People asking me in shock why I did not vaccinate!!

[Nikki2ol6]

My little boy is 18 months and IS completely upto date with all his immunisations. However he has managed to catch whooping cough and has been very poorly but after 2 different anti biotics and over 2 weeks of coughing and vomiting he's a little better. People have heard the cough and looked very shocked and said OMG was he not imunised !!!! When I say he is they find it heard to believe he was whooping cough since he was imunised against it!!! Has anyone else's child caught something after having all of their injections?

I had whooping cough as a child despite being vaccinated. No idea how common it is

I had measles as a child even though I was vaccinated, I was really ill and I dread to think what would have happened if my body hadn't had a head start on fighting it. Sorry to hear your DS is so ill, hope he's properly on the mend soon.

Immunisation does not mean you don't get the diseases. When there are measle outbreaks most of the people are immunised, that is what I heard anyway.

Vaccinations are not 100% effective but as long as enough people have them it doesn't matter as there's no one to catch whooping cough from, if you see what I mean.

I'd be more interested in who has not been vaccinating to allow your child to get it. Because someone somewhere has not had the jab if your child has caught it. Poor kiddy. Hope he's better very soon with no lasting effects.

I caught measles as a child even thought I was vaccinated.

Sorry your boy is ill. The accusations must be very annoying.

In a way it's reassuring that people are openly horrified at the thought of not vaccinating.

They are not 100% and he may not have responded to the vaccine. Some ppl don't develop enough antibodies.

Also unless he got another bacterial infection on top of the whooping cough antibiotics are not going to do anything for him I'm afraid. It used to be called the 100 day cough as the cough can last for about 2-3 months

I'm a nurse so had to have my immunity checked as a student. I had to have one immunisation repeated 3 times before it worked!

As PPs have said, the vaccine is not 100% effective, and some children don't respond adequately to a vaccine.We rely on herd immunity for this reason (and for those who cannot have vaccines for various reasons). I'm sorry your son was unlucky enough to have not had the protection he should have had from the herd. I hope he's on the road to recovery now.

At four years old my DS caught whooping cough despite being vaccinated. He was briefly hospitalised and the ward sister told me that most of the children they saw with whooping cough had been vaccinated.

My DD caught measles as a baby, before she had MMR. She now has now has no hearing in her left ear.

Actually whooping cough is a bacterial infection so antibiotics do have a role to play in treating it. However the most important reason for antibiotics in this setting is to reduce infectiousness to others as quickly as possible. And as above to treat secondary infections. The prolonged cough so characteristic of whooping cough does tend to take its own time to resolve unless treatment starts very early in the illness (at which point you probably haven't thought "is this whooping cough").

The big difficulty with pertussis (the other name for the illness) is that not only is the vaccination not quite 100% effective, but it wears off later in life. And when adults get it it might be "100 day cough" or might be less serious, but is unlikely to have the "whoop" that young children get. So it continues to circulate in the population more than other vaccine preventable diseases. This is part of the reason why they've started repeating vaccination in pregnancy, and I think thought about boosting it in teenagers.

Nikki I hope your son continues to get steadily better, perhaps practise something like "Yes he was vaccinated, he's just been very unlucky".

My DD had measles despite being vaccinated. My gp told me that it doesn't prevent you getting the illness it helps your body build up some immunity towards the illness. In the event they do catch the illness they will be able to fight it better.