Pertussis

[TZ]

My older sister with Lupus has it! Fortunately it's the mild version but the doctor told her to expect to cough for 100 days. Her seven year old daughter 's school has a bad outbreak. She probably got it there from unvaccinated children!!!! This is a fairly wealthy educated state, yet we have plenty of nitwits who won't vaccinate and this puts people like my sister at risk. While I know I'm preaching to the choir here I just want to say to any wandering anti-vaxx nutters- it's YOUR selfishness that causes stuff like this and I loathe you and your dangerous idiocy with a passion! :rant: :banghead: Oh and just in case, because my sister has an autoimmune disorder she cannot have many vaccines, this is why herd immunity is so damn important!

[semillama]

1. Oh come on, it was probably an unvaccinated adult who did it

Unvaccinated children never got anyone sick, according to information from the Health forum!

:sarcasm:

[laconicsax]

2. That's because unvaccinated children never contract disease.

Which is why we don't need to vaccinate anyone.

[LeftishBrit]

3. Hope your sister is better soon!

Sad that so many people these days either don't bother to vaccinate or are ideologically against it.

[lizerdbits]

4. I hope she does well

I guess what the doc means by the mild version is Bordetella parapertussis instead of B. pertussis. I was out sick years ago (still at BREL, don't know if you were still there) with a cough so bad at times I thought I was going to throw up. That could be a sign of whooping cough, and of course I probably hadn't had a vaccine since childhood. I was planning on going to the doc on a Monday morning but the Sunday night before I wasn't breathing that well and went to the urgent care. Of course they don't take much for a diagnosis for a 'walking pneumonia', it's just listen to your chest and 'here's your Rx for the Z pack'. My mom's an ex nurse and was convinced that's what it was, but we'll never know.

[Warpy]

5. I have lupus and I caught it from a coworker

and I was sick as a dog for 6 months. Only megadosing with steroids at the end of that 6 months plus humoring the doc by taking antibiotics finally got rid of the bastard.

Whether or not you get a severe case of it is highly individual. I can't blame my coworker too much because the adult vaccine didn't exist back then.

However, it exists now and anyone who is going to be around infants or immunocompromised adults needs to get it.

And yes, I despise antivax nutters with every fibre of my being.

[rexcat]

6. The other problem with perussis is 5% of the general population...

are carriers of Bordetella pertussis. When my wife was doing her post-doc at the Univeristy of Arizona I worked in the College of Medicine Department of Microbiology and worked on pertussis for a year. I used to do literature searches for my boss. As a former pediatric clinical microbiologist I have saw a lot of pertussis in infants and young children. One of the most common causes of chronic cough in adults is pertussis. I also saw one adult female on a ventilator who was loaded with pertussis (pneumonia). It is one nasty disease.

[SheilaT]

8. You caught lupus from a coworker?

Gosh.

[Deep13]

7. Damned straight. nt