We hear a lot of bad news these days about vaccines. Aack, autism. Aaack, superbugs.
Finally, some good news: the meningitis vaccine is working.
Since pushing the Prevnar plunger into the thighs of babies two months to two years began in 2000, rates of pneumococcal meningits have dropped sixty-four percent in kids under age two.
That’s based on studies in kids in 1998-99 to 2004-05 published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The numbers are dipping for bigger kids (and the biggest kids of all - us) too, dropping thirty percent in the same time frame. In people over sixty-five, the rates dropped by more than fifty percent.
The study notes that vaccinating children is as important if not more than getting to the rest of the population, because fewer sick kids means fewer germs spread around.
When kids are sick, they not only fail to cover their mouths and practice the type of hygiene adults (should) practice, but they’re also a sector of the population that can’t be isolated when sick. We as adults can stay home from work and hide on the couch, kick everyone out of the room (well, unless we’re parents, in which case we just try to hide from our kids and spray a lot of Lysol).
Kids, on the other hand, need to have someone in close proximity caring for them - and that someone can easily pick up their germs. The disease cycle doesn’t stop when you’re dealing with kids – it just gets passed over to Mom and Dad. But with immunized kids, researchers say they're able to create a "herd immunity."
It doesn’t solve the autism debate or the superbug debate, but this is the kind of news that puts a little wind back into the sails of Moms like me who have vaccinated their kids. At least some of them are working.
Image/Source: USA Today
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