From discussions among vaccine opponents, three arguments against Pertussis (Whooping Cough) vaccination are commonly advanced. The first is that the protection afforded by the vaccine is short-lived. The second is that Pertussis deaths were already declining rapidly when the vaccine was introduced in the 1940's. The third is that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease.

The first argument is self-defeating to a faction that is reflexively skeptical of any vaccination campaign. Pertussis doesn't confer life-long protection from the disease; It doesn't advance one's argument to then complain that Pertussis vaccine doesn't provide long-term protection! Furthermore, complaining that the Pertussis vaccine does not work for very long actually weakens the anti-vaccine position: This is the complaint of those who generally support vaccines! What is called for by such an argument is an improved vaccine or an improved vaccine schedule, not elimination of vaccination altogether. In fact, Pertussis boosters for school-age children are currently recommended, and are offered to middle-schoolers in Massachusetts.

The second argument is illustrated in the graph downloaded from HealthSentinel.com, a site that is generally critical of normative Western Medicine and generally complimentary of Alternative Medicine. The implication HealthSentinel means to convey is that Pertussis deaths would have continued to decline asymptotically had the vaccine never been introduced.

Even if the argument were true, it is undermined by the superimposed black line taking its own asymptotic dive. This line demonstrates the fall in Pertussis cases following the introduction of vaccine. It is far more difficult to explain a fall in cases by causes other than introduction of vaccination campaigns. Indeed, there are well-documented spikes in yearly incidence that correlate with dips in vaccination rates. As Pertussis is transmitted only between people, it stands to reason that increased vaccine coverage will have at least some impact on mortality. If no one gets it, no one dies of it. And a vaccine that decreases the morbidity of an infectious disease can't be all bad.

What kind of morbidity are we talking about?

From 1997-2000, one out of every five children with Pertussis was hospitalized, including more than half of all infants under six months. Ninety percent of Pertussis deaths occurred in infants.

Younger children are more likely to suffer complications from Pertussis. The most common complication is secondary bacterial infection, most often pneumonia. Most of the infants who die of such complications die of pneumonia.

Infants are also more likely to suffer seizures and encephalopathy, probably due to the reduction of oxygen supply to the brain. This last complication is especially poignant given the third anti-Pertussis vaccine argument (that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease). The original, whole-cell Pertussis vaccines were implicated in precisely the type of brain injury they were designed to prevent. That the relative risks involved weighed heavily in favor the old vaccine did not lessen the intensity of the "rage of the people".

Following introduction of the relatively safer acellular vaccine the intensity of the rage only seemed to intensify. Or perhaps this is because the appearance of the DTaP coincided roughly with the birth of the internet.

The Chinese call Pertussis "The Cough of One Hundred Days". For older children and adults with Whooping Cough, all you get is a truly nasty cough that lasts three months. Nobody dies. Nobody gets hospitalized. Nobody gets encephalopathy.

So you may miss a little work: no big whoop?