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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Unfortunately, we don't HAVE herd immunity from Pertussis -- and it is primarily due to adults with waning immunity, moreso than anti-vaxers. Both are problems.[/quote]

Yep, this. The vast majority of school-aged children in the US ARE appropriately vaccinated. (I can't speak to the problem of measles anti-vaxers in Britain.) It's the adults in our community who have waning immunity and are likely to be spreading disease, and it's actually a recognized unintended effect of mass vaccination.

Vaccination confers a lower level of immunity than actual disease does. So people who have been immunized against, say, whooping cough, have *some* immunity against the disease, usually enough to prevent infection (but not always). Someone who acquires immunity by having the disease itself has a much higher level of immunity, almost always enough to prevent re-infection....at least in the medium term.

Over the long term, all immunity, no matter how acquired, declines unless the immune system receives regular "boosters." (That's why no one is likely to be immune to smallpox, even if you are old enough to have been immunized.) One way to get an immune boost is to be exposed regularly to the disease. So, if after having whooping cough or being immunized against it, you are regularly exposed to the pertussis virus, your immune system is "boosted" and you remain protected. Alternatively, you can be immunized against whooping cough (or re-immunized), and this gives you a boost. (Thus the term "booster shot.")

Now, let's say you get immunized against whooping cough, so have a lower level of immunity against the disease to begin with, and then you live in an environment where pertussis virus is rarely circulating naturally. Your immune system doesn't get any natural boost, and your immunity to whooping cough begins to decline. Unless you get a booster shot, your immunity can decline to a level that isn't protective. What happens when pertussis is introduced into the environment? You catch whooping cough.

What we have are large numbers of adults with declining immunity to diseases they were immunized against in childhood. Many of them (most?) don't get boosters. So when pertussis circulates, they get sick. Only whooping cough in adults often isn't serious and frequently lacks the hallmark "whoop," so many people don't even realize they have whooping cough. We only recognize the problem when small children--some immunized but lacking good immunity, some not immunized--get sick.

We like to blame the anti-vaxers, but the truth is many of us vaccine supporters are at fault. When's the last time YOU had a booster shot?[/quote]

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