To think friend was irresponsible to spread whooping cough around?

[Monkley]

DS (3) who is asthmatic and have a very low immune system has just be diagnosed with whooping cough, he is so ill I've been in tears (he has been vaccinated)

I have friend who is against vaccinations and therefore didn't vaccinate her three DC's which I have never had a problem with until now. Our children play together and a few weeks ago she mentioned (after a day of DC's playing together) that all hers had terrible coughs like she'd never heard before which had lasted over a month. She had given them homeopathic remedies but not been to the doctor.

I am convinced DS caught whooping cough from them and I do realise how unreasonable that sounds but I just feel she's been really irresponsible.

Homeopathy is such a load of bollocks. I can't believe that in this day and age of information people can still be so stupid.

Those poor kids won't get better without proper treatment.

And your poor DS. I hope he feels better soon.

She may not have caught whooping cough from them. There is a lot of whooping cough around at the moment and a lot of evidence that it is spreading via vaccinated individuals.

I started a thread linking to an article about this last week:

www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/03/us-whoopingcough-idUSBRE8320TM20120403

There's been quite a lot of discussion in the UK for the last 10 years or so about the (lack of) effectiveness of the whooping cough vaccination. Back in 2002 a paper was published showing that the vaccine no longer protected that well because whooping cough itself has mutated. I haven't followed it particularly closely but if you google you will see quite a bit from the last few weeks about it spreading via vaccinated individuals. Adults in particular pass it on as it's harder to recognise in adults so they just have a cough that lasts for months without realising they actually have whooping cough (and why would they realise given that in the majority of cases they will have been vaccinated).

oh bugger

www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/03/us-whoopingcough-idUSBRE8320TM20120403

Always forget to tick the box

Your poor ds. I hope he feels better soon. He has been very unlucky considering he has been vaccinated.

Oh they should get better. Unless you see a GP very early in the infection (in which case they will prescribe antibs as that supposedly reduces the risk of it spreading) they don't prescribe anything particular for whooping cough anyway.

Actually monkley that's another point, if you saw your friend 3 weeks after the cough started it won't be them that passed it on as it's no longer contagious however much they're still barking - only contragious in the first three weeks (unless antibs are given in the first week I think in which case it stops being contagious 5 days after antibs given- something like that).

Oh sorry the 'oh they should get better' was referring to the friends children, I know OP's son is very poorly at the moment.

TBH if your friend knows that your child has a low immune system then she should be careful about when you meet. If you think she is a bit gung ho then just ask her each time you meet whether her children are well.

It's irresponsable all round to not have your children vacinacted.

We have eliminated diseases in the UK, because we are vacinated against them.

If she isn't understanding about how conventional medicine is needed, at times, then i wouldn't trust her to fully take on board what having a low immune system means for your DS.

I am very much in favour of 'alternative therapies', but they have their place.

saintly- the three children could be re-passing it to each other, so are continually infectious, especially around a compromised immune system.

But birds the recent research is showing that whooping cough is spreading via vaccinated individuals anywa.

They can't re-pass it because once they've had it then they'll be immune. They'll be infectious for the three weeks following the start of each illness, but child B who caught it from child A can't pass it back to child A as child A will have immunity.

OP did you hear them coughing? DS2 was around two children with whooping cough when he was 4 months old, and after a few hours I said to my friend 'er your twins sound like they have whooping cough', she said something along the line of 'I was just thinking that', but it was pretty obvious because they were doing the whoop and she had it confirmed a day later. I'm fairly sure I remember reading somewhere that the new strain of whooping cough, that the vaccination doesn't work against anyway, is less whoopy. But I'd have to search.

Hope your son is better soon.

However, how can you say they wouldn't have passes it to him if they had been vaccinated? Your DS is proof that having the vaccine is not foolproof.

Did she actually say her children have whooping cough?

Here look here's a recent (somewhat sensationalised) report

www.healtharticlesforkids.org/1224/new-whooping-cough-strain-threatens-outbreak-in-children/

But there were papers published on this back in 2002 (I don't the time to search now) saying much the same in slightly less OTT terms.

I do have a problem with people not having their children vaccinated. It seems to me they are exploiting the fact that the vast majority of people do vaccinate to take advantage of the herd immunity of the population as a whole.

I do have a problem with people not having their children vaccinated. It seems to me they are exploiting the fact that the vast majority of people do vaccinate to take advantage of the herd immunity of the population as a whole.

10 years is a long time in medical research!

OP, I really hope your son makes a swift recovery - I had a childhood friend who had whooping cough and it was just horrible - she was off school for ages.

But girl - in the case of whooping cough it's spreading anyway.

www.kpbs.org/news/2010/sep/07/whooping-cough-vaccine-working/

If you google you'll find that that States and Australia have both had big outbreaks in the past couple of years and in both cases vaccinated children were being affected. Most seem to think that this is as a result of the switch from whole cell vaccine (which is more dangerous) to aP which has fewer side effects and triggers fewer seizures but isn't as effective. Plus mutation of the bacteria that causes whopping cough. The UK was about the last country in the work to switch to aP so that may be why we haven't had a large outbreak here to date.

Oh FFS

www.kpbs.org/news/2010/sep/07/whooping-cough-vaccine-working/

Don't stress out about where it came from. There's a lot of it about. DD and DH have bothhad it recently, DD was vaccinated.

girlpancake I agree- its the relying on herd immunity that gets my goat too.

OP, I do hope your son gets better soon.

As others have said, it is quite possible that your friend (admittedly barking re the homeopathy!) knew that her dc were out of the contagious period, you do carry on whooping for ages afterwards.

Interestingly, when we had a similar problem round here with (vaccinated) children getting it, MiL who was a childminder for years said that pre-vaccine days all her kids got whooping cough, post vaccine, all her kids got 'a nasty cough with a whoop that couldn't be whooping cough because they'd had the jab'. And that at least pre-vaccine days parents looked out for it and kept them home. TBH after hearing the kids here I'm 90% sure I had it when I was about 17, I had a horrendous cough for months including the whoop that half the time made me throw up, but of course didn't think of w/c because I'd had the jab . . .

It does seem appalling to allow 3 young children to have a horrendous cough for over a month and not take them to doc. Regardless of whether it was actually whooping cough, they could very well have had a chest infection which untreated could have caused pneumonia.

My DCs had a cough which lasted 3 and a half months (both of them, it was a couple of years ago now). In that time, I probably had them to the doctors 8 times to make sure they were OK/get meds if needed.

I am sorry your DS is so ill. I hope he gets better soon. Vaccination is a difficult issue in some cases - my DCs (autism in family) have had all vaccines apart from MMR which they have had singly - but my DD hasn't had the mumps vaccine because there aren't any vaccines left. My DS is old enough to have had the mumps vaccine when it was around. But I do think that on balance a healthy child with no contraindications shoudl have all the baby vax incl. whooping cough.

(Obviously it is still better to vaccinate even if it isn't 100% guaranteed, has to be better than nothing!)

@saintly. I read the linked articles, thanks for that. The first one is serious and interesting - it would appear that whooping cough vaccines do not give permanent cover, but only for the first few years.

The second one, however :

slightly hysterical tone, tick

claims for "studies have shown that" but no reference, tick. (Whatever your point of view, there is an oddball institute, generally in the States, which has produced a study supporting it. of course, these studies )

a very worrying claim for which no evidence is produced (that vaccination is not only less effective than we thought but is actually creating epidemics), tick

a worrying irrelevant data point, tick (unless whooping cough vaccine was introduced in 2011 the increase in whooping cough in one county between 2011 and 2012 tells us very little about whooping cough vaccine.)

Not taking that one overly seriously to be honest, it's a bit dihydrogen monoxide ish. Not to say that it might not be true, if you've anything more convincing I'd be interested to see it.

Just read your third article, I thought that one was good as well.

UANBU
As others have said there is a lot of Whopping Cough about.
But not vaccinating, not taking DC to the GP when they've been ill that long and using homeopathy
Sorry I have very little time for non vaccinators and non for homeopathy.

Can sympathise more with not going to the GP, after years of it's a virus I don't often.

However, DD does have a blue inhaler that stops her coughing for weeks when she gets a could,

Interesting piece on radio 4 last week, if you google whooping cough, medical matters there was a pod cast.

Seems it peaks every 11 years and Drs don't recognise mild cases in vaccinated DCs.

I caught whooping cough from a friend a few years ago. She passed it to her partner, who passed it to his parents. I passed it to my partner, parents and brother. Apart from my parents, we were all vaccinated. Since it's contagious before you show any symptoms, it's very easy to pass on, so your ds could have got it from anywhere I suppose.

I hope your ds feel better soon, it is a horrible illness.

I remember having whooping cough when I was 4 as my mother refused the vaccination as there were concerns about it at the time (this was in the mid seventies)

It was horrible, I would cough and cough until I was sick but fortunately escaped with no lung damage.

You friend should take her children to the doctor just to ensure their lungs are ok.

Sorry to hear about your wee one, op. I have vaccinated all my children and am very impatient with people who don't (unless they have a medical reason) as there are children at DD's nursery who are immune suppressed, and recently there was (yet another) case of measles.