Tag Archives: epidemic

Health, News, Science

Whooping Cough Epidemic in Washington Now Up 1,300% From 2011

The good news is that no lives have been lost to whooping cough (pertussis) in Washington State in 2012. “It’s a miracle a baby hasn’t died in our state yet this year,” admitted State Health Officer Dr. Maxine Hayes. But 39 infants have had to be hospitalized. Whooping cough can lead to pneumonia, or even seizures, but it can be treated with antibiotics. Infants are most at risk because the vaccination is delivered in stages: at two, four, and six months of age, then at 15 to 18 months, and culminating in fifth shot at four to six years of age.

As you can see from the chart above, whooping cough has exploded from its edging-into-epidemic levels of last year, and Washington has yet to face the fall and winter. The CDC’s report on Washington’s epidemic records a 1,300-percent increase in the number of cases, the worst outbreak in the state since 1942–but that was as of June 16.

The state’s Department of Health issues a weekly pertussis update, and a month later, in mid-July (pdf), the number of cases had risen to 3,014. That’s compared to 219 over the same period last year. It’s all too similar to the epidemic that hit California, which topped out at 9,156 cases in 2010, with about 600 infants hospitalized and ten deaths. (Last year, California saw about 3,000 cases, and in 2012, just 169 so far–but pertussis outbreaks have three-to-five-year peaks and valleys, so that abrupt fall doesn’t mean California is out of danger.)

California’s highest incidence rate was 45 cases per 100,000 people; in 2012, Washington’s overall rate is 44.8 per 100,000–but Skagit County has an incidence rate of 440 per 100,000.

What’s new is that, nationally, vaccinated 13- and 14-year-olds are contracting whooping cough in greater numbers, indicating that the childhood DTaP vaccine‘s protection is wearing off sooner than expected. (DTaP is the “newer” pertussis vaccine, which the U.S. switched to in the early ’90s because reactions to it are far less frequent and severe.) After about five years, it appears, DTaP’s effectiveness drops to about 70 percent. This isn’t a huge problem–anyone can get a booster shot if they’re worried.

It’s worth noting that even if the DTaP vaccine doesn’t prevent whooping cough in all cases–studies gauge its effectiveness in prevention at somewhere between 60 and 90 percent, depending on a number of factors, including how many shots you’ve gotten–it still results in less severe cases, that don’t last as long, and aren’t as contagious. (Perversely, this could also have promoted the rise of the perception that pertussis is just a bad cough, and not that much to worry about.)

Despite the common-sense tactic of “cocooning”–keeping anyone who so much as sneezes away from infants–the single most common source of a baby’s whooping cough is its mother. Pregnant and post-partum women should get a booster shot if they need one. You can get the vaccine at a number of locations, including pharmacies, and 27,000 shots have been made available for Washington’s uninsured–which seems disproportionate given that some 1,000,000 people in Washington have no health insurance.

 

Health, News

Welcome to Washington, the Whooping Cough State

Chart indicating how pertussis has surpassed epidemic baseline in 2012
Chart indicating how pertussis has surpassed epidemic baseline in 2012

There are always winners and losers. Our recently dissolved state tourism board has dodged a negative publicity bullet. “Say WA“? How about “Say AHHHHH”? How would you like to persuade families to vacation in the whooping cough outbreak state? Seattle’s cruise ship industry can’t love this.

End of March 2012, the Washington State Department of Health announced that, technically speaking, whooping cough (pertussis) had reached epidemic levels. Now, almost a month later, the news is actually worse: “There have been a total of 1,008 cases reported statewide through week 16, compared to 110 reported cases in 2011 during the same time period.”

If that trend continues, for a total of 3,000 cases in 2012, it would mark the worst outbreak in 60 years in Washington, reports KING TV.

27 Washington counties have reported pertussis activity, with only twelve escaping it so far. As expected, babies are most susceptible: “Seventy-one infants under one year of age were reported as having whooping cough and eighteen of them were hospitalized. Of those hospitalized, fourteen (78%) were very young (three months of age or younger).” In terms of absolute cases, the leading age group is from five to thirteen years of age, with 449 children with whooping cough.

MyNorthwest.com’s Josh Kerns notes that “vaccines are available to all Washington children under 19 years old through health care provider offices participating in the state’s Childhood Vaccine Program.” By middle school and high school, the original pertussis vaccine will have started to wear off, so a booster shot is probably a good idea.

As always, California got there first. CNN notes, in their earlier story about Washington’s pertussis epidemic:

In 2010, whooping cough infected 9,000 people and killed 10 infants in California, in the worst outbreak in the state in 60 years. California passed a law requiring all students in the 7th to 12th grade to get the Tdap booster shot.

You can’t say you weren’t warned. The state’s department of health has been issuing alarms about the rise in pertussis incidence for some time; The SunBreak published a story last year on the trend, in mentioning the state’s leadership in parent-excused vaccinations. By February of this year, it was already clear it was going to be bad.

Health, News

What’s the “Philosophy” Behind Babies Coughing to Death?

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Graph: Washington Department of Health

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.