For centuries, whooping cough was one of the leading causes of infant death. It induces persistent coughing that can lead to vomitting which can cause malnutrition, infection and pnuemonia. With the introduction of pertussis vaccines in the 1940s, reported cases fell from 157 to 1 cases per 100,000 people. These vaccines saved thousands of lives.
This week California declared a whooping cough epidemic. Fifteen hundred cases have been reported so far, a five-fold increase over the year before. There have been five, possibly six, deaths in the first six months of 2010. Increased occurances can be attributed in part to parents who opt out of vaccination.
One of the worst hit areas is located north of San Francisco in affluent Marin County. The area has had ten times more reported instances this year than in the previous ten. What's going on?В
In Marin, parents are able to cite "personal beliefs" in order to opt out of vaccination. As a result, 7.1% of children enter kindergarten without proper protection. This practice is driven by parental fears which have all been debunked. It's one thing for a Luddite Amishman to eschew technology to his inconvience. It's quite another to leave infants vulnerable to vaccine preventable diseases. Unfortunately, many parents are willing to trust Jenny McCarthy rather than a family physician.
UPDATE: This article mentions a sixth death possibly attributed to whooping cough. Today that was confirmed.
Where's Pom?
If you don’t want to vaccinate your kids because you think some god spoke to you, that’s fine... or you think that you shouldn't vaccinate because of some small chance of "X", that's fine, odd, but fine. But don’t even try to say there’s a rational or scientific reason for your choice.
July 20th, 2010 // By Mark