Whooping Cough again

The parents who choose not to vaccinate their children are idiots. They need to realize the harm they are doing to their kids and to the community at large. From the Peninsula Daily News:

Number of whooping cough cases levels off on Peninsula
The pertussis outbreak of 2012 has leveled off on the North Olympic Peninsula, with no new cases reported this week in �Clallam or Jefferson counties, health officials said.

Pertussis, known as whooping cough, is a highly contagious bacterial disease that leads to severe coughing and tends to target children.

Dr. Tom Locke, public health officer for Clallam and Jefferson County, said Jefferson County still had 23 cases, and Clallam County had five, as was reported in early March.

Health officials said this year's pertussis outbreak has reached �epidemic levels� in Jefferson and five other counties: Cowlitz, Kittitas, Snohomish, Skagit and Whatcom.

Locke said the medical community has done a good job of isolating the whooping cough sufferers and vaccinating those around them.

�That's our goal: to find the cases and treat them so they're no longer infectious,� Locke said.

�If you do that, you can stop outbreaks.�

Locke said pertussis is considered an epidemic in Jefferson County because there was a �chain reaction� in its spread.

Once you get below the threshold for herd immunity, you get explosive outbreaks like this. The threshold for Pertussis is very high -- 92% to 94% and the reproduction number is also high compared to other diseases. This stuff is nasty. There is a big difference between real medicine and an ignorant parent thinking that their little snowflake should not be exposed to some nasty 'corporate' vaccine...