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CNN reports that the number of whooping cough cases in California has officially reached epidemic proportions with 800 cases reported in the past two weeks alone. And the number of actual cases may be even higher, because past studies have shown that for every case of whooping cough that is reported, there are 10 more that are not officially counted. The public health department in California is strongly urging people to make sure their vaccinations are up to date, especially if they're pregnant. State health officials are working closely with schools and local health departments to spread the word.
But there's a vaccine for whooping cough so why is there an epidemic? According to Dylan Matthews it's hard to blame any single cause for public health problems like the recent rise in whooping cough, but it's clear that anti-vaccine activists aren't helping. Researchers at Johns Hopkins, Emory, and the California Department of Public Health found that California communities with large numbers of parents claiming "nonmedical exemptions" from vaccines from their kids (that is, parents who don't vaccinate for religious, personal, or other reasons not backed by medical professionals) were 1.73 times more likely to see outbreaks of whooping cough; another study looking at Michigan found high-exemption areas were 2.7 times as likely to experience high levels of the disease. "Unlike some other vaccine-preventable diseases, like measles, neither vaccination nor illness from pertussis offers lifetime immunity," says Dr. Ron Chapman. "However, vaccination is still the best defense against this potentially fatal disease."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaganar on Wednesday June 18 2014, @07:59PM
Just for fun I ran some numbers:
85% of those infected have the vaccine! Obviously it's not doing much! -- or is it? If 95% of the infectable population is vaccinated, but only 85% of those infected are vaccinated, then the proportion of non-vaccinated people infected is actually over three times larger than the proportion of vaccinated people. On the other hand, if 75% of the population is vaccinated, then you're actually nearly twice as likely to be infected if you're vaccinated. This is assuming independent random variables.
Of course, if I explain this to my family their head explodes, and the reaction is head-nodding or skepticism. However, without understood context the statistics never amount to anything other than propaganda. Since most won't understand the context, "facts" are no better than propaganda.