The Deadliest of Diseases

[witt]

I am struggling...........

I have 3 kids, 6,3 and 6mths. My older two have had some vaxes not MMR but polio and tetanus and Pertussis and then I stopped and they haven't had the full course cos I got shaky on my stance.

My baby hasn't had anything no shots at all, and I'm still just waiting (it's summer here so not so risky) to see whether I do the dtaP (?) polio round. I'm in no rush and I want to do lots of research.

BUT the govt here has bought in a vax for Meningitis B which is BAD BAD BAD - basically this is not some nice disease - it kills children in this country fast and furious. THere is a 90% take up rate on this vax and I haven't vaxed my kids against it.

I have waited two years after it's introduction and I'm still on the fence grr ...

How did you all make up your minds on really serious diseases? We're not talking chicken pox (which my kids have had I'm thrilled to say) or measles here but a really serious disease......

WWYD?
I'm just looking for perspectives
tia
Claire

[Aura_Kitten]

at one point in time EVERY disease was in fact a "very serious disease."


i guess my thought is ~ where do you draw the line?

if you believe vaccines are bad, then what would make the risks outweigh the benefits?

many vaxes have come on the market lately that proclaim they prevent against diseases that kill children right and left every year ~ but more often than not it's more due to increased publicity than a real increased risk.



what do you personally consider a "really serious disease"--?

[mamakay]

Are you talking about n. meningititis serogroup B?

[mamakay]

Ok...let's break these numbers down. I have a feeling you're being fed a line of poo here...
http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/wpg_i...Disease+FAQs#5

How many people are affected by meningococcal disease in New Zealand?

More than 5400 cases of meningococcal disease have been recorded since the epidemic began in 1991. Before the epidemic began, there were about 50 cases of meningococcal disease per year.

That sounds like 5400 cases of meningitis from "meningitis B", doesn't it?
It's not.
"meningococcal disease" can be sinus infections, upper respiratory infections, etc. Basically, "bacterial infections".
Not necessarily a big deal.

To find out HOW deadly this is, you're going to have to find out how many cases of "meningitis" there are a year.
The spelling is tricky with this one.
There is a family of bacteria...meningoccal...which is necessaria meningititis...and there are a lot of serotypes of this bacteria...serotype A, serotype B (that's the one you're being fearmongered about)...serotype C, etc.

And then there is "bacterial meningitis" which means a bacterial infection (any kind of bacteria, Hi, pneumococcal, meningococcal, etc...whatever) has run amok, made it's way into your blood...and then made the lining of your brain swell.
That is VERY RARE.

So...to find out if what you're being led to believe is true or not...
Find out how many cases of bacterial meningitis are being caused by necessaria meningititis serotype B a year right now.

[Spy]

... also bear in mind that the vaccine in question has been tried in Norway and NOT accepted for mass use there as the efficacy was shown too low - 57%, if I remember correctly. And some of the teenagers that the vaccine was tested on suffered permanent disability and are being paid compensation from the government.
Also this same vaccine was never tried on infants before being licensed, so the experiment is still happening, only the parents are not told that their children are used as guinea pigs.

As with any 'meningitis' vaccine, it will be publicised that the disease have been decreasing since the vaccine came on board. What actually happening is meningococcal B disease may be decreasing. And meningococcal X disease increasing, overall rate of meningitis stable :. Unless you don't care if your child gets meningitis as long as it is not B, why in the world would you consider this vaccine? Meningitis is meningitis, no matter what the letter is, it is not something the bug does, it is the inability of the system to stop the bug. One in 6 people is carrying meningococcal bacteria at any given time, which means, everyone carries it at some point in life. But only very few get sick - what's different about them?

You were never vaccinated against meningococcal B (or any other meningococcal bacteria), were you? Noone in your generation would have been. How many do you know who would have died from it as a child? Why are you worried about your child - is it because there is a vaccine now? But does the appearance of a vaccine make a disease worse? How?

[mamakay]

Originally Posted by Spy

As with any 'meningitis' vaccine, it will be publicised that the disease have been decreasing since the vaccine came on board. What actually happening is meningococcal B disease may be decreasing. And meningococcal X disease increasing, overall rate of meningitis stable . Unless you don't care if your child gets meningitis as long as it is not B, why in the world would you consider this vaccine? Meningitis is meningitis, no matter what the letter is, it is not something the bug does, it is the inability of the system to stop the bug. One in 6 people is carrying meningococcal bacteria at any given time, which means, everyone carries it at some point in life. But only very few get sick - what's different about them?

Yep.
Which is why you'll never be able to find one of those cute provax charts that goes over the last 15 years and says "Before X vaccine, there were X many cases of bacterial meningitis, and now there are only Y" with a line going down.

You can only find ones that show individual strains as they were added to the schedule.
You're on your own if you want to find out how many cases of bacterial meningitis there were in the "whole bacterial meningitis prevaccine era" compared to now.
And now they're having to create NC-HI vaxes, more meningococcal vaxes, a staph vax...and there a nifty prevnar clinical trial going on to see if fewer doses might maybe make kids "not THAT" immune so that the emerging pneumoccal serotypes will quit emerging to fill the ecological niche.

[suschi]

Here's something I had bookmarked about this,

"Data from the Ministry of Health reveals the MeNZB vaccine has had no impact on the levels of meningococcal disease in New Zealand, despite assurances to the contrary."

"Figures released last week reveal that Waikato children given the MeNZB vaccine actually have a higher risk of contracting meningococcal disease than unvaccinated children.

Since January 2005 all five deaths due to meningococcal disease in under twenty year olds have been in children vaccinated with MeNZB; not one unvaccinated child has died!"

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE0611/S00057.htm

[mattemma04]

Everything has the potential to be deadly if given the right circumstances,so I have focused my research into why some diseases can take hold and injure one person; while being mild in another. I wanted to know what lifestyle/nutrition factors are involved,so that when my child does get ill they are less likely to develop any sort of complications.

Ofcourse I also researched the treatment options for many diseases,so that I could be a good advocate if we ever did need allopathic care.

[Anastasiya]

Originally Posted by mamakay

And now they're having to create NC-HI vaxes, more meningococcal vaxes, a staph vax...and there a nifty prevnar clinical trial going on to see if fewer doses might maybe make kids "not THAT" immune so that the emerging pneumoccal serotypes will quit emerging to fill the ecological niche.

mamakay - can you give me some sources for this? this is precisely what i was telling my BIL was going to happen and i'd love to show him some proof...

[witt]

oh my gosh you guys are awesome

I'm going to keep researching............ I'm moving more and more to anti vax as time goes on.....

[mamakay]

Originally Posted by Sancta

mamakay - can you give me some sources for this? this is precisely what i was telling my BIL was going to happen and i'd love to show him some proof...

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...clinical+trial

http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct/sho...189020?order=1

Effect of Two Versus Three Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccinations

Two vaccinations with pneumococcal conjugate vaccine Prevnar in infants before age 6 months is presumed to provide over 90% protection against invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) for those pn. serotypes included in the vaccine. Licensure of the vaccine however is based on studies with 3 vaccinations before 6 months and a booster vaccinations half a year later (3+1 scheme). Apart from protection against IPD, the 3+1 studies showed 50% reduction of vaccine type pn.nasopharyngeal carriage in vaccinees. In the USA, also substantial herd-immunity has been reported for IPD after licensure of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine Prevnar in 2000. However, overall pneumococcal carriage in vaccinated infants was not reduced and non-vaccine pneumococcal serotypes have shown an increased contribution both in nasopharyngeal carriage and disease like AOM and IPD.

Hypothesis: A 2-doses vaccination scheme without booster vaccination offers sufficient protection against IPD by vaccine types, but results in less carriage reduction, herd immunity and respiratory tract infections. Effects on replacement by both non-vaccine pneumococci and other potential pathogens will be less. Apart from cost-effectiveness, a 2-doses scheme therefore has major advantages.

ETA:
Great science, huh?

"Oops...now that we've given millions of kids this vaccine, NOW let's get figure out what we're doing."

[Gitti]

Polio is the other disease you mentioned as being a worry to you. But do you know that most of the people who in fact had polio NEVER EVEN KNEW IT?

Polio - We may all still have polio antibodies, that means we came in contact with the virus. But no one is looking.

Diphtheria - basically unheard of in healthy kids.

Tetanus as well. Very few tetanus cases every year. And they are in old people with poor circulation.

Whooping cough - the vaccine is probably useless since that bacteria seems to come around every 5 yrs. no matter what and will continue to do so. (And they use that time cycle to to scare us into buying the vaccine.) WC is not such a big worry in kids over the age of 6 mo. anyway.

[MichelleS]

Originally Posted by Gitti

Polio is the other disease you mentioned as being a worry to you. But do you know that most of the people who in fact had polio NEVER EVEN KNEW IT?

Polio - We may all still have polio antibodies, that means we came in contact with the virus. But no one is looking.

Diphtheria - basically unheard of in healthy kids.

Tetanus as well. Very few tetanus cases every year. And they are in old people with poor circulation.

Whooping cough - the vaccine is probably useless since that bacteria seems to come around every 5 yrs. no matter what and will continue to do so. (And they use that time cycle to to scare us into buying the vaccine.) WC is not such a big worry in kids over the age of 6 mo. anyway.

What happens, generally, if a child under one contracts WC? I had somewhere read that usually in children under one, they have to be hosptalised due to their breathing passages being so small. (I've read a lot of the threads about WC, and it frightens me. Is there a specific great homeopathy book to use for children?)

[Deborah]

Several people in this forum have had children under one with WC and all of them survived without hospitalization. There have been threads on how to treat it. Try a search for whooping cough.

[Romana]

What I understand about WC in very young children (under one year, certainly under 6 mos) is that the vaccine at that point generally does not provide sufficient immunity to preclude contraction of the disease. And the pertussis vaccine is notoriously low in terms of effectiveness rate, anyway.

And you're just going to get it anyway as a teen if you're exposed and don't get boosters.

There was a mom about a year ago who delayed vaxes due to one of her other boys becoming autistic due to a vax (acknowledged by her doc who was pretty mainstream but aware of the risk of vax). Her newborn babe got WC at some age under 1 year, can't remember exactly how old - but she was really worried and upset and felt guilty, and her doc told her that at that age the babe probably wouldn't be sufficiently protected by the vaccine to have prevented infection in any case.

So when WC is most dangerous to babies, the vax is rather ineffective anyway. Gives me a lot of reasons not to do it.

Julia
dd 9mos

[Gitti]

AND the DTaP vaccine is the most reactive and linked closely to SIDS.

There were several threads about wc in kids. Seems the best way to treat it is with plenty of sodium ascorbate.

My own totally non-vaccinated grandson is 11 months and since his mom nurses him, we don't really worry about wc or any other diseases.

[witt]

again i say you guys are AWESOME

I was comfortable not vaxing for meningitis but my 5 yr old had a febrile seizure last year and was rush to hospital - they were considering meningitis and I have to tell it was such a frightening experience - i remember thinking "oh my god if he dies from meningitis - I don't know what I would do"

So this experience has left me shaky, of course it wasn't meningitis it was just a virus but now I feel a little scared whenever the kids get a fever and I don't want to feel fearful cos I haven't vaxed, so I need to either lose the fear or vax


this is where i'm at now,
but no meningitis vaxes happened yet and no vaxs for my baby 6mths, I'm taking my time this time and thoroughly researching

the boys are partly vaxed but then I stopped but they go to a Wardolf Steiner school where a lot of kids aren't vaxed so if there is something going around the school will have it.

Any other thoughts anyone??

[Gitti]

Bringing up and old thread for a new mom -

So this experience has left me shaky, of course it wasn't meningitis it was just a virus but now I feel a little scared whenever the kids get a fever and I don't want to feel fearful cos I haven't vaxed, so I need to either lose the fear or vax

Just a virus can cause meningitis. But the vaccine would not have prevented that. There are many viruses or bacteria that can cause meningitis. Only a few are covered in the vaccine. And the ones that are not covered can be just as severe. Don't rely on the vaccine to protect your child from meningitis. It most likely creates super bacteria that are deadly.

[CallMeKelly]

My thoughts...

research the true instances of disease in your area, and any you worry about.

research the harm that could be done by that disease

research the safety record of the vacc for that disease

research the effectiveness of the vacc

make your own charts for each vacc so it is easy to ref. and just glance at...

Disease A: x% chance of infection

x % chance of a naturally occuring infection causing permanent harm to my child

x % protection offered by the vacc

x % of people suffered harm from vacc

whatever is important to you (I just made those cat. up, I did this four years ago and haven't looked back since)

That way you KNOW why you made the decision to or not to vacc... you know the %of protection claimed by the vacc, the possibility of damage from the vacc, the possibility of infection of the disease, the possible outcome from that and you can then make the decision based on what is the most important to you. I spent about six months four years ago, and I've been confident in my decisions since... I keep an eye on the news and check around once in a while to make sure I am current on info but it really settled my mind, researching the facts as far as I could figure them and choosing on my values, not someone elses.

It is a tough road, made worse by media frenzies and hard to find info but no matter what, you are a concerned parent, doing the best you can and that is all anyone can ask.

[lioralourie]

here.

http://www.*********/vaccine/menzb_vaccine.html

Read anything you can written by Hilary Butler (from New Zealand)! There are at least 2 links there.

And the http://www.ias.org.nz/ from NZ is wonderful, too! (site not fully functional, under maintenance Oct 2008...) but order Just A Little Prick and also the newer From One Prick To Another--both fabulous books by Hilary Butler, at that site.