Study: Whooping Cough Resurgence Due to Vaccinated People Not Knowing They’re Infectious
Whooping cough has made an astonishing comeback, with 2012 seeing nearly 50,000 infections in the U.S. (the most since 1955), and a death rate in infants three times that of the rest of the population. The dramatic resurgence has puzzled public health officials. A new study published in BMC Medicine by Santa Fe Institute Omidyar Fellows Ben Althouse and Sam Scarpino reveals the source of the outbreak -- vaccinated people who are infectious but who do not display the symptoms of whooping cough, suggesting that the number of people transmitting without symptoms may be many times greater than those transmitting with symptoms. Althouse and Scarpino used whopping cough case counts from the CDC, genomic data on the pertussis bacteria, and a detailed epidemiological model of whooping cough transmission to conclude that acellular vaccines may well have contributed to -- even exacerbated -- the recent pertussis outbreak by allowing infected individuals without symptoms to unknowingly spread pertussis multiple times in their lifetimes. "There could be millions of people out there with just a minor cough or no cough spreading this potentially fatal disease without knowing it," said Althouse. "The public health community should act now to better assess the true burden of pertussis infection." Will public health officials heed Dr. Althouse's advice, or will they instead ignore the research and continue blaming whooping cough outbreaks on unvaccinated children, while continuing to push laws to force children to receive this failed, dangerous vaccine?