Thanks a lot, Jenny
November 17, 2013A not-too-long essay about a woman’s experience with whooping cough and why she thinks she contracted it. RTWT.
I’ve Got Whooping Cough. Thanks a Lot, Jenny McCarthy.
BY JULIA IOFFEAt this writing, I have been coughing for 72 days. Not on and off coughing, but continuously, every day and every night, for two and a half months. And not just coughing, but whooping: doubled over, body clenched, sucking violently for air, my face reddening and my eyes watering. Sometimes, I cough so hard, I vomit. Other times, I pee myself. Both of these symptoms have become blessedly less frequent, and I have yet to break a rib coughing—also a common side effect. […]
How responsible are these non-vaccinating parents for my pertussis? Very. A study recently published in the journal Pediatrics indicated that outbreaks of these antediluvian diseases clustered where parents filed non-medical exemptions—that is, where parents decided not to vaccinate their kids because of their personal beliefs. The study found that areas with high concentrations of conscientious objectors were 2.5 times more likely to have an outbreak of pertussis. […]
So thanks a lot, anti-vaccine parents. You took an ethical stand against big pharma and the autism your baby was not going to get anyway, and, by doing so, killed some babies and gave me, an otherwise healthy 31-year-old woman, the whooping cough in the year 2013. […]
As a follow-up to the essay above, Ms Ioffe wrote another brief post about her illness: Yes, I Got Vaccinated for Whooping Cough. I Shouldn’t Need a Booster, Too. That second post includes this graph (compiled from CDC data).
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Via The Dish
No Truce With Kings 
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