You need protection against viruses and bacteria that lurk out there

After reading a number of articles, I decided that Lynnette and I  are up to date on all our vaccinations, but many adult are not; the CDC on Feb 1, 2013, published an online review titled "Noninfluenza Vaccination Coverage Among Adults--United States 2011" that reveals a sad picture. The first two sentence sums it up, "Vaccinations are recommended throughout life to prevent vaccine-preventable diseases and their sequelae. Adult vaccination coverage, however, remains low for most routinely recommended vaccines and well below Healthy People 2020 targets."

I had only a vague idea what does Healthy People 2020 referred to, so I found the definition on a CDC website. 

In December of 2010 the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched a multi-faceted ten-year program with four major goals for our American population: 1). Attain high-quality, longer lives free of preventable disease, disability, injury, and premature death. 2). Achieve health equality, eliminate disparities, and improve the health of all groups. 3). Create social and physical environments that promote good health for all. 4). Promote quality of life, healthy development, and healthy behaviors across all life stages.

It's obviously a huge undertaking and HHS came up with 1,200 objectives (sic) organized into "topic areas" (42 of those) each covering something felt to be very important in our public health. That's too big of a chunk for me to even think of writing about today.

So in this post I'll focus on vaccinations for adults.

Every year an Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is given the charge of reviewing and updating the recommendations for childhood vaccinations and also those for adults. The Annals of Internal Medicine published the adult schedule and comments on its changes January 29, 2013.

Let's go back to the non-influenza vaccination article; the discussion was on immunizations to protect us against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis/whooping cough combined as Tdap; pneumococcal pneumonia, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, herpes zoster (AKA shingles), and the human papillomavirus (HPV).

The Tdap numbers were startling to me. Only 55.4 of adults over 65% are protected and <65% of adults from ages 19 to 64, but  fatality rates for tetanus are over 13%. Far too many people are taking chances with a terrible, but preventable disease. The American Geriatrics Society is urging all of us over age 65 to have the Tdap shot, to protect ourselves and our grandkids (from pertussis in the latter case).

I've written on pertussis, but to recap we're seeing more cases in the U.S. (22,550 were  reported in 2010 and many more, especially among the elderly, are never reported). There have been epidemics of pertussis in 2012-2013. If you think you're still immune to whooping cough  because you had the childhood vaccination five-shot series, you should know that an person's immunity wanes from 98% protection to 70% after five years have elapsed.

There hasn't been a case of diphtheria in this country since 2003, but lots of us travel to countries where that disease is endemic (regularly found) and the case-fatality rate for respiratory diphtheria is 5-10%.

The pneumoccocal vaccination rate for those in this country who are 19 to 64 and considered at high risk for this kind of infection (e.g., anyone whose immune system isn't at its best) is only a tad over 20%, while the 2011 figures for those of us over 65 are much higher, at 62.3% in 2011. Even in the older age group the data showed Caucasians have gotten this immunization much more commonly then Asians, Hispanics or blacks, all of whom had vaccination rates <50%.

I've had the herpes zoster shot, but I'm in the 15.8% (20111 figures) who've done so. I never wanted to have shingles after knowing two people who had prolonged excruciating pain from this disease.

HPV is the most common sexually-transmitted viral disease in the United States. The CDC says, "Almost every sexually active person will acquire HPV at some point in their lives." In doing so they increase their risk of certain cancers; in a major CDC study that covered everyone in the U.S. from 2004-2008 there were over 33,000 HPV-associated cancer cases per year.

There are a host of reasons people don't get vaccinated. The CDC has an article online that covers the topic of common misconceptions about the need to continue vaccination. Some people think that infectious diseases were being prevented by improvements in sanitation/hygiene even before immunizations were developed. Or they may believe that a majority of us have already been vaccinated so they don't need to (the herd immunity concept) or that certain "lots" of a particular vaccine are dangerous. Some think we've gotten rid of all the diseases that vaccines can prevent, so they reject having themselves get the shots.

Especially if "out there." in your case, means most of the world

Unfortunately, none of these concepts are valid and many of us travel to parts of the world that have much worse immunization statistics than America does. So, if we're not vaccinated before our trips, we run the risk of bringing home a disease and spreading it to others.