Luxury goods for children, Vaccines

                              Luxury Goods for Children

Mrs Elizabeth Young Mitchell and her Baby, Alfred George Stevens (1817-1875)

Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

From an £86,000 diamond-and-gold dummy to a $1,000 Gucci baby tracksuit, you are seemingly never too young to enjoy a little luxury.

…Personalised cots, cashmere cardigans and traditional rocking horses are among luxury items on offer for youngsters, with an array of brands seeking to capitalise on affluent parents’ demand for such items.

“It’s grown into a huge market. It’s been hugely helped by the Royals because it gives a lot of these brands an international platform,” says Kate Freud, editor at large of luxury parenting magazines Baby and Little London.

“You can be looking at anything from a simple cotton baby-grow that’s £90…to a Burberry changing bag which is £850, and beyond. Some of the prices are really eye-watering but parents are prepared to pay it.

Among those providing luxury baby products is Spanish company Suommo, who are behind the ornate dummy and also offer an 18carat gold-plated cot costing £51,400. Other firms offer bespoke mattresses, gold high chairs or silver rattles.

…market research firm Mintel…found more than a third of parents think branded clothes were worth paying more for. At London children’s boutique Marie Chantal, embroidered baby grows, silk chiffon dresses and cashmere knits are on offer, with prices reaching up to £350.

(The i, 2019)

                   Some parents with more money than sense.

Vaccines    

When a vaccine for measles became available, Roald Dahl was among those horrified that some parents did not choose to inoculate their children…Dahl was only too well aware of the dangers. His daughter Olivia had died of measles encephalitis …in November 1962.

Dahl railed against the British authorities for not doing more to get children vaccinated and delighted in the American approach at the time: vaccination was not obligatory, but by law you had to send your child to school and they would not be allowed in unless they had been vaccinated.

…Social media is still helping to spread what Professor Dame Sally Davies, England’s Chief Medical Officer, has called “bad science.” The World Health Organisation has declared the anti-vaccine movement one of the top 10 global health threats for 2019.

The UK Government announced last week that it is considering new legislation forcing social media companies to remove content with false information about vaccines.

(The i, 2019)

Will we hear any more about new legislation?

The Sick Child, (Det syke barn) Edvard Munch (1863-1944) 
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

*With the possible exception of quinine, for centuries the only treatment for malaria, and antibiotics, vaccines have saved more lives than any other intervention in medical history. Yet, from New York’s Brooklyn to Camden in north London to Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo vaccines are in retreat shunned by populations who seemingly have little sense of the risks they are running with their own or other people’s lives.

Why this should be so is one of the conundrums of our age. Is it all the fault of social media and anti-vax propaganda that has taken root on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? Or has society grown complacent about the risks that infectious diseases posed to previous generations, when it was common for children to be paralysed by polio or rendered deaf or brain-damaged by measles?

…Although it is difficult to gauge the impact of Facebook and Google on all this, the suspicion is that social media has skewed the game in favour of anti-vaxxers.

…What is surprising and demands more explanation is the persistence of these fears in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccination is a boon to health and, for the most part, safe.

Perhaps the phenomenon is best explained by our own hubris. With no experience of the childhood diseases that shortened or blighted our grandparents’ lives, much less tropical diseases such as Ebola and malaria, we have forgotten that it is only because of vaccines and other medical advances that we no longer need fear infectious disease. Instead, it is the remote and unproved risks of vaccines that keep us awake at night.

By contrast, the thought that keeps the WHO awake is that Ebola will escape the DRC and spark an international emergency. In 2014, the WHO was widely criticised for its complacency about the threat of Ebola in West Africa. It is because it is determined not to fall into the trap of hubris a second time that it is taking this epidemic so seriously.

(Mark Honigsbaum, The Observer, 2019)

Even with the overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines are, for the most part, safe, the expression which comes to mind – you can take a horse to water…

*More than half a million children in the UK have not been vaccinated against measles, according to figures from Unicef.

The charity is warning that increasing numbers of youngsters are being left unprotected against the highly infectious disease, which can cause disability and death. Misleading anti-vaccination messages on social media are thought to be one reason why rates are plummeting.

…Simon Stevens, NHS England chief executive, said: “With measles cases almost quadrupling in England in just one year, it is grossly irresponsible for anybody to spread scare stories about vaccines, and social media firms should have a zero-tolerance approach towards this dangerous content.”

(The i, 2019)