Whooping Cough

Just about a year ago, some may remember, newspapers throughout North America announced an epidemic of whooping cough in California that health officials predicted would spread throughout the country.

From January to November 30, 2010, California's state epidemiologist reported 2,625 pertussis cases including ten infant deaths while the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 18,586 cases nationwide.[1] In perfect timing with media reports, public health departments urged families to make sure their children have had all five of the triple antigen DTaP vaccine. Most health departments even encouraged older children and adults to get this vaccine since drug companies have now formulated pertussis vaccines just for them.

News reports wildly speculated that the outbreak was due to the number of unvaccinated children in some California school districts. Out of 7,200 schools in California,, 175 schools had vaccine exemption rates of 20 percent or more while a few were over 70 percent.[2] Despite the growing number of families claiming a personal belief exemption to required shots, only about 2 percent throughout the state claim an exemption. So with 98 percent of children taking all CDC recommended vaccines, herd immunity is covered and blaming the unvaccinated for the outbreak defies logic. What these reports fail to mention is the number of fully vaccinated children who came down with whooping cough.

Vaccine failures
The push for family members and young children to rush and get their DTaP shot is certainly unwarranted when one looks at the many well-documented cases of “vaccine failure” in communities that experienced record numbers of whooping cough cases. In 1996 there was a statewide outbreak of pertussis in Vermont where vaccination rates were among the highest in the country and yet 97 percent of affected children 19-35 months of age had received the recommended number of vaccines. [3] More recently, The Star-Ledger reported on February 11, 2009 of a pertussis outbreak in 21 fully vaccinated children in Hunterdon county, New Jersey.[4] Closer to home, in Toronto, Ontario, from October 2005 to March 2006, a laboratory-confirmed outbreak of pertussis occurred in fully-vaccinated preschool children.[5] Even the British Medical Journal reported on a study revealing that 55 of the 64 children who presented seriological evidence of a recent Bordetella pertussis infection had been fully vaccinated.[6]

The Watchdog Institute, an investigative journalism center based in San Diego, recently teamed up with kpbs.org to research the number of families affected by the whooping cough outbreak that had been fully vaccinated against pertussis. Their four-month investigation culminated in the airing of a documentary on December 16, 2010. They revealed that of the nine counties in California most affected, 44 to 83 percent of the victims had been fully vaccinated. In Ohio and Texas, two states also having record numbers of whooping cough cases, 75 and 67.5 percent respectively had been vaccinated. Dr. Fritz Mooi, a respected Dutch scientist who has been studying pertussis bacteria mutations for 15 years, claims a more virulent strain not in the DTP or DTaP vaccines is the cause of recent outbreaks. Mooi said his research is being ignored since those who influence public policy on pertussis here and abroad rely on vaccine manufacturers to fund their research and meetings. [7]

1. www.cdc.gov MMWR for week 48 Table II, Part 7
2.Whooping Cough in California Worries Officials http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFlu/whooping-cough-epidemic-california-lax-vaccination-blame/story?id=11000305&page=2
3. The Vaccine Safety Manual by Neil Z.Miller, New Atlantean Press, 2008. p. 139
4. The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal: July 2009 - Volume 28 - Issue 7 - pp 582-587
5.“Whooping Cough returns to Hunterdon County” by Mike Frasinelli, The Star-Ledger, February 11, 2009 http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/whooping_cough_returns_to_hunt.html
6. BMJ 2006; 333 : 174 doi: 10.1136/bmj.38870.655405.AE (Published 7 July 2006)
http://www.bmj.com/content/333/7560/174.abstract
7. http://www.watchdoginstitute.org/2010/12/13/whooping-cough-epidemic-california/


Here again I am posting the study that explains the potential contributor to Whooping Cough outbreaks in certain areas of California. http://harpub.co.cc/whoop/index.htm