Whooping cough vaccine not as powerful as thought

[Marnica]

http://www.ajc.com/health/content/me...h_vaccine.html

Of the 18 students in the recent Cobb cluster, 17 were properly immunized with five doses of DTaP vaccine, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, health officials said.

Ok so experts say the vaccine is not as effective as they thought:

Despite the fact that we routinely vaccinate against pertussis, pertussis is endemic. There’s lots of pertussis,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of CDC’s meningitis and vaccine preventable diseases branch.

Their solution is to vaccinate adults with booster shots to prevent the spread of the disease. But they just said it is not as effective as they thought and cases are still showing up in highly vaxed populations. So adults and teens should vaccinate themselves with the same ineffective vaccine that the vaccinated children get. Makes no sense to me but ok.

They go on to say that despite that the vax may not protect like they thought, it is still better than the prevaccine era

In the 1920s and 1930s, there were more than 160,000 cases and more than 5,000 deaths each year. After the introduction of a pertussis vaccine in the 1940s, reports dropped dramatically. In 1976, just 1,010 cases were reported — the record low.

But then they had just gotten thorough stating that pertussis is underreported and way more common than we think

About 10,000 cases and 20 infant deaths were reported in the United States last year, but some studies have suggested the number of people sickened each year may be closer to 300,000, CDC officials said.

Seems like a contradiction to me.

[kiara7]

Ok,

so pre-vaccine there were 160,000 cases and 300,000 now?
A lot of good the vax did.

And yes, let's all run out and get vax'ed, the mercury and aluminum will protect us from everything!

[carriebft]

Good article; probably the best on this I have seen in a while since it addresses lots of issues most others do not. ALthough the transmission thing is there : but they do cover vaccine failure, lessening of symptoms, vax duration, etc which most do not cover.

[AFWife]

I can tell you from experience (well, DH's experience) that when adults get WC it's usually diagnosed as "bronchitis" and a WC test is never even done! So yeah, totally under reported.

So the mindset is: It doesn't work so lets give more of it?

[EVC]

It doesn't work so lets give more of it?

That is exactly the logic. I remember a story posted here a while back about how ineffective the polio vaccine had been in certian regions of India. They noted the high levels of overcrowding, poverty, lack of clean drinking water, and poor sanitation typical of these areas and then......concluded that people likely just needed more doses of the vax.

[ZoeyZoo]

Originally Posted by Marnica

[url]Their solution is to vaccinate adults with booster shots to prevent the spread of the disease. But they just said it is not as effective as they thought and cases are still showing up in highly vaxed populations. So adults and teens should vaccinate themselves with the same ineffective vaccine that the vaccinated children get. Makes no sense to me but ok.

Makes no sense to me either. How is a vax that does nothing against transmission help keep from spreading the disease?

[guestmama9911]

Subbing so I can reference this later.

[skolbut]

I would consider myself "highly vaxed". I got WC about a year ago (ugh, had a one year old and ttc and wintertime...). Got dx with bronchitis twice, but it was WC. It was less than 10 years since I had a 'booster'.

[claddaghmom]

l

[ericswifey27]

20 infant deaths from Pertussis in 1 year. Hmm.

This study examining VAERS reports involving infants receiving a vaccine with Pertussis component showed a yearly death rate often quadruple that in infants under 1.

The annual number of deaths during the study was 85 in 1995, 82 in 1996, 77 in 1997, and 41 in the first half of 1998.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.or...full/106/4/e51

Granted many infants had multiple vaccines administered, so there may be other factors at work than just the pertussis component, but it's still interesting given its known reactivity...

I would be curious to know how many of the 10,000 cases of pertussis and 20 yearly deaths were found in infants recently vaccinated against it? Could a death be recorded both as a pertussis death and a VAERS death? Or is that impossible? Does anyone know?

[mkmoro311]

Wow, I posted that original article last week which said nothing more than the fact that there where a number of kids who were sick with WC. The artice made me mad because it was useless, just a scare-tactic. Glad this one followed up with the kids and CDC's reaction.

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...096&highlight=

[medusaatemydog]

Originally Posted by EVC

That is exactly the logic. I remember a story posted here a while back about how ineffective the polio vaccine had been in certian regions of India. They noted the high levels of overcrowding, poverty, lack of clean drinking water, and poor sanitation typical of these areas and then......concluded that people likely just needed more doses of the vax.

i was under the impression that the oral polio increased infection in India...the living conditions helped to spread the disease...
add more vaccines add more disease.

[kriket]

Originally Posted by kiara7

the mercury and aluminum will protect us from everything!

the aluminum will protect our brains from the aliens.

Originally Posted by medusaatemydog

i was under the impression that the oral polio increased infection in India...the living conditions helped to spread the disease...
add more vaccines add more disease.

I've read this too. There were remote villages that had generally good health, they had problems with water/sewer and maintance care (most disadvantaged villages problems) so instead of helping dig latrines AWAY from the water table, they vaxed them all, the polio shed, and quite a few people ended up dying from polio. :

I get so pissed when people talk about "there are probably undiagnosed cases out there" Yeah... because its not serious! The sit at home watching cartoons eating chicken soup like all the other sick kids then go back to school on monday!

[AFWife]

Originally Posted by kriket

I get so pissed when people talk about "there are probably undiagnosed cases out there" Yeah... because its not serious! The sit at home watching cartoons eating chicken soup like all the other sick kids then go back to school on monday!

That was something DH and I found when we started researching. We'd always thought that the vaccines protected against all of these horrible, fatal things and if you didn't get it you risked death! (well, isn't that what they WANT us to think?) We watched that Tenpenny (?) video and everytime she talked about a different disease and what it ACTUALLY does our jaws would drop... Now, when people ask why we aren't vaxing a lot of times we tell them "Because a lot of those things just aren't that bad"

[EVC]

i was under the impression that the oral polio increased infection in India...the living conditions helped to spread the disease...
add more vaccines add more disease.

Quite possibly the case, but they wanted to solve it by vaxing MORE. The article I read was http://www.reutershealth.com/en/index.html. but doesn't seem to be available anymore. Here are some excerpts that I saved:

LONDON (Reuters) - New vaccine strategies could wipe out lingering reservoirs of polio in northern India and lead to global eradication of the crippling disease by the end of the decade, scientists said on Thursday....

In a study published in the journal Science they said the virus has been so persistent, despite good immunization coverage in northern India, because of overcrowded living conditions and poor sanitation.

Those conditions in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar made the oral poliovirus vaccine less effective than in other parts of India and immunized children were still being infected."

They then went on to argue for INCREASED vaccination.