What’s everyone on about?
This is so sad – a woman in Australia refused a whooping cough vaccination when she was 28 weeks pregnant – and got whooping cough and passed it to her infant.
After giving birth, Ms Avital who had been coughing for a couple of days was told she had whooping cough which she had passed on to Eva.
She said the first few days Eva only had a slight cough and thought “what’s everyone on about?” but within two weeks Eva’s cough became “pretty scary”, similar to “horror movie coughing”.
“[She was] coughing to the point of going blue, flopping in my hands, couldn’t breathe, rushing [her] to hospital,” Ms Avital said.
Eva had to be taken to the hospital several times, once after suffering apnoea which caused her to stop breathing for three minutes.
Pertussis is like that for infants. We saw some videos of whooping infants a few years ago, and it was horrific. They keep coughing out until they have no breath left, and they can’t take any in.
A Queensland Health spokeswoman said the message behind Ms Avital’s video was incredibly important and the amount of attention it had received online was pleasing.
“Whooping cough is a terrible disease, especially for children,” she said.
“Women can get a booster vaccine in their third trimester which offers protection for babies.”
From 2014-2015, cases of whooping cough surged to 6,670 after 3,988 presentations the previous year, according to the Commonwealth’s Report on Government Services released in February.
Pertussis can kill.
And it’s at epidemic levels here in our lovely state, simply because parents are not vaccinating. Who would have thought that this could be possible, a few decades ago when vaccinations were increasing and people were seriously discussing eliminating many diseases. One wonders what other “eradicated” diseases will return to our shores.
And this is why we need to treat vaccination the way the right pretends to treat abortions… near zero exceptions. Tyranny can indeed be a strong force for good when used properly.
The anti-vax crowd should be charged with a criminal offense. Encouraging people to avoid crucial vaccinations for their children based on junk science is tantamount to practicing medicine without a license.
The reaction of the anti-vaxers to this woman’s video makes me all stabby. They’re claiming hoax, that she’s an actor and the baby is a doll … aaargh, I can’t even start on the list without steam coming out of my ears.