Mother decides to leave anti-vaxxer movement—but not in time. All 7 children get whooping cough

Tara Hills has written a piece for thescientificparent.org chronicling her decision to become an anti-vaxxer and then return to believing in vaccinations. She pens the piece from quarantine because all seven of her children have recently been diagnosed with whopping cough.

We’d had a games night at our house in March, my brother-in-law had a full-blown cold, so when the kids started with a dry cough a few days later I didn’t think much of it.  But a week after the symptoms started the kids weren’t improving, in fact they were getting worse.  And the cough. No one had a runny nose or sneezing but they all had the same unproductive cough.  Between coughing fits they were fine.

Then a few days later at midnight I snapped. My youngest three children were coughing so hard they would gag or vomit. I’d never seen anything like this before.  Watching our youngest struggle with this choking cough, bringing up clear, stringy mucus – I had heard of this before somewhere.  My mom said I had it when I was a kid. I snapped into ‘something is WRONG’ mode.  READ MORE