason for vaccinations

We are so lucky to have access to preventative medicine and antibiotics. My late husband's sister died of gastro-enteritis when she was 3 years old, around 1936.
Before I went to Australia for the birth of my granddaughter I was 'ordered' to have a German measles booster vaccination, as her doctor recommended it for any visitors. I thought that it was a bit over-the-top, but complied to make them happy.
I never had German measles as a child, and was very lucky in only catching it after I had my four children, and not during pregnancy.

All my children (born in the 80s and early 90s) were given the MMR vaccination - we lived overseas and it was a standard vaccination which no-one questioned. All of them were fine.

When I was a newly qualified physio I worked at a unit for children and young adults with learning and physical disabilities - one girl had profound problems due to her mother contracting German measles (Rubella) in early pregnancy and refusing an abortion on religious grounds

I remember the signs in buses that warned: 'Spitting Forbidden'. This was because of the prevalence of TB. My class at school was the first to receive the BCG vaccination. This was preceded by the skin test which showed if we had the infection or had been exposed to it. A couple of girls were removed from school for treatment. As another preliminary, we were all lined up at a local hospital for chest X-rays, feeling very self-conscious about being seen in our vests. Modesty dictated that girls and boys were lined up on different days.
A year or so later, on a school trip to France, we knew what 'Défence de Cracher' meant!

A young lad I worked with went on Haj and contracted TB. He looked ill for months poor soul. We were told by healthcare that it was nothing to be concerned about, but secretly I was, a bit.
I didn’t know about smallpox being about so near to me.
The flu epidemic was terrible. My dad was on a tram from Holmfirth to Huddersfield and a man just keeled over and died. Dad got it as well, but pulled through. They were the only family in the village not to lose someone to flu.
It must’ve been so frightening. A sore throat..a temperature and it could be a catastrophe.

MMR has been routine in many countries for ages.

One of my dds was born in Abu Dhabi - she was given the MMR at 12 months. New babies there was also routinely vaccinated soon after birth for TB, since there was a lot of it about, much of it among the vast army of relatively cheap labour imported from India and Pakistan.

Vaccine-shedding, as mentioned by Kisathecat*, has pretty much been debunked. It's a minuscule problem that's been hijacked by anti-vacc conspiracy theorists. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_shedding

Maybe vaccines don't give you 100% immunity but I'd still be happy with 90% immunity against diphtheria/tetanus/flu/whatever. Maybe if the BCG had been available back in the day my father wouldn't have lost his mother, two siblings and a niece to TB.

There was a smallpox outbreak in Bradford too, in 1962, and the child that started it had been vaccinated twice, get parents were revaccinated si they were ok, if anyone is interested there is a write up here
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1079469/#!po=20.9677 a very vivid memory, not everyone who died had been vaccinated. The outbreak was contained fortunately.
People forget how serious the diseases that immunisation gives some protection against. I don't remember having German measles but I must have, had measles, but not mumps. Not chickenpox

I was living in Brighton in 1950 when smallpox hit there. The first cases were about half a mile from our home.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/146642405207200202?journalCode=rsha
www.britishpathe.com/video/town-tackles-smallpox-scare

Granted vaccines don't necessarily provide life-long immunity and in some cases don't work, but that is surely not a reason to refuse to have them.

I belong to a generation that was vaccinated against tetanus, whooping-cough and diphtheria at such an early age that I cannot remember it.

Smallpox vaccination was compulsory for children starting school at five, polio followed a year or so later and TB vaccination when we were ten.

You couldn't be vaccinated against German measles, measles or mumps, mothers s made sure girls had German measles well before puberty and that boys had mumps. I also remember having chicken pox twice!

Whether some of these vaccinations are or could be the cause of serious illness or disability is a discussion that has been going on for as long as I can remember. Not being either a doctor nor a bio-chemist I don't know the rights and wrongs of it.

Parents have the right to decide for themselves in these matters, which unfortunately can put other peoples children at risk, but surely usually only if these children haven't been vaccinated either?

My mother worked in a fever hospital or isolation hospital called Cuddington near Banstead, Surrey during the war. Many children were patients there with diphtheria, TB and other illnesses before vaccinations. Patients were isolated. Everything was boiled. Diphtheria closed up the windpipe and the only treatment was an operation. She witnessed a 9 year old girl die on the operating table.

I believe the MMR vaccination is too much all at once for a tiny baby's body. I paid for my grandchildren to be given the single vaccinations instead rather than a triple jab.

The companies in the UK who provide single jabs do not guarentee "cold chain" and some have a dodgy history of not recalling contaminated batches abroad

The NHS has a robust cold chain and recall system. This makes triple jab is therefore MUCH safer.

Smallpox - Between 20 and 60% of all those infected—and over 80% of infected children—died from the disease. During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths. In the early 1950s an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox occurred in the world each year.

It was one of the world's most devastating diseases known to humanity. The last known natural case was in Somalia in 1977. It was declared eradicated in 1980 following a global immunization campaign led by the World Health Organization

www.google.com/search?q=smallpox and select "images" from the choices below the text box.
www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/smallpox-and-vaccines/

Kisathecat Unvaccinated people also carry the diseases while they incubate them, and are a danger to those with compromised immune systems. My mother caught diphtheria from a friend who just seemed to have a bad cold until she became really ill.

Smallpox has been eliminated through a concerted global effort. Would you really go back to having that spread through the population like a fire in a timber yard?

Does anyone know when childhood vaccinations for measles and mumps became routine? I only have DPT recorded on my baby vaccination records (I am 60). I think I recall having rubella jab as teenager. Only asking because I have been offered an MMR too (which I'm having) as part of some travel vaccinations. Sorry if this is slightly derailing the thread but it hadn't previously occurred to me that there may be lots of older people who don't have immunity. Personally I will take any vaccination on offer and think it is irresponsible not to. Nothing is 100% safe, but the number of people harmed by the diseases far outweighs those harmed by a vaccine.

Marjgran vaccinations don’t lessen the presence of disease. What actually happens is that vaccinated individuals don’t mount an immune response against disease. They are still carriers of disease and for many weeks after vaccination are a danger to immunocompromised individuals because of the reality of virus shedding. Your post also highlights the fact that the idea of herd immunity by vaccines is an untruth because of all the adults whose vaccinations are no longer active.
There is a good reason that more and more people are choosing not to vaccinate. It is very unwise to disregard these people and pour scorn upon the people whose children have died or been damaged by vaccines and have had the courage to tell their stories.
An industry that is protected by the law against liability must be questioned. You can argue about the science of vaccinations till you’re blue in the face - not many ordinary people can understand the complexities of this subject. But if they are so safe, why Is big pharma not liable when things go wrong?

I didn’t have injections as a child...didn’t even know if I could’ve had them.... think my dad was ‘against’ them. The only injection I remember having was a tetanus jab in A &E when I was about 11 , as I had jumped onto a rusty nail and it went through my plimsole ( obligatory summer wear ) for all kids in our district! My mum had taken me...with the nail protruding through top of foot on a bus to hospital!!! Next injection was given at school against TB I think. No other injection until a rubella jab just after I had my first child. Plenty more since though . Amazingly I never had measles...mumps.... or chickenpox , although my brothers did!

Patticake123 your post really choked me up, thinking of your poor grandfather. How desperately sad and powerless he must have felt. As a retired paediatric nurse, strongly encouraging everyone to get vaccinated is one of my life's passions. I have taken care of children who weren't and (sometimes, nearly) sometimes died.

I was seconding what you posted, Oopsminty, as there are people around whose logic goes "Immunisation has almost eliminated XXXX so I don't need to be immunised"

I have had whooping cough twice, too, the second time was as an adult just fifteen years or so ago. I remembered the first time and was able to tell the GP the diagnosis. I also remembered that a child with a nasty cough had stood near me about 10 days before I felt ill.

My daughter had it as a child - she obligingly produced a coughing fit and whoop in front of the GP, who said he had never encountered the whoop before. Vaccination had weakened the disease so that people didn't have the obvious signs any more, so it was not being diagnosed as often.

The sister of a school friend almost died of diphtheria but the family, in the early 1940s, was anti-vaccination and my friend was never vaccinated for anything when I lined up with my classmates for boosters or when BCG was introduced for TB - and what a boon that has been. I had a bad reaction to a diphtheria booster when I was ten. My arm swelled up and I missed out on a family trip to see Peter Pan on stage in Glasgow. Regrettably, it didn't get me out of having to play the piano (badly) in the Ayrshire Music Festival the following week.

My foster daughter caught measles even though she was fully vaccinated and it affected her spleen. She was ill for 4 weeks on antibiotics too.
Sadly vaccines are not 100%

Of course not, Elegran.

My point was that all children who can have the vaccine, should have it. As MMR. Single doses are pointless, cause problems and the only people who benefit are the clinics who charge for it

Herd immunity against measles requires that 90-95% of the entire population are immune

My mum died in 1990 of TB, I can recall a conversation with her specialist at the time who told me that the BCG vaccination didn't work for everyone and there were differences in the length of immunity for people.
My own view is everyone should have a 'booster' if at all possible and suitable.

The herd immunity is important, but if everyone just relied on that, it would cease to exist. Herd immunity is not a reason to skip the jab either.

That they sometimes don't work should never be a reason not to have them.

When I was a small child, one of my mother's friends had diphtheria. Before it was diagnosed, my mother had been going round to her house making her meals and generally helping a sick friend, so she caught it too. Mum was confined to bed with her friends coming in to cook and clean and look after me. I remember playing on her bed so that a neighbour could get on with housework!
That was about 1943 - before vaccinations. It is amazing that I didn't go down with it too.