Vaxed kids playing with non-vaxed kids

[Moxie]

This isn't a vaccination thread; it's a "people is dumb" thread.

I'm a lurker on another mommy-type board. There is a discussion about vaccinations. The majority of the women say that they will not allow their fully vaxed children to play with a child that they know is not vaxed because IT COULD BE DANGEROUS to their children!!
I just shake my head.

 

ETA:  I changed the title of this thread because "idiot" isn't a very nice word and I shouldn't have used it.

[Anne in CA]

A little worrying, but both of my children got chicken pox after getting the vax anyway, so it is not impossible that after this experience some people don't want to chance polio. I know it's different, and I was warned that the chicken pox vax might not work, and that I should still avoid exposing them to chicken pox. However, chicken pox is most contagious before you have spots, lol. I probably would not bother with chicken pox vax if I had more kids. 

[Liz CA]

Well if they have that little faith in vaccinations, why bother?

[Wilma]

Chicken pox is no big deal, though -- we ALL had chicken pox back in the day.

 

And really, don't worry about polio unless you're going to Afghanistan, Nigeria or Pakistan.

 

I wonder if the people who say they wouldn't allow their kids to play with un-vaxed kids demand vaccination records at the park... or ask people about their medical history before arranging a playdate...  or keep up to date on the adult booster shots...

[Vera]

My son was hospitalized for 3 days when he had the chicken pox. It was a VERY big deal.

[Dana]

My son was hospitalized for 3 days when he had the chicken pox. It was a VERY big deal.

And I have some scarring from my chicken pox.

[shawthorne44]

Well, we know that a certain % of the vaccinations won't take.  So, my kid might be vulnerable to the disease and we wouldn't know it. Personally, I wouldn't care about something like Chicken Pox, which I don't consider a big deal.  But, Polio or Measles?  Seems reasonable unless I knew that my kid was 100% protected against it.  The benefit of playing with a particular family of kids would not outweigh the risk of a debilitating illness.   I also see nothing nothing wrong with not allowing my kid to play with kids for other reasons like bad behavior.

[SKL]

Her poor kids will never travel, I guess.

 

I always find that comment funny too, because in all my years of life I've never been asked:  "are you vaccinated?  Are your kids vaccinated?  Is that kid you're babysitting vaccinated?"

 

Do these parents also ask their teachers, doctors, co-workers, etc. if they are vaccinated?  Do they also refuse to sit next to an adult who is not vaccinated?  What about those around them in church?  In the gym? ... LOL.

[Clear Creek]

My husband had chicken pox as a young adult, was severely ill with it to the point that he was hospitalized, and was supposed to be sterile as a result of it.  Thankfully he wasn't :D

[bettyandbob]

My son was hospitalized for 3 days when he had the chicken pox. It was a VERY big deal.

 

My sil was hospitalized for 3 weeks at age 6 for complications due to chicken pox.

 

My other sil had friend die from chicken pox in first grade.

 

Chicken pox may not be as bad as polio, but it can be very bad for some people. And there's no way to know who is going to develop such complications.

 

Getting back to the OPs point, the people she is communicating with apparently have no idea how vaccinations work.

[SKL]

The horror stories of chicken pox as older kids / young adults is why we wish our kids could have been exposed when they were little.  It is very benign (with rare individual exceptions) up to about age 9 or 10, and then it becomes dangerous.  Which is why parents need to consider vaxing their own kids after a certain age.  Not other people's kids.

 

Now if a kid has immunity issues, that's a different issue, but then you have to assume every kid is too germy.  It's not like vaccinated kids don't get (or carry) communicable illnesses.

[MEmama]

Chicken pox is also the root of shingles, which can also be a very big deal.

I actually had no intention of vaccinating my DS against CP until my ped (who was generally vax neutral) gave me lots of stats on the dangers. I had no idea.

But this is an interesting thread to me, because although DS is fully vaccinated (and yes, as adults we keep up to date on boosters), I have concerns about hanging out too much with unvaccinated kids, especially when there are outbreaks of dieases like whooping cough. However, I prefer to think of myself as realistic and informed, rather than an idiot. I "trust" vaccinations (ovbiously), but I know enough that they don't fully protect 100%. No whooping cough beats out a milder case every time, thank you very much.

[AmandaVT]

I don't consider myself an idiot, but I wasn't super thrilled when I found out that my (vaccinated) son was exposed to whooping cough from a little boy who hadn't been vaccinated and ended up quite ill. The mother re-thought her position on vaccines after that illness. 

[JustEm]

I think that statement can be dumb but I also agree with it sometimes. There are unvaccinated people I no longer hang out with because they are not vaccinated and they do not take the necessary precautions to ensure if they or their child is sick they won't pass it to others. Its that lack of precaution that I don't trust and will not put my kids or myself in danger just to hang out with them.

When I was pregnant with my youngest I met up with a friend. Kids were playing happily for about 10 minutes. Then friend casually says "oh, so and so had rubella recently but the rash cleared up last week." I immediately packed my kids up, left, and ended that friendship. Now she didn't know that I am immune to the rubella vaccine so have no protection against rubella and as a pregnant woman at the time that exposure was very dangerous. But the fact that she would bring her still potentially contagious child out in public was awful and I no longer trust her to have enough common sense to make safe decisions about her children's health or the health of others.

[Acorn]

The status of fully vaxed is dependent on age.  A child can be "fully vaxed" for a 4 year old but still hasn't received the boosters to raise the percentage of successful vaccination.  We know that some kids won't achieve full immunity, so there is a reliance on herd immunity.

[katilac]

It's not dumb. Vaccines offer excellent protection to most people, not perfect protection to all people. 

 

As far as it being dumb b/c you won't know who is vaccinated or not? I assume they mean they won't let their kids play with the kids of vocal anti-vaxxers. Of course you don't question every random kid at the playground, but you can avoid the kids you KNOW aren't vaxed. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

The status of fully vaxed is dependent on age.  A child can be "fully vaxed" for a 4 year old but still hasn't received the boosters to raise the percentage of successful vaccination.  We know that some kids won't achieve full immunity, so there is a reliance on herd immunity.

Add to that the percentage of people with immune problems of some kind who can't be vaccinated but are still highly at risk if they were to get sick.  And add to that, the 10% (give or take - based on a "90% efficacy rate" that is a generalization but seems to be generally true) that aren't protected from the vaccine.  And you have a lot of people who need to rely on herd immunity.  So no, I wouldn't label them as "idiots".  

[Ravin]

If one's child is immune compromised, avoiding other children generally makes some sense.

And whether and to what extent my kids are vaxed is private medical information.

We selectively delay vax. DD has hit puberty, so we did varicella. DH had chicken pox at 14 and it was the worst case his ped (who had been in practice for 3 decades by then) had ever seen. She never caught it when she was little.

[Joker]

My oldest had a horrible reaction to her first chicken pox vaccine and now can't have any of the boosters. If someone was vocal about not getting vaccinated, I would probably try to limit her exposure to them.

[SKL]

I don't know anyone who is vocal about whether or not their kids are vaxed.  I guess I'd be wary of someone like that, because it is weird to go on about a private matter.  But the fact is, there are plenty of kids who are not vaxed (or up to date on vaxes) for a variety of reasons.  Avoiding those who wear it on their sleeve but associating with everyone else is illogical.

 

And on the other hand, if you started asking me about my kids' vaxes, I'd be the one avoiding you.  (Generic "you.")

 

I think parents just need to navigate life with the understanding that their kids are going to come in contact with unvaccinated kids.  It makes very little difference statistically.  The little difference it makes is one of those minor risks we all have to accept, because we can't control them without causing other problems.  (Immune compromised kids excepted.)

[73349]

If those vaxed kids often spend time with vulnerable people (baby cousin? great-grandma?), it's better for them to avoid anybody who's more likely to be carrying something. Being able to fight something off better doesn't mean you won't have a little window in which you could spread it.

I never, ever get the flu. But DH and DS have, so I get vaxed every year to reduce my risk of bringing the apparently-harmless-to-me germs home for them to contend with (even though they're also vaxed as early as possible).

 

I probably wouldn't blink at intentionally unvaxed kids at a park or something, but I'd think twice about inviting them to my house if I knew about it. DS often plays with younger kids who would not have had all the shots yet, and I'd hate for us to carry something even if we didn't get sick from it ourselves.

[Lolly]

I wonder if she asks her adult friends if they are getting their boosters. You know we adults need boosters too? Not many of us get them. Oh yeah, now that we are not getting exposure to the chicken pox vaccine which helps us keep our immunity, we need to get a booster even though we have had it...keeps shingles away. need MMR too. I actually doubt she has kept her own immunizations up to date. I know very, very few adults who have.

[Incognito]

This isn't a vaccination thread; it's a "people is dumb" thread.

I'm a lurker on another mommy-type board. There is a discussion about vaccinations. The majority of the women say that they will not allow their fully vaxed children to play with a child that they know is not vaxed because IT COULD BE DANGEROUS to their children!!
I just shake my head.

 

I'm not sure you totally get how vaccines work either.  It could be dangerous.  Personally, I'm not going to question everyone if they are vaccinated or not and decide if we will play with them, but vaccines don't prevent disease completely.  

 

We have a measles outbreak in our area because a group of non-vaxers started getting the measles.  My kids have been immunized, but they can catch it.  The more recently they are innoculated, and the closer the strain given is to whatever is going around, the less likely we would be to have a problem if my kids bumped into it, but there are a lot of factors.  I'm not staying home all the time over it, but I sure wouldn't set a play date with anyone from the school with the initial outbreak.  It's not ignorance, it's prudence.

[Azalea]

This isn't a vaccination thread; it's a "people is dumb" thread.

I'm a lurker on another mommy-type board. There is a discussion about vaccinations. The majority of the women say that they will not allow their fully vaxed children to play with a child that they know is not vaxed because IT COULD BE DANGEROUS to their children!!
I just shake my head.

 

They probably really just don't want their children to associate with people ignorant enough not to vaccinate their children.

[Wilma]

They probably really just don't want their children to associate with people ignorant enough not to vaccinate their children.

 

That's a really ugly thing to say.  :crying:

 

Maybe somehow you didn't mean it to be??

[Julie Smith]

Our Dr. who is new to the area says she was surprised by the sheer number of people who don't vacinate. 

 

I don't ask people, well except I have brought up the subject with the boys best friends Mom. But then he has been at my house on average I would say about 15 hours a week for the past 3 years so it's not just like a person I meet up with at the park. 

[Azalea]

That's a really ugly thing to say.  :crying:

 

Maybe somehow you didn't mean it to be??

 

Well I thought the OP calling people idiots who are clearly not idiots pretty mean. Children who are vaccinated may not want to associate with children who are not vaccinated for all the reasons written by other posters previously in this thread. I think the OP should reconsider her/his post based on the new information they have received and retract their post. 

 

I am weary of science deniers. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

 

I think parents just need to navigate life with the understanding that their kids are going to come in contact with unvaccinated kids.  It makes very little difference statistically.  The little difference it makes is one of those minor risks we all have to accept, because we can't control them without causing other problems.  (Immune compromised kids excepted.)

I think most parents do navigate life with that understanding.  The problem is that in my experience, the only time it comes up is when an unvaxed child who is showing symptoms or has been recently exposed but isn't showing symptoms yet is brought to a gathering.  Then the mother nonchalantly mentions it and is upset when people are upset.  I know someone up thread mentioned it with the Rubella.  I had a situation when my child (who was only in process of being vaccinated) was exposed so someone who had active chickenpox.  This was right after the doctor had told me that his other medical conditions would put him at risk if he were to contract chickenpox.  It is the same when someone with the flu comes to visit my 92 year old dad in the hospital and then casually mentions the fact.  Obviously he could get sick from anyone he's around but we do hope that people with actual symptoms or known exposure would have enough sense to stay away.  

[SKL]

Our Dr. who is new to the area says she was surprised by the sheer number of people who don't vacinate. 

 

I don't ask people, well except I have brought up the subject with the boys best friends Mom. But then he has been at my house on average I would say about 15 hours a week for the past 3 years so it's not just like a person I meet up with at the park. 

 

So just out of curiosity, if your boys' best friends weren't vaccinated, would you stop letting them be friends?

[SKL]

  I had a situation when my child (who was only in process of being vaccinated) was exposed so someone who had active chickenpox.  This was right after the doctor had told me that his other medical conditions would put him at risk if he were to contract chickenpox.

 

So here's a question.  If your child has known immunity issues with respect to a rather common, normally mild childhood illness against which you KNOW many families do not vax (and you know many vaxed kids still get), is it your responsibility to tell them about your child's vulnerability, or their responsibility to assume this normally benign virus is dangerous to your child?

 

In the case of chickenpox, I'd say it's 50/50.  People should tell you if their kids have it.  BUT you should also tell them if your child is especially vulnerable.

 

My kids had a friend who was immune compromised.  Because her grandma told me this, I canceled many playdates because my kids had the sniffles or whatever - conditions that would not normally stop me from unleashing my kids on the world.
 

[AimeeM]

While I agree it's eye roll worthy with typical, healthy, fully vaccinated children, please do remember that some children may not be fully vaccinated because of health reasons (my son wasn't allowed to have his vaccinations on schedule, due to his surgical schedule and the risky nature of recovery after the surgery), may be living with elderly relatives, or newborns too young to be vaccinated.

[Catwoman]

This isn't a vaccination thread; it's a "people is dumb" thread.

Thank goodness this isn't a vaccination thread.

Otherwise, people might be starting to debate about vaccinations.

But since you asked that it not be a vaccination thread, I'm sure that would never happen.

OR WOULD IT???

;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)

You should have known better than to mention THAT WORD. :D

[AimeeM]

So here's a question.  If your child has known immunity issues with respect to a rather common, normally mild childhood illness against which you KNOW many families do not vax (and you know many vaxed kids still get), is it your responsibility to tell them about your child's vulnerability, or their responsibility to assume this normally benign virus is dangerous to your child?

 

In the case of chickenpox, I'd say it's 50/50.  People should tell you if their kids have it.  BUT you should also tell them if your child is especially vulnerable.

 

My kids had a friend who was immune compromised.  Because her grandma told me this, I canceled many playdates because my kids had the sniffles or whatever - conditions that would not normally stop me from unleashing my kids on the world.
 

 

It is absolutely the parent of the "ill" child's responsibility to tell - but I've had family members either lie to me (or omit information) about their children being sick. We didn't find out until mid-birthday party last month, that every child in the house had been down with bronchitis; we knew that my grandmother had it, was on antibiotics, and she offered to wear a face mask - and stay away from my Middle Boy, but we had NO clue that the children he was playing closely with had had it, until I noticed them tiring easily and coughing.
 

[Jean in Newcastle]

So here's a question.  If your child has known immunity issues with respect to a rather common, normally mild childhood illness against which you KNOW many families do not vax (and you know many vaxed kids still get), is it your responsibility to tell them about your child's vulnerability, or their responsibility to assume this normally benign virus is dangerous to your child?

 

In the case of chickenpox, I'd say it's 50/50.  People should tell you if their kids have it.  BUT you should also tell them if your child is especially vulnerable.

 

My kids had a friend who was immune compromised.  Because her grandma told me this, I canceled many playdates because my kids had the sniffles or whatever - conditions that would not normally stop me from unleashing my kids on the world.
 

I asked the doctor about this at the time and his opinion was that while you couldn't be 100% sure that there was no exposure in daily life, that the threat of casual exposure was minimal enough that it was ok.  But. . . he wasn't talking about the mom who was sitting next to me in the church nursery who said to me, "Oh, I think little Johnny has the chickenpox.  That is what these blisters are, aren't they?" as she lifted up his shirt.  All of a sudden ds's threat of exposure has gone up exponentially because she didn't think the "do not bring your child to the nursery while sick" rule could possibly apply to her or her child.  

[LMV]

The reality is that some fully immunized individuals will not mount a sufficient immune response to protect against a large infectious burden.  This is something unique to their own genetics or sometimes a result of medications they may be on concurrently (i.e. steroids for asthma).  There are also other individuals who have contraindications to certain immunizations.  In an ideal world where everyone who could safely be immunized was then the collective immunity of the community would protect these lower titer and unimmunized individuals.  That is the concept of herd immunity.  In theory it is great but, in practice, I'm afraid we don't have sufficient immunization rates to be confident that it is still a completely relevant concept in the year 2014 and beyond.  This is a bit scary and sad from my perspective but it is what it is.  So, I do what I can, which is to ensure our children are appropriately immunized and recognize that other children and adults may not be. DH and I (and both sets of our parents) have fully kept up with the ACIP recommendations regarding adult immunizations and we all got Tdap when I was pregnant with our youngest. While we've never decreed that our kids will never play with kids who are not 'vaxed' (perhaps partly because that word in a pet peeve of mine), in general when deciding what activities (or perhaps exposures) we allow our children to participate in we try to look at things on a case by case basis and consider all factors.  In some cases we have avoided situations or activities where we felt uncomfortable with the inherent infectious exposure risk for our children.  These were decisions we made as parents with our children's best interests and welfare at heart.  They were not politically or religiously motivated and we've never couched them as that.  I fully respect the right of other parents to make their own decisions regarding their children's welfare. 

[FaithManor]

Well, we know that a certain % of the vaccinations won't take.  So, my kid might be vulnerable to the disease and we wouldn't know it. Personally, I wouldn't care about something like Chicken Pox, which I don't consider a big deal.  But, Polio or Measles?  Seems reasonable unless I knew that my kid was 100% protected against it.  The benefit of playing with a particular family of kids would not outweigh the risk of a debilitating illness.   I also see nothing nothing wrong with not allowing my kid to play with kids for other reasons like bad behavior.

Yes only 75% - 80% of those fully immunized with MMR get immunity. It is not a 100% rate. Several years ago a traveler from a foreign country was coming down with measles when he boarded his flight to the US. Though nearly everyone on the plane was fully vaxed, there were still some cases of measles amongst the passengers. This is why they check a pregnant woman's titers to MMR. They hope to head of problems at the pass. I have a friend with a child who is deaf from being exposed to measles during her pregnancy despite being fully vaxed. The lab messed up her bloodwork and some how the dr.'s officer overlooked the fact that they never checked her titers.

 

So, it does happen.

 

Now that said, short of living in a bubble, and demanding medical records for every playmate her child comes in contact with in stores, in school, in the park, walking on the sidewalk, in the restaurant, you name it, then her child is being exposed. She needs to calm down a bit. At any given time there will be people with religious objections, adults whose immunities have worn off, children who never acquired full immunity to begin with, foreign travelers who may not be vaxed for everything, and children with depressed immune systems who cannot be vaxed, children - like my dd - who nearly died twice from vaccines due to one seriously hyperactive immune response - children and grandchildren of cancer patients or those with depressed immune systems so they cannot have their vaccines according to the schedule our boys' all had their polio vaccines and boosters delayed one year when we were going to go spend some time with grandpa who was terminally ill and getting chemotherapy), etc.

 

Life is too short to be that offensive and that easily spooked and upset. You just can't control all of the microbes of all of the humans you come in contact with, and worrying about and being that upset won't change this reality.

[Amy in NH]

I don't know anyone who is vocal about whether or not their kids are vaxed.  I guess I'd be wary of someone like that, because it is weird to go on about a private matter. 

 

[SNIP]

 

I know a bunch.

[wendyroo]

Well, I don't worry about vaccination status, but I don't let my kids associate with any children that were formula fed, wear disposable diapers or whose mothers' work outside the home.  You never know what kind of cooties those kids might be spreading.   :tongue_smilie:

[shawthorne44]

I asked the doctor about this at the time and his opinion was that while you couldn't be 100% sure that there was no exposure in daily life, that the threat of casual exposure was minimal enough that it was ok.  But. . . he wasn't talking about the mom who was sitting next to me in the church nursery who said to me, "Oh, I think little Johnny has the chickenpox.  That is what these blisters are, aren't they?" as she lifted up his shirt.  All of a sudden ds's threat of exposure has gone up exponentially because she didn't think the "do not bring your child to the nursery while sick" rule could possibly apply to her or her child.  

 

These people are the ones that I think are idiots.  We had 3 weeks of hell when DD was about a year old because my MIL brought DD's cousin over to play even though he had bronchitis.  DD was not permanently harmed, but I still could have done without that.  

[LMV]

Chicken pox is no big deal, though -- we ALL had chicken pox back in the day.

 

And really, don't worry about polio unless you're going to Afghanistan, Nigeria or Pakistan.

 

 

 

Chicken pox in an immunocompromised child, and this includes kids we think of as healthy but got that 5 day burst of steroids for the last flare of their asthma sometime in the last 3 months, can be a very big, and even fatal, deal. I am always a bit nervous giving steroids in the ED to unimmunized kids and I do question parents about Varicella exposure before doing it and caution them about it being different in this context and the role of VZIg after exposure and IV acyclovir for treatment (i.e. they can't just wait things out at home with confidence).  But sometimes you get stuck as a physician because you can't withhold the medicine that is allowing them to breathe today because it may be what contributes to them dying of disseminated varicella a few months later.  So you take a risk and you pray.  I also advocate that parents of kids who have need for even intermittent steroids discuss again with their pediatrician the risks and benefits of various immunizations because I think the benefit ratio shifts even more favorably in this context. 

 

As far as polio, well, we eliminated polio in the US because we immunized against it.  Now our immunization rates are declining and we live in a global village (so people do go where polio is more endemic or come to the US from a more endemic area) so I'm afraid we probably will see polio return. Herd immunity is a great concept until you have thinned the herd to the point where it isn't really relevant anymore. 

[SKL]

I know Wendyroo is just kidding, but yeah, I always think the more the merrier with my kids.  They don't have serious immunity issues (though one catches stuff a lot easier than the other).  They weren't "fully immunized on schedule" and still only have the bare minimum of vaxes that will keep me in the school's good graces.  I have always taken the position that it's healthy to be exposed to dirt and germs.  I don't wipe shopping carts etc.  Heck, I don't even wash fruit before I serve it.  So needless to say, I never worry about who or what my kids are playing with.  Maybe that puts me in a minority, I don't know.

[NorthwestMom]

I think that statement can be dumb but I also agree with it sometimes. There are unvaccinated people I no longer hang out with because they are not vaccinated and they do not take the necessary precautions to ensure if they or their child is sick they won't pass it to others. Its that lack of precaution that I don't trust and will not put my kids or myself in danger just to hang out with them.

When I was pregnant with my youngest I met up with a friend. Kids were playing happily for about 10 minutes. Then friend casually says "oh, so and so had rubella recently but the rash cleared up last week." I immediately packed my kids up, left, and ended that friendship. Now she didn't know that I am immune to the rubella vaccine so have no protection against rubella and as a pregnant woman at the time that exposure was very dangerous. But the fact that she would bring her still potentially contagious child out in public was awful and I no longer trust her to have enough common sense to make safe decisions about her children's health or the health of others.

 

Many years ago I worked in a nursing home facility for profoundly disabled children, including one who was prenatally exposed to rubella. There infection caused severe microcephaly and she could not walk or talk and had to be fed through a tube.

 

Rubella probably didn't kill the person with the initial infection who exposed the mom in the first place, and it is likely that person never knew they ruined that child's life. 

[AimeeM]

The only non vaxing people I have ever met ever are homeschoolers.  They really are the only ones around here who could even get away with that (barring some evidence that the kid had a bad reaction or might have a bad reaction to a vaccination).

 

Not really. Every public school and every private school my eldest has attended, has exemptions from vaccinations. Anybody and their mother can claim, for example, that vaccinations are "against their beliefs" and the school can't argue it.

[Dory]

Those sorts of people would be terrified of areas like this one. There are a lot of kids here who are un-vaxed. My ds has had some serious reactions to his vaccines as did my brother and my cousin so we have been pretty cautious.

 

The people that annoy me are the ones that knowingly take their sick kids out to play with everyone else. When my kids have the sniffles, we take a couple days and stay at home, or at least try to keep away from little kids and old people.

 

There are numerous people in the school here who haven't vaccinated their kids. Would people like that start homeschooling to ensure that their kids avoided those unvaxed kids?

 

I'm one of those in the middle sort of people when it comes to vaccines, I can see the benefits that many of them have had on society, but I can see a few red flags with some of them too. In my mind, it's not an all or nothing sort of thing. But then, that sort of black and white thinking usually boggles my mind a little.

[AimeeM]

It is absolutely the parent of the "ill" child's responsibility to tell - but I've had family members either lie to me (or omit information) about their children being sick. We didn't find out until mid-birthday party last month, that every child in the house had been down with bronchitis; we knew that my grandmother had it, was on antibiotics, and she offered to wear a face mask - and stay away from my Middle Boy, but we had NO clue that the children he was playing closely with had had it, until I noticed them tiring easily and coughing.
 

 

ETA: I'll also note that a few days - a week later, all of my children (including At Risk Boy-O) ended up with bronchitis and pneumonia. Now, I can't swear it was the exposure at the party (I'm not sure what the incubation period is there, so it may not have been), but still... not cool.
 

[SKL]

Often, when kids are contagious they aren't even showing signs of being ill.  Parents with vulnerable kids have no choice but to assume there will be germs in places where there are kids.

 

I agree that it's rotten to take your very sick kid out knowingly.  That said, one time I took my kid out to a kids' musical production and wondered why she was so tired and crabby.  Turns out she was just starting to develop the symptoms of strep.  Crap.  It happens.

[Julie Smith]

So just out of curiosity, if your boys' best friends weren't vaccinated, would you stop letting them be friends?

 

I might not offer to take him on weekend long trips with me during which we might end up spending extended time with my extended family which includes very old seniors, pregnant women and babies. 

[Indian summer]

My kids have been vaxed and I don't worry too much about being around sick people, but I do understand that not everyone can have up to date vaccinations and that some people, whether I'm aware of it or not, might be immuno compromised so if my kids even have so much as a sniffle, we either stay home, or I let the other moms know that my kids have the sniffles and would they rather reschedule. Some moms are not overly concerned about my kids colds so we still get together, but I do inform the mom beforehand. I think it's the sensible thing to do. I would hope others would do the same, but of course they don't always.

Sorry 'bout the run on sentence.

[LMV]

Yes only 75% - 80% of those fully immunized with MMR get immunity. It is not a 100% rate. Several years ago a traveler from a foreign country was coming down with measles when he boarded his flight to the US. Though nearly everyone on the plane was fully vaxed, there were still some cases of measles amongst the passengers. This is why they check a pregnant woman's titers to MMR. They hope to head of problems at the pass. I have a friend with a child who is deaf from being exposed to measles during her pregnancy despite being fully vaxed. The lab messed up her bloodwork and some how the dr.'s officer overlooked the fact that they never checked her titers.

 

So, it does happen.

 

 

 

MMR actually covers against three diseases [measles, mumps and rubella (sometimes called German Measles)]. You are correct that adequate titers for all three occur in <100% of those fully immunized but the percentage of successful immunizations is closer to 95%.  Your numbers might be correct for adults  (with waning titers) before we started adding a second dose to the series which was before my time.  I think that even then the percentages were higher but I'm not sure.   What OBs usually check (ideally at a preconception visit when there is time to immunize) is Rubella titers.  Congenital rubella is associated with deafness (and many other problems including heart problems like persistent PDAs, eye problems like retinopathy (and blindness in some cases), and intellectual compromise) and I wonder if this what your friend's child had/has.  Congenital measles often results in miscarriage, still birth, and preterm delivery but it hasn't been associated with birth defects outside of this. 

[LMV]

Oh crap I guess that leaves me out of your club.  LOL

 

My kids sometimes eat sugary cereals too.

 

It is alright, you can join our club.  I breastfed but we probably used more than our share of disposable diapers, but I promise I try to recycle a lot to make up for that landfill space.  I work outside the home, as a physician no less, but I promise I practice good hand washing and always use appropriate universal precautions (and sometimes more).  Our kids don't like sugary cereals but they have been known to grab a cookie (or two) from the cooling rack when DH or I are baking.  They're pretty good about sharing (those cookies not germs, of course)!