Rotavirus vaccine

Trouble- you are right- except vaccination is NOT lasting immunity...

I agree soda - it is always interesting to hear other peoples opinions and what they have experienced because everyones experience has been so different! If everyone had the same opinion all the time the world would be a very boring place indeed!

For me it was a measles outbreak a few years back and it hit the unvaccinated children really hard it was heartbreaking to watch and from that day on I swore I would vaccinate my children (I am a primary school teacher so the children I teach are a bit older).

In saying that I have never seen a child have a reaction to a vaccine so I am not in a position to say if I would still be pro-vaccine had that happened to one of my children, I would like to think I would but you just never know!

The only thing I think we can do is read the information for both sides, because there are pros and cons for both, and make our own decision based on that. You can't do anything more and in all reality whatever decision you make is right for you, your family and your situation.

yep Rebecca absolutely.. its a very personal decision. and dont worry, my opinions are not about to "talk people out of vaccinating" ... nothing anyone says will make me vaccinate just as much as nothing I say will convince you. its all about reading information from both sides (tricky when so much of it is biased and controlled by the drug companies themselves..) all I can do is encourage parents to research and come to their own conclusions. its not something anyone can force upon someone is it  and trust me, before my childs reaction, nothing would have talked me out of vaccinating either. so i do understand both sides of the argument. 

I totally agree with you Soda. I would never try to change somebodies opinion because that is something they have researched and come to themselves so must be right for them just as I would expect people to respect my decision for the same reasons.

Southkiwi: I think you have done the right thing you have researched you have asked for peoples opinions and experiences and made an informed decision you can't do more than that and you should be able to expect people to respect your decision. At the end of the day if all else fails go with your gut. Instincts are there for a reason

Gut instincts are there because they were all that kept us alive on the savannah ten thousand years ago before we had cities and agriculture. We have epidemiologists now for this kind of problem.

Wow, trouble-really? I think this is going around in circles. Southkiwi is making her decision in a sensible fashion and I applaud that. Not much point going on about it now. Trouble you are starting to look kinda silly, probably time to end this.. Im outty.

Edited by _Soda_ - 02 July 2014 at 11:12pm

There is absolutely no need be nasty to each other, you were asked for your opinions not to
Judge others!

How about you all be happy you are in the position to decide to vaccinate your children or not, something I won't get to do!!

Edited by *Sara* - 03 July 2014 at 7:22am

Sorry, I was polite and civil in my initial post and I'm not remotely interested in an argument, people should do what they like (such is the beauty of choice) - but to be told that it's good for your tiny baby to have been sick with a virus that's left his gut stuffed? Totally not ok. The member is brand new but as far as I'm concerned that's no excuse for that kind of offensive and inflammatory rubbish and I wasn't about to sit back and let it slide.

1 - Please provide proof that 'they're better off than catching the real thing'

2 - Please explain what 'the real thing' is

It's virtually certain that without vaccination, your child will catch wild rotavirus at some point, which has a 2% chance of sending your baby to hospital, through dehydration caused by constant vomiting and diarrhoea. The attenuated vaccine virus has about a 10% chance of giving your baby mild diarrhoea.

3 - Please explain how it's ok for a vaccinated person to infect somebody with a disease FROM that vaccine, but it's not ok for me to not vaccinate my child lest they magically infect your vaccinated, and thus supposedly protected, child with a magical virus they aren't actually carrying?

Feel free to have this argument with someone who is actually making that claim. I'm not. It's not ok to infect anyone with anything, as far as you can help it. Sometimes you can't help it. I'd rather be inadvertently infected by a vaccine virus than a wild one any day.

4 - Please explain how it's been weakened, despite evidence to the contrary'?

Sure, once you provide evidence to the contrary. Since the vaccine was introduced in Australia, the number of kids hospitalised with rotavirus dropped 70%. That seems like a pretty clear effect.

5 - Please explain how the immune system is designed to react to IM injections of all the various adjuvants etc in combo?

I don't need to. I've already pointed to evidence that side effects are rare. If it caused problems, there have been enough studies that we'd be able to see. Same with all the other ten-dollar words you're using.

There is no legitimate scientific controversy over whether vaccination in general is safe and effective. Each vaccine has its own safety and effectiveness information - some are better than others, and the work that scientists do to assess that is very important and worth keeping up with if you're interested in that kind of thing. Public health experts are unified on this issue because that's where the evidence points, not because they're in cahoots with drug companies.

Where there are legitimate differences of opinion, is how we feel about taking on a small risk to protect against a bigger, harder to quantify one. The especially complicated part is how we feel when the risk is an individual one and the benefit is shared by everyone. We're also responsible of making that choice on behalf of our children without being public health experts ourselves. Of course people get upset when it goes wrong. I'm fine with everyone making that call in the best way they know how. But they need good information to do that, not alarmist pseudoscience from the conspiracy section of the internet. You're entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.

Very sad to see that a simple question created an argument.

Trouble, maybe you dont know how forums work?

Most of us come here to get opinions and advice from others. It does not mean we will make important decisions based on what we get told.

We are not ignorant, we know where to go to ask for help.

I have done my own reaserch, have spoken to plunket and to a nurse. So am confident and happy with what I am doing.

So please stop hurting people's feelings and let us be happy with whatever we want to do with/to/for our children.

Edited by SouthKiwi - 03 July 2014 at 10:16am