Whooping Cough Outbreaks

Did you know that California is currently having the worst outbreak of whooping cough in 60 years? Nine infants have died this year.

Can you guess the cause? Yeah, it’s probably the anti-vaccine crazies. The DTP vaccination rate has dropped a lot in recent years, especially in California.

Here’s an article which explains what’s happening. Wikipedia does pretty good job of explaining herd immunity and why it’s important to vaccinate a critical percentage (in this case ~85%) of the population. Once the number of parents opting out goes above the threshold, outbreaks like this should be expected.

It reminds me of the tragedy of the polio vaccine failure in Nigeria. Hard to believe it can happen in this country.