No free immunizations during pertussis outbreak in county

I figured you all would be outraged. Very predictable.

What I don't get is why the county health dept doesn't want to organize vaccines at the schools for free like they did with small pox years ago. You have a so called public health emergency and no apparent organized response. In the literature sent home by the school they didn't even say where to go to get the vaccine, they just described the symptoms and said that pertussis was only a real danger to children under 1 year old. The health dept is 30 miles away and they aren't even promoting their vaccine.

Many people did not get the pertussis vaccine for their kids. Some people question some vaccines.

We have all this stimulus money pouring in. Our library, for our town of 1000 people managed to get $800,000 I heard even though there is a better library 2 miles away in a slightly larger town. What a waste of money I say. Yet the county doesn't have a plan to get kids vaccinated against pertussis in the event of an outbreak that could lead to an epidemic?

We have all this stimulus money pouring in. Our library, for our town of 1000 people managed to get $800,000 I heard even though there is a better library 2 miles away in a slightly larger town. What a waste of money I say. Yet the county doesn't have a plan to get kids vaccinated against pertussis in the event of an outbreak that could lead to an epidemic?

What is pertussis?
Pertussis (widely known as whooping cough) is one of the most contagious diseases around. Caused by a bacterium (Bordetella pertussis), whooping cough makes children cough uncontrollably. With the cough so hard and so persistent children oftentimes can't catch their breath. Children make a "whooping" sound when they attempt to breathe in against a windpipe severely narrowed by mucus. Pneumonia or seizures can also develop.

Pertussis is unusual in that most children catch the disease from adults and not other children. It is estimated that every year in the United States between 600,000 and 900,000 adults and adolescents get pertussis!

Before the pertussis vaccine
Whooping cough is highly contagious and deadly. Prior to the vaccine, pertussis caused about 8,000 deaths in the United States every year. Now about 10 children die every year from pertussis.

My point is that they just should be free period. It's not whether I can pay for them or not. I don't particularly believe in vaccines, but I thought I'd do my public duty and get what I assumed would be a free vaccine for all, in the face of a potential epidemic. Yes, I'm disgusted that a nation that can spend billions on an unnecessary foreign war, sends billions in foreign aide to get foreign children vaccinated for free, can't get it together to meet a local health emergency by setting up vaccine centers in each school for kids. They do it with the flu vaccine.

What annoys me is not the cost, but the fact that it probably came from some other kid whose parents decided not to vaccinate against pertussis.