California Whooping Cough Cases "an Epidemic"

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.

Comments

So there's 100 or so unimmunized?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized?

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:So there's 100 or so unimmunized?

[level_headed_midwest]

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.

Re:Mexico Vaccinates Better Than The US

[refinch]

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