How anal do I need to be about de-germing with pertussis?

[Metasequoia]

Trashing tooth brushes? (Man, I *just* put a new head on my Sonicare!) Can I soak tooth brushes rather than trash them?

Surfaces? How long can the pertussis bacteria live on things? At least we have the windows wide open...

Anything else I should disinfect? I'm so not a germaphobe, but there's no way we're going to risk THIS again.

[japonica]

We didn't do anything special. Maybe throw out our toothbrushes, but we usually do that after bad colds and the like anyway.

It really didn't cross my mind. My DH brought it home and was hacking all over the place for weeks (and none of us knew what it was, he's always coughing for some reason or another because of the places he works). After DS got sick and we knew what it was, then I was too busy tending him to bother. I do a regular clean for stuff like this...nothing more than I'd usually do to keep the house tidy. If anyone has a GI bug, I'm a bit more stringent with disinfecting etc.

Plus, we all either gained (some form of) immunity afterwards or had our immunity boosted through exposure, so I wasn't concerned about it.

Honestly, you could probably scrub your whole house, but with pertussis endemic in most western countries even with high vaccination coverage, it probably won't be the last time you encounter it. It's just always circulating...and since the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission (or even infection in many cases), then it's just one of those things always out there like colds, flus, etc.