As I mentioned a little while ago, Pertussis is back. Whooping Cough is an issue in California and elsewhere in the US, and is causing a lot of problems. Surly Amy from Skepchick wrote an article about this entitled quite beautifully Thanks, Assholes.
In the comments, she is attacked for her stance that this is the fault of the antivaxxers. The reality is that we don’t know the cause of it just yet. Epidemics in the wild are not fully understood until they are over. That’s what makes predicting them and preparing for them such a ridiculous impossibility, and what led to everyone getting sanctimonious about the H1N1 outbreak. So it’s true that you can’t put the blame squarely on the face of the anti-vax movement. But we know that the more people are vaccinated, the less the disease is able to take root. Many people have chosen not to get the vaccination because of misinformation from the anti-vaxxers, and as a result it’s easier for the disease to take root. There may be other issues at play, but it’s hard to imagine that declining vaccinations isn’t one of the players.
That lunatic maverick Dr. Joe Mercola is on about this too. In the comments on the article, I found a link (thanks IanJN!) to an article on his site that is just hard to stomach. He says:
According to the CDC:
“The reemergence of pertussis has been attributed to various factors, including increased awareness, improved diagnostics, decreased vaccination coverage, suboptimal vaccines, waning vaccine-induced immunity, and pathogen adaptation … Pathogen adaptation is supported by several observations.”
In other words, vaccinating against the whooping cough pathogens has caused the pathogens to evolve with a more virulent strain.
Oh, Joe. That’s just a lot of forcing the data to read the way you want it to. Pathogen adaptation may or may not mean evolving with a more virulent strain. It certainly means that the pathogen has changed, but it does not by any means make the strain more virulent. I may be not clear on the science, but several observations of support for pathogen adaptation does not mean that the bacteria’s virulence factors are greater. And your statement ignores every other factor described and states that it is the vaccination process that has caused this to happen.
Dammit, Joe, you’re supposed to be a doctor, but you sure don’t seem to act like one.
It is just as scientifically valid for me to say that decreased vaccination coverage has caused the epidemic, thus making it you and your antivaxxer screech patrol’s fault. I could also say just as incorrectly (or more accurately, just as prematurely) that it was the result of waning immunity. In fact, if I wanted to be completely like you, I could say that improved diagnostics has caused the pathogens to to evolve into badgers with ice picks.
I have, as of yet, not gone for my booster shot for pertussis. This is simply due to bad planning on my end, but I’m going to arrange an appointment with my doctor for next Friday unless I can get in to see him tomorrow. I believe it’s the responsible thing to do both for herd immunity and to increase my own chances of not coming down with a disease that could (at least in theory) cost me time from work, make others around me sick, or worse. And as before, I highly encourage others to look into whether or not they feel this is a smart move (in my opinion, it is) and make the arrangements.
Jim
I should quickly make the possible correction. I’m not sure if Dr. Mercola wrote the introduction or if it comes from Barbara Loe Fisher, who wrote the rest of the post. Either way, they’re creatures cut from the same cloth.