Hi, there. I had pertussis in 2015. It sucked. I've never missed a vaccination. Know how I had pertussis in 2015? Because they recommend Tdap every ten years but your insurance probably doesn't cover it because as an adult, pertussis isn't a life-threatening illness. So chances are you don't even have a vaccination. And if you did, it's probably not in your records anyway so the insurance is going to say "prove you needed this" so your clinic isn't even gonna offer it to you because it's a solid money loser. So if you know anyone with a cough, and you spend any time with them, guess what? You've got pertussis. And you don't know it's pertussis until you go "holy shit why have I been coughing uncontrollably for six weeks?" And by the way by the time you've been coughing hard enough to break a rib, you're no longer contagious. The rib-breakers are you hacking up your dead alveoli. That's why it's gonna take you two months to get batter. You're literally regrowing your lungs. But yeah. That cold you had a month ago? It was actually whooping cough and now you've given it to every adult you know who also doesn't know what whooping cough is other than guessing you probably can't get it from eating margarine. The anti-vax folx love pox parties. They think they should have them all the time. They do all sorts of silly shit. Of course what the medical establishment wants you to do is vaccinate against varicella but you gotta dig deep as to why; fundamentally it's because the antibiotic-resistant bacteria we've grown for the past 50 years take pox from "itchy thing" to "MRSA vector" and since you're coming to the hospital with your highly-infectious pox they don't want you leaving with flesh-eating bacteria. Look. I get that everyone with an ounce of science wants to beat somebody up. I get that the IFLS posse hates the anti-vaxers the way 4chan hates furries. But fuckin' slow your roll. Epidemiology and public health aren't as simple as "vaccinate your fucking kids". Yeah. Totes do that. But your own goddamn link says nothing about vaccinating adults because nobody does. And even when you're vaccinated you can still get goddamn whooping cough.Valid vaccination history was available for 1,829 of 2,006 (91.2%) patients aged 3 months–19 years. Overall, 758 of 1,000 (75.8%) patients aged 3 months–10 years were up-to-date with the childhood diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and acellular pertussis (DTaP) doses. Receipt of Tdap was documented in 97 of 225 (43.1%) patients aged 11–12 years and in 466 of 604 (77.2%) patients aged 13–19 years. Estimated DTaP coverage in Washington among children aged 19–35 months was 93.2% for ≥3 doses and 81.9% for ≥4 doses in 2010; Tdap coverage in adolescents aged 13–17 years was estimated at 70.6% (3).
I know just how badly you want this to be about vaccine exemption. It's not. Here in Skagit County, about an hour’s drive north of Seattle — the hardest-hit corner of the state, based on pertussis cases per capita — the local Public Health Department has half the staff it did in 2008. Preventive care programs, intended to keep people healthy, are mostly gone. The county’s top medical officer, Dr. Howard Leibrand, who is also a full-time emergency room physician, said that in the crushing triage of a combined health crisis and budget crisis, he had gone so far as to urge local physicians to stop testing patients to confirm a whooping cough diagnosis. If the signs are there, he said — especially a persistent, deep cough and indication of contact with a confirmed victim — doctors should simply treat patients with antibiotics. The pertussis test can cost up to $400 and delay treatment by days. About 14.6 percent of Skagit County residents have no health insurance, according to a state study conducted last year, up from 11.6 percent in 2008. “There has been half a million dollars spent on testing in this county,” Dr. Leibrand said late last week. “Do you know how much vaccination you can buy for half a million dollars?” And testing, he added, benefits only the epidemiologists, not the patients. “It’s an outrageous way to spend your health care dollar.” People wanted to get bent outta shape about the anti-vax crowd in 2012, too. They had a bit more of a leg to stand on. Except Washington actually changed their regulations for the better the year before: “We had the easiest opt-out law in the nation until last year, so what we also had was the highest percent of parents opting out,” Ms. Selecky said. And I know you want this to be "a group of religious people that went to South America." Except it was eighteen different strains. Listen closely to me, atheist, because you're doing that thing everybody hates us for: proclaiming that proper zealous adherence to dogma will protect our virtue. That's like when people would tell me my kid has a life-threatening peanut allergy because my wife didn't eat enough peanut butter sandwiches when she was pregnant, and then blamed us both for not enrolling her in a peanut allergy study. You're whistling in the goddamn graveyard and everybody knows it - but worse than that, you're saying parents are to blame for the random misfortunes of their offspring. You know why there's a pertussis outbreak in Kentucky? So if you're under 50 you thought you were vaccinated against pertussis forever but it turns out you were actually only vaccinated against pertussis until about 2008. Stop trying to blame people for that. No. this isn't about crossing national borders. No. This isn't about whether or not you ride the bus. This is about the fact that people get fucking sick sometimes and it's a drag. Kinda like how the flu vaccine is sometimes like 40% effective because it's for the wrong strain. I dated a girl who worked at a hospital. As part of her HR package she had to be tested for every fuckin' thing under the sun. Turns out she picked up tuberculosis when she was in Spain five years previously. Is there a tuberculosis vaccine? yes. Is it given in the US? no. So are we gonna keep all the brown people out now? or give them all a vaccine scar that never goes away? Or just go ahead and treat everyone? 'cuz that's a six month course with a teratogenic that requires monthly liver function checks and utter abstinence of all alcohol. Or maybe just accept that in a town called Perfect everyone thinks like you, acts like you, behaves like you and vaccines are 100% effective but here in These United States we can't afford to burn people at the stake for getting sick?The response to the epidemic has been hampered by the recession, which has left state and local health departments on the front lines of defense weakened by years of sustained budget cuts.
Last year, the Washington Legislature passed a law requiring parents to prove that they had consulted a physician before declining vaccinations for their children.
Thirty-one PFGE types were found, with the most common types, CDC013 (n = 51), CDC237 (n = 44), and CDC002 (n = 42), accounting for 57% of them. Eleven MLVA types were observed, mainly comprising type 27 (n = 183, 76%). Seven MLST types were identified, with the majority of the isolates typing as prn2-ptxP3-ptxA1-fim3-1 (n = 157, 65%). Four different prn mutations accounted for the 76% of isolates exhibiting pertactin deficiency.
However, Thomas Clark, MD, an epidemiologist with the CDC's meningitis and vaccine-preventable disease branch, told the Times that many people sickened in outbreaks in Washington and other states received their childhood vaccinations, but changes in the vaccine in the early 1990s to reduce side effects may have had an impact on how long immunity lasts.