...by many sources, including Forbes, which you cited as one of your sources (see link).  Others simply call it an "outbreak."

BTW, when your urologist tells you to turn your head and cough, he's not checking to see if you have pertussis, lol.

and I have an answer to the question "What to do now, buttercup?"

Immunization also protects by "herd immunity". The vaccine is not less effective because it is less effective as you stated or was misinterpreted by the docs you consulted, it is less effective only when 5-15% of the population doesn't get vaccinated because then even people who are vaccinated have less immunity and elevated risk.

Nearly 18,000 cases have been reported so far — more than twice the number seen at this point last year.  At this pace, the number for the entire year will be the highest since 1959, when 40,000 illnesses were reported.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, who oversees the CDC's immunization and respiratory disease programs, and who I know and have spoken with, says the newer vaccine may not be as effective over a period of time, and may be less effective in teen agers or older patients but they don't  know what that period is yet, and will need more study. She strongly recommends that the groups the CDC recommends get the vaccine get it, including teenagers and adults,  and she is very concerned. She also debunked one of the self appointed ID experts on this board who claimed H1N1 was an exagerated myth, and said they didn't visit the dying patients at Emory Children's Hospital  across the street from the CDC like she did whose  hospitalizations cost upwards of $600,000.

I  wonder if your brother-in-law with the good bedside manner told you what the medical schools in Georgia are saying to Governor Deal and the Ga. legislature  about getting off their asses and accepting Medicaid expansion funds, and that he should (but won't) allow the state to set u p exchanges instead of having HHS do it for them. Many Republican governors will do just that after pounding their chests stupidly to jerkoff the base who wanted Palin a heartbeat away from the oval office.

I assume (lol) you're implying I don't have a high quality level of empathy or bedside manner, but my patients over the years seen every day, would disagree, and I'm not looking for any "attaboys" in that respect from people who call me an idiot several times a day because they want to deny 30 million people health care.

Also, only 50% of people in the US both sexes whose age indicates they get a colonoscopy do, so I hope if you and your doctor acquaitances are that age you get one, because 50% of doctors in Georgia and the US who should don't get them. They're painless, and propofol, the drug that Michael Jackson misused is used for anesthesia and it works well.

Also if you were telling BigPapasan that you have a tumor I wish you the best possible outcome, and wonder if it's been ultrasounded or CT-scanned to determine what to do next. Maybe I misunderstood.

The population of the US a few minutes ago was  314,008, 851 a few minutes ago. The CDC's official definition of an epidemic is: "The occurrence of more cases of disease than expected in a given area or among a specific group of people over a particular period of time." Since some diseases become more prevalent or lethal over time, while others become less severe, the CDC adjusts its statistical models to alter the definition of what's truly more than expected.

1) There is a lag in what gets reported to CDC and finally appears in the MMWR that comes out. Over the last 5 years up to 25,000 cases of Whooping Cough didn't get reported.

2) The deaths of the 9 kids we know about aren't viewed as a "whopping percent of the population" by their parents. They are viewed as tragedies that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

3) It's very important that children and some adults get vaccinated.  The vaccine is effective. There was an epidemic in Japan in 1979 where  In 1979, Japan reported 13105 cases of pertussis with 41 deaths after an anti-vaccine movement, and witholding vaccinations recommended by CDC is a terribly irresponsible thing to do, and I don't know any MDs, particularly pediatricians doing that.  

We have one of your  collegues on this Board who likes to upload huge .jpegs or .pngs ridiculing Bill and Melinda gates as killers who gave a long rambling patchwork of paraphrase asserting that the NIH says polio vaccines are causing a record increase of pediatric cancer over the last 6 decades. Nothing  could be further from the truth, and the investigators that feared that would happen did their work in the early 1950's.  The NIH has since debunked that myth with several careful studies in the medical literature and SV-40 has not and is not causing cancer. The polio vaccine has been tweaked since the early 1990s and the rate of complications from it (no vaccine is 100% safe just as we can't say that BBBJ is 100% safe) is down about 40% to 5 serious ones a year.  It's not the toxic poisonous monstrous plot by the government to kill large segments of the pediatric population that was depicted by your collegue her.  The NIH has a website dedicated to debunking the myth perpeatuated on SV-40, and I get the major cancer journals and there is no mention in "CA", the journal from the  American Cancer Society hq'd in Atlanta two months ago that dealt with cancer incidence and relative increases in certain cancers. Pediatric neoplasms weren't among them.

You or your advisors are incorrect in saying that "infants too young to be vaccinated" died because  the current CDC recommendations for Pertussis are these:

http://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/outbreaks-faqs.html

•Infants and children should receive 5 doses of the DTaP vaccine at 2, 4, and 6 months, at 15 through 18 months, and at 4 through 6 years. All 5 doses are needed for maximum protection. Children 7-10 years of age who are not fully vaccinated with DTaP should receive a dose of Tdap instead of waiting for the 11-12 year old check up.  See the rest of the link for recommendations for older patient groups.

*Adults and children who need to be vaccinated aren't getting vaccinated and that's the reason for the outbreaks and yes epidemics in several states.* This puts them at risk for getting whooping cough, and in the worst case scenario, dying from it.

In Washington state, where an epidemic has been declared, the numbers are staggering: 1,284 cases through early May, the most in at least three decades and 10 times last year’s total at this time, 128. Budget cuts in Washington and other states are compromising the response to this epidemic. The ER doc that heads one county where the epidemic is worst in Washington has recommended testing for Pertussis stop because of lack of funds, that if the patient has a persistent deep cough and history of exposure to another patient, they should just treat because testing for whooping cough costs $400 and delays treatment for days. Half a million has been spent on testing in the US this year,  and that buys a lot of vaccine.

In the 1920's -1940's before our time, Pertussis killed 5-10,000 Americans, but now the risk is primarily to infants, and it kills about 1% of them.

In fact most of the victims in the US currently who got or have whooping cough are between the ages of 8-12. Washington State, according to a federal study last year of kindergarten-age children, had the highest percentage of parents in the nation who voluntarily exempted their children from one or more vaccines, out of a false fear of side effects or for philosophical reasons.

Officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which sent three epidemiologist investigators to Washington last week, said the number of pertussis cases had been rising gradually nationwide for several decades, with periodic regional outbreaks. In 2010, California had its worst bout with pertussis in decades.












-- Modified on 7/24/2012 10:35:52 AM