(no subject)
This saddens me beyond measure.
"We are facing what could be the worst year for pertussis that this state has seen in more than 50 years,” Dr. Gilberto Chávez of the California Department of Public Health said last week in a statement put out by the agency's Center for Infectious Disease. The worst news in this upsetting trend is this: We're doing it to ourselves. As far as anyone can tell, the rise in pertussis is not due to any change in the organism, or to any mysterious error among the manufacturers who make pertussis vaccines. It's due to vaccine refusal, to parents turning away from vaccines because they think the vaccines are more harmful than the diseases they prevent - or, more selfishly, because they think the wall of immunity created by other vaccinated children will protect their unimmunized ones.
Source: Whooping cough: Back, with a vengeance
"We are facing what could be the worst year for pertussis that this state has seen in more than 50 years,” Dr. Gilberto Chávez of the California Department of Public Health said last week in a statement put out by the agency's Center for Infectious Disease. The worst news in this upsetting trend is this: We're doing it to ourselves. As far as anyone can tell, the rise in pertussis is not due to any change in the organism, or to any mysterious error among the manufacturers who make pertussis vaccines. It's due to vaccine refusal, to parents turning away from vaccines because they think the vaccines are more harmful than the diseases they prevent - or, more selfishly, because they think the wall of immunity created by other vaccinated children will protect their unimmunized ones.
Source: Whooping cough: Back, with a vengeance