Whooping Cough Boosters for Adults? The Vaccines Don’t Even Work for Kids

By  Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

NBC News this week reported whooping cough “rising sharply” in some countries and quoted experts warning pregnant moms and parents to vaccinate their kids and adults to get boosters. Experts interviewed by The Defender said the vaccines don’t prevent transmission and come with dangerous side effects.

“We are not seeing anything unusual,” Jasmine Reed, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson, told the news outlet.

However, in the same article — “Whooping Cough Rising in Some Countries. Why You May Need a Booster” — NBC contributor Kaitlin Sullivan reported that “outbreaks in Europe, Asia and parts of the U.S. should be a reminder to get vaccinated, experts say.”

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told NBC the current situation “won’t turn into a pandemic because we have a highly vaccinated population.”

Schaffner added: “However, let’s make sure that pregnant people get vaccinated, that babies are vaccinated on schedule, and the rest of us take the Tdap vaccine every 10 years.”

This is especially necessary to protect infants, who are especially vulnerable to the otherwise typically mild illness, NBC reported.

Experts told The Defender they thought the NBC report was unnecessarily alarming, cited outdated methods for protecting babies, and failed to consider serious and well-known concerns with the safety and efficacy of DTaP and Tdap vaccines.

Pertussis vaccines don’t prevent transmission

Dr. Bob Sears, author of “The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child,” told The Defender that studies have shown the pertussis vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission.

“There’s no medical or scientific reason to advise giving the vaccine to any group of people for the purpose of preventing transmission to others,” Sears said.

He added:

“We have whooping cough in our society simply because this is one of several vaccines that doesn’t reduce the spread of its disease. The vaccine simply doesn’t work that way, and no amount of scientific hope or wishful thinking will change that.”

The United Kingdom saw an increase in whooping cough cases in January. According to The BMJ, the spike seen there also occurred in other European countries, but the outbreak primarily affected people ages 15 and older, who are not at high risk from the illness. Only 4% of cases in the recent spike were in infants.

NBC also reported that China had a 15-fold increase in cases in January, part of a variable epidemiology of the disease seen over the last 10 years. That increase amounted to 15,275 cases among a population of over 1.4 billion people.

Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told NBC that the outbreaks and mild isolated cases the agency reported in the San Francisco Bay area, Hawaii and New York are normal and something “we expect to see every year.”

Whooping cough is a highly contagious respiratory illness that manifests as a cold in most people, but it can be serious for newborns who have a very narrow trachea, Dr. Meryl Nass, an internal medicine physician, told The Defender.

Deaths from pertussis are extremely rare, averaging about 10 per year. About 85% of deaths happen in children under two months of age — before babies are even eligible to begin the pertussis vaccination.

Nass said pertussis is extremely common and endemic in the U.S. It tends to be misdiagnosed as cold or flu and medical attention is rarely sought, except for babies.

Current formula needs to be ‘scrapped or reworked’

Dr. Paul Thomas said the NBC article “completely ignores the risk of death from the vaccine, which is documented to be greater than the number of deaths prevented — even before you consider that 50-90% of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome occurs in the week after infant vaccines, of which the DTaP is the most concerning.”

Maternal-fetal medicine expert Dr. James Thorp told The Defender the pertussis vaccine has never been proven to be safe or effective in a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial.

And there have been no long-term studies examining all health outcomes related to the vaccine, Thorp said.

Babies and children currently receive the DTaP vaccine, designed to protect against pertussis, diphtheria and tetanus. People ages 7 and older receive the Tdap booster, designed to protect against diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis.

Thomas, author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Years,” said that both DTap and Tdap are old vaccines that rely on recognizing the pertactin protein to develop immunity.

About 85% of pertussis circulating in the U.S. is pertactin-negative making the vaccine at best 15% effective, he said.

The CDC has been tracking changes in the prevalence of bacteria causing whooping cough for years. The most recent CDC data, reported this month, found that the Bordetella parapertussis type of whooping cough has significantly overtaken B. pertussis in prevalence — and research published in Vaccines in March shows the existing vaccines “scarcely provide protection” against this strain.

“This pertussis vaccine needs to either be scrapped or reworked to provide one that is effective,” Thomas said.

“Those vaccinated are now getting pertussis at a much higher rate than those with natural immunity and not vaccinated for pertussis,” he added. “It is the vaccinated who are also most likely to bring pertussis to newborns and put them at risk.”

Vaccinated — not unvaccinated — more likely to give infants pertussis

NBC reported that although the disease poses no serious threat to most adults, adults ought to get vaccinated to protect infants.

The article quotes Schaffner as saying, “Anyone who comes to see the new baby should have had a recent inoculation with Tdap vaccine, to provide a cocoon of protection around that baby.”

But Thomas said the concept of cocooning, “where you vaccinate the adults and children and caregivers in the infant world to provide a cocoon of protection, has been long abandoned as it has failed to protect infants.”

“It turns out those vaccinated still get pertussis and because sometimes it is a less severe infection (a minor vaccine benefit) they are more likely to be around infants and put them at risk for pertussis.”

Nass noted that antibiotics provide some protection against whooping cough transmission, but not against symptoms. And because the disease is misdiagnosed in adults and very mild, few take them.

Thomas said the best approach for parents with an infant — because the disease is relatively harmless after one year — is to avoid indoor crowds and sick visitors.

“Even family and visitors who are not sick should wash their hands with soap and water before touching the baby and not kiss the baby on the face, hands or feet,” he said. “It is worth noting that the worst of the pertussis dangers was largely gone even before the vaccine was introduced to the masses.”

‘No vaccine should be given during pregnancy’

Nass told The Defender that another problem with pertussis vaccine efficacy is that it takes multiple shots — given at ages 2, 4, 6 and 15-18 months — for a child to develop some immunity.

However, children are only really at risk of death from the illness very early in life, before the shots provide any protection.

Thorp said that because the original goal of protecting infants with the vaccine in the first year of life was “a miserable failure” pharmaceutical companies began advocating to give the shots to pregnant women.

In 2012, the CDC first began recommending the TDap vaccine for pregnant women to protect newborn infants, despite the fact that they largely don’t need the diphtheria or tetanus components, Nass said.

“The CDC could have recommended manufacturers make just a pertussis vaccine for this purpose, but chose not to,” she added.

This was another example, Thorp said, “where this fable that the vaccine would provide immunity was forced down the throats of pregnant women with the backing of the medical-industrial-complex without a randomized double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial.”

No vaccine should be given during pregnancy, Thorp said. “But now the pharmaceutical industrial complex is pushing six vaccines including for influenza, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, RSV, and COVID-19.”

“From the fetus to the infant at 12 months of life, there are about 42 vaccines administered in 2024, compared with about 11 in 1986,” he added. “This is absurd and an abomination of science.”

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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/whooping-cough-boosters-adults-vaccine-efficacy-kids/