Hug me I'm Vaccinated

"Look its Patient Zero, TAKE' HER DOWN!"

Are you noticing lots of people coughing, spluttering, complaining of sniffles and worse SNEEZING? Everyday on the train into the city a half a dozen people in my carriage release a mighty, droplet-riddled - ACHOO, and I think

 'is this it? is this Patient Zero of the next great pandemic?' 

What is the correct etiquette in this situation? pass them a hanky, douse them in disinfectant, yell at them "way to to doom the planet sneezy."

This week saw 4197 cases of Whooping Cough (Pertussis) since the start of the year in Victoria. This is twice the numbers for the same period in 2010. The Chief Health Officer of Victoria provided these figures

In 2008 there were 1673 cases
2009 there were 3736
2010 a total of 6736

anyone else spotting a trend here?


My reason_for_living, a mild mannered academic at a major metropolitan university, (that's a fib she's never been mild mannered) was notified of a case of diphtheria in the university. That's right

DIPHFRAKINGTHERIA

The New South Wales health department describes this disease as

As a contagious and potentially life threatening bacterial  infection, a common cause of death in children up   until the 1940s but has now almost  disappeared in Australia due to immunization     

I expect Tetanus to start rearing its ugly jaw locking head any day. 

If only there was some effective regime we as a society could adopt to prevent these terrible disease from ravaging across our civilization? There is its called VACCINATION.  Perhaps a schedule like the one listed here given to all children. Its called the National Immunization Program Schedule. So why isn't it working? I tell you why its because ....

Immunization is a victim of its own success, we don't see children suffering from these diseases anymore so we have become complacent. Which allows the efforts of the deliberately miss-titled Australian Vaccination network to spread lies and fears of the risk of immunization. This organisation headed by the appalling Meryl Dorey whose rants against immunization are so bizarre, on one occasion likening a vaccination of a child to rape, leads me to suspect she may suffer from some form of twisted Piquerism. Then there is the work of ex Doctor Andrew Wakefield whose fraudulent study proposing a link between the UK MMR vaccine and Autism lead to a boom in cases of measles. Plus the Tree-change, we live in a fairy tale mind state in rural New South Wales and don't believe in Western Medicine type. 


When I took the_weapon in to get this years flu shot I discovered the booster for tetanus I got after my motorbike accident only covered me for Tetanus and Diphtheria. So I paid the $40 for the booster and received the most painless vaccination ever. At the moment the health department is offering the booster free to new parents in an effort to get this outbreak under control and reduce the risk to new borns.

I'd like to think in some office in the Health Department there is a big transparent plasma screen like the one you see in all the high tech movies, with a outline of the state, highlighting the reported infections. Down one side a series of numbers recording the tally and plotting against previously calculated intervention points which automatically trip increasing levels of free immunizations.


At this level the standard childhood immunizations,  at this level parents of newborns, now people working with children, the vulnerable and finally in a desperate attempt to stop the spread free to everyone. 


Of course its not like that, and I worry that our health services are desperately under funded and people don't realize the risk or appreciate how long it took us to reign in these terrible scourges and how this brief respite in the history of civilization could end and we could return to tiny babies gasping for breath due to whooping cough.  


We shouldn't have to go backwards, we shouldn't have to learn this stuff all over again.