Part of the reason that vaccines are grouped is because it’s more likely for parents to stick to a schedule when they only have to go to the doctor a few times.
Spacing them out is not a privilege many people have and it increases the odds that a child will have gaps in their protection.
Doctors who discredit vaccines should lose their licenses IMO. They are violating the “do no harm” first rule of ethical medicine.
As a parent of an autistic child who still gets asked by people who seem to be otherwise well-educated if I think vaccines caused my child’s autism, I am horrified.
I am also horrified at the prospect of serious setbacks in supports for individuals with autism that are provided through public education and affordable or subsidized health insurance.
We delayed the Hep B vaccine for our youngest daughter. It was strange, to say the least, that she was supposed to get it on Day 1 while it wasn’t recommended for the older girls at all! Such was the government protocol at the time which was looking to vaccinate the babies of mothers who were IV drug abusers and were thinking that they might never come back for their 2 month or 4 month visit. Our doc recommended the older girls get it around the time they got the HPV vaccine.
I think the timetable for Hep B should be changed. It is not contagious in the same way as other diseases and if a doctor is reasonably sure that a Mom is not an IV drug user who is planning on breastfeeding, then there’s no compelling reason to do it so soon.
^ Another reason these schedules exist is so that doctors don’t have to make judgment calls like that.
@frazzled2thecore I don’t have an autistic child but I do have an autistic cousin. When I hear the “vaccines cause autism” bs, I ALWAYS want to scream at people and ask them if they’d rather their child die than have autism… because that’s the argument they’re implicitly making.
There are mothers with undiagnosed hepatitis B infections who acquired the infections not through high risk recreational drug use or sexual activity, but from their mothers when they were born.
Hepatitis B is a blood-borne disease. Sexual activity and IV drug use are not the only way it is transmitted. Any exchange of blood. Needle stick, blood transfusion.
The reason Hep B vaccine is recommended at birth is because the professionals felt that parents would not agree to have their children vaccinated for it later on. I believe this judgment has been borne out based on mixed reaction to the HPV vaccine.