Living-Deliberately.com

• First today is my little Clara’s birthday. Seven years! I probably would have had combined birthdays for she and Celia; I think about it everytime I pass the butterfly party plates at the store. They’d have been thick as thieves. It’s a beautiful day today and that’s all I can say.
• It’s ironic that the day after I blog about the kids wanting a dog, one shows up. Not a demon-dog either, like the other ones in our past! This little thing looks like Bosco, the terrier mutt of my childhood. He is full of curly matted hair and and as near as we can tell, the neighbors moved out and left the dog behind. He loves the kids and plays well with them and since they aren’t allowed to name it, they call it “Boy”. Last night it slept on our front porch and barked at anyone walking past, showing he’s claimed us as his family. Thing is….the landlord said no pets. So, unless we can plead for mercy, I’ll have to take it to the pound. We’re giving it a week.
• Our cold turned out to be a little more than that. It’s Whooping Cough. I’m pretty upset about this one. I know immunizations is a testy topic with some people so be forewarned. If you are someone who thinks the CDC and shots are wise, infallible things, stop reading!

One gets immunized for Whooping Cough with thier DTP shot. WC is the Pertussis part of the combo shot. It’s been a controversial shot for years; before the switch was made to an alternative with fewer side reactions (DTaP) the DTP shot was the cause of numerous brain injuries. The CDC even has an Immunization Injury Compensantion that I understand comes from the court cases and incidents of injury from the vaccine. In that light, it seems rational to consider the actual diseases horrible things and *immunity* a desired thing. After all, if otherwise healthy children were being injured for this shot and the protection it was suposed to provide, it must be a pretty horrible disease and immunity quite the value!

When my kids start coughing, I never think “whooping cough”. I assumed it was pretty much out of circulation, living in a civilized country where people get shots for that kind of thing. Two of my kids had the origional DTP. One of them got the alternative DTaP. And one of them is too young for the shot and I stretch shots out until they are 5 anyway; I’m not comfortable with multiple shots at one time.

But my baby’s cough was something I’d never heard before. It sounds gaggy and like he’s going to vomit. He turns blue, he stops breathing. He WHOOPS. A friend suggested that’s what it is and I headed to the internet to do some reading. It didn’t take long.

A quick google search turns up the biggies. Info boards put up by mainstream sites, the CDC, Mayo Clinic, drug companies. Nothing obscure or weird. Here’s what I found:

In the developed world, where most children are immunized, whooping cough most commonly occurs in adults!

• Many cases occur in adults and older children because protection from the vaccine lasts only 5 to 10 years after the last dose.
• Pertussis vaccine is used to protect young infants from severe disease and death, but even vaccinated persons can get less severe pertussis infections.

Since then, however, the incidence of whooping cough has been increasing, primarily among children too young to have completed the full course of vaccinations and teenagers whose immunity has faded.

With proper care, most teenagers and adults recover from whooping cough without complications. Whooping cough is more serious in children, especially infants younger than 6 months of age.
So, basically, it’s thought that the vaccination program is a good one because it reduces the intensity of the older people getting Pertussis. One site said it reduced the liklihood that babies would be around it, but apparently not if all it does is make for milder symtoms! Babies and elderly are most at risk from intesne infections. In fact, boosters are needed every 5 years. How many adults do YOU know that go in for a Pertusis booster? In other countries, children get this and they have lifetime immunity! So all our shots are doing (in best case scenarios) are putting off incidents of whooping cough until people are older. It’s just a delay. And, in the worst case scenario, children are being harmed from the vaccine itself. I’m thinking about those poor children and parents whose lives were completely changed, for a vaccine that doesn’t even really make people immune.

Something similar is going on in the chicken pox realm. Sure, the vaccine is keeping down incidents of pox. But guess what is also from the same strain? Shingles. So, whereas someone who gets pox natually is immune for life from future pox *and* shingles, the rate of shingles sufferers is reportedly going UP. That’s because the vaccine doesn’t surpress the shingles for life and they have outbreaks in adulthood because they didn’t have a chance at childhood immunity.

They say Whooping Cough is the “100 Day” cough. We won’t be going anywhere for quite some time yet; it’s very contagious and there are little babies in our church. I’m glad my kids will be natually immune now and how ironic it is that yet again, it’s not due to thier shots.

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