Whooping Cough Epidimic
- 75 Replies
2012 is gonna be one of the worst years for whooping cough. WHAT ELSE NEEDS TO HAPPEN BEFORE YOU NON VAXING MOM CAN GET IT IN YOUR HEAD!! I have a 3 mos old DD that is vaccinated, along w an 18 mos old niece, and a nephew being born in September. YOU ARE PUTTING MY DD AND FAMILY AT RISK!!!!!!! Get it though your thick dumb skulls!
No I am not a troll.
...you make no sense. if your kids are vaxxed, they're not a risk at all.
Quoting Anonymous:I shouldnt have to! People who are too stubborn to vaccinate should keep their kids inside!
Quoting TurtleSquish:
Then keep your vaccinated family inside. if they're truly vaxxed you have nothing to worry about. You'll get your point across much better if you're not a rude cow.
Quoting Anonymous:
Putting my family at risk goes way beyond being rude! I vaccinate and i do my research.......thanks.
Quoting TurtleSquish:
op, don't be fucking rude. people can choose not to vax if they want. I got my booster because my sister is coming to visit with my 8 week old nephew and i don't want him to be sick. You shouldn't personally attack people for making decisions like this, especially since non vaxxing families do their research.
Because apparently you vaccinating people are the problem in this article posted in another group:
Whooping cough outbreak caused by VACCINATED children
the outbreak of pertussis is certainly tragic, you cannot blame it on unvaccinated children. Several sources have found that these breakouts have been primarily amongst VACCINATED children, not unvaccinated children.
Posted Apr 18, 2012 by Elliott Freeman
San Rafael - An investigation by California doctors has revealed that the state's latest outbreak of whooping cough centered around children who had already received the whooping cough vaccine, Reuters reports.
CDC
A doctor prepares to administer a vaccine to a patient.
The study, led by infectious disease specialist Dr. David Witt, was initiated after an unusually large number of whooping cough cases were admitted to Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Rafael, California in 2010.
After examining the records of juvenile whooping cough patients over an 8-month period, the doctors discovered that 81 percent of patients had received the full series of whooping cough shots, and 11 percent had received only some of the shots. The remaining 8 percent had not received any immunizations for whooping cough.
"What was very surprising was the majority of cases were in fully vaccinated children," Witt said. "That's what started catching our attention."
After further analysis, Witt and his team surmised that the effectiveness of the vaccine wears off after several years, creating the need for additional inoculations.
Unfortunately, drug maker Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK), the manufacturer of the whooping cough vaccine, did not bother to perform long-term studies of its effectiveness. A company spokesperson confirmed this disturbing fact in an email to Reuters, stating that GSK never studied the duration of the vaccine's protection after the shot was given to four- to six-year-olds.
Dr. Tom Clark, a medical epidemiologist with the Center for Disease Control (CDC), also provided a troubling analysis of the situation. "It's likely if we move doses around we'd shift the burden of disease, but not necessarily reduce it," he said.
However, these explanations alone do not account for the new epidemic of whooping cough in California. According to the New York Times, vaccination rates have remained steady as cases of whooping cough have skyrocketed in the state.
In addition, other scientific studies have confirmed a link between vaccines and an increased risk of infectious diseases.
In 2009, four separate Canadian studies concluded that the seasonal flu shot massively increases the likelihood of contracting the H1N1 flu. According to Science Daily, recipients of the seasonal flu vaccine were up to 250% more likely to be infected by the H1N1 variant than those who did not receive the injection.
Revelations like these should be a reminder to parents to do as much research as possible and weigh the risks and benefits before allowing their children to receive vaccines.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/print/article/323187#ixzz1tFa83LSg
Pasted from <http://www.digitaljournal.com/print/article/323187>
Whooping cough vaccine fades in pre-teens: study
By Kerry Grens
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - During a whooping cough outbreak in California in 2010, immunized children between eight and 12 years old were more likely to catch the bacterial disease than kids of other ages, suggesting that the childhood vaccine wears off as kids get older, according to new research.
"We have a real belief that the durability (of the vaccine) is not what was imagined," said Dr. David Witt, an infectious disease specialist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael, California, and senior author of the study.
Whooping cough, or pertussis, is caused by Bordetella pertussis bacteria. The infection produces an intense cough that lasts weeks and can lead to pneumonia, an inability to breathe or death -- although most cases don't reach such extremes.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about nine out of every 100,000 Americans get pertussis each year, and while that number is considerably smaller than before the vaccine was introduced, it has been rising for the past two decades.
The pertussis vaccine, a five-shot series referred to as DTaP, is recommended for children at ages two-, four-, six- and 18-months, and at four to six years old.
The CDC recommends that at age 11 or 12 kids get the booster shot called Tdap.
In early 2010, a spike in cases appeared at Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael, and it was soon determined to be an outbreak of whooping cough -- the largest seen in California in more than 50 years.
Witt had expected to see the illnesses center around unvaccinated kids, knowing they are more vulnerable to the disease.
"We started dissecting the data. What was very surprising was the majority of cases were in fully vaccinated children. That's what started catching our attention," said Witt.
To figure out just how well the vaccine was working, Witt and his colleagues collected information on every patient who had tested positive for pertussis between March and October, 2010.
Of the 132 patients under age 18, 81 percent were up to date on recommended whooping cough shots and eight percent had never been vaccinated. The other 11 percent had received at least one shot, but not the complete series.
The rate of cases for each age, two through 18 years old, peaked among kids in their pre-teens.
Among fully immunized kids, there were about 36 cases for every 10,000 children two to seven years old, compared to 245 out of every 10,000 kids aged eight to 12.
"The longer you went from your last vaccine, the greater your risk of disease," Witt told Reuters Health.
At age 13, the number of cases dropped, presumably because that's the age when children are eligible for their booster shot.
Comparing the kids who got pertussis to the more than 22,000 kids in the medical center's database who didn't, Witt's group wrote in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases that the vaccine is effective about half of the time for all kids, and just 24 percent of the time in the eight to 12 year old age group.
"For pertussis, having even 24 percent helps (mitigate an epidemic), but you'd sure like it higher than that," he said.
Dr. Tom Clark, a medical epidemiologist with the CDC, said it's understood that vaccine protection wanes over time.
"That's why we have an adolescent booster dose recommendation," he said.
Clark said CDC's data from the California outbreak also show the vaccine's effect dropping off as children get father away from their last shot, but that the vaccine appears more effective than what Witt's group found.
Witt and his colleagues suggest that the booster seems to come too late, leaving pre-teens at an increased risk of catching pertussis.
But moving up the Tdap booster shot to an earlier age is not so easy, Clark said, and it might not fix the problem.
"It's likely if we move doses around we'd shift the burden of disease, but not necessarily reduce it," Clark said.
Additionally, the booster shot is not approved for seven to nine year olds.
A spokesperson for GSK, one of the pertussis vaccine makers, wrote in an email to Reuters Health that studies conducted by the company have shown the vaccine is about 78 percent effective in warding off disease up until the age of six years.
GSK has never studied the duration of the vaccine's protection after the shot given to four- to six-year-olds, the spokesperson said.
Dr. Joel Ward at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute said it's still important for parents to get their kids immunized, even though it doesn't provide lasting protection from whooping cough.
"The disease has diminished markedly with the use of it. The benefit has been enormous," he said.
Ward, who did not participate in the new study, also said that immunized kids who catch whooping cough don't get as sick as unimmunized kids.
Newborns and infants are most at risk of catching whooping cough because they have not yet been immunized.
The CDC has expanded recommendations for adults and pregnant women, encouraging them to get a booster shot to "cocoon" babies by preventing everyone around the infants from catching the bacterium and passing it on.
In February this year, the CDC included adults over age 65 in their recommendations for the booster shot.
SOURCE: bit.ly/HdfLsU Clinical Infectious Diseases, online March 15, 2012.
Acutally they are. Vaccines dont fully protect.....just helps a lot.
Quoting TurtleSquish:
...you make no sense. if your kids are vaxxed, they're not a risk at all.
Quoting Anonymous:
I shouldnt have to! People who are too stubborn to vaccinate should keep their kids inside!
Quoting TurtleSquish:
Then keep your vaccinated family inside. if they're truly vaxxed you have nothing to worry about. You'll get your point across much better if you're not a rude cow.
Quoting Anonymous:
Putting my family at risk goes way beyond being rude! I vaccinate and i do my research.......thanks.
Quoting TurtleSquish:
op, don't be fucking rude. people can choose not to vax if they want. I got my booster because my sister is coming to visit with my 8 week old nephew and i don't want him to be sick. You shouldn't personally attack people for making decisions like this, especially since non vaxxing families do their research.
Let me see if I can find the article on Whooping Cough in WA. There was a good percentage of people that were diagnosed with whooping cough that already had been vaccinated for it.
And yeah, you vaccinate your children with tthat poison, & I'll keep it out of mine. K, thx. :)
Here's more from the post:
Unexpectedly Limited Durability of Immunity Following Acellular Pertussis Vaccination in Pre-Adolescents in a North American Outbreak
- Maxwell A. Witt1,
- Paul H. Katz, MD, MPH2, and
- David J. Witt, MD3
81 Percent of Whooping Cough Cases Occurred in People Who Were Fully Vaccinated
CDC data shows 84 percent of children under the age of 3 have received at least FOUR DTaP shots—which is the acellular pertussis vaccine that was approved in the United States in 1996—yet, despite this high vaccination rate, whooping cough still keeps circulating among both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
More likely than not, the vaccine provides very little if any protection, and this was evidenced very clearly in a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.i
Researchers reviewed data on every patient who tested positive for pertussis between March and October 2010 at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael, California.
Out of these 132 patients:
- 81 percent were fully up to date on the whooping cough vaccine
- 8 percent had never been vaccinated
- 11 percent had received at least one shot, but not the entire recommended series
What’s wrong with this picture? Could it be that children and adults, who have received all the government-recommended pertussis shots, can still get the disease? Yes, of course. And this study suggests they may in fact be more likely to get the diseases than unvaccinated populations. Researchers noted:
“Despite widespread childhood vaccination against Bordetella pertussis, disease remains prevalent. It has been suggested that acellular vaccine may be less effective than previously believed. Our data suggests that the current schedule of acellular pertussis vaccine doses is insufficient to prevent outbreaks of pertussis.”
That is clearly stating the obvious, as B. pertussis whooping cough is a cyclical disease and natural increases tend to occur every 4-5 years no matter how high the vaccination rates in a population using DPT or DTaP vaccines on a widespread basis. Whole cell DPT vaccines used in the U.S. from the 1950’s until the late 1990’s were estimated to be 63 to 94 percent effective and studies showed that vaccine-acquired immunity fell to about 40 percent after seven years.
In the recent DTaP vaccine study, researchers noted the vaccine’s effectiveness was only 41 percent among 2- to 7-year-olds and a dismal 24 percent among those aged 8-12. With this shockingly low rate of DTaP vaccine effectiveness, the questionable solution that public health officials have come up with is to declare that everybody has to get three primary shots and three follow-up booster shots just to get the vaccine to give long-lasting protection—if any protection is provided at all.ii
Whooping Cough Vaccine Protection Fades in Three Years
The featured study also suggests that the acellular pertussis vaccine loses much of its effectiveness after just three years. This is much faster than previously believed, and could also help explain the recent whooping cough outbreaks in the U.S.
Unfortunately, stacking on additional booster shots is likely to make matters worse rather than better, especially in light of the fact that the mass use of existing pertussis vaccines has already led to vaccine-resistant strains that are still evolving and could become much more virulent.
The new mutation, which some researchers are calling "P3," is a strain that produces more pertussis toxin (PT).iii
Pertussis toxin is the part of B. pertussis bacteria that is most responsible for the neurological complications of both pertussis disease and DPT and DtaP pertussis vaccines, and is also most responsible for stimulating an immune response. The acellular pertussis vaccines, which were developed and tested in the late 1980's and early 1990's, do not include the mutated strain.
Another reason why whooping cough cannot be entirely eradicated is the fact that there's another Bordetella organism – parapertussis – that can also cause whooping cough. The symptoms of B. parapertussis, while often milder, can look exactly like B. pertussis, but doctors rarely recognize or test for parapertussis. And, there is NO vaccine for it.
One difference between recovering from B. pertussis whooping cough and getting the vaccine is that recovery from whooping cough confers a naturally-acquired immunity that is stronger and longer lasting than the artificial immunity induced by the vaccine. Vaccination requires more and more booster doses to try to extend the artificial vaccine immunity.
Many Doctors Now Pushing Ineffective “Cocooning” Whooping Cough Vaccines
The Tdap vaccine, which is recommended for children aged 7 years and older, as well as adults, is also a combination vaccine that is supposed to protect against tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough (pertussis). The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is now directing all physicians, particularly pediatricians, to offer Tdap vaccine to parents and close family members of babies under age 2 months, who are too young to receive a pertussis-containing vaccine themselves. (The other vaccine being promoted to parents and close contacts of babies is the flu vaccine).
Known as "cocooning," this controversial practice is being promoted by the AAP and government health officials as a way of protecting babies from whooping cough and other infectious diseases like influenza by vaccinating their parents and other adult caregivers. However, there is little evidence to show that this works! In fact, research from Canada showed just the opposite.
The Canadian study investigated how many parents would need to be vaccinated in order to prevent infant hospitalizations and deaths from pertussis using the cocoon strategy, and the results were dismal. They found the number needed to vaccinate (NNV) for parental immunization was at least 1 million to prevent 1 infant death, approximately 100,000 for ICU admission, and >10,000 for hospitalization.iv Researchers concluded:
"... the parental cocoon program is inefficient and resource intensive for the prevention of serious outcomes in early infancy."
There are Risks Attached to the Whooping Cough Vaccine
Whooping cough can be serious, especially for newborns and babies, whose tiny airways can become clogged with the sticky mucus produced by the toxins in B. pertussis bacteria. These babies can suffer life-threatening breathing problems that require hospitalization and use of suctioning and re-hydration therapies. However, the vast majority of children and adults get through a bout with whooping cough without complications and it is important for them to get proper nutrition, hydration and rest to support the healing process.
Similarly, while some children and adults get pertussis-containing vaccines and experience no complications, others do suffer serious reactions, injuries, or have died after getting vaccinated. According to Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC):v
"Of all the vaccines which have been routinely used by children in the past century, the brain damaging effects of the pertussis (whooping cough) portion of DPT vaccine is among the most well documented in the scientific literature.
Created in 1912, the crude pertussis vaccine basically consisted of B. pertussis bacteria killed with heat, preserved with formaldehyde, and injected into children. In the early 1940's, aluminum was added as an adjuvant and later the mercury preservative, thimerosal, was added when pertussis was combined with diphtheria and tetanus vaccines to create DPT. Pertussis vaccine was never studied in large clinical trials before being given to children in the first half of the 20th century or after it was combined into DPT and recommended for mass use by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1947."
Children who are particularly high-risk for brain injury or death after getting a pertussis-containing vaccine (DPT, DTaP or Tdap) include those who have suffered previous vaccine reactions, such as:
- High fever
- High pitched screaming or persistent crying
- Convulsions (with or without fever)
- Collapse/shock (also known as hypo-tonic/hypo-responsive episodes)
- Brain inflammation and encephalopathy
Most of the adverse effects are believed to occur from the effects of the pertussis toxin itself, which is one of the most lethal toxins in nature. It's a well-known neurotoxin that is so reliable for inducing brain inflammation and brain damage that it's used to deliberately induce experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) in lab animals.
In the video profile of pertussis vaccine injury below, Barbara Loe Fisher interviews a Houston family with a history of vaccine reactions that spans three generations. Now, a 12-year-old child in the family has become permanently disabled from a reaction to the DTaP vaccine that was given to her, along with 6 other vaccines, at age 15 months.
Either way, getting whooping cough or getting a pertussis vaccination entails a risk. But, remember, the vaccine carries with it two risks: the risk of a serious side effect AND the risk that the vaccine won't work at all or will only work for a short period of time. What happened to this family is a potent reminder of just how important it is to make well-informed decisions about vaccinations.
The news story I read stated that the cases involved vaccinated children and adults. The speculation is that the formula and dosage changed in the late 90's because of concerns about rashes etc and now the vaccination is less effective.
I found out via text DH has TWO other babies *update