Recently the Center for Disease Control released a vaccination coverage study with good news and bad news. The good news was that the vaccination rate for kindergarteners nationally was over 90 percent. The bad news is that Washington State had the highest percentage of children excused by parents, 6.2 percent, or 5,015 kid-sized disease vectors.
WebMD reports the the “vast majority” of Washington parents who excused their kindergarteners from vaccinations did so on philosophical grounds. The site quotes Michele Roberts of the Washington State Department of Health: “Chickenpox outbreaks are a continual problem in our state and last year two infants died of pertussis [whooping cough]. In these cases there was not enough community protection to protect these infants.”
In Washington, the department of health notes in a pertussis fact sheet, “The rate of disease in infants under one year of age, 27.1 per 100,000, remains higher than rates in all other age groups.” As of last year, Washington began flirting with the epidemic threshold for whooping cough.
As much as I’m drawn to emphasize what an act of violence it is to use language to describe this virulent combination of know-nothingness and self-centeredness as a “philosophy,” what really needs to be underlined here is the suffering and deaths of children.
The CDC doesn’t track the hours parents listen to their infant cough itself into pneumonia and brain damage, but surely that needs to be weighed in the balance with whatever “philosophy” promotes bringing back the host of scourges vaccinations protect us from. (It’s probably not coincidental that Washington’s rate of unvaccinated kindergarteners doubled during the years of vaccinations-cause-autism misinformation.)
As it happens, this July a new law will require opting-out parents to supply a note from a licensed health care provider, as evidence that despite having heard the benefits and risks of vaccination, they still prefer to put the lives of their children and others at risk.
explain… WA had two pertussis deaths and they have the highest rate of non vaxing. CA had way more deaths and they have a much higher rate of vaxing. Health does not come in the form of a needle!!!!
You explain that to the two dead infants, Hillary. But be prepared to talk loudly, because they may not hear you. Nothing can have been more conclusively demonstrated than the effectiveness of vaccinations. I can’t argue with someone who can’t grasp that diseases that once killed millions have been more or less eradicated by vaccines.
Michael,
You need to review some basic documentation from the CDC before making unsubstantiated claims that can quickly be disproved.
There have been thousands of cases of Whooping cough every year between 1965 until 2002. Before 1965 and after 2002 there are tens of thousands of cases every year. The last year there was more than 100 deaths was 1963. The only years there have not been any deaths are 1991, 2008, and 2009.
Fact: The pertussis vaccine is very ineffective and requiring vaccination will not resolve the problem. History has already proven that over the past 3 decades. Since 1950 there have been 5000 deaths from pertussis. You cannot possible calculate the number of years that millions of pertussis deaths would take globally, so stop trying.
Chuck, that depends on how you define “very ineffective,” doesn’t it? The NNNI admits that the current pertussis vaccine is “is 59-89% effective in preventing pertussis, while the protection rates
for diphtheria and tetanus are higher. Pertussis occasionally occurs in
children who have received the pertussis immunization, but it is less
severe and has fewer complications.”
Now let’s compare the vaccine to no vaccine at all: “Approximately 50 out of every 10,000 people who develop pertussis die from the disease. Between 1940-1945, before widespread vaccination, as many as 147,000 cases of pertussis were reported in the United States each year, with approximately 8,000 deaths caused by the disease. In 1976, there were 1,010 case of pertussis in the US, the lowest number of cases ever reported. Over the past few years the number of reported cases of pertussis has increased, reaching 25, 827 in 2004. Worldwide, there are an estimated 300,000 annual deaths due to pertussis.”
Using that last number, you arrive at millions in 7 years.
Michael,
Does the vaccine prevent carriage and transmission? What is the actual rate of pertussis in the U.S.? Not the reported cases, but the estimated number of cases which are overlooked?
from the CDC: “Pertussis affects an estimated 600,000 adults every year, aged 20 to 64
years, and can result in weeks of coughing, cracked ribs from severe
coughing spells, pneumonia, and other complications.” http://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/r051109.htm
So for all of those years when supposedly the vaccine was saving everyone there were hundreds of thousands of unnoticed cases of adults with pertussis wandering around coughing on babies who were too young to be vaccinated. Why weren’t there many, many, many thousands of dead babies? Perhaps something changed in the ability of the medical profession to treat babies with severe breathing problems between the 1930s and the 1980s?
Now that there is a vaccine available for adults and teens it is magically going to prevent hundreds of thousands of unnoticed cases of adults with pertussis wandering around coughing on babies who are too young to be vaccinated? Not unless the vaccine prevents carriage and transmission. As it happens… “Vaccinated adolescents and adults may serve as reservoirs for silent
infection and become potential transmitters to unprotected infants
(3-11). The whole-cell vaccine for pertussis is protective only against
clinical disease, not against infection (15-17). Therefore, even young,
recently vaccinated children may serve as reservoirs and potential
transmitters of infection.” http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol6no5/pdf/srugo.pdf
Just to save time, the current vaccine is not the same as the whole-cell vaccine. It is apparently even less effective–but it is also slightly less dangerous.
Let’s check your math:
1) 1,000,000/300,000 = about 3 and 1/3 years, not 7
2) Between 1940-1945 there were 147,000 cases and approximately 8,000 deaths. I will be generous and say that for every 19 cases there was one death. Even though the vaccines have not improved their effective rates since the 1940’s, the medical treatment of patients has made improvements over the past 70 years. The average number of cases to 1 death for 2000-2009 is 1,175. So if there is 147,000 cases today, the number of deaths would be 125, a 98% reduction in the number of deaths compared to 1940-1945.
Have any of you intelligent people posting comments ever spent a month quarantined in a hospital room listening to your beautiful newborn baby gasp for air, turn blue, and cough until all the blood vessels in her eyes rupture? Thought not…..