Tag Archives: vaccines

A Bit More on Pertussis

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My story on pertussis this week didn’t focus too much on the cause of the recent uptick in whooping cough cases we’re seeing nationwide. Is it unvaccinated children? is it unvaccinated adults? something else?

Anne Polta did a wonderful examination of the question on her HealthBeat blog, and I recommend taking a look at it.

I do have to wonder if Minnesota’s recent uptick has anything to do with Andrew Wakefield’s visit. For the record, Wakefield’s “study” claiming autism is caused by vaccines was fraudulent and he deliberately falsified data for it. He is no longer permitted to practice medicine in the U.K. and his fraudulent “work” has been discredited in countless scientific fora.

North Dakota’s already seen more cases this year than it saw all year last year, but the really alarming numbers are coming out of Minnesota, where there have been 1,881 cases this year thus far.

I gathered the numbers for Minnesota’s pertussis cases for the last decade-and-change, all of which are available on the state’s Dept. of Health website. Here they are.

2012 1881 to date
2011 661
2010 1143
2009 1134
2008 1034
2007 393
2006 320
2005 1571
2004 1368
2003 207
2002 429
2001 308
2000 575

As you can see, and as I noted in my article, numbers for pertussis fluctuate quite a bit and there are plenty of ups and downs.

Yet this year isn’t just another “up.” The number of cases Minnesota has had in seven months has significantly outstripped the numbers from every other year since 2000. That’s the most recent year I had easy access to numbers for, too, so it might even go back further. I have no idea. However, this is definitely a matter for concern.

Part of the problem is that people are not vaccinating their children. Part of the problem is that adults are not getting vaccinated themselves.

I will (mostly) spare you the lecture on herd immunity and explanations of why it is critical that ordinary healthy adults stay updated on their vaccines, but I would like to note that whooping cough can be especially devastating to babies. Most people want to keep babies safe.

Health officials recommend that adults get a Tdap vaccination. People are supposed to get a Td booster every 10 years anyway, and Tdap takes the place of that, so you won’t even need any extra shots.

It’s virtually painless (the needle is ultra-tiny), most insurance companies pay for it and it’ll probably take less than half an hour. You don’t even need an appointment for it at some clinics.

And frankly, you don’t want to get whooping cough anyway. It sounds a lot like having the worst cold imaginable, and you can have it for more than six weeks. Having a minor cold for six days is bad enough for me, thanks.

There are Donut Cops?

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There are donut cops. This is a thing which actually exists. Had I realized this earlier on in my life, I may have chosen a different career track, although I’m not sure my blood pressure would’ve thanked me for it.

I have a wide assortment of other links that may or may not be of interest:

  • Logan Adams, of “It’s Good to Be in N.D.” has posted after a long hiatus. Hurray!
  • Dull and Boring are together at last, as sister communities. I’ve always thought it would be awkward to live in a town with a weird name, although being able to say “I’ll see you in Hell!” in a chipper, friendly voice would be kind of funny.
  • “The Hunger Games,” which is a great book, and its sequels feature four of the top five highlighted passages in books on Kindle, as well as eight of the top ten. The other two in the top ten are from Jane Austen. All ten of them were written, in other words, by women.
  • A mom-science-blogger calls TLC out on some vaccine-related silliness. TLC asked “why shouldn’t we vaccinate our children” as if doing so were a bad thing. Vaccinating is not a bad thing, there is no link between vaccines and autism and the paper that claimed there was was not only false, but deliberately fraudulent.
  • How do you feel about nounjectives, adjectives that become nouns? The good, the bad, the ugly and the like? Apparently some people have very strong negative feelings about them. I quite enjoy using the term “awesome” as a noun, personally.
  • Men can have sympathetic pregnancies. It’s called “couvade syndrome,” and it sounds pretty uncomfortable, although not as uncomfortable as actually having all your internal organs jammed up into your chest cavity to make room for a bonus human.

Shot Up

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We’re not lemmings.

Before I write anything else, I want you all to know that reporters are not lemmings.

In fact, I’d say that reporters are probably a little less likely than other people to do something because other people thought it was cool. We have a deep-seated suspicion of all cool things, because the cooler something is, the more uncool it will be later on. (If you don’t believe this, remember Vanilla Ice, hair crimping and snap bracelets?)

However, after my newspaper ran an editorial reminding people to get vaccinated, it seemed like a really good idea to get a flu shot, given how many people I hang around at work.

I don’t worry too much about getting the flu myself. I’m pretty healthy and ailments generally seem to hit me hard and then wander off in vague confusion as to why I’m not getting sicker.

However, at work, I meet all sorts of people. Old people, young people, happy people, sad people, and even adorable tiny babies who have the hiccups. Some of these people are inevitably going to be a little more vulnerable to the flu than I am. If I get the flu, it’s not a big deal, but if a tiny baby, a very old person, or a person whose immune system is suppressed by drugs gets the flu, it’s a whole different story. It’s dangerous.

I do not want to be the instrument of someone else’s downfall.

So when a colleague said he wanted to go get a flu shot, I said sure! And we tried to get everyone else to go too, and we did have one other taker.

Three reporters in one office waiting to get a shot. We all listened to the usual questions about whether we were allergic to eggs or had had a previous reaction to the shot, and then we each got our shots. Nobody cried or ran away from the doctor, screaming, so I think we did pretty well.

I barely felt mine. I’m pretty wimpy about needles, and I admit I was a little tense. It helped to have other folks there too, but as always, it turned out I needn’t have worried. I could barely tell when the shot went in, and I could barely tell when the vaccine went in, either.

I couldn’t even tell afterward, because this time the needle was so small I didn’t bleed.

In fact, if I didn’t a. have two witnesses and b. feel vaguely run-down for no apparent reason, I’d suspect that I hadn’t gotten the shot at all. And now it’s safe for me to be around old people and tiny babies again.

Victimizing Cancer Patients

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"Evil" is a hard word to define and a strong word to use, but it’s hard not to use it to describe people who prey on the vulnerable or helpless, from babies, to puppies, to people suffering with a potentially terminal illness.

Last night I was appalled to learn there is an entire industry that exists for the sole purpose of taking advantage of cancer patients.

I was reading Quackwatch, a highly-praised, nationally-acclaimed website dedicated to debunking pseudoscientific health claims. Quackwatch is pretty much Snopes, but for health information, and it’s run by an actual credentialled doctor. It is highly reputable.

This page, "A Special Message to Cancer Patients Seeking "Alternative" Treatments," filled me with disgust, and additionally, made me want to cry and/or break somebody’s knees. The list of questionable cancer treatments alone, some of which claim they cure 100% of all cancers, is horrific. And considering some of the "treatments" can not only not cure your cancer, but can burn off your nose (warning: ghastly, ghastly photos in this link!) or break your bones? I hesitate to use the word "evil," but surely, surely this type of quackery is it.

The worst danger in quackery, however, is that a practitioner will convince you not to use conventional medicine such as radiation, chemotherapy or surgery to fight your cancer. Some practitioners will not just give you treatments that do not work; they will actively attempt to persuade you not to use treatments that are proven to work, using arguments like these. Some of them will even claim there’s a conspiracy to suppress cancer cures.

Some of these people actually believe in their therapies and remedies, but others do not and are simply out to make a fast buck by taking advantage of people in desperate, terrifying circumstances.

If you or a loved one has cancer, concerns about immunization, or even if you simply wish to be well-informed about alternative medicine (which is good, which is bad and which is neither), please check out Quackwatch. You could save a life, or even just a nose.

More on the Seasonal Flu and Its Vaccine

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I had too much information yesterday to actually fit it all into a reasonably-sized article yesterday, so I’ll share a couple of extra tidbits here.

  • Cost: Around here, the flu vaccine will cost around $25-$30. Your insurance company may pay for part, all or none of it. Sometimes you just need to provide your insurance card. Jason Turner at GuidePoint said Medicare patients have the easiest time of anyone.
  • Businesses or Groups: The two local clinics (Sanford for sure, and I believe the Avera one too) have actually gone to several large businesses or big apartment buildings to vaccinate big groups of people. It’s not quite making house calls, but it’s pretty close. Call the clinics to ask them about it; I have no idea if there’s an associated cost or how much that cost would be.
  • Shot Clinic: Avera Worthington Specialty Clinics will have a shot clinic from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday night. Adults can just walk in, but pediatric patients should make an appointment. They’ll have a second clinic later if their supplies hold out. I’m not sure if Sanford has shot clinics too, but people at both clinics are super nice and would love to answer any questions you have.
  • Wash Those Hands: The medical professionals I talked to all emphasized hand-washing as another critical factor in fighting the flu. I did mention this in the article but decided to focus my writing on the vaccine, which took up 27 inches all by itself.
  • Misinformation: There’s a lot of misinformation out there, especially online, about the seasonal flu. Some are conflating it with the H1N1 flu variant, and others are getting into conspiracy theories about both the flu and its vaccine. Be careful what you believe and stick to reliable sources. The CDC, for example, has a lot of information on the flu for both ordinary people and medical professionals. Here’s the CDC’s section on flu vaccinations, for example. It would be very easy to get lost in the CDC’s site for hours, given how much excellent information it has.