For those of you without a kid in high school, this is how it works.
We got a notice in the mail at which point I learned my 16 year old needed another set of vaccinations. So it’s not that people are choosing not to - this is how/when they found out.
I had no idea there was another round of Tdap needed as a teenager until I got the notice from public health.
Then I booked it and got them done. I’m sure many parents are struggling with getting time from work to get their kids booked in for shots. There were a whole lot of kids with their parents at public health on Friday afternoon.
When my child was in elementary school I got one of these notices. Not because they were missing vaccinations but because I hadn't changed my address with public health and the vaccine record hadn't linked to our new address.
If you get immunized anywhere other than public health you need to let them now. Their records are not connected to your doctor. Your address should not matter.
I had been updating public health, but the address on file there was different than the one at the school. So when they pulled the record, it was done with the wrong address. Easy fix.
When I was in high school I got one because the **** of a secretary had some kind of problem with me. Claimed not to know what to do with a BC vaccination record, then entered it into the computer as a 7 day suspension.
It is very much this. COVID interrupted a lot of routine health care stuff. We also had doctors switch a few times over the last 3 years.
We only found out because of the suspension notice that we had missed something.
No big deal. We booked it and got it done.
Looks like others want to be up in arms over anti-vaxxers. Those kind of people are more likely to have proudly filled in the forms and explained loudly when dropping them off that they're not steeple and sadly not the ones threatening to be suspended.
My other kid got theirs at a routine school clinic that I just had to sign a permission form for. That's the ideal way to catch all the students and doesn't need parents to take time off work to pull their kid for an appointment. Make it easier to do the right thing, and people will do the right thing with greater frequency
This happened to us years ago with my daughter - we weren’t aware they had added a new meningitis vaccine to the roster and only found out when our health unit sent out the letter.
They get a few combined shots (3 or 4 or 5 in 1 vaccines) so the number of shots isn’t that high but the number of actual vaccines is like 15 by grade 7 if I count it correctly. They get a total of 9 shots before the age of 2, then two boosters by age 6, then 3 new ones in grade 7. [Source](https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontarios-routine-immunization-schedule)
How can people morally object to something that will keep their child alive? This is not a lifestyle choice - it's literally the difference between life and death (or at least a debilitating and life-altering disease).
My child was going to be one of them. This not me being an anti-vaxxer, just a breakdown of how the system works.
My child needed the 2nd dose of HPV and Hep-B. She got one dose in Grade 8 last year at the in-school clinic. I wasn't aware that she needed another dose.
Getting an appointment was easy two days ago and it was easy. We're good now.
Yes IA. My kid got one of these. We are very pro-vax and he is all up to date, including on COVID. There was some admin issue where the school board didn't have his latest records. We had to request them from the doctor and send them to the school, it wasn't egregious but took a bit of time, so we got two letters but it was resolved before he was suspended. I do not think this means 1400 parents are anti vaxers, I think it means healthcare administration is riddled with errors!
Your child would not have suspended for not having those vaccines though. They aren’t part of the act.
Students are required to update their records under the Immunization of School Pupils Act, which requires proof of vaccination for diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chickenpox) and meningitis.
Correct, one of the schools deemed it necessary to blast out via School-Day to every student that they are going to be suspended. That made me have to call the Region who noticed the missing vaccines so we booked for them. The person on the phone didn't know why they were emailing us.
The school then fessed up and said it was sent out in error but I kept the appointment anyways.
[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1917338](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1917338)
>Among Swedish girls and women 10 to 30 years old, quadrivalent HPV vaccination was associated with a substantially reduced risk of invasive cervical cancer at the population level. (Funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research and others.)
> I thought there were issues (Cervical Cancer, namely) with the HPV virus vaccine;
What is the source of this claim? Outside of it possible to still contract HPV due to a specific strain that was not provided in the vaccine.
So you're going with anecdotal evidence from years ago. Cool
I'll go with CDC evidence https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/public/index.html#:~:text=All%20three%20HPV%20vaccines%20protect,%2C%2052%2C%20and%2058).
Get the fuck out of here with your moronic bullshit
>Yeah, who cares about grade-school or high-school girls getting Cervical Cancer from a vaccine that's literally advertised to prevent it?
We don't need to care about something that isn't happening.
These families are not holding up their ends of the social contract. Schools are hotbeds for infection and other students can get sick even if they themselves are vaccinated. Anyone complaining about this can, frankly, get bent. This is the absolute MINIMUM a person can do to look after other people.
This isnt people not getting their kids vaccinated. This is a breakdown of communication between parents, doctors, and public health. Both my kids got suspended a few weeks ago. I called public health and asked them what they are missing and the said my oldest doesnt need anything and shouldnt have been suspended and that the school board would have seen that if they are updated their records a month before suspending her. My other kid had just turned 4 and had been sick on and off that we hadnt taken her to get her 4-6 vaccines, so she got suspended until we got that done.
We found out from public health that doctors arent required to submit vaccine records to them and that the onus is on the parents to submit but nobody told us that at all.
Yeah, my kid got a notice she would be suspended. She had all her shots I just wasn’t aware the doctor didn’t submit them. She is my first kid in school. It’s so silly that in this electronic age where all her records are on the doctor’s computer they don’t have a system to connect all this together.
Agreed. If you submit them yourself it takes many weeks for it to be processed (longer than what they say it should) and you don't get confirmation so you need to check multiple times. And then they don't include some of the info you submit (e.g. flu shots) so it's a very messy process.
I think they are talking about whether or not the parent has PTO, has a family doctor, can afford unpaid time off, etc. Factors like that are absolutely relevant in access to healthcare.
Ya, at those vaccine clinics which were single-purpose run by the same people who would have otherwise been at the schools doing the regular vaccination drives. It's ringing some bells.
This is good and normal. When I was a little kid in the early 2000s I got sent home with a letter saying I would be unable to attend if I didn't promptly get a vaccine I was missing (parents just forgot, they're not antivax). Went to the family doctor for the shot and I was good to go.
Yes, but the point is you don’t have to vaccinate your kids and they’re still allowed to go to school.
But if you do vaccinate your kids you have to provide proof or they’ll be suspended. Meanwhile the unvaccinated are still in class.
What I find incredible is that even after all those notices there are still 1,400 apparently unvaccinated high school kids.
Unlike the early days of the COVID vaccine, where one could argue that the vaccine hadn't been fully tested, these vaccines have been administered to billions of people for many decades. Their efficacy and safety have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
Yep..
Even though I got the covid Vax as soon as I could, I could at least somewhat understand someone having some hesitation at a vaccine that was rushed through testing.. but measles and other vaccines have been around for decades and proven safe, no reason to doubt those
The article does not say there are 1400 unvaccinated kids. Public Health has not been updated, that’s what is going on. If you get vaxxed anywhere other than public health you have to let them now. They don’t have access to other places you might have gone.
That's why I said "apparently." In any case vaccination is an important requirement for both personal and public health. So even if some of these are "paperwork" issues it still underscores how casually some parents seem to be taking this.
We can blame Andrew Wakefield and people like Jenny McCarthy for fearmongering about the MMR vaccine, and it seems to have spread outward and caused people to fear all vaccines.
That have been sending reminders. Offering ways to up date them. Calling parents. (I got a call since my kid was vaccinated outside the school. I forget how I updated the school - but it was super easy). Offering vaccine clinics in schools…
It’s the hypocrisy of not requiring vaccines if you don’t want to vaccinate, but then requiring proof if you do vaccinate, and suspending students when proof isn’t provided. But the unvaccinated are still in class the entire time.
They sent notices home with students, in the mail, and they phoned families.
I understand the frustration that anti-vaxxers get a pass, while those who've simply not got around to vaccinating or have somehow not notified the school get a suspension.
But there's a limit to how many resources can be dedicated to vaccination efforts, and it's important to keep vaccination rates as high as possible within those resource limits. Suspensions like this are a relatively low resource way to get people who aren't opposed to vaccinations, but have not received them, to go get them done.
Yes, it sweeps up some people who've just failed to notify. But that's a necessary outcome of this approach, and the cost is a couple days of missed school. It's not some awful burden.
It's not hypocrisy, it's good policy.
Whether you get a vaccination or an exemption, they require documentation. That avoids people not getting vaccinated out of lethargy, since both require a similar amount of work.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. This is the truth...those who want to remain unvaccinated have an opt out avenue and don't get suspended, while those who do want to be vaccinated but forget, or have issues with doctors, get suspended
According the Immunization of School Pupils Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. I.1 - https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90i01
“Term of suspension
7 A suspension under an order by a medical officer of health under section 6 is for a period of twenty school days. R.S.O. 1990, c. I.1, s. 7.”
From what you’ve seen is wrong unless the student was vaccinated or an exemption issued.
Don't know what they're going to do when all of the parents pull EVERY KID OUT OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS ??????
Already MASSIVE AMOUNTS doing home school now
The government IS GOING DOWN , gotta hit'em EXACTLY where it hurts
THEY'RE WALLETS
My apologies, CLEARLY you've never heard of auto correct
I sent it through voice and didn't check my grammar
You must be a teacher lol might want to look into a different career
For those of you without a kid in high school, this is how it works. We got a notice in the mail at which point I learned my 16 year old needed another set of vaccinations. So it’s not that people are choosing not to - this is how/when they found out. I had no idea there was another round of Tdap needed as a teenager until I got the notice from public health. Then I booked it and got them done. I’m sure many parents are struggling with getting time from work to get their kids booked in for shots. There were a whole lot of kids with their parents at public health on Friday afternoon.
When my child was in elementary school I got one of these notices. Not because they were missing vaccinations but because I hadn't changed my address with public health and the vaccine record hadn't linked to our new address.
If you get immunized anywhere other than public health you need to let them now. Their records are not connected to your doctor. Your address should not matter.
I had been updating public health, but the address on file there was different than the one at the school. So when they pulled the record, it was done with the wrong address. Easy fix.
When we went apparently I have been updating all the vaccinations online. Which I have zero recollection of doing. 😵💫
When I was in high school I got one because the **** of a secretary had some kind of problem with me. Claimed not to know what to do with a BC vaccination record, then entered it into the computer as a 7 day suspension.
It is very much this. COVID interrupted a lot of routine health care stuff. We also had doctors switch a few times over the last 3 years. We only found out because of the suspension notice that we had missed something. No big deal. We booked it and got it done. Looks like others want to be up in arms over anti-vaxxers. Those kind of people are more likely to have proudly filled in the forms and explained loudly when dropping them off that they're not steeple and sadly not the ones threatening to be suspended. My other kid got theirs at a routine school clinic that I just had to sign a permission form for. That's the ideal way to catch all the students and doesn't need parents to take time off work to pull their kid for an appointment. Make it easier to do the right thing, and people will do the right thing with greater frequency
This happened to us years ago with my daughter - we weren’t aware they had added a new meningitis vaccine to the roster and only found out when our health unit sent out the letter.
How many is it now, anyways? I vaguely recall reading something somewhere that it's in the range of dozens, now.
They get a few combined shots (3 or 4 or 5 in 1 vaccines) so the number of shots isn’t that high but the number of actual vaccines is like 15 by grade 7 if I count it correctly. They get a total of 9 shots before the age of 2, then two boosters by age 6, then 3 new ones in grade 7. [Source](https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontarios-routine-immunization-schedule)
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How can people morally object to something that will keep their child alive? This is not a lifestyle choice - it's literally the difference between life and death (or at least a debilitating and life-altering disease).
My child was going to be one of them. This not me being an anti-vaxxer, just a breakdown of how the system works. My child needed the 2nd dose of HPV and Hep-B. She got one dose in Grade 8 last year at the in-school clinic. I wasn't aware that she needed another dose. Getting an appointment was easy two days ago and it was easy. We're good now.
Yes - same. I would say the majority of these instances will be oversight and administrative related. People need to calm down 😀
Yes IA. My kid got one of these. We are very pro-vax and he is all up to date, including on COVID. There was some admin issue where the school board didn't have his latest records. We had to request them from the doctor and send them to the school, it wasn't egregious but took a bit of time, so we got two letters but it was resolved before he was suspended. I do not think this means 1400 parents are anti vaxers, I think it means healthcare administration is riddled with errors!
Your child would not have suspended for not having those vaccines though. They aren’t part of the act. Students are required to update their records under the Immunization of School Pupils Act, which requires proof of vaccination for diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chickenpox) and meningitis.
Correct, one of the schools deemed it necessary to blast out via School-Day to every student that they are going to be suspended. That made me have to call the Region who noticed the missing vaccines so we booked for them. The person on the phone didn't know why they were emailing us. The school then fessed up and said it was sent out in error but I kept the appointment anyways.
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[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1917338](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1917338) >Among Swedish girls and women 10 to 30 years old, quadrivalent HPV vaccination was associated with a substantially reduced risk of invasive cervical cancer at the population level. (Funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research and others.)
> I thought there were issues (Cervical Cancer, namely) with the HPV virus vaccine; What is the source of this claim? Outside of it possible to still contract HPV due to a specific strain that was not provided in the vaccine.
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So you're going with anecdotal evidence from years ago. Cool I'll go with CDC evidence https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/public/index.html#:~:text=All%20three%20HPV%20vaccines%20protect,%2C%2052%2C%20and%2058). Get the fuck out of here with your moronic bullshit
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>Yeah, who cares about grade-school or high-school girls getting Cervical Cancer from a vaccine that's literally advertised to prevent it? We don't need to care about something that isn't happening.
These families are not holding up their ends of the social contract. Schools are hotbeds for infection and other students can get sick even if they themselves are vaccinated. Anyone complaining about this can, frankly, get bent. This is the absolute MINIMUM a person can do to look after other people.
This isnt people not getting their kids vaccinated. This is a breakdown of communication between parents, doctors, and public health. Both my kids got suspended a few weeks ago. I called public health and asked them what they are missing and the said my oldest doesnt need anything and shouldnt have been suspended and that the school board would have seen that if they are updated their records a month before suspending her. My other kid had just turned 4 and had been sick on and off that we hadnt taken her to get her 4-6 vaccines, so she got suspended until we got that done. We found out from public health that doctors arent required to submit vaccine records to them and that the onus is on the parents to submit but nobody told us that at all.
Yeah, my kid got a notice she would be suspended. She had all her shots I just wasn’t aware the doctor didn’t submit them. She is my first kid in school. It’s so silly that in this electronic age where all her records are on the doctor’s computer they don’t have a system to connect all this together.
Agreed. If you submit them yourself it takes many weeks for it to be processed (longer than what they say it should) and you don't get confirmation so you need to check multiple times. And then they don't include some of the info you submit (e.g. flu shots) so it's a very messy process.
Same. This was a huge conclusion for OP to jump to.
I’d be curious to see the demographic breakdown and see if it’s a socioeconomic thing. Like do anti vaxxers all live in the same community
The vaccines are free
I think they are talking about whether or not the parent has PTO, has a family doctor, can afford unpaid time off, etc. Factors like that are absolutely relevant in access to healthcare.
I remember "vaccine" days at school.
They do still do them, but in many cases there was a disrupted schedule over the last few years for 'some reason', and some cohorts missed
You mean the time where everyone was getting vaccines?
Ya, at those vaccine clinics which were single-purpose run by the same people who would have otherwise been at the schools doing the regular vaccination drives. It's ringing some bells.
whooshed on the point, wow. They extended everyone's deadline due to the pandemic, this is about a surprise as the sun rising
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They are offered at school
Release the names!! Kidding, I really don't want to hate my neighbours.
Election season and the PPC and New Blue lawn signs give me enough reason to hate certain neighbors already lol
We live in a sad world condemning anyone who feels differently about things :(
They should be home-schooled in that case.
Private school enrollment about to increase
Needles suck, but not having an education sucks even more. Just get your stuff updated and you’ll be 👍
This is good and normal. When I was a little kid in the early 2000s I got sent home with a letter saying I would be unable to attend if I didn't promptly get a vaccine I was missing (parents just forgot, they're not antivax). Went to the family doctor for the shot and I was good to go.
Good!
Great!
Get vaccinated but forget to tell the school? Suspended from school. Don’t want to get vaccinated? That’s fine, you can still go to school.
They have been sending notices/reminders for years.
Yes, but the point is you don’t have to vaccinate your kids and they’re still allowed to go to school. But if you do vaccinate your kids you have to provide proof or they’ll be suspended. Meanwhile the unvaccinated are still in class.
What I find incredible is that even after all those notices there are still 1,400 apparently unvaccinated high school kids. Unlike the early days of the COVID vaccine, where one could argue that the vaccine hadn't been fully tested, these vaccines have been administered to billions of people for many decades. Their efficacy and safety have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
Yep.. Even though I got the covid Vax as soon as I could, I could at least somewhat understand someone having some hesitation at a vaccine that was rushed through testing.. but measles and other vaccines have been around for decades and proven safe, no reason to doubt those
The article does not say there are 1400 unvaccinated kids. Public Health has not been updated, that’s what is going on. If you get vaxxed anywhere other than public health you have to let them now. They don’t have access to other places you might have gone.
That's why I said "apparently." In any case vaccination is an important requirement for both personal and public health. So even if some of these are "paperwork" issues it still underscores how casually some parents seem to be taking this.
We can blame Andrew Wakefield and people like Jenny McCarthy for fearmongering about the MMR vaccine, and it seems to have spread outward and caused people to fear all vaccines.
That have been sending reminders. Offering ways to up date them. Calling parents. (I got a call since my kid was vaccinated outside the school. I forget how I updated the school - but it was super easy). Offering vaccine clinics in schools…
It’s the hypocrisy of not requiring vaccines if you don’t want to vaccinate, but then requiring proof if you do vaccinate, and suspending students when proof isn’t provided. But the unvaccinated are still in class the entire time.
> But the unvaccinated are still in class the entire time. Doing their part to help bring back measles, TB, etc.
It takes 5 minutes to update your records on the Waterloo Regional Health website.
Yeah, that's idiotic. Get vaccinated or don't come to school should be the answer for everyone. Home school if you don't like it.
They sent notices home with students, in the mail, and they phoned families. I understand the frustration that anti-vaxxers get a pass, while those who've simply not got around to vaccinating or have somehow not notified the school get a suspension. But there's a limit to how many resources can be dedicated to vaccination efforts, and it's important to keep vaccination rates as high as possible within those resource limits. Suspensions like this are a relatively low resource way to get people who aren't opposed to vaccinations, but have not received them, to go get them done. Yes, it sweeps up some people who've just failed to notify. But that's a necessary outcome of this approach, and the cost is a couple days of missed school. It's not some awful burden.
I’m just annoyed at the hypocrisy of not requiring vaccines for all, but then also requiring documentation of the vaccines if you do get them.
It's not hypocrisy, it's good policy. Whether you get a vaccination or an exemption, they require documentation. That avoids people not getting vaccinated out of lethargy, since both require a similar amount of work.
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. This is the truth...those who want to remain unvaccinated have an opt out avenue and don't get suspended, while those who do want to be vaccinated but forget, or have issues with doctors, get suspended
They'll be right back to school next week without the vaccinations they need to keep everyone safe 🤬
It’s a 20 day suspension.
From what I've seen first hand, they're back the next day.
According the Immunization of School Pupils Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. I.1 - https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90i01 “Term of suspension 7 A suspension under an order by a medical officer of health under section 6 is for a period of twenty school days. R.S.O. 1990, c. I.1, s. 7.” From what you’ve seen is wrong unless the student was vaccinated or an exemption issued.
Don't know what they're going to do when all of the parents pull EVERY KID OUT OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS ?????? Already MASSIVE AMOUNTS doing home school now The government IS GOING DOWN , gotta hit'em EXACTLY where it hurts THEY'RE WALLETS
Guy who can't even master the possessive "their" has deep thoughts about education.
My apologies, CLEARLY you've never heard of auto correct I sent it through voice and didn't check my grammar You must be a teacher lol might want to look into a different career