It’s not just autism they worry about. They often cite VAERS for an abundance of adverse outcomes, including death, that are presumably caused by vaccines.
There is a nurse on my nursing forum who frequently posts about her niece, who became very sick and “profoundly mentally ■■■■■■■■ (not autistic)” as a direct result of receiving a vaccine she when she had a very low grad fever. People with personal bad anecdotes will not be swayed, and many of them feel morally compelled to spread the word.
I suppose it’s similar to how many people are afraid to fly because of crashes (one major one today, in fact), but are oblivious to all the deadly car wrecks that happen daily as they hop in their car for their travel instead. They see and fear the “unusual” news, but are deadened against the “normal.”
Kids die from the flu. “It happens. Too bad for them.” Kid has issues from the flu vaccine (quite likely not even deadly issues). “Wow! Avoid vaccines - they’re horrid! Look what can happen (as they repeat what they heard or read).”
Re children afraid of shots: The grownup way of helping certainly isn’t avoidance. We step up, we tell them the truth – including that hey it might hurt but we’ll take care of them – and that it’s to prevent something much, much worse, not just for ourselves but for everyone around us. We are put here to field their terror and help them.
My sons loathed needles, and one of them was outright locked up about them. Think repeated postponements of routine inoculations that he wanted to get, agreed with getting, but he choked on the first attempt and we had to reschedule. When he was getting ready to go away for undergrad, he had to gear himself up to get one of the vaccines that his school said was optional but he still felt was important. It took conversations with various combinations of him, myself, and nurse who knew him from childhood to figure out how to get him through it.
He ended up having me drive him to the provider’s office, me getting out to tell the staff we were here, the nurse coming to the door to meet him and take him right back so there was no other interaction or waiting stress, and he got the vaccine. He was a legal adult. The vaccine was optional. He was terrified. He still worked through it – and deities bless that nurse with eternal happiness and large tax refunds – because the protection it conferred mattered enough.
It’s one of the bravest things I ever saw. And that is how you handle fear of shots.
My med school lad tells me they call them “pointy kisses…” It sounds like a pretty cool way to introduce them to kids so perhaps they don’t get super afraid. I doubt it will help those who are phobic, but it’s bound to help the rest by giving the brain a different way to process it.
With respect to the flu, part of the problem is that people refer to any feverish illness as “the flu”, which tends to trivialize the severity and potential danger of the real flu. So people tend to think that “the flu” is no big deal (and that flu vaccines are not effective against “the flu” (that is not the real flu) that they got afterward).
People are wired to look for causation where none exists. Vaccinations are just infrequent enough, and for some people, especially the needle-phobic, just scary enough to be memorable, yet frequent enough that just about any normal, unrelated, childhood illness is likely to occur within a short time frame of a regularly scheduled vaccine.
The autism thing is truly a red herring. Many have moved onto “other” side effects and the idea that vaccines are actually weakening us. Or, y’know, big pharma (or something).
The autism connection lost steam when people countered with: “so you hate autistic people so much that you’d rather your kid be dead than autistic?”
My partner is a behavior tech with autistic kids. Autistic traits show up before 2-3 years (usually) but parents just don’t notice them or understand them.
23 cases of mumps at Temple!
https://www.philly.com/news/mumps-temple-university-20190312.html
Yikes! That is likely what made George Washington sterile.
I listened to a podcast episode of Kaiser Health News “What The Health?” and part of the episode discussed the worldwide (<—!!!) public health challenge re: people with vaccine hesitancy (<—that’s the proper term, I learned).
The podcast said vaccine hesitancy goes way way back, but the modern version took off in the 90s with a study about potential problems with the preservation thimerosal — potential problem later dismissed and then thimerosal not used any longer.
The podcast says convincing arguments do. not. work. The best public health move would be to tighten up the laws and requirements to access government services. The reporter said making exemptions very difficult to obtain, and having firm vaccination requirements for admittance to public schools would take care of the majority of those who are in the vaccine hesitant camp because they will want entry in to, for example, an early childhood program, government assistance, or K-12.
The reporter said, sure, you’ll still have people who will want to go off-grid, but it will be a very small minority.
Pet vaccines are not quite the same. There are scientific vet studies showing that yearly vaccinations, after the initial first year puppy shots, are overkill. Cornell had a very prominent study that came out a few years ago. I have a dog that is very vaccine reactive and had an extreme reaction to the DHLPP vaccine. Our vet moved him to core vaccines only, and they now draw titers first instead of just doing them yearly. Rabies being the exception but, knock on wood, he hasn’t had a reaction to that one.
FWIW, the human child is fully vaccinated.
Awhile back, I had read that U-Wisconsin Madison was looking into the rabies vaccine. How many - how often will result in immunity. I have not looked for any updated news on that front.
Same in our household @momofsenior1, a vaccine reactive dog, fully vaccinated teens. The bummer with the titer draws on the dog is that they cost more than the vaccine! 
Yes @Mwfan1921 on the cost of titers! But, our dog was so ill after the last DHLPP that we spent way more on his treatment. We were back and forth to the vet multiple times, lots of testing, IVs, prescription drugs etc…
Ugh @momofsenior1 Hope your dog has fully recovered…sounds like it was quite the ordeal
@Mwfan1921 - Yes, he thankfully did make a full recovery but it took months. This was a few years back and he’s been good since. I will say I was a nervous wreck when he got his rabies vaccine this past Fall.
Just what you need when you lose a child: attacks from Anti-vaxxers blaming you for your child’s death, no matter what caused it.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/19/health/anti-vax-harassment-eprise/index.html
The Plague- an oddly popular video game based on creating epidemics -is adding in an anti vaxxer feature. It was by popular demand.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-wildly-popular-video-game-about-deadly-plagues-is-adding-anti-vaxxers-to-the-list
There is an article about it on Slate as well.
Kentucky governor does not like vaccines…
Another needless death that may have been prevented by the HPV vaccine:
https://www.thejournal.ie/laura-brennan-death-hpv-4552638-Mar2019/