Oh Great, whooping cough!

[asterroc]

My Dad apparently has whooping cough, and I was apparently exposed to it while visiting for Thanksgiving. Teh intarwebs mentions that vaccination while incubating can stop it, and otherwise you can be sick AND contagious for months, so I'm going to call up my doctor tomorrow and find out if I should get a vaccination.

ETA: Turns out Dad hasn't been diagnosed yet. His doctor has been out of the office for a week (his own daughter's sick), and while Dad has a 103º fever apparently it's not bad enough to yet find another doctor or go to an emergency room... He's been partly self-diagnosing, and partly talking with a friend who is a doctor about it. If either Dad gets an official diagnosis or I experience symptoms I will IMMEDIATELY get myself to my doctor. Whooping cough would put me out of school for up to two months, either b/c I'd feel so crappy, or b/c it's so contagious.

Comments

[sarrichelle.livejournal.com]

ive heard that it was "back". i've never heard of anyone having it in my whole life until recently.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I was talking with a 70-year-old coworker today and he says he had it. I'm under the impression it was common in our grandparents' generation, then our parents all got vaccinated against it, but our generation wasn't. That and the fact that our parents' vaccinations have "worn out" are why it's making an unfortunate comeback. I really hope he doesn't have it.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

A friend in public health (the same one who explained that it was so contagious) blames the -most recent- crop of babies for the resurgence of the disease. Our generation, apparently, was vaccinated - it's in with the vaccine for tetanus and diptheria (DTP, now DTaP).

Apparently vaccinations for pertussis wear out by the end of childhood, but children have always been the primary vectors of contagious diseases. If children are vaccinated, adults won't get it. So when the babies our generation and our parents' generation were getting vaccinated, everyone was safe. Now, though, people are more wary of giving their children vaccines (due to false fears that they cause autism, or some other problem). Once there's a critical mass of unvaccinated children, those kids will get it and spread it to adults whose vaccines have worn off, which is apparently what's happening.

q10 had pertussis in college, as did a lot of other folks at my college. There was an outbreak the year before I got there.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

From doing more research, it's looking like my friend's theory is still just a theory - people don't quite know why there is an upsurge in adults. Kids seem to be protected by vaccinations as much now as earlier, implying that maybe it isn't widespread non-vaccination of kids that is causing a change. But our generation did get the vaccine.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Is there a whooping cough -only vaccine? From my research it seems there's only a combo one with tetanus and other things, and I got the tetanus (alone I believe) a month or two ago, so while I've heard that a booster can help if one's been exposed, I doubt I should double-up the tetanus shot. And I could've sworn I'd heard that children nowadays are not being vaccinated for it, so maybe that's what I was thinking before, and maybe that's causing the upsurge. *shrug*

[sammka.livejournal.com]

It doesn't look like there is a pertussis-only vaccine. That is sad. But, children are vaccinated for it, or at least the CDC is still encouraging it and lumping it in with DT. Apparently at age 11, kids nowadays were just getting a diptheria/tetanus booster, with no pertussis, but now they're adding pertussis to that booster too, so that kids will have immunity to pertussis into adolescence.