I would like to add a question to this. I was fully vaccinated, and I was living in Germany at the time. Only recently I found my old vaccination card and discovered to my surprise that I was even vaccinated for chicken pox (something they didn't start elsewhere till much later). Now, I never had the chicken pox. But my sister did (even fully vaccinated) as well as mumps. I however, got measles, even if I was fully vaccinated. Now, most would argue that both me and my sister would have had those illnesses to a lesser extend because of the vaccinations. BUT, in our cases, would we not be able to infect others (for instance young babies etc.) who aren't vaccinated (yet) and does this not blow the theory of herd immunity out of the water completely?
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Individual cases (almost) never blow a theory.
And yes, vaccines don't work in 100% of the times. But herd immunisation doesnt require 100% as we have learned before.
As you might have seen I am fully answering to all of your questions as good as I can. However I wasn't there and therefore I can't say too much about you and your sister.
Of course, the example I gave you are individual cases and I understand what you are saying. However, if these kind of incidents happen twice in one family, I believe it is quite easy to assume that our cases are NOT singular cases since the same family had three of the diseases we were supposed to be immune against (or at least vaccinated for). I believe we can assume that this happens more than we think...
Did you get the required boosters or did you ever check a titer level?
But of course it also could be that, for a genetic reason maybe, vaccinations worke worse for members of your family.
I believe this depends on what numbers we are thinking about ;)
Yeah, I had all the boosters. My parents always did everything they were told to do, even if it killed them (not the vaccine, but it was a doctors advice or negligence, whichever comes first that killed my mother). And the numbers, well I don't know. Our family had three children. Two out of three, probably 3 out of 3 (my brother got mumps too) with one child having two illnesses she was vaccinated against...What do you think? Our family was definitely not alone, I know lots of people who still got childhood illnesses even if they were vaccinated. So even though I can't come with an exact number, I think the number is much higher than we think. Especially seen the fact that a lot of people either don't remember having the illness as a child or (like me) don't know till later that they had vaccines for those illnesses.
Something you might consider, unrelated to the vaccine safety issue, is that your family might be genetically more susceptible to those diseases, so even with vaccination, your immune systems weren't able to prevent infection.
It's possible that the additional immunity theoretically provided by vaccination saved your lives, by proactively preparing your less effective immune systems against the diseases.
The only answer for having the diseases after being vaccinated for them ISN'T that the vaccines were ineffective.
As @theaustrianguy points out, different people have different genetics, and our immune systems are different as a result.
This is also something, returning to vaccine safety, that makes giving everybody the same vaccine risky. Some people will be harmed by things that others, even everybody else, isn't.
Before very recently, it would have been impossible to differentiate between people whose genetics and immune systems require different medical treatment.
Thankfully, personalized medicine is being developed, and soon, perhaps these risks will be a thing of the past.
Setting big hopes in this aspect as well!
@valued-customer: I have two explanations for the reasons why my siblings and I did get sick. First of all: my mother didn't breastfeed either of us. She grew up in a very Catholic part of the Netherlands and I think with my brother (who's sixteen years older than me) they would have told her that it was not done to breastfeed. When my sister was born, my mother was a single parent with no support, so she had to leave my sister in care with nuns. When I was born, the midwife somehow told her some crap about how I didn't want her milk because I kept spitting (turns out: her supply was too much for my greedy little self) and talked her into giving up. So that may be a very important factor in the story. I do have to say that neither one of us is ever really sick besides a little flu or cold every few years. My sister and brother would have kept up with their vaccines, I have never had anything after I left the home at 19. I don't really believe us getting sick had much to do with our immune system, because the whole story about genetics that's been given by the medical profession is questionably as well, but of course, it's always a possibility. I am not a medical professional (not in the traditional sense anyway) but I did study pathology and anatomy during my study as a hypnotherapist. Besides this, I've been studying about different areas in the field as well during my research missions. So even though I really don't know everything, I did learn that this subject is definitely not as black and white as both sides think it is. Thank you for your input @valued-customer, you just gave me something new to work on and think about. Your input is always valuable 😎
At least you did receive some colostrum from your mother, which is chock full of antibodies and many immunoresponsive factors. Breastfeeding is extraordinarily important to immune system function in children, and perhaps throughout life.
It is certain that amongst the most important breastmilk is the very first few days, as that is when the initial immune system assets are primarily passed to infants.
You are clearly applying sound thinking to the questions, and I am sure you are better informed than I ever could be about your medical situation.
I am sorry for your loss :(
As I said, maybe their is something genetic that makes your families members not reacting well to vaccines.
That of course is bad luck - and I understand why you might think that vaccines are not so good if you experienced that bad luck.
But in the game of big numbers, you are just a very very little part. I don't say not important - every human life is. .
There is a study done in the Netherlands for mumps. There was a big mumps breakout among students aged 20/25 a couple of years ago.
Strange thing is the students that got their mumps vaccinations as a child were more likely to get sick.
No one died by the way. Because people don't die of mumps.
A link to the statistics would be nice ;)
Yes, dying to mumps is rather unlikely.
But 30% of all infected man get orchitis which can lead to infertility; also not a great outcome ;)
This also happened in the US recently. An outbreak of mumps in university with 34 students who got the mumps. 32 of those were vaccinated. Of the rest of the other students, (beside the two) no other unvaccinated student contracted mumps...I think it was Harvard.
Many, perhaps millions, have died from mumps, and the rest of us are descended from the survivors, inheriting their immune responses. This is why almost no one dies from the mumps anymore.
Native Americans were ravaged by many plagues that eliminated perhaps 98% of them between 1492 and LaSalle's expedition up the Mississipi River roughly a century later, including the mumps.
It is unknown how many the mumps, or any other disease communicated by Colombus's crew, killed directly, but it is known that mumps did cause deaths in Native Americans, who had no resistance at all to the new, to them, disease.