Between January 1 and February 14, 2024, the Institute for Public Health of Republic of North Macedonia registered 28 cases of whooping cough (pertussis), mostly in unvaccinated babies. This is more than twice the total the number of cases in the previous five years (2019–2022) which amounted to 9.
Epidemiologists warn that children who haven’t been vaccinated should not go to kindergarten to avoid epidemics that threaten the health and life of both children and seniors.
According to Panovski, the misinformation and disinformation around vaccines that was rampant during the COVID-19 pandemic brought about the fear of vaccines and lack of trust, which increased the number of anti-vaxxers. “Skopje has the lowest percentage of vaccinations, specifically in the urban municipalities Centar and Karpos. The anti-vaxxers caused a great deal of trouble,” he says.
actually I have seen whooping cough in the USA, twice: Both in kids who didn't get the vaccine because of health problems (hospitalized) that delayed their routine shots.
Both were very sick, and what alerted me to one was the high WBC...the other was sick and I sent her to ICU and they were annoyed that it was not from her primary health problem (severe GEReflux with recurrant pneumonia, but just whooping cough).
So where did they catch it? Most of the kids had had the DPT vaccine back then. But I suspect that the nasty chest cold with terrible cough but not high fever in my adult patients was probably whooping cough...
Of course I also saw some cases in Africa. So now with the hysteria (rightly or wrongly) about covid vaccine, we will be seeing these common diseases again because parent won't get their kids the routine shots. We saw this after the Dengue vaccine debacle here in the Philippines.
sigh.
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