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

[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.