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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.
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.
It's much safer. Stock up on Doritos and Dr. Pepper and wait the epidemic out.
Pertussis is a big deal and, as usual, the media is Doing It Wrong. For most adults, pertussis is annoying (very annoying) but not life threatening. It is also rather contagious and worse, it is most contagious early on when one's symptoms are mild and non specific. So when you are sick, stay in the basement. Wash your hands. Communicate with the rest of the world via Slashdot.
For young children it can be fatal, hence the importance of immunizations.
What is pretty clear is that the primary immunization series works pretty well (not perfectly). Immunizations of adults doesn't work well at all. What TFA didn't make clear was how immunized the adults were. They would be up to date if they had received their primary children's series but no adult Dtap (typically given as part of a tetanus immunization, not directly 'for' pertussis). But we know that the pertussis component of Dtap wanes after five years. So even if you were technically up to date by tetanus standards, you'd be behind for pertussis.
We've known this for decades. What I can't figure out is why a pertussis only booster hasn't been marketed. We have the vaccine, we have much of the data. It would be fairly easy to do. (Insert favorite rant about the Medical Industrial Complex here.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Cite, please.
The whole reason we vaccinate is because it's been shown that fewer people get sick or die when we do. Yes, there are sometimes adverse reactions, but it's worse when we don't.
Also, the "free" education is neither free nor voluntary. You pay for it in taxes. You send your kids or you go to jail, unless send them to a different, approved school.
Having had had family members with whooping cough I looked into this. Adults are believed to be carrier's with silent symptoms. This year (2014) when adults get their physical they will very likely be offered an immunization for whooping cough. I just got mine since I was exposed to it. Although vaccines after the fact may not be useful for protection, the wisdom apparently is that the vaccine helps your body supress the silent infection. Not sure I understand why.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Mexico's vaccination rates are higher than the US.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
We do require; the problem is many states allow an exemption for personal beliefs.
The vaccination should be required regardless of beliefs or conscientious objection by the parents, because other People's safety is at risk.
Furthermore... if the reason for exemption is medical; this should require at least two healthcare officials to verify it and sign off on it, and there should be a requirement to renew the certification every year.
Also, the immunization certificates should have conspicuous expiration dates before the next booster is needed for each vaccine, and schools should be required to verify these annually.
The certificate should also be required to be admitted to an institution of higher education, to buy or own real property, to register a vehicle, to obtain airplane tickets, boarding pass, or to step into an airplane, to obtain and renew a driver's license or other ID with a stamp making it an immunization ID as well, proof of immunization (or presentation of drivers license/ID that certification is required for) should be necessary to enter publicly owned buildings where a large number of people may be present, and employers should be required to verify certificate (or require vaccination) before employing any new worker. Obtaining social security, unemployment, welfare benefits, should also require an active immunization certificate.
In other words: there should be gates requiring citizens to have proper immunization or medical exemption from them.
I told you so!
Yours,
Jenny McCarthy
I think there's enough creditable evidence out there to suggest that young children under the age of 3 shouldn't have any immunization because thier systems aren't developed enough to deal with the shots. But by 3 they should be required to be immunized before attending and public school. Also I this there should be mandated boosters in public middle and highschool. You don't want to follow the rules then you don't get the free education.
Care to post some links to this "creditable evidence"?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
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...
So, only the stupid and superstitious people who refuse to get vacinated will get sick and hopefully die and clean up the gene pool?
I like it!
It depends on how many cases you expect. Smallpox has been eradicated worldwide, so a single case is considered an epidemic. Ebola is so rare and deadly that a small number is needed for it to be called an outbreak or an epidemic. Whooping cough is more common, but this recent outbreak is at a much higher rate than normal.
http://www.washoecounty.us/hea...
There is no credible evidence that early vaccinations cause issues with children. That's a bunch of horse shit.
Oh, if only there was something we could give children to keep them from getting sick. Then personal choices would not put other people at risk, only the people that opt out would take their chances.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Too bad such a thing does not exist. Vaccines, after all, are not 100% effective. And some people, particularly the very young or elderly, have compromised immune systems or are unable to receive vaccinations for other reasons, and must rely on the rest of the population being immunised to prevent them from getting sick.
The article is terrible. The CDC has a very good FAQ on the pertussis vaccine.
http://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/a...
Q: Can pertussis be prevented with vaccines?
A: Yes. Pertussis, or whooping cough, can be prevented with vaccines. Before pertussis vaccines became widely available in the 1940s, about 200,000 children got sick with it each year in the US and about 9,000 died as a result of the infection. Now we see about 10,000–40,000 cases reported each year and unfortunately about 10–20 deaths.
Pertussis vaccines are recommended for people of all ages. Infants and children should get 5 doses of DTaP for maximum protection. A dose is given at 2, 4 and 6 months, at 15 through 18 months, and again at 4 through 6 years. A booster dose of Tdap is given to preteens at 11 or 12 years of age.
Any adolescents or adults who didn't get Tdap as a preteen should get one dose. Getting Tdap is especially important for pregnant women. It’s also important that those who care for infants are up-to-date with pertussis vaccination. You can get the Tdap booster dose no matter when you got your last regular tetanus booster shot (Td). Also, you need to get Tdap even if you were vaccinated as a child or have been sick with pertussis in the past.
Learn more about preventing pertussis.
car
Whooping cough can be deadly for babies. Learn how to protect them through vaccination. See this infographic.
Q: Why is the focus on protecting infants from pertussis?
A: Infants are at greatest risk for getting pertussis and then having severe complications from it, including death. About half of infants younger than 1 year old who get pertussis are hospitalized, and 1 or 2 in 100 hospitalized infants die.
There are two strategies to protect infants until they're old enough to receive vaccines and build their immunity against this disease.
First, vaccinate pregnant women with Tdap during each pregnancy, preferably at 27 through 36 weeks. By getting Tdap during pregnancy, mothers build antibodies that are transferred to the newborn, likely providing protection against pertussis in early life, before the baby can start getting DTaP vaccines at 2 months old. Tdap also helps protect mothers during delivery, making them less likely to transmit pertussis to their infants.
Second, make sure everyone around the infant is immunized. This includes parents, siblings, grandparents (including those 65 years and older), other family members, babysitters, etc. They should be up-to-date with the age-appropriate vaccine (DTaP or Tdap) at least two weeks before coming into close contact with the infant. Unless pregnant, only one dose of Tdap is recommended in a lifetime.
These two strategies should reduce infection in infants, since health data have shown that, when the source of pertussis could be identified, mothers were responsible for 30-40% of infant infections and all household members were responsible for about 80% of infections.
It's also critical that healthcare professionals are up-to-date with a one-time Tdap booster dose, especially those who care for infants.
Learn more about infant complications.
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Q: Do pertussis vaccines protect for a lifetime? If I've had whooping cough, do I still need a pertussis booster?
A: Getting sick with pertussis or getting pertussis vaccines doesn't provide lifelong protection, which means you can still get pertussis and pass it onto infants.
Pertussis vaccines are effective, but not perfect. They typically offer high levels of protection within the first 2 years of getting vaccinated, but then protection decreases over time. This is known as waning immunity. Similarly, natural infection may also only protect you for a few years.
In general, DTaP vaccines are 80-90% effective. Among kids who get all 5 doses of DTaP on schedule, effectiveness is very high within the year following the 5th dose
AccountKiller
Do you mean thiomersal, the mercuric component of which is readily excreted by the body in less than a month with no ill effects and hasn't been used as a vaccine preservative in US, Europe and elsewhere since 1999?
Ignorant fear monger.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Perhaps by your logic we should also give up all our privacy because by refusing we allow criminals and terrorists amongst us to plot away and that puts people's safety at risk.
Do you mean thiomersal, the mercuric component of which is readily excreted by the body in less than a month with no ill effects
Still a matter for debate.
and hasn't been used as a vaccine preservative in US, Europe and elsewhere since 1999?
False.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Around here, you can educate them yourself by opening your own state approved school and following certain rules. That's what homeschooling looks like here. You can't just "teach them yourself". Obviously, things may differ in your jurisdiction.
Then personal choices would not put other people at risk, only the people that opt out would take their chances.
This seems like no more a 'personal choice', than a choice to not pay taxes.
Or to run an unsecured computer on the internet, or open e-mail proxy, that spammers can abuse.
The thing is... a person's 'personal' choice to be vulnerable to a contagion will always put other people at risk, unless they have a 100% quarantine, since once you are infected, you have provided the contagion a place to fester and evolve, that is -- to randomly mutate, and if any of the mutations turns out to have increased resistance against the vaccine, you have provided the contagion the tools needed to defeat the vaccine.
... I was following until you randomly brought 9/11 into it, thereby showing you are a nutjob.
People were concerned about them, but since they were inevitable, you couldn't do anything but not worry too much and hope for the best.
We knew that mumps and measles were one-time diseases, and that it was best to get them early because then you were immune, some of them are much more dangerous in adults (especially mumps, which sterilzes adult males), and anyway the sooner you get it the less of an investment we lose if it kills you.
People were a lot more casual about kids dying in the past.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Well, apart from the complete lack of citations, etcetera:
Who cares what someone did in 1944? And what does 9/11 have to do with anything? You're making a moral argument that something is disgusting or immoral, but that's not a rebuttal to the claim that it has a particular effect.
It's also a little weird to see you talking about the "post 9/11 vaccine" for a disease that we haven't generally vaccinated for since 1972 or so.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Most people don't realize that. "Home school" is just a convenient way to say "Extremely exclusive private school".
I'll pass on your over paranoid, over centralized, over sanitized, overregulated society.. jesus fucking christ..
That's the price we pay for freedom. We can't assume other computers are clean, so we take responsibility for defending our own. We don't assume the people near us are disease free, so we don't share food utensils. When we shake hands with them, we assume we should wash later. We don't put our fingers in our mouths or touch our faces and we wash before we eat. Beyond that, there isn't much you can do besides keeping yourself in good health. That alone is your best defense. More nannying centralization is not.
The kind of bureaucratic micromanagement some here are suggesting is its own form of disease. All those people should move to some socialist hellhole...where, ironically, there's no money for any sort of consistent vaccination program. At least they have their bureaucracy to make them 'feel' safer.
This isn't a case of whether vaccines work or don't work, or whether they cause neurological damage. The issue is dominion over one's own body. The group doesn't always get priority over the individual.
Public health doctors are perfectly aware that typical vaccinations are not strong enough to confer near-perfect immunity. That's because it's a balancing act between wanting lots of immune response and not wanting too much: as in, people getting sick from the vaccination.
The goal is to minimize the total number of sick people, from any cause. When the disease is rare, vaccine side effects must be carefully limited.
This is clearer in the case of polio, where there are two vaccines in widespread use. In countries where polio is absent, they use a dead vaccine as pioneered by Sabin. Reasonable protection, very low side effect.
But if you're living somewhere where exposure is likely, you're going to get the Salk-style live virus oral polio vaccine. This produces much greater protection, but about one in a million people get polio symptoms from it.
It's all a matter of odds of exposure. The goal of public immunizations is not to provide perfect protection, but to limit the numer of people one sick person can transmit the disease to to less than 1. If that's the case, any outbreak will quickly stop. But it's just like a nuclear chain reaction: as it gets close to 1, the number of cases increases rapidly. And if it ever exceeds 1, it will explode.
And that's the harm that anti-vaccine people are doing to me. By increasing my exposure, I have to vaccinate more and more strongly, which increases my risk of side effects.
There is no credible evidence that early vaccinations cause issues with children.
There is always a risk of complications with a vaccine even for adults. The question is not whether there is any risk from having the vaccine but whether the risk is less than the risk from catching the disease. According to the US CDC there were 48,277 cases of Whooping Cough with 20 fatalities mainly in babies under 3 months.
The only rate of serious complications from a vaccine I could find is for the MMR where 1 in a million develop encephalitis which is a serious condition but that has to be compared to a 1 in a thousand rate of encephalitis from measles alone. Assuming the whooping cough vaccine has a similar serious complication rate that puts the likelihood of death at below 1 in a million vs. 1 in 25,000 for the disease. So I'll take my chance with the vaccine (and already did when I was a kid!).
So instead of trying to persuade people that there is zero risk from vaccines, which is simply not true, we should instead be educating them about the relative risks of the vaccine (almost none) compared to the disease (typically a far higher chance of death and/or permanent disability). One of the biggest ironies of vaccines though has to be that some people don't get vaccinated because they don't see serious diseases like measles as a threat to be worried about anymore. Doh!
Unfortunately - that's not entirely true, immunization against whooping cough is only partially effective. Worse yet, the effectiveness also fades over time. Even worse.... there's a possibility that the vaccine may not stop an uninfected person from being a carrier.
If you're talking about the post-Jenny McCarthy era, you can't blame the current rise in whooping cough cases on her. Pertussis cases began rising in the 1980's, and the current spike takes off in 2003 - four years before she started her campaign.
There was an outbreak of whooping cough in Australia a couple of years ago, my immunised ex-wife caught a dose. Turned out it was a new strain of whooping cough the vaccination is still effective but not as effective as it was for the old strain. If the US vaccination rates haven't changed recently then I would put my money on it being the new Aussie strain.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
We need a Megan's law for the unvaccinated. So you can look up which of your neighbors you need to avoid and keep your kids aways from, just as you would keep them away from sex offenders. Or at the very least childcares, kindergartens, and schools should be required to publicly document how many unvaccinated kids are attending so people can make informed decisions about whether to send their own kids there.
Let's hope it doesn't buy Hemorrhagic Shock which causes oxygen deprivation, loss of consciousness and death.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
We do require; the problem is many states allow an exemption for personal beliefs.
The vaccination should be required regardless of beliefs or conscientious objection by the parents, because other People's safety is at risk.
Furthermore... if the reason for exemption is medical; this should require at least two healthcare officials to verify it and sign off on it, and there should be a requirement to renew the certification every year.
Also, the immunization certificates should have conspicuous expiration dates before the next booster is needed for each vaccine, and schools should be required to verify these annually.
The certificate should also be required to be admitted to an institution of higher education, to buy or own real property, to register a vehicle, to obtain airplane tickets, boarding pass, or to step into an airplane, to obtain and renew a driver's license or other ID with a stamp making it an immunization ID as well, proof of immunization (or presentation of drivers license/ID that certification is required for) should be necessary to enter publicly owned buildings where a large number of people may be present, and employers should be required to verify certificate (or require vaccination) before employing any new worker. Obtaining social security, unemployment, welfare benefits, should also require an active immunization certificate.
In other words: there should be gates requiring citizens to have proper immunization or medical exemption from them.
Why go to all the trouble of actual pieces of paper/stamps/etc? A database keeping track of which person has which vaccine is probably the simplest database there is. I wouldn't use a SSN as a unique identifier but Name+Birthdate+Birthtown is probably sufficient. Make it open to the public on the internet so that we can check our neighbors if desired. Make some APIs so that other software packages can check easily. That kind of information is a public service/right to know. I'm all for the right to privacy but for this information, public health trumps. It boggles my mind that it hasn't been done already, even on a state level.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
It's a convenient way to say "Extremely exclusive private school with a non-standard and probably-unknown level of competence". In more sane places it's illegal because it can seriously mess children up.
Wow. I get it - you are ruled by your gut and not logic (hence your attacks on women, for example). Socialist "hellholes", as you call them, have far more money to spend on healthcare than the US does, as they don't have waves upon waves of middlemen taking their cut of the healthcare money for bureaucracy. But I guess you have your hubris to make you 'feel' safer.
Where is your freedom when you develop an immunity disorder and can't be vaccinated, and some muppet infects you because they chose to not be vaccinated? Where do your rights end and theirs begin? Not that you've thought this through in any depth, as that's some sort of socialist commie thing to do. BENGHAZI or something.
Mexican children usually have comparable (or better) immunization than their US counterparts, but I guess you don't want to let facts get in the way of your muppet-rage.
Vaccines saves lives. They have saved hundreds of millions of lives. Are there risks? Hell yes! But we are taking about 1 in 100,000. Why are there so many deaths in Africa? Cuz there ain’t no vaccines. Repeat after me: Vaccines saves lives Vaccines saves lives Vaccines saves lives Vaccines saves lives
Wait til you find out how sausages are made.
The reason we vaccinate as early as possible is because very young children are more likely to die if they do get sick. So you want to get SOME immunity as soon as the system can develop it.
We have idiots who don't vaccinate puppies until 4 months as well, because OMG developing immune system. This is all dandy if you can keep them in total isolation. Not so dandy if they're out in the real world. Much safer to do the core vaccinations early (and with newer vaccines, you can hit them at 3 to 5 weeks for prophylaxis in the event of high-risk exposure, or 5 to 6 weeks for a normal first shot). Usually it takes losing a whole litter to parvo at 8 weeks to get the facts thru their heads, and even then some don't change their ways.
Incidentally, you can't half-dose vaccine either (some idiots do that as well) because there's a threshold number of virus particles necessary to induce immunity. High-titer vaccines (with 3 to 5 times the number of virus particles) do a much better job of generating immunity, especially in very young puppies (and when one still needs to overcome maternal antibodies).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
That's actually how it was done for dogs, prior to distemper vaccine: puppies would be deliberately exposed, and the survivors (about half, but occasionally none) were considered immune.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
As opposed to the standard poor level of competence at the public school.
On the plus side, one of the big effects on student performance is parental involvement, and home-schooling is heavy on that. As long as they have to pass the same sort of tests as their public-school counterparts, it's probably fine.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So can public schools. My public school experience, while not really horrible, was sufficiently unpleasant that I mostly tuned out and almost didn't graduate on time. I came to my senses early enough in the last year to maintain grades just good enough to get me out.
Maybe I was just a loser. Then again, I went on to a 3.9+ undergrad GPA, and later a Masters degree. I blame that crappy public school for my graduating college 6 years late. If it had sucked less, I'd have gone straight to college and probably wouldn't have had to pay for it.
I don't think the answer is banning homeschooling or banning public or traditional private schools. It's setting sufficiently high standards. If you can meet them, great. Open a school.
Welcome to life, dude. You cant protect yourself from everything. It's getting to the point where one can't do much of anything without researching and obeying a boatload of regs and buying expensive insurance in order to protect the involved parties from lawsuits based on those laws. It's too top heavy.
An immunity disorder as massive as you suggest is a death sentence, vaccinated populace or not. I assume you worry about being struck by micrometeorites too? I also suppose you can argue without ad hominem attacks? After all, such rampant emotionalism in place of reason WOULD be the typical 'socialist commie' thing to do.
It's not very surprising you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're", yet feel capable of examining and appraising this situation. Hubris at work, ladies and gentlemen.