www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-01/whooping-cough-epidemic-cases-surging-australia-superbug-vaccine/104023220
Australia on track for worst year of whooping cough since 2016 as cases surge across the country
newsVaccines should be free.
They are for many people
Elimination of a disease requires that a substantial fraction of the population is vaccinated.
"Many people" doesn't quite cut it.
It's only free to:
children aged 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 18 months and 4 years
adolescents aged 12-13 years through school-based vaccination programs
pregnant women (ideally between 20-32 weeks)
If you cant afford the $60 ish it costs, you could apply to your gp for a discount or a free vaccine im sure
Its not just a money issue sadly
It's not a matter of it being affordable, it's a matter of maximizing the number of people who take it up.
Of course we'd also want an education campaign and GPs recommending it.
Except it probably costs $60 to go to your GP to even ask.
You can get it through the chemist or alternatively many GPs have nurse services that cover vaccinations at a much cheaper cost.
I'm not disputing the cost being a concern, I'm just highlighting that people can save a few bucks and get the DTaP vaccination for $20-$30 instead of $60-$100.
It's $50 at all the chemists we checked this year.
According to google majority of vaccines are free for anyone who holds a medicare card.
But yes, if your gp doesnt bulk bill, youll be charged something to see them.
There are plenty of people who don't have a Medicare card that would struggle to front up $100 right now to get two adults vaxed.
Just because you are comfortable financially doesn't mean everybody else is. The fact is, most adults have to pay for their vaccines.
Cost is a barrier to entry, doubley so when times are tough.
Im not well off. I have a medicare card & i cant afford a gp that doesnt bulk bill.🤣
And medicare card holders🤣
According to google its free if you have a medicare card
I just put in a link to the Oz Government website: it's only free to a limited selection of people.
Again, a quick google search confirms catch up vaccines are free for adult medicare card holders
Not just these groups
Boosters for dtap don’t count as catch-up.
Catch up is only for missed vaccines that you should have received under 18 but didn’t for whatever reason.
it's not even free for fathers. we spent years locking down and vaccinating to save boomers but they won't even fund vaccines to save babies
It's free in Vic for fathers, I got it only 2 years ago. If you want that in your state petition your local representative to do the same as Vic.
Well that sucks it is no longer free.
This is awkward. I had a baby 2 months ago in Vic. It's no longer free.
Well someone should have informed my GP of that, because it wasn't free for me. The Victorian health website seems to reflect that, so it might be a recent change.
I had no idea, that is so stupid and frustrating.
You have a medicare card?
Of course I do. Still doesn't make it free anymore.
This is recommended for ages 50 and over if you received the prescribed courses as a child, for those interested.
Anyone know the cost? Or does it vary depending on if you get it at GP vs pharmacy for example?
They're about 50-60 bucks
You can get it at your local pharmacy, you might need to make an appointment, for about $60. Otherwise GP plus $40ish dollars.
I would help if the doctor said hey there is this vaccine / booster you might want instead of letting it slide
Oh man I remember my mum getting weird about it when a family friend requested the same thing.
Fast forward to my children being born and we were super hard on it, no vax no visit. Luckily mum had come around by then.
I can’t help but feel it’s contrarianism on the part of some people. They resent literally anyone being able to set rules or boundaries and react negatively.
I could just be projecting my own experience with elderly relatives though 😅
I can’t help but feel it’s contrarianism on the part of some people. They resent literally anyone being able to set rules or boundaries and react negatively.
I have a terrible habit of pushing back when people try to force me to do things yet I get all my vaccines.
I know people who are contrarian like this. I agree that they have a right not to do certain things but those decisions come with consequences. Apparently it's unfair if people don't want to hang out with Typhoid Mary.
I actually didn’t know about boosters. I’ll go get my fucking boosters.
Your GP can actually run a simple blood test to determine which ones you need - I did this recently when my stepdaughter was pregnant. Found out I needed the whooping cough/diphtheria booster as well as Hep B. Worth doing as particularly for us older folk, vaccines have improved since we were little.
Modern medicine is really amazing when you think about it.
You don't need a blood test to check pertussis (whooping cough) levels, just get the vaccine if it's due.
Fuck yeah!!!
I got mine 3 years ago in 2021 before my nephew was born.
Yeah. I think the common way of thinking is that if you were vaxxed as a child, then you can't ever get a disease or pass it to others.
Get boosters peeps. ❤️
I just brought my grandchild home from hospital yesterday, and my daughter is refusing point blank any family or friends to visit without documentary evidence of vaccination. And I support her 100%
Good on her!
Y our daughter is sensible
I had whooping cough as an adult (I was up to date with my boosters fwiw) and it was horrendous (I had a coughing fit so bad I fractured a rib at one point and often used to throw up after coughing fits). I couldn't imagine how terrible this would be for a baby - your family are morons.
Are those the ones that last close to 10 years? I got one when my niece was born, I’m assuming it was that
The absolute TANTRUMS grown adults had at being asked NOT to put a newborns life at risk were fucking wild.
People will still throw a tantrum when you point out that COVID literally went nowhere, and that anyone going out in public without masking up is being selfish and reckless.
Ugh. I don’t seroconvert the whopping cough vaccine. I’ve had whooping cough twice, and the vaccine multiple times. Every time I get my blood tested it shows I carry no immunity. Hooray.
You are the reason why herd immunity is needed. Vaccinated people help protect you.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I'm shit out of luck for Mumps.
MMR, Measles, Mumps Rubella vaccine and only 2/3 worked on me.
Please get vaccinated. You will all be helping protect my testicles.
I'm the same! I have always kept up to date with my boosters but whooping cough and measles I do not retain my immunity to for some reason. Whooping cough is horrendous and I'm hoping I don't get it again - last time I was ill for five months with it.
I didn't seroconvert pretty much any of my childhood vaccinations. Had to get them all again including the full hep B course when I started medical school. Second time worked fine though. Sure am glad there wasn't a lot of measles and pertussis around when I was a kid.
In short: Australia is heading towards a whooping cough epidemic with cases spiking across the country.
Researchers say 2024 is on track to become the worst year for the potentially deadly disease since 2016.
What's next? People are being advised to check their vaccination status and get a booster if in regular contact with babies.
Lots of my kids classmates have caught it this year. All vaccinated. From what the school has said the vax just decreases the severity, doesn’t prevent you from getting it. My mate whose daughter caught it was shocked at how sick she was. DoH told her it is absolutely rampant in the South west at the moment and they were expecting a big spike. This was prob 10 weeks ago.
From this government's website :
"Vaccine effectiveness in children
Pertussis-containing vaccines protect against severe and typical pertussis. They provide substantially less protection against milder coughing illness.25,26 DTPa vaccines with 3 or more antigens have vaccine efficacy of:26 71–78% for preventing milder symptoms of pertussis (≥7 days of paroxysmal cough and laboratory confirmation) 84% for preventing typical disease (≥21 days of paroxysmal cough and laboratory confirmation) The 1st dose of the childhood schedule significantly reduces the incidence of severe pertussis disease in young infants.1,67-69 Protection increases further with the doses given at 4 and 6 months of age, as measured by hospitalisation rates and mortality."
So, it prevents mild symptoms up to 78% in children, which is quite good. In teenagers and adults it works way better:
"Vaccine effectiveness in adolescents and adults Pertussis-containing vaccines with reduced antigen content (dTpa) are immunogenic, including in older people.40,71-73 A randomised trial in adults reported a point estimate of 92% efficacy against culture-positive or nucleic acid test–positive disease within 2.5 years of vaccination with a 3-component monovalent pertussis vaccine.58"
A disease that we had all but eradicated. In the 90s and early 200's I would have thought we were mere days away from having this disease completely eradicated. Now thanks to the hard work of many anti-vaxxers we can be sure that Whooping cough will live on and cause many more deaths.
The vaccination rates back then were worse than they are now. Don't think they've ever been higher
People are insane about updating their vaccinations. Idk why but they take the suggestion as some kind of personal insult. My parents steadfastly refused to meet my newborn because they'd require a whooping cough booster. They were constantly at their GP anyway so who knows what the issue really was but I'm not alone. A lot of friends parents are the same.
It’s a very scary time for those of us with newborns this winter 😞
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6d
Newborns aren’t vaccinated against whooping cough until six weeks of age. A booster given during pregnancy does confer some protection, but until that six week point, babies are incredibly vulnerable to it.
Further to this, the first dose is at 6 weeks, and takes 2 weeks to be effective, so they are really 2 months old before having any reasonable protection.
Newborns can’t be vaccinated until 6-8 weeks old? And even then, they’ve only had one dose and are still susceptible to more serious infections… that’s how.
Babies can’t have it till they’re 6 weeks old.
Just a note for everyone. Pharmacists can administer a number of vaccines in Australia and DTaP is one of them in every state and territory. If getting into a GP is difficult you can always try and find a pharmacist who is trained to do vaccination and get your booster there.
Yeah this. I got the dtap booster last year at chemist warehouse.
Just walked in, did some paperwork and got it.
It's super easy to as well.
My husband and I just got it done last week at the pharmacy. Booked online, turned up, paid $50 for my husband to get it (it was free for me since I'm pregnant), injected, waited around for 10 mins and left.
I had my booster in 2022 (prior to that in 2019) and still caught whooping cough this year. Was absolutely awful.
Someone else here has said that they've had the whooping cough vaccine multiple times, but it didn't "take". Maybe that's what's happened with you?
It could also just be because the vaccine doesn't 100% prevent you from catching the virus. Like the COVID vaccines, it lessens your chances of catching it and lessens the severity of the infection if you catch it anyway. So, if you hadn't had the vaccine, it could have been worse.
Maybe that’s the case. But omg it was bad enough, throwing up nearly every time I coughed. I would hate to have it without being vaccinated!
I got a booster when my first kid was on the way. Had it twice over the next three years and it was terrible. Almost passed out from coughing and damn-near cracked a rib the second bout - had to go get an x-ray to check it out.
I apparently had 'mild' bouts. I can't imagine what it's like to get severe whooping cough.
That sounds absolutely awful. I wouldn’t call that mild at all!! I thought I had it bad with throwing up every time I had a coughing fit.
I'm as pro vaccine as you can get but was completely unaware that we needed whooping cough boosters. It certainly hasn't been promoted in the past. The kids were all done as babies but no one ever mentioned adults needing it too. So I guess it gets forgotten. I'm up to date with Covid and fly 4 shots, got a couple of others (hepatitis and typhoid) for overseas travel a while ago. Looks like I need some more.
Oh and I was recently in a pharmacy where a mother dragged her 5 year old around inside who was coughing the worst kid cough I've heard in years, no mask of course. Was probably whooping cough going by the sound of it.
Had whooping cough as a kid because there was a mishap with my vaccine. Absolutely positively horrendous. One of the worst experiences of my life.
University students doing practical placements for early childhood education are put into classrooms with infants for a couple of weeks. No whooping cough awareness at all, and complete strangers handling your baby. WT-the-actual-F?
Get your booster! I had whooping a few years ago because as a non-pregnant woman in her mid-20s no one had ever mentioned it even though I was seeing a GP weekly for chronic health issues. Sickest I’ve ever been, nearly broke ribs and lost a bunch of weight.
Good day to start hostelling up the east coast
Had it in our house. Was worse than COVID for us.
Not to worry, should be a few spots left to see a GP in November 2025. Just remember the $140 copayment
This is scary. My two year old just got out of hospital for pneumonia and has always been fragile. I’m really worried about her getting whooping cough too
this is what letting covid rip does . As each infection does more harm to immune systems, opportunistic infections occur. As someone who coughed for 12 months post pertussis I wouldn't wish it on anyone:( it's awful.
The current vaccine is less effective - another reason for the increase is that immunity is down generally for a variety of reasons
How long after the original vax are boosters recommended? I got it when pregnant, kiddo is now at school, should I be thinking about a booster now?
Every 10 years
Why cant it be whoop whoop cough
Do we have another lockdown?
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6d
The utter stupidity around COVID was funded by Clive "Fatty McFuck Face" Palmer.
Sounds like an AWESOME reason to kill newborn babies. More proof that anti-vaxxers of all stripes don’t have two brain cells to rub together. DTAP vaccine has nothing to do with Covid and the majority of covid anti-vaxxers would have already have had multiple dtap vaccines in their lifetimes.
Only stupid people became vaccine sceptics during covid. If you had somewhere around a grade-school level understanding of how vaccines actually work, it wouldn't have bothered you.
You mean weak minded people
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Adults need to remember to get their dtap boosters!
One of the reasons for high cases of whooping cough is NOT nutty anti-vaxxers and their kids. It’s regular adults who don’t get boosters!
I couldn’t believe that absolute uproar from some of my family members when I told them 2 years ago that, unless they were up to date with vaccines - they wouldn’t be able to meet my new baby until she was 6 months old.
The absolute TANTRUMS grown adults had at being asked NOT to put a newborns life at risk were fucking wild.
TL;DR - GET YOUR FUCKING DTAP BOOSTER.