13 March 2009

Whooping cough is there any evidence of outbreak

| skewbo
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What happened to the whooping cough outbreak reported recently for the ACT?

It was a recent news item aired inMelbourne so is there any reason for concern?

ACT Health site last reported NSW increase whooping on Jan 9 particually on the Sth Coast.

I am not tryng to panic but am concerned a report reaches Melb about the ACT and is seemingly not reported here.

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Whooping cough vaccine (boostrix) costs 45.00.

MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) is free for anyone born between 1966 – 1982.

The hardest part is getting a Doctor’s appointment to get a script for the Boostrix.

Me too, miz.

Too true Granny. Sole parents get judged and stereotyped badly. It’s extremely discriminatory for the sole parent and children of – amazing how different you are treated before and after relationship breakdown. I think this says something about society, and it’s not a good something.

Hells_Bells7410:03 am 15 Mar 09

+1 to Granny.. Know it all too well.

Peterh, unless you have been a single parent with nobody to leave the children with, and no money for a care I suggest you don’t judge others who may be in that situation.

Why do you assume everyone has a partner? Or family and friends that will help out? Why do you assume that everybody has a car?

There are plenty of reasons for things that people know nothing about simply because they haven’t experienced them.

I’m sick and tired of people making other people’s lives miserable by ill-informed judgments. Live and let live.

Granny said :

MWF said :

There is no reason to take an obviously unwell child out in public and infect other people just because you think you have no other choice.

Oh really?

How are you supposed to get them to the doctor then? Or casualty? Or pathology? Or get a prescription filled?

How are you supposed to feed the kid if you can’t get groceries?

As a single parent for nearly ten years, I can tell you that not everybody has the money or support network that provide the options necessary to leave a child at home.

‘No reason’ … quite simply the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time.

But, Granny, if you had a very ill child, I would suspect that you would be in a line at emergency, like I do, and would let groceries go till later – you can always pick up the basics at a servo, but the kids come first. no-one needs to put their kids at risk of getting worse, especially if you don’t know what it is.

My daughter was bitten by a spider, we didn’t know what type, so i took her to the calms clinic straight away, as my wife phoned for an appointment. luckily, it was a huntsman. she won’t pick them up anymore….

If the calms clinic was closed, i would be in emergency waiting my turn. if I hadn’t the fee, I would still go to emergency.

when I had my little break at broulee, down the coast, my son developed severe wheezing. I drove him to bateman’s bay hospital at 3am. he was identified with an allergy to a particular pollen, we doped him up then and there, and i drove home at 4am. never did it enter my head to wait till morning, or to see if he got better.

I drove to ensure the best level of care for my son. the milk we needed was bought at the caltex on the way home.

MWF said :

There is no reason to take an obviously unwell child out in public and infect other people just because you think you have no other choice.

Oh really?

How are you supposed to get them to the doctor then? Or casualty? Or pathology? Or get a prescription filled?

How are you supposed to feed the kid if you can’t get groceries?

As a single parent for nearly ten years, I can tell you that not everybody has the money or support network that provide the options necessary to leave a child at home.

‘No reason’ … quite simply the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time.

Woody Mann-Caruso7:59 pm 14 Mar 09

No need to guess what the F stand for.

If you’re all so terrified of catching pertussis from these reckless hooligan parents, get immunised. Ask for a clue shot while you’re there.

Oh, I’m not going to get involved in this because I’ll get too angry.

Granny said :

I actually agree with Woody. It is unfair to judge parents without any knowledge of the facts surrounding their circumstances.

If said kid has whooping cough there is EVERY reason to keep the kid at home. “Pertussis is easily spread to other people by droplets from coughing or sneezing or by direct contact with secretions from the nose or mouth.” A bit like TB really. Yummy.

There is no reason to take an obviously unwell child out in public and infect other people just because you think you have no other choice.

“Graham and Celia” sending their sick child to school is abusive. I would hope that any School principal in the ACT would phone the parents and have the child taken home. If the parents choose to leave the child alone so they can work, they are abusive parents.

Knowingly taking a child with an infectious disease out in public to infect other people and babies and adults is wrong on so many levels.

I actually agree with Woody. It is unfair to judge parents without any knowledge of the facts surrounding their circumstances.

When I was in Tasmania somebody on the bus made a comment about us taking the baby out in the rain. We had just been to visit her son in hospital after a skin graft and she doesn’t drive. She needed that like a hole in the head frankly.

It’s possible that they’re uncaring. It’s also possible that they don’t have a choice. Some coughs take a long time to clear. I had one last year that lasted nine weeks. Well, I was perfectly fine apart from that. I couldn’t put my life on hold for that long just because I would cough from time to time. If you kept a kid home from school until a cough completely disappeared they’d never get an education.

Also, because coughs seem to freshen up at night, you can keep a kid home based on how they were when they woke up and after nine o’clock in the morning there’s no reason they couldn’t have been at school.

or the kids are too sick for school but they feel that taking them to a speech therapy appointment is appropriate. poor kid is miserable, can’t learn anything new, and then you’ve just spread something fun to a new group of kids and adults

Woody Mann-Caruso9:58 am 14 Mar 09

I’m often amazed at how clueless people without kids can be about why parents are sometimes forced to do things they’d rather not. Here are some case studies:

Jenny is a single mother. She has to take her sick child to the shops with her because she needs to buy food and medicine but can’t leave little Daniel at home by himself. She doesn’t want to – she has simply chosen the lesser of two evils.

Graham and Cecelia are both casual workers – not by choice, but because it’s become the norm in their industry. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid. Their wages have not kept pace with increases in rents or the price of petrol, so they haven’t been able to ‘set aside’ money to pay for sick leave. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid. They can’t afford at-home care. They send their daughter Sarah to school even when she’s sick because they’re worried about what might happen to her if they leave her at home by herself.

It sucks, but it’s real life, not ‘lifestyle’. Maybe give people the benefit of the doubt and show a little compassion and you can let that throbbing vein in your neck go down a bit and your eye will stop twitching.

I’m often amazed at the horrible coughs kids have, out in public. They should be in bed, but there they are, in shopping centres, at school, at ski school! The cough is just wrong, the sound is just awful. But their delightful parents don’t seem to notice or care, heaven forbid the kid’s condition should interfere with their lifestyle.

I got whooping cough a few years ago, in Canberra. First doc said ‘just a virus’. Next doc (coupla days later) sent me to Woden Hosp pathology for a nasal swab and it was, indeed, whooping cough.

As an adult you don’t ‘whoop’. All I can tell you is, I felt like death, no cough medicines worked (I couldn’t decide if I had a dry or mucousy cough anyway) and I cough cough coughed for about three months. The cough is so vigorous you retch and vomit.

The kids had to have antibiotics – even though they are all immunised – as a precaution, because it is a bacterium not a virus.

No real idea how I got it, though some woman had coughed and spluttered on me in the ATM queue.

like they say, but, if you get a cold, go roll naked in the snow and catch pneumonia – they can cure that.

MWF said :

peterh said :

heard a poor little bloke yesterday with it, in woden plaza. he sounded terrible. his mum was explaining that she didn’t believe in innoculating her kids, to a couple of friends. shame that he has to suffer for her stupidity. anything that sounds that bad needs to be prevented, not to mention the obvious distress he was in…

So, poor little bloke and IDIOT mother decide it best he spread this disease to others by having a shopping trip to Woden. I ‘spose it couldn’t be helped. IDIOT mother was probably really anxious to spend spend spend all her stimulus money. I bet she had those fake nails.

how did you know?

little fella was easy to spot, he sounded like a barking seal. I didn’t give a rats for the mum, but felt sorry for the little lad. AND mentioned it to her, that maybe he needed to go to a doctor – she looked at me like I was mad. Hope he gets better.

peterh said :

heard a poor little bloke yesterday with it, in woden plaza. he sounded terrible. his mum was explaining that she didn’t believe in innoculating her kids, to a couple of friends. shame that he has to suffer for her stupidity. anything that sounds that bad needs to be prevented, not to mention the obvious distress he was in…

So, poor little bloke and IDIOT mother decide it best he spread this disease to others by having a shopping trip to Woden. I ‘spose it couldn’t be helped. IDIOT mother was probably really anxious to spend spend spend all her stimulus money. I bet she had those fake nails.

RandomGit said :

I thought it was an outbreak of tonsilitis. Anyone else here with kids have a tonsilitis episode in the last week?

Not in the last week, but the week before school started. My youngest was really ill. Very high temps, tonsils full of gunk and could barely swallow.

I get tonsilitis all teh time, yuck. I wish I’d had my tonsils out when young! Now it’s a major op so it’s not going to happen.

as for Whooping Cough, that can actually kill kids, but so many parents now opt not to have their kids vaccinated, so these diseases can run riot.

heard a poor little bloke yesterday with it, in woden plaza. he sounded terrible. his mum was explaining that she didn’t believe in innoculating her kids, to a couple of friends. shame that he has to suffer for her stupidity. anything that sounds that bad needs to be prevented, not to mention the obvious distress he was in…

Nah it’s all good.

I didn’t really tell people how bad it was.

As far as i know no connection to the singing. Hopefully i can now just get better and get on with singing….

anyone got any idea how much the booster costs?

Sorry mate I never realised it was that bad or I wouldn’t have taken the p!ss.

Is there any connection to singing? I hope not.

Oh… it’s clearing up now I think.

May have to go for x-rays next week if there’s no joy.

Gotta also check for adult onset asthma.

Hey Disp.

Nah this was a proper dose. I mean it really kicked my ass.

Short version

7 different courses of antibiotics over 8 weeks

Twice daily steroids to reduce lung inflamation

Two trips to the hospital and being barred from driving by Doc because I kept coughing until I passed out. My folks took me to the hospital because they were actually worried I was going to die. They told me that.

Believe me I wanted to play cricket. I did get one game in, but ended up back in hospital as a result.

Tonka said :

Also pneumonia.

I’m recovering for a very severe case of that.

It kicked my ass proper.

Still? Damn mate I hope it clears up soon.

I thought that was just your excuse for not having to compete with me for a spot in our cricket team 😉

No worries – I was sort of replying to take the opportunity to correct my first post.
🙂

Sorry I was being flippant sepi- I am just sick of the sniffles and the quantity of tissues I go through in a day!

Jessieduck a persistent cough can be Whooping Cough even without whooping – you can get a blood test. It probably isn’t though, if you are not feeling too bad.

– I”m not sure now if it is 10 years or 5 since a year ten Whooping Cough vaccine that you would need a booster – anyone with really young babies should ask a GP if they need one. There are ads in women’s mags currently recommending parents get vaccinated.

I’ve had a cold for three weeks but no whoops.

There is a serious Whooping Cough outbreak in NSW and one baby has died.

Parents of young children (under one) should be vaccinated with a Boostrix vaccine, to avoid passing on Whooping Cough to babies who are more vulnerable.

NSW is offering Boostrix free to parents and those who work with children.
ACT is not, but you can get the vaccination done via your GP.

You won’t need it if you are young enough to have had a vacc at school recently (less than 10 years since you were in year ten).

Also pneumonia.

I’m recovering for a very severe case of that.

It kicked my ass proper.

I thought it was an outbreak of tonsilitis. Anyone else here with kids have a tonsilitis episode in the last week?

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