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.

Eldritch, not all children get it that badly.

saintly you would know if your kids had had it- the cough is very distinctive - I remember it 35 years on.

I found the coughs absolutely draining and frightening-I just could not get my breath.

And I suspect anyone with a child showing those symptoms would go to the doctor, but not every case of whooping cough is so obvious. Which is why they're only just beginning to realise just how many people are catching it, vaccinated or not.

At the time when I think ds2 had it there were a lot of news reports saying that if you had a prolonged cough lasting more than a month you should get checked for whooping cough even if you weren't whooping (although not quite sure what the point was by then as you would no longer be contagious after 3 weeks) as the cough isn't always as severe as people think.

As I said my friend's kids weren't that ill with it. We sat around discussing whether it could be, apart from the occasional whoop it was just like a heavy cold.

Thank you saintly
It is my weakness and I feel a total idiot. I am not a cotton wool mum at all normally.

Crap at illness though.

but valium - that's the point it has changed, so supposedly less whooping. And in older kids and adults the whoop is often missing. That was the point of the news reports at the time that in older children it is often milder.

My friend with the twins had whooping cough herself back in the 70's which was what we were comparing it to. Her twins were snottier, and fairly miserable but not vomiting as much as she was (I remember it well she used to have to carry tissues around with her to puke into). Her doctor confirmed whooping cough though.

For those who feel it is their right to not vaccinate, or that it is not so serious an illness to warrent the "risks" of vaccination, please read this...

shotbyshot.org/pertussis/kaliahs-story/

shotbyshot.org/pertussis/kaliahs-story/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20736473

and this

au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/6786186/researchers-warn-of-mutated-whooping-cough/

now I'm sure I remember reading years ago that mutated pertussis gave milder symptoms, but I can't remember whether I read it in something reliable tbh.

But anyway, having seen confirmed whooping cough fairly recently I can understand why it might take a while to get to the doctor, especially if a mild case.

ThePleaser what a truly, truly sad story. My DC are vaccinated, irrelevant to that poor, poor woman and her family. Thank you for highlighting this, hopefully some people who have chosen to not vaccinate may have second thoughts after seeing that article.

That's a very sad story the pleaser - but sort of demonstrates the problems now. She caught whooping cough from her mother, presumably because her mother's immunity had waned. Whooping cough is harder to identify in adults and older children because it is usually milder so they spread it far and wide not realising they have it (after all they were vaccinated as kids). Until recently there was no pertussis vaccination even available for adults (risk of side effects was too great), but adults didn't generally get it because they'd developed immunity as children which was then boosted with each outbreak. Now there are far more adult cases

Here's some UK figures which points out that the surge in cases is from adults and teens.

It's a problem certainly. (And imo may well begin to happen with things like measles - already has with mumps - as no adult boosters are given over here).

www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Whooping-cough/Pages/Introduction.aspx

whoops forgot the link

And you know if the public health officials are going to sort out the problems with whooping cough (and mumps) they are going to have to accept that the protection offered by jabs given to young children is not lifelong, and that they'll have to introduce boosters if they don't want outbreaks. The whooping cough case also demonstrates that they really need to keep an eye on whether vaccinations introduce a selection pressure to mutate (this seems to have happened) and whether therefore the vaccinations need to changes.

Blaming people who haven't vaccinated their children won't stop outbreaks when a lot of the people going down with it have been vaccinated.

Thankyou MN!
Have just read this thread with interest, and have finally pieced together what's been wrong with us!
I'm now convinced that we've all had bloody whooping cough without knowing it. Started at school nursery with DD3, then down went DD2, then DD1 and I had an awful cough but nothing else, and DP was quite ill. Had DD3 and DD2 to the doctors when their temperatures were sky high for days, anti-B's given straight away, but with no mention of what it was...
I thought I was being sick after awful bouts of coughing because I'm pg, pulled stomach muscles etc. DP is only just better after 3 sets of Anti-B's (that I now know won't have helped much if it was whooping cough), and about 2 months later.
About 1/3 the school was off with a horrible cough, so why wasn't anyone diagnosed? We have all been vaccinated, so maybe we didn't get it as badly??
My DD's weren't 'whooping' (but I was - why didn't I think?), but it was an awful cough. I'm so glad we all stayed home feeling rough, so hopefully didn't spread it about much.
Sorry to go off topic, but thanks for all the useful info.

Sorry to hear you've all been so unwell knitting (although the bright side is you will hopefully now have a decent dose of immunity).

Only 50% of children with whooping cough whoop, retching and sickness is a better predictor. Can you be tested now?

all i would say is whooping cough is on the rise alarmingly in the uk, the vacination does not stop you catching it, no i am not an anti vacinate person, it does however prevent u getting sever whooping cough, but you do catch a mild version, on the vacination debate, i would vacinate even if it did cause autisum, i would rather have an autistic child than a child who has passed away, the people this affects the worst is those children not old enough to have the jab like my daughter who passed away last year due to whooping cough.

Regardless of whether anyone was vaccinated or whether the friend's children had whooping cough it is totally irrisponsible to take a child with a cold / flu / RTI to play with an asmatic child.

YANBU - I hope your little one is well soon.

Hope he is better soon. This permanently damaged my mum's lungs when she got it at a young age.

When was the change made in UK to the acellular form of the vaccine?

The old one was the one that should never be given beyond infancy, the new one apparently can, so did it hppen with change of guidelines? And when was that?

There was a documentary a few weeks ago about vaccinations and a couple who lost their 5 week old daughter to whooping cough.

There are outbreaks all over the country, especially in places where less children have been immunised

There was a news report yesterday about a surge of cases, however I wonder how much is because doctors are diagnosing Whooping Cough again. It wasn't diagnosed for months about 10 years ago when a friend's DD had it, and then only diagnosed after a Doctor friend who had worked in Africa diagnosed it. Then about 5 years ago there was a "nasty cough" at Pre-school, three months later there was a news report about a lingering cough actually being Whooping Cough (but the kids were never diagnosed).

I feel so sorry for your poor DS op. I've had whooping cough for weeks, it's still lingering on, it's horrible as an adult, let alone as a small child. I was vaccinated as a child and don't know anyone else who had got it, so must have got it in a public place.
The doctor firstly refused to be believe an adult could have whooping cough, even though I had all the symptoms, until I had a severe coughing bought in front of her. I'm sure there is a large amount of it going undiagnosed.

It's not really about the vaccinations though, it's the fact that she didn't mention the illness when she knew her children were playing with a child with asthma, surely?

That's what I'm not clear about tabulahrasa, because it sounds as if the OP didn't notice a cough as she only says her friend said they had an awful cough. And a full blown case of whooping cough is fairly recognisable (mild cases less so, so especially in adults). When my 4 month old was exposed I met with my friend and we both started out thinking her children had a really heavy cold and horrible cough, as the day went on the whoop started and we both said around the same time that it sounded like whooping cough (and she had it confirmed a few days later). I can understand not wanting an asthmatic child around any respiratory infection, but I guess that gets pretty difficult to do. If the whoop stage had passed so the OP didn't see coughing herself then I guess the kids might have been more than 3 weeks post infection so not contagious anyway.

Agree with Japonica and mummytime there's probably a lot undiagnosed, and that of course means it's more likely to spread. I doubt many people would take their kids out and about if they knew they had whooping cough, but most people wouldn't keep their child at home for just a cough so diagnosis is really important. And can you imagine phoning your boss and saying you were staying home because you had a lingering cough? Whereas if your doctor diagnosed whooping cough you probably would stay home.

Design-wise, this looks like a really rubbish site but is actually by a general practice doctor who was awarded a PhD for his research on whooping cough.
www.whoopingcough.net/
It includes sound files and videos of the cough. It says much goes undiagnosed, partly because the paroxysms may be hours apart and doctors rarely see one in a 10 minute appt. Thus they tend not to believe in the severity of the attacks.
A lot of interesting info, though ultimately there seems little you can actually do about it.