r/MaintenancePhase • u/Ur-mom-goes2college • 8d ago
Discussion Vaccine hesitancy
I’m a pediatric nurse. I am so angry about a note I just read in a toddler’s chart. The parents cited their reason for refusing to vaccinate that RFK has put out so much conflicting information about their safety and they’re going to wait until he has put out more definitive advice 😭
He is directly harming children.
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u/nightcheese17vt 8d ago
I just listened to TPWKY’s episode on Vit K shots and parents increasingly declining them and I am furious. I don’t really intersect with the maha crowd but I want to take action against medical disinformation and don’t know how
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u/teaseapea 8d ago
that is one of my favorite podcasts! soon-to-be parents should also listen to the whooping cough episode
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8d ago
[deleted]
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u/PC-load-letter-wtf 8d ago
I think if you can’t stand the thought of your newborn receiving a tiny medical syringe filled with prescribed medicine, therapy is the route to go, urgently. I say this without any negativity. It’s extremely important that parents are comfortable with their children receiving injections from day 1. That’s a serious anxiety that needs to be resolved. Because if it’s not this injection, it’ll be the next one.
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u/nightcheese17vt 8d ago edited 8d ago
The intramuscular vitamin k is much, much more effective than the oral drops. It is NOT an equal choice. Many infants cannot absorb vitamin k well orally because the digestive tract is not well developed .
Infants who do not receive the vitamin k shot are 81 times more likely to have VKDB, which is severe and life threatening. You do not know how much idany your infant will absorb of oral vit k. Mortality rates for VKDB range from 20 to 50%, and those who survive often have brain damage. You don’t want to risk that.
Your child will not remember the brief pain of a vit k shot
Edit: meant to reply to the deleted comment not you. Sorry!
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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar 8d ago
Tangential rant. I have this argument with the urgent care doctors who want to give me a steroid pill instead of the injection I need. “It’s the same medication.” Yes, but you want it to go through my absorption-impaired GI tract where it won’t do anything.
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u/OscarAndDelilah 8d ago
Absolutely. This is a thing I saw quite a bit of working with new parents and young kids.
If I can provide some perspective here, I largely blame the "parenting/early childhood should be maaaaagical" framing that is so prevalent these days. It seems that some parents aren't anti-science, but feel like by declining injections, their child's medical visit will be perfect and magical. They're thinking they can bubble-wrap their kid. In reality, a lot of stuff about parenting sucks, a lot of early childhood sucks, most of it is out of your control, and your kid really will turn out fine like kids have been for millennia.
So, pretty much every childhood medical visit we had with our kids, we encountered some combination of: misgendering one or more people in our family, confusion about what our family roles are, obnoxious comments about our kids' disabilities, medical racism, and "normal" racism (that very common first name is soooo exotic). Pretty fucking un-magical, let me tell you. But you know what? We kept going to medical providers as advised for the most part (some exceptions where providers really just didn't know shit about our kids' disabilities and their needs were being covered by other disciplines), because having sick or dead kids is much worse than kids having a few shitty experiences.
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u/SupersoftBday_party 8d ago
It’s just… why the fuck are people comfortable taking medical advice from a lawyer?? As a lawyer myself, I know I have no fucking idea what I’m really talking about when it comes to medicine. Fucking absurd
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u/elizajaneredux 8d ago
JFC! I do feel for people, because there’s a lot of misleading information pumped into the algorithm and news and because it’s scary as hell to feel like you’re taking chances with your kid’s life, but at the same time COME THE FUCK ON. This is exactly why media and scientific literacy are important and should be taught more directly in schools.
The damage this administration has done is staggering.
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u/Gabbyct1 8d ago
why it is that people trust social media information and influencers instead of actual scientists and doctors is beyond me.
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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar 8d ago
Psychologists or someone has to be studying this. I know with my grandmother, who trusted internet advice over the advice of her daughter, a physician, the issue was that my grandmother couldn’t accept that my mom knew more than she did. This was before medscape, Mayo Clinic, etc started putting out reliable medical information on the internet. She was basically taking medical advice from a complete stranger with a geocities page.
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u/Special_Net5313 6d ago
People distrust institutions. And people tend to trust people they know, (or who they feel like they “know”/relate to) above all else. If you don’t know any scientists, and you have a distaste for institutions, you end up more likely to believe influencers, etc.
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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar 8d ago
It’s partly the fault of insurance companies limiting how much time patients and parents can spend with the expert who can answer their questions. A while ago I asked my mom (physician) about why they couldn’t spread the vaccines out so that infants weren’t getting so many at once. She explained that that wasn’t better because it meant children were having an inflammatory response from a vaccine on multiple days instead of just one day. That makes a huge amount of sense. The explanations exist for all of their concerns they’re just not able to access it in a way they can understand or from a source they’re willing to trust.
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u/rayybloodypurchase 8d ago
I feel for yall so much having to do this work with an administration actively working against you.
We got our kid’s flu and Covid boosters yesterday and the doctor was legitimately thrilled that we wanted them.
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u/Kooky-Pressure5792 8d ago
I have a bad feeling that because most parents with kids of vaccination age never experienced a pre-vaccine world, we are going to hit that point again with children horrific painful deaths & being inflicted with life long injuries to their bodies & brains before this insanity ends
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u/bluewhale3030 7d ago
We are already hitting that point. Measles is back, for one. It's only a matter of time before polio makes a comeback at this point. I honestly think it might be beneficial to start doing more cemetery tours in school so people have a better understanding of what life looked like before vaccines.
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u/GatorGTwoman 8d ago
My sister did a delayed vaccination schedule with my nephew. I was thrilled she was getting him vaccinated at all.
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u/MyFaceSaysItsSugar 8d ago
I wish people were willing to talk about it and be open to suggestions that are at their level. Like “why do you feel safe trusting RFK exclusively? Why not listen to more people?” Just nudge a little hole in their argument. Providers, particularly providers at the pediatric level, are not given enough time to do that. But there have to be bipartisan people they would trust to talk to. I used to have a neighbor who was so vulnerable to everything Fox News put out, along with every scam promising thousands of dollars in gold if you just paid the $200 shipping cost. He’d suffered brain damage from a helicopter crash so he had an excuse. But all I had to do was hear him out and then start asking him questions. The questions got him to poke holes in Fox new’s arguments all by himself. That’s what we need for these people, someone they can build enough trust with to where that person can guide them in poking their own holes in the word diarrhea they’re being sold.
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u/Kooky-Pressure5792 8d ago
Why go a doctor at all if you want to follow the healthcare advice of a man that goes in a sauna in jeans, snorted coke off of toilet seats, and eats roadkill?
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u/squishyg 8d ago
A lot of people don’t know about that stuff or think it’s just a rumor.
Once upon a time there a was a general trust in the health information that the government put out.
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u/dksn154373 8d ago
I'm more concerned that he's gutting inspections to ensure purity and safety of the vaccines 😭 and, ya know, food
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u/MudiMom 8d ago
I was severely injured by the covid vaccine. It completely wrecked my life and I was out of work for two years, have lingering health issues, and was completely utterly ignored and gaslit by most (thankfully not all) doctors.
IMHO vaccine hesitancy is born out of a mistreatment of vaccine reactions. People are terrified of their child (or themselves) being a statistic and that fear is justified when those who do have a reaction are treated like a public enemy for daring to be part of the small percentage of people with a reaction.
When this happened to me, I was treated like I was spreading vaccine misinformation anytime I talked about it. I was describing my own real, lived experience.
I don’t like RFK in the slightest and this current administration is vomit inducing. I strongly believe he’s using the injured like myself and the others I know for his own personal benefit. But when nobody on the planet will listen, it’s hard not to get excited when somebody in a position of power gives you the time of day.
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u/greencat26 8d ago
I'll take your word that it was the vaccine, but COVID vaccines are different than the ones we give infants and have been giving them for decades upon decades. We know the safety and efficacy and well documented history of the vitamin k shot, MMR, chicken pox, etc.
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u/MudiMom 8d ago
I agree, but if you know somebody hurt by one, you become suspicious of all. It isn’t logical- it’s just human nature.
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u/greencat26 8d ago
Eh, that's snap judgement based on personal experience which is human. However, just because it's human, doesnt mean it's not an unreasonable response. A response that becomes harmful when one person's trauma is making things more dangerous for another innocent person (baby).
Here's a similar example: When I was in a car accident, sure I was really hesitant to drive again and fearful of cars. It took me months to feel confident again and I didn't drive for a week at first. However, I recognized that statistically, my chances of arriving somewhere safely FAR outweighed the risks associated with staying home and never leaving my house. I recognized that my accident was caused by specific conditions (black ice) and made decisions to sometimes stay home on days where that was a likely chance. Similar to someone choosing to not get COVID or flu shots but recognizing that rejecting all vaccines is not logical. And in the vaccine case, the choice to not do it puts others at risk.
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u/MudiMom 8d ago
I literally said it isn't logical.
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u/greencat26 8d ago
It's not just illogical, it's foolish, reckless and harmful
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u/MudiMom 8d ago
So is ignoring people who have had very real reactions. Because that is what DRIVES vaccine hesitancy.
On a personal note, this is my own experience and why I personally will no longer get vaccinated. But that is a decision I made for myself. I won't make it for other people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/health/covid-vaccines-side-effects.html
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u/greencat26 8d ago
Ignoring people? I just had a whole conversation with you where I started it off by saying I believed you. And then explained why that response is illogical and why vaccine deniers have the reputation they do
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u/GeneralForce413 8d ago
My daughter had a minor negative reaction to a vaccine as well - had to report it to our local vaccine safety group and see a immunologist to rule out genetic issues.
I really thought nothing of it until I started trying to talk about the experience.
Nobody wanted to hear it and everyone would get this terrified look in their eye like I was about to spout two heads.
It was really uncomfortable because I was 100% pro vaccine, zero hesitancy in getting them done.
But I was not allowed to talk about the vaccine side effect without people being uncomfortable at the hint of anything other than 100% pro vaccines.
This was BEFORE the craziness of MAHA and not in America mind you.
I can't imagine how awful trying to have that conversation now would be.
I'm really sorry you went through that.
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u/Dadhat56 8d ago
Idk, I have another condition that flared horribly with the mRNA vaccine, but my new insurance covers novavax (the “traditional” vaccine for Covid) and I literally just walked out of Costco with that and the flu vaccine like 20 minutes ago.
People have accused me of being “anti-science” and “anti-vax” when nothing could be further from the truth. It’s unpleasant to be discounted/misunderstood, but I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater due to a specific vaccine type not working out for me and my very specific conditions.
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u/MudiMom 8d ago
I’m glad it worked out for you. I will never let this happen to my body again. I got myopericarditis and POTS. It still affects me to this day.
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u/Dadhat56 8d ago
I’m sorry that happened to you. It sucks because Covid infections can also cause both conditions (as I’m sure you know) which just makes everything more convoluted.
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u/MudiMom 8d ago
Case in point- I’m about to get downvoted into oblivion. I’m still going to share my reality. Sorry that isn’t convenient.
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u/STFUisright 7d ago
I’m very sorry for you if you got a vaccine injury. That really sucks. No one (credible) denies that it can happen. But the numbers of severe injuries are staggering low. That’s no comfort to you I realize but I still wouldn’t hesitate to vaccinate myself or my children (if I had any).
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u/sanityjanity 8d ago
Meanwhile, a school in my district was closed down, because there's a case of measles found there.
There's a special place in hell for RFK Jr.