It’s Official: Anti-Vaccine Parents Are Behind Whooping Cough Outbreaks
When the world is brought to its knees by infectious diseases, blame idiocy. The Center for Disease Control has conducted research that proves that when parents don't vaccinate their children, the impact is felt far and wide.
The CDC says that whooping cough (also known as pertussis or the "100 days cough") is "a highly contagious bacterial disease that attacks the respiratory system." When someone contracts it, it starts off like the common cold. Over the next couple weeks, a severe cough develops. Eventually it becomes worse, until the person can only stop coughing when he or she tries to breathe, which sounds like a horrible, raspy "whoop." The whooping cough can last for months — hence the 100 days name — and can lead to death. In 2013, the United States recorded the highest number of whooping cough cases since 1959. There were also 20 deaths; and all were infants. Why the sudden rise in the disease? Idiot parents.
A team of experts conducted a test to prove that moronic parents causing the outbreaks was true. They analyzed areas of California with a high rate of parents who chose not to have their children vaccinated for "non-medical reasons" with areas that were impacted by the whooping cough in 2010. The results showed that people living in the areas where parents chose not to vaccinate were almost three times more likely to be located within the area with the high whooping cough outbreak. Not only that, but the risk of whooping cough was 20 percent higher inside the area where parents didn't vaccinate their kids than outside the area.
Saad Omer, an associate professor of global health, epidemiology and pediatrics at Emory University in Atlanta, says that parents who don't vaccinate fail to understand that what they do doesn't happen in a vacuum. Believe it or not, there are other people in the world, and they are impacted by your stupidity! "Not vaccinating your child is not a benign decision," Omer told US News & World Report. "It has real health consequences to the individual child and to the community."
You would think people would understand this. But they don't, especially idiots who believe that vaccines cause autism even though there isn't any proof. It's a frustrating trend that's been gaining steam among affluent and educated Americans over the years (infamously tied to media personality and anti-vaccine advocate Jenny McCarthy). It's always been belied that the recent rise in previously eradicated diseases (like whooping cough, mumps, diphtheria, etc) had been caused by the anti-vaccine movement, but the CDC report is the first official confirmation of the connection. Sadly, it also proves that we are an insanely self-centered nation.
"It's personal freedom versus public health," Dr. Kenneth Bromberg, director of The Vaccine Research Center at The Brooklyn Hospital Center, told HealthDay News back in September. "We can't always do everything we want in a society. And the issue is more complicated than what was addressed in this article. There are immune-compromised people, and people who receive their vaccines as recommended. By not getting vaccinated, they're putting immune-compromised people at an even greater risk and putting normally healthy people at risk, too."
[Image via Flickr - Ajenette]
