Strollerderby : whooping cough

They Say: Another Reason to Vaccinate Your Kid

JeanneSager — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:28:00 GMT

The no-vax movement got more bad news this week with a report in Pediatrics that confirms herd immunity does not keep the non-vaccinated safe.

The study by researchers at Kaiser Permanente Colorado and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health determines kids whose parents opt out on vaccines are twenty three times more likely to develop pertussis than their vaccinated peers.

More commonly known as whooping cough, the incidence of pertussis was rapidly declining in the U.S. from the 1940s through the late nineties thanks to vaccinations. But with parents forgoing the vaccines, the numbers are back up - big time. In 2005 alone, more than twenty-five thousand cases were reported (for comparison check out the numbers in 1976 - only one thousand ten cases in the entire U.S.).

Those numbers should have proven the importance (and efficacy) of the vaccine, but parents have been skipping the vaccine in increasing numbers, or delaying it as part of the system touted by Dr. Robert Sears, a much revered pediatrician by the middle-of-the pack vax crowd. The study at Kaiser found that eleven percent of the kids who contracted pertussis were kids whose parents actually refused the vaccine (which makes a difference - these weren't kids whose parents opted out because of a medical issue that kept them from getting the vaccine).

What a fair number of anti-vaccine parents fail to realize is the problem isn't just the other kids their kids are coming in contact with. Even if the majority of American kids get the vaccine, adults age out of their immunity. Which means unless they head to the doctor for a booster, they're susceptible to the disease, and carriers who could be passing it on to your kids (studies indicate at least one third of pertussis cases were transmitted by mother to child).

And pertussis is not a silly, laugh it off disease. It can kill, particularly infants.

So if herd immunity isn't protecting your kids from pertussis, what else isn't it protecting them from?

Image: LA Times

Shots for Mom and Dad, Too

Madeline Holler — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Infants and toddlers aren't the only ones who need vaccines. But they're the ones most likely to get them, which is making health officials worry. Despite the development of vaccines that guard against terrible illnesses people can develop as adults, only a teeny tiny number of people are actually getting the shots.

Here's what a new CDC report found:

Only about 2 percent of Americans ages 60 and older received a vaccine against shingles in its first year of sales. Anybody who had chickenpox is at risk for developing shingles, a super painful viral eruption, as they get older. The shingles vaccine cuts that risk in half.

About 2 percent of adults ages 18 to 64 got a booster shot against whooping cough in the two years since it hit the market.The booster toddlers get stars to wear off by adolescence.

About 10 percent of women ages 18 to 26 have received at least one dose of a three-shot series that protects against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, that causes cervical cancer.

Among people 65 or older, a high-risk age, CDC found only 69 percent get an annual flu shot; just 66 percent have had a one-time pneumonia vaccine; and 44 percent had received a tetanus shot in the past 10 years.

Okay, so, guilty as charged! But seriously, did you know about all this? The report said health officials are disappointed that more people haven't gotten these vaccines, even after so much publicity about the vaccines. But except for the HPV and flu shots, I didn't know about them. I would think this is the kind of thing doctors could tell us about or make a part of our checkups. So, do they know about them?

Another problem is the cost of these shots. $150 for some, $300 for the three-shot HPV one. Naturally, insurance coverage on these varies.

Anybody out there totally current on their shots? Honestly, I have no idea.

Photo: Salt Lake Tribune

Why I'm Going to Vaccinate My Unvaccinated Kids

Karen Murphy — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:28:00 GMT

I'm coming to the conclusion that I've been hiding my head in the sand for several years now when it comes to certain parenting issues. My happy little parenting Bubble Of Goodness. I think a lot had to do with being immersed in a Waldorf school community and all that went along with it: the Attachment-Parenting, no-circumcision (I haven't changed my mind about that one), no-vaccinating, organically-grown parenting ideals that many in that lifestyle, myself included, subscribe to.

I'm finding though that as my kids get older or as I chill out a bit or maybe both, that some of these ideals aren't as ideal as I once thought.

For instance, no children sleep in my bed ANY. MORE.

And the vaccination thing. My youngest son has respiratory issues anyway simply because of Down syndrome-related anatomy, and for him, dealing with a serious illness like whooping cough could be difficult if not fatal.

And it turns out that there's a measure of social responsibility involved here. If the majority in a group vaccinate, those who choose not to can rely on the group to protect them from the disease the rest of them are vaccinated against. But when a large number in a group fail to vaccinate, things fall apart. Which is why the largest whooping cough outbreak in recent U.S. history occurred in Boulder, Colorado, the city I recently moved away from (not for that reason) and a city where a large number of folks don't vaccinate their kids.

But don't take my word for it. Julie Marsh at The Imperfect Parent explains it oh so well. And I'm okay with you making the choices you feel are best for your kids, truly I am. I still worry for my own kids about some of the issues that kept me from vaccinating in the first place. But I no longer feel that those issues outweigh the larger one of social responsibility.

What's your stand on vaccinations? Yea or nay, and why?

Strollerderby : whooping cough

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Shots for Mom and Dad, Too

Why I'm Going to Vaccinate My Unvaccinated Kids