If at First You Don't Succeed, Vax and Vax Again.

Here come more vaccine boosters, because everyone knows, if a product doesn't work, you simply give more. From NJ.com. New Jersery, where the flu vaccine is now mandated.  Could the flu vaccine be interfering with the efficacy of the pertussis vaccine?

A dozen cases of whooping cough have been found in children since the middle of last month in Hunterdon County, health officials said today.

"It is not unusual to have individual cases. It is unusual for us to have this number of cases in this defined time period," said John Beckley, the Hunterdon County health director.

All of the infected children had been vaccinated, but Hunterdon officials said the immunity to the vaccine can wane between ages 7 and 9 and that there is no licensed vaccine for children in that age group. 

Louise Kuo Habakus, a member of the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccination Choice, said girls receive 69 shots by age 18 and boys get 66 during that time. "Our babies and our toddlers receive five pertussis shots until age 5, and that's not enough to protect them at age 7?" she said.  Read more HERE.

Comments

[Bad Apple]

Jack,

Yah, we all lived to tell. It was pretty nasty, though. I remember afterward thinking that if the shots did give us some protection, it must be a darn nasty disease for those without some protection from the vaccines. I could see where people were afraid of it, especially for those already sick or old or very young.

Still and all, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't vaccinate my children. I'm starting to feel as though I can't trust the medical profession at all. Safe vaccine schedule? Pffft. Anything that comes out of their mouths or their labs I don't trust.

[Cherry Sperlin Misra]

Hmm- Interesting- Whooping cough was likely to lead to pneumonia in babies below 6 months.Wasn't that just the perfect time for a baby's immune system to be non functional due to mercury given in vaccines? Thankyou doctors- You create the dangerous illnesses and you save us from them with your vaccines.

[jruch]

Thanks for the heads up. The locals are a rough crowd on these issues - obnoxious and poorly informed, even when the information is right in front of their face. The very first post referred to the parents as idiots.

This story really helps shift the focus from the parents fears to the quality of the mandatory intervention, and the silliness of using the herd immunity argument for all vaccines.

I would love to find out why, for a vaccine given 5 times before school age, there is no version licensed for use for the 7-9 age group.

I hope to get to your seminar next week in Toms River. Thanks for all your hard work.

-John aka RC89

[Kathy Blanco]

Measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox usually confer permanent immunity; the child will rarely contract these ailments again. In contrast, vaccines provide temporary immunity; protection is incomplete, requiring booster doses. Vaccinated children are still susceptible to the disease. Studies also indicate that childhood diseases can have a favorable effect on the child’s immune system. When children overcome illnesses on their own, their immune systems are stimulated: they build resistance to other diseases in later life. For example, several studies show that women are less likely to develop ovarian cancer if they have had mumps in childhood.

So, as I say over and over ad naueaum, start treating this vaccine program as public enemy number one to the health of our nation, especially our children. Avoid them, never go near a pediatrician (I really mean that), and learn how to have health by eating no GMO/MSG/Corn Syrup/Preservative/Colors crap, and get on the bandwagon of health and fitness. Try it, you will like it, like I finally did. I finally got it. My grandkids, no autism, no vaccines, healthy, never had an ear infection, overcome illnesses in short time, and are super smart, I suspect they will be in AP classes, my three year old grandson already reads.

[Garbo]

Maybe they'll just quadruple the amount of pertussis virus in the vaccines, like they did with the mumps virus in the MMR. That should take care of the problem, right?!

How about we use this as an opportunity to educate everyone about the notion of testing titers for each individual child to determine immunity, rather than dosing them up with further vaccines that may not be necessary or effective?

[Sakura]

Forgot to mention in my comment below, of course, is that the mechanism of action is different for different vaccines but that is assuming that the vaccines work, which is a whole other issue.

The pertussis vaccine has an estimated efficacy of somewhere between 59-85%. Thus, even in a fully vaccinated population the vax efficacy is nowhere near what is needed to maintain that hypothetical herd immunity. However, as previously mentioned, this is a moot point since the pertussis vaccine does not prevent transmission, so there is no such thing as herd immunity to pertussis.

[biomedmom]

My comment isn't about pertusis but it is about vax and vax again...

Someone (in this fight with all of us) recently told me that women who have just given birth will soon be required to receive a rubella booster. Problem is, they've gotta get the MMR to get a rubella booster, right?

[Sakura]

Pertussis vaccines do not prevent transmission, so discussing the whole herd immunity thing is absurd in regards to whooping cough. Most people don't know this, and most doctors don't know this either. This is why people have to look at each individual vaccine and each individual corresponding disease.

All of the vaccines do not have the same mechanism of action.

[Cooper Hawkes]

Key line in the article if you ask me:

"All of the infected children had been vaccinated, but Hunterdon officials said the immunity to the vaccine can wane between ages 7 and 9 and that there is no licensed vaccine for children in that age group."

[Jack]

Bad Apple,

I'm confused. Do you mean to say you had whooping cough, but yet, somehow, you've lived to tell about it? How can that be?

I've seen 4 cases of RSV in our boys. Did it suck? yes. Do we need to inject every child on the planet with something with limited safety testing and regardless of individual considerations about those children? NO!

[Patrick]

I was wondering about this yesterday. A parent with a 5 year old sick child was telling me that there were a few things going around but if they have a cough, fever, not eating AND vomit to take the child to the ER as my 9 year old started coughing. He said one is really strange.
After reading about pertussis I assume he is talking about that.

The CDC says the main reasons for increase in pertussis is:
-increased recognition of Pertussis by doctors
-better tests available to confirm
-better reporting of the cases
-an increase

I figure that either the vaccine isn't working or their immune system is so suppressed that they get pertussis anyway. Also most cases of mild pertussis are probably mistaken as severe croup.

My state was ranked 4th in 2002 in cases of Pertussis and we recently had an outbreak in a school here.

[Bad Apple]

My whole family came down with whooping cough. We didn’t know what it was for a long time. I went to the Doctor three times I think, and she kept on telling me “it’s the flu”, even though the last time I went it was about six weeks into the ‘flu’. At the second Doctor visit which was probably at around four weeks in, I asked her “Is flu supposed to last this long?”, and she said yes it does sometimes. Then she said she thought I had COPD and gave me some inhaler I think for that, but it didn’t help. Then she asked me if I were just trying to get out of going to work. She didn’t say it as if it were a joke, she was quite serious. I told her “Ha, I wish, I’m a stay at home mother,” and promptly got myself another Doctor.

I know that there will be an attempt to paint this whooping cough epidemic as the fault of the ‘anti-vaccine bad apples’. But we got our cases of whooping cough just a year or so before I ever heard of vaccine damage. All of my children (I’m trying to remember how old they were at the time. I’d guess they ranged between around eleven and sixteen.) had been fully vaccinated up to that point in time.

The Doctor never did find out it was whooping cough. It was my husband who did some internet research and figured out that we all had whooping cough. He had the whooping sound with his cough, and it’s a very distinctive sound and he found a wave file of it online. And we all got over it within around three months, which is how long whooping cough is supposed to last. I know that I see a lot of ads lately for COPD medication on my telly, and I wonder how many people who’ve really got whooping cough have been misdiagnosed with COPD.

I remember thinking to myself that we could’ve saved a hell of a lot of money by just relying on my husband to diagnose our sickness, instead of the Doctors. Who really, so very often lately, don’t seem to know their arse from a hole in the ground.

My neighbors were asking me about whooping cough at the holiday party. I think this is the only time the topic of vaccination has ever come up with them, although all of my cars have bumper stickers on them. They were discussing a recent outbreak of whooping cough and wanted to know if my children were vaccinated against it, and they seemed surprised and puzzled when I told them that yes, they all were.