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Since you all have been talking about anti-vaxers can you weigh in
on this?
My SIL is an anti-vaxer. How her 2 boys got enrolled in school, I'm not sure. However, I have a CW who's son goes to the same school, but is older. CW told me that on Monday, all the kids got sent home with letters from the school saying that there have been reported cases of whooping cough and then CW's son got a separate letter from his sports team that said a kid on the team had it (nephew plays a different sport but would have used the same locker room). SIL hasn't said a word about it and we are having a big party for my DS this weekend. DS has had his dtap already-but I am really unaware of how contagious or how it's carried-so please tell me if this is just ignorant-my 89 year old G-ma is going to be at the party along with another relative that has some health issues-should this even be something I should worry about?
Re: Since you all have been talking about anti-vaxers can you weigh in
From my understanding, kids aren't fully vaccinated against whooping cough until they're 5. I'd really be cautious about my gma being exposed.
Maybe ask your SIL if her kids have been sick? Say that there's something going around and wondering if her family got it?
I would just say "Hey, I heard Whooping Cough is going around your kids' school. Have either of your boys been sick?"
If so, tell her they can't come. I have no patience for the anti-vax stuff.
According to this after the first round of three the vaccine is ~80% effective (http://children.webmd.com/whooping-cough-and-the-dtap-vaccine).
Whooping cough is highly contagious. I've seen where they're expanding recommendations for the Tdap booster in general...I'd be pretty worried about an elderly person potentially being exposed, particularly since a healthy looking individual can be a carrier without knowing.
It does offer some protection. I would be more worried about your grandmother.
This. They wouldn't just be putting your LO in danger, but your grandma, too.
S/O's sister didn't have any of her four kids vaccinated. Her kids keep asking to meet DS (my four-month-old son).
Unfortunately, S/O has taken the "ignore them" approach (he doesn't respond to messages asking when they can come over and meet the baby). It's his family, so it's not my place to get involved, but if it were my sister, I'd flat-out tell her the reason.
It's also ridiculous that S/O's mom is trying to guilt him into letting his nieces and nephew come over -- his mom just finished chemo for colon cancer, so they could be putting her in danger, too!
It does offer some protection, but the thing about whooping cough is that even when you're fully vaccinated you might still be able to get the disease. You will get a much less painful version of it and it won't less nearly as long (7-10 days as opposed to 3-4 mos), but you can still get it.
I'm kind of a b!tch about vaccinations so I would just ask. Have your kids been vaccinated? No? You can't come. Whooping cough is going around you're most likely to spread it before you're symptomatic.
Especially considering you're going to have young children and an elderly person there, that would be a no go. Besides you don't know the situations of the other kids that will be at the party. What if there's some kid there with asthma? Even if he's fully vaccinated and only gets the 7-10 day "light" whooping cough, that could be devastating to him, healthwise. I would simply tell them they can't come.
This only addresses part of the problem - if her kids started the outbreak. They might not have started it, but are more likely to carry it on, and they might not be symptomatic yet. I'd just tell them they can't come.
This is the part where you get to say, nope you can't come because you don't know if you're healthy and because you haven't vaxxed your kids, you're a lot less likely to be healthy sorry.
How tricky would this be. Is she your brother's wife, or your husband's sister?
If she's your brother's wife, I'd tell your brother and let him break the news to her. If it's your husband's sister, I'd let him tell her. You don't want to get in the middle of it, but I would not be cool with her being at my house.
Here's another perspective on it, too - Say I'm one of the guests you invited to your party. YOU know that there's a chance there's a whooping cough carrier at the party, but YOU didn't tell ME that. I have a 9 mos old and a 3 year old with a heart defect. Obviously the 9 mos old isn't fully protected yet because he hasn't had the full battery of vaxxes, and if the 3 year old got the "light" version of whooping cough, she'd spend weeks in the hospital. Just for the record, if we had been friend, and you did that to my kids, it would end our friendship.
There's a lot more to consider there than just the awkwardness between you and SIL for forcing her to do something she should have decided to to on her own. For pete's sake, if you're going to intentionally not vax, at least have the good judgment to keep your kids home when there's a pretty good chance they've been exposed to and are carrying one of the diseases they should have been vaxxed for. She can't have it both ways.
All of what she just said. There is a scary whooping cough commercial airing in my city. The sounds of a child struggling to breathe with a cough are just horrific. She wouldn't be able to come to my party. Point Blank and Period.
Your kids are a THREAT to the health of everyone else at the party. There is no way in the world I would knowingly let you come to a party and endanger the lives of others. You want to be foolish and be all Anti-Vax, deal with the consequences of being ostracized because of it. Deal with it.
Yes. The SILs kids or grandmas need to stay home. Whooping cough could kill grandma.
The vaccine is not a great one - it helps the person who gets it, because you won't get as sick, but you are still very capable of catching and transmitting it even if you have no symptoms of whooping cough.
Don't trust your SIL- anti-vaxxers talk amongst themselves about how these diseases are nothing, how all those silly mainstream people panic over nothing, etc, etc.
But, TBH, if my fully-vaxed kids school was having an outbreak of whooping cough we would not be near 89 year old grandma - they could give it to her.
Your post informed me of this, so I am going to adjust my response to match yours - "sorry, heard there's an outbreak of WC, and since you're most likely to spread it before you are symptomatic, and since Grandma will be here, we'd rather you stay home. Sorry!"
I was going to say the same thing but didn't want to be accused of being the bittchy mom on the playground with the clipboard again.
If her kids have any symptoms of it, it's going to be pretty obvious... but if a vaccinated kid has pertussis, the symptoms are usually much milder, and a lot of parents just think their kid has a bad cold or something. Someone on my local board was just posting about a vaccinated kid in her son's daycare who has whooping cough and has had it for weeks... no one realized what it was because the cough didn't sound *that* bad. The pertussis vax is one of the least effective vaccines out there. You can still get it even if fully vaccinated, but you'll likely get a much milder case and may not even realize you have it... as you continue your daily life in public, spreading it around to everyone else. The vaccine doesn't prevent vaccinated people from spreading the disease, and even in populations with extremely high vaccination rates, there are still regular outbreaks. If anything, her unvaccinated kids are at a higher risk than your vaccinated one because if they get whooping cough, they'll likely get a much more serious case than a vaccinated child will.
Frankly, I think you're overreacting and you just really dislike this SIL and don't want her around and are using whooping cough as an excuse.
That said, if you're really paranoid, I'd send out an email to invitees saying that there will be a guest at the party with a compromised immune system, and if you or your child is at all sick, please stay home. It's still going to come across as kind of rude, but it's less rude than saying "I think your children are disease-ridden vermin, please stay away from us."
Meredith, 6-1-06 and Alex, 11-5-09