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California Whooping Cough Cases "an Epidemic"

Posted by timothy on from the hooting-and-hollering-cough-looks-on-enviously dept.

As reported by the San Jose Mercury News, the state of California is "in the throes of a whooping cough epidemic, state health department officials announced Friday. Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the California Department of Public Health, said 3,458 cases of whooping cough have been reported since Jan. 1 -- including 800 in the past two weeks. That total is more than all the cases reported in 2013." Public broadcaster KPBS notes that of the 621 people known to have come down with whooping cough in San Diego county, the vast majority (85 percent) were up to date on their immunizations.

18 of 387 comments (clear)

  1. So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So there's 100 or so unimmunized kids who got sick in just that last two weeks?

    Without those kids, would the other 500 or so gotten sick?

    There's a reason it's called herd immunity.

    Fuck Jenny McCarthy. With a 50-year-old telephone pole that's had linemen up and down it with spiked shoes thousands of times. Soaked in gasoline. On fire. Up the ass.

    1. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, they ignore the fact that those un-immunized 15% gave a nice reservoir for the illness to mutate and develop stronger strains, like illnesses do. And lets not bring in the fact that most Americans have piss poor immune systems to begin with, and the shots just make one facet stronger, not invincible.

    2. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by LifesABeach · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe you could site a reference, other than your body's exit point for your food. When one is immunized, one can handle the real thing quickly. That means the sickness cannot take hold, or not for long. There is a group of dumb ass American parents that believe that immunizing their children is a bad thing. These parents will face outcomes like child mortality, and child cripplings for the unlucky. The immunized children will not understand that their close friend is forever negatively altered because their friend's parents are so short sighted that because they don't see it, therefore it doesn't exist.

      This idea is applicable to other things. Short Sigtedness paralleled with business shows rapid depletion of its resources in exchange for an increase in profit; like a child that has more free time because it doesn't have to wait in line for a vaccine shot. Then when the resources run out, the business colapses; the outcome is the abandonment of its employees, and its customers; now the community is damaged, also the death of the business. The survivers must now spend time, money, and resources that they would not have to before; the impact cripples.

    3. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are precisely two viruses like this that have been "eradicated" by medicine, in the entire history of humankind. Two.

      And one of those is suspected of making a comeback in a related form.

      "Immunisation" buys you time, not immunity. We can't get 100% of people to pay taxes or abide by the law, what makes you think we can get 100% immunised?

      Like using one particular chemical in weedkiller or rat poison - doesn't matter how many rats you kill, one will get immune to it and breed a generation immune to it really quickly, or a branch of the same genetic family will evolve to take it over. Even if you legislate (as some countries do) that you MUST use 2 or 3 totally unrelated chemicals at all times and never deploy them singly - still there are rats. And still there will be diseases getting through that are related to those you immunise.

      Hell, we offer flu shots to the elderly for free in my country - hasn't even dented flu-like diseases. Immunisation helps. Blaming those percent that choose to decide what they put into their own bodies is just peer pressure and bullying. And, guess what, if you were actually "immunised" you wouldn't be able to catch it from them, or the evolved strains...

      The biggest issue with the flu is that there are so many strains of it (it mutates quite easily). Your flu vaccination is for the one strain which is believed to be the most common one for that particular year. Unfortunately they could have guessed wrong as to which strain will be the most common or you could just as easily pick up some other strain.

      As for immunisation protecting you from evolved strains, what happens when that one little mutation is a change in the protein coating which makes your immunity a moot point? Vaccines work by giving you a dead or harmless version of the virus so that your immune system knows what it is and that it should react to it. One of the ways this is done is via the protein coating of the virus. If that changes enough then the immune system no longer recognises the virus as being one it has encountered already. Tying back into the flu virus, it mutates quite easily and more often then not the protein coatings change, hence why the flu vaccine does not always stop you from getting the flu.

      It is the ease that viruses mutate that makes getting as many people as possible vaccinated important. The fewer hosts a virus can infect mean the less likely hood of the virus getting to mutate.

      As for your comment on only 2 viruses being eradicated via vaccinations, how many people do you know or have heard of catching stuff like german measles, rubella, smallpox, pertussis, tuberculosis, mumps, etc? And how many of those live in countries where vaccination is readily available (eg, most non-thirdworld nations). Myself, I don't know anyone who has had any of these diseases outside of outbreaks in the UK and the USA due mostly to the anti-vaccination crowd...

    4. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by magamiako1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are many reasons the flu vaccine "doesn't work", for the most part, because it's only around 80% effective to begin with. They also target specific strains that they think will be the most common in a given region. They do not target every strain of the flu out there.

      So yes, 80% effective, only targeting key specific seasonal strains they think will cause the most havoc.

      But, at the end of the day, it's a gamble. Do you want to take your life or the lives of loved ones at such risk? I don't get a flu vaccine, in part because I haven't had the flu in a long, long time (Colds and I, however, have problems). Also because I'm not around little kids or super elderly folks, and don't work in a hospital/doctor's office, etc. But it's a choice I make. If I were to get the flu more often, I'd probably get vaccinated.

    5. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are precisely two viruses like this that have been "eradicated" by medicine, in the entire history of humankind. Two.

      No, they have not been eradicated.

      1. One lives in labs
      2. The other one is still in wild because of fucked up Islamists.

      Aside from that, your comment is stupid. You do not require 100% immunization to eradicate a disease. You only require good enough level of immunization. And comparing this to some specific strain flu vaccine, really? Flu vaccine has nowhere the same effectiveness as polio vaccine.

      "Immunisation" buys you time, not immunity.

      What a gem.

    6. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by superdana · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I know it's very fashionable to have allergies these days but a tummy ache is not anaphylaxis. Try taking it with food next time.

    7. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The US have one of the highest rates of antibiotics (ab)use. I'd be surprised if you found worse strains of germs in our hospitals than you find in the average US hotel air condition.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    8. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If it was just for him, I'd be cheerleader for the vaccine-naysayers. Darwin should be right at least sometimes and all that.

      But sadly it's not just about him. There are people who cannot get immunized, who cannot get vaccines, for various reasons. Very real reasons, unlike that anti-vac crowd. Some people would love to get vaccinated because they do not want to get sick. But simply cannot. For them, we "vaccinated ones" are the protective shield. Because if there is no strain to infect them (because we don't carry it around since our vaccinated immune system kills them), we effectively protect them.

      Those anti-vac nuts endanger them.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    9. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by level_headed_midwest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are at least two things you wrote which are generally medically incorrect. First of all, having only a stomach ache after ingesting a drug is very unlikely to be an allergy. True (IgE/T-cell-mediated) allergies usually cause things like hives, throat/lip/face swelling, low blood pressure, and trouble breathing. You simply describe a very well known NON-ALLERGIC adverse effect common to all opioids. True allergies are generally not heritable either, so the "my relative was allergic to X, so I can't take it" is nonsense. Your aunt and uncle simply had the same very common NON-ALLERGIC adverse effect you did. The exception to this is in people who have things like celiac disease who have a T-cell-mediated response to gluten in the medication which is an allergy. But you'd have a telltale set of symptoms involving more than just nausea if that was indeed the case for you. The only reason I mention this is because many people say they're "allergic" to vaccinations for similar nonsense reasons. A moderate fever and redness/aching at the injection site is a known adverse effect due to how vaccines work. You have symptoms of an immune response because you have to elicit an immune response for vaccines to work.

      --
      Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
    10. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, personally I'd rather get vaccinated than die.

      You know, if vaccination is wrong, then it's wrong in a really right way. Let's put theory to a rest for a moment and ponder reality. Some diseases vanished entirely. Others have been pushed back considerably. All just due to a better sanitary situation? Certainly that is a factor too. But not sufficient to explain everything. Take tetanus. It's a fairly well understood disease, mostly because it used to be very troublesome before we understood it fully. And all cases of tetanus since WW2, at least, have been in people who were not vaccinated against it, despite the bacterium responsible for tetanus still being pretty much ubiquitous (it's fairly impossible to eliminate it from our life).

      So if vaccination doesn't work, how would you explain this?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    11. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The US have one of the highest rates of antibiotics (ab)use. I'd be surprised if you found worse strains of germs in our hospitals than you find in the average US hotel air condition.

      It's not so much an issue of them not being in the hotel air as them not being trivial to find. But as it turns out, they're all over the hospitals, which are typically nowhere near as sanitary as they're alleged to be, mostly by health care professionals. Basically nothing in the typical hospital aside from some of the purpose-built equipment can actually be properly cleaned for the variety and load of contaminants which pass through it.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by houstonbofh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I know it's very fashionable to have allergies these days but a tummy ache is not anaphylaxis. Try taking it with food next time.

      Anaphylaxis is not the only allergic reaction. Not even the only life threatening one. And NVD (Nausa, vomiting, diarrhea) during a respiratory illness is very deadly.

    13. Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized? by Belial6 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm pretty sure that equating vaccination to religion isn't going to convince people into thinking what you want them to think.

  2. Re:Mexico Vaccinates Better Than The US by refinch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The proper, legal term is "illegal alien." Everything else is politically-corrected propaganda.

  3. Re:Mexico Vaccinates Better Than The US by PapayaSF · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "...and was speaking from personal experience." This is a huge red flag. He probably is not a trained epidemiologist, and as such his observation bias is no different in that area then anyone else.

    Nonsense. He knows what he sees in his work. He wasn't making an epidemiological statement, he was making an observational one: the TB cases he was seeing were disproportionately illegal immigrants. Observation is not necessarily "observational bias."

    Of course, he wears a white coat so you assume is an expert in all things.

    No, I just assume he's an expert on the characteristics of his patients and their diseases, because that's his job.

    --
    Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
  4. Re:Mexico Vaccinates Better Than The US by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Experience at a free clinic would be suggestive of issues faced by the poor and lower middle class in general. To really draw conclusions from experience, he would need to have worked in a free clinic far from immigrant populations and in a clinic (free or not) in a wealthy area.

  5. Re:Mexico Vaccinates Better Than The US by Barsteward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    " I have an aversion to people taking from our country and giving nothing back."

    You have to be careful with making statements like that .e.g.

    do you ever buy from places that use aliens as cheap labor to keep prices low?
    do you pay every cent of tax you are supposed to?
    the Rich are bigger freeloaders than the aliens because they don't pay their fair share of personal tax and do their best to avoid it.
    Global companies do their level best to avoid paying any tax.

    Aliens are a very small part of any problem

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)