agonyaunt | Ask Amy: Is it appropriate to not invite Anti Vaxxers into my home

Cut for length. And the flames on the sides of my face.

Dear Amy: I have four young children. The oldest (twins) just started school. We know some people who cannot vaccinate their children for health reasons. But we also know of others who choose not to vaccinate their children.

We are all about being inclusive and we love to entertain other children, but I don't want parents to bring their kids to our house if they have chosen not to vaccinate. Children who can't be vaccinated for health reasons are welcome.

As a registered nurse who works with young babies I feel very strongly about this. I have seen the tragic results of children contracting preventable diseases.

To be honest, I don't know if I want my kids to associate with the children of parents who "think they know better." I thought about putting a note to parents on invitations asking children who have not been vaccinated by choice to please not attend, but I don't know if that is appropriate and can't figure out the wording.

Is it OK to post this warning on invitations? — Pro-Vax RN

Dear Pro-Vax: You categorize children into three groups: vaccinated, unvaccinated due to presumed underlying health issues or because of age, and unvaccinated by parents' choice, (so-called "anti-vaxxers").

As an RN, you are very aware of the potential health issues for unvaccinated children, by catching and/or spreading disease. You frame this as an intention to protect these children, but isn't this their parents' job? Shouldn't they be the ones inquiring into the vaccination status of others?

You are being disingenuous to present this as a health issue when actually you simply don't want to welcome children whose parents are either ignorant and/or disagree with you on this important topic.

It is your right to deny children access to your home, but don't send invitations to children and then tell them on the invitation that they might not be welcome. Deal with parents privately. But be aware that when you place your family in a bubble — only admitting others who already think and act as you do — you are not the inclusive person you claim to be.

Even though I am staunchly Team Vax and strongly urge all parents to vaccinate their children, if you asked me about my child's immunization status as a test to determine what kind of person I am, I would respond that it was none of your business — unless you demonstrated a legitimate health-related need to know.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Um, yeah, NO. I could list a whole bunch of reasons why Amy's science is wonky, but NO. I had a friend who flat-out asked anyone if they'd had their T-DAP recently before having that person around her newborn, and I wasn't offended in the slightest. Hells, if I hadn't just had it a year before, I would have welcomed the reminder. We all make choices, and we all live with the consequences. It sounds like the LW is prepared to accept lost friendships as a result of her actions, so one would assume the anti-vaxxers would be likewise. If not, they should be. And Amy can just stuff it.

yeeeeeeeeeeep

Wait, whut? Vaccines are not a health issue but rather a personal prejudice thing?

I think Jonas Salk might say, "fuck that noise."

I suppose even someone as wise as AMy has to roll a critical failure sometimes, but wow, this is fractally wrong. Both on the biology and the epidemiology but also on the "be tolerant of intolerance" front.

unless you demonstrated a legitimate health-related need to know.

How about "I have a child that your child might be around". THAT IS, IN FACT, A LEGITIMATE HEALTH RELATED NEED TO KNOW.

Oh god I could expend a lot of froth here, but fuck that, lady. Herd immunity is important, it IS a health issue, it's a health issue for EVERYONE (because guess what THERE IS NO LITTLE SIGN THAT SAYS "warning, your vaccination didn't take", THE SAFETY VALVE THERE IS HERD IMMUNITY LEVELS OF VACCINATION), and the anti-vax bullshit makes me so angry I could spit.

Not to mention that no, actually, I am okay with raising my child in a bubble that excludes people so unexaminedly ablist that they think "autistic child" is worse than "dead child" or "turning child into plague vector". Especially since I, their autistic mother, would be in that bubble! Which increases the huge chances that they, too, would be.

So fuck. that. noise.

. . . okay I will stop now but no, fuck your bullshit, Amy.

As someone who has had the MMR vaccine...five times, I think, because it just would NOT take (I got tested before, during, and directly after pregnancy), THANK YOU.

"FLAMES on the side of my FACE!" is pretty much me and anti-vax stuff, so much, for exactly that reason and others. Vaccines are among the biggest medical miracles to benefit the human race and then there's this classist, ablist BULLSHIT that . . . just . . . argh . . . FLAMES.

FLAMES.

It's NOT a minor "oh everyone has their funny priorities" social-judgement issue. It's a major fucking moral and health issue. Aaaargh.

. . .sorry. I will stop now.

it is entirely legitimate to prioritise the health of guests who can't be vaccinated over the smug self-righteousness of parents of guests who can, it's not reasonable to ask guests to liaise with each other about whether they've been vaccinated thereby necessitating sending out the whole guest list to every single person and having every single family to whom this is important ask every single other family etc etc etc, *etc*...

YEP

AMEN

How about also "the complex health reasons that mean that i could get very sick from your unvaccinated kid are... not actually other people's business". (I just found out that my cousin's now-nearly-five-year-old is NOT VACCINATED because his hippie Dad is against it (even though he lives almost 100% full-time with his Mum now), and his Mum/my cousin is missing out on tens of thousands of dollars of tax rebates because of it. In our family, ignorance of the potential outcomes of non-vaccination is...ridiculous: said cousin's older brother got measles when we were small, and another, younger cousin (my cousin should be old enough to remember this) was hopsitalised with encephalitis caused by chicken pox (before there was a chicken pox vax here, afaik) and possibly (probably?) suffered mild neurological damage. I am focusing on taking lots of deep breaths and reminding myself that i *didn't* catch anything from adorable little bug, and my immune system is doing better now, and there is no point in thinking about what might have happened. If i stop and think about it too much, i will end up being very angry. And i know that it's a complicated situation in which it isn't *entirely* fair to blame my cousin (although someone still should've fucking let me know he was unvaccinated when i was around him as a toddler; everyone knew i'd been on immunosuppressants for aaaages).

UGH UGH. I cannot stand anti-vaxxers. I wonder if Amy was afraid of riling the growing number of people not vaccinating their children by choice, and there seems to be more and more.

This post reminded me of this epic response: Angry scientist finds an uneducated internet comment and delivers an epic response...

Okay, it looks like I'm in a minority here.

I'm not disagreeing on the health or the ethical problem here. I'm definitely pro vax, and I definitely think "there will be people there who cannot be vaccinated and will be at risk" is sufficient reason not to invite unvaccinated people to one's home. And they have kids at home too young to be vaccinated, so that's reason enough right there.

And I'm sympathetic to the argument that anti-vaxxers are likely to be horrible people who would rather risk your child dying of measles than risk their child becoming autistic from something that can't even cause autism, and not people you'd want in one's house because they're horrible (I think this is a little hard on the anti-vaxxers' children, but I am sympathetic with the position.)

But I do disagree on the etiquette problem. I think there has to be a better way of ascertaining someone's vaccination stance than "Emma/Isabella/Olivia is cordially invited to the twins' sixth birthday party Friday week. Unless you chose not to vaccinate her, in which case she is not invited. If your child has a medical reason for not being vaccinated, she can still come. Cake at twelve. Please RSVP by Monday."

Especially if you're dictating that to the twins to write on their Olaf the Snowman themed stationery to hand out to the children themselves.

That's not just protecting your young children from infection and your home from arsehole parents, it's also dumping your first grade kids in the middle of the vaccination wars and leaving them to fight them out on the schoolground. Which is not fair to them OR to the kids they're (un)inviting.

I think calling the parents and asking directly would be fine, so long as they can manage to phrase it so that "if your child has a medical reason for not being vaccinated, he's still welcome" doesn't come out like "I am an RN and need you to disclose little Noah's medical condition so I can determine if you're justified in not vaccinating him." Because the answer might be "he has an autoimmune condition that's going to kill him by age 40 if he's lucky, thanks so much for asking."

I think most of us left the precise etiquette form element of the question pretty quickly and went right to what Amy challenges, which is the right to draw the boundary at all. I would almost certainly not handle it by putting a note on the invites, no.

The hard part, I suspect, might be distinguishing between someone who actually has a medical reason for not vaccinating, and someone who thinks "his older brother is on the spectrum" counts as a medical reason.

Yes, a bunch of anti-vax parents will out themselves as soon as you ask "are you and your child vaccinated against whooping cough?" or mention that you plan to get a flu vaccine. And eliminating those children and their parents from your social group might be enough to reduce your child's risk of infection significantly.

I agree that the letter writer shouldn't be putting a note on the party invitations but other than that, the wrongness in this answer is so large it is visible from outer space.

Ask Amy: Is it appropriate to not invite Anti Vaxxers into my home

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