If you’ve noticed your friends, family, or coworkers coughing like they were actively attempting to flip themselves inside out, there’s a chance they may have had whooping cough, otherwise known as Pertussis. That’s because as of a CDC report issued on December 14, there have been 32,085 cases of whooping cough reported in the United States this year— that’s six times more than there were at this time last year and more than there have been reported since 2014. One of the big reasons for the rise is as American as you can get: not enough people are vaccinated.
Whooping cough is caused by a bacterium called Bordetella pertussis, which can lead to nasty coughing fits that can be dangerous for kids and immunocompromised adults. Luckily, we created a vaccine way back in the 1940s that helped to significantly reduce the number of whooping cough cases in the United States. Again, that 32,085 might not sound like much, but there was once a point when there were between 100,000 and 300,000 cases reported every year in the United States. The vaccine works, and it works remarkably well, like most vaccines.
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Vaccination rates among children have fallen in recent years with the rise of the anti-vax movement. While the numbers still remain quite high, with around 92% of kindergartners getting the DTaP vaccine for the 2023-2024 school year, it’s still below the 95% target set by federal regulators. That’s a whole lot of kids whose parents are leaving them vulnerable to an illness that they shouldn’t have to worry about. The vaccine’s effects fade over time, so if you’re an adult it’s probably wise to get your DTaP vaccine booster, which only 43% of adults over 18 have received in the past decade.
