Whooping cough used to be more common. In the 1900s, about 200,000 children became infected each year in the U.S., and it was estimated that about 9,000 died from the infection.

Today, there are 10,000 to 40,000 cases of whooping cough per year, and just 20 deaths.

The powers that be — including the CDC — tout those statistics as proof that the Tdap is effective and that we must continue to vaccinate.

But looking at a graph of the mortality rates for whooping cough presents a different picture.

In fact, the mortality rate for all vaccine-treated childhood illnesses began declining before the introduction, in the 1960s, of mass childhood vaccination.

Once a person is naturally infected with whooping cough, they have lifetime near-immunity against future infections. And women who experienced whooping cough infections as children (or later) impart natural immunity to their newborn children.

Because whooping cough can be deadly for newborns in their first 12 months, the optimal time for a mother to provide immunity is while the baby is developing in her womb.

On the other hand, vaccinated mothers cannot provide immunity to their newborn children.

Therefore, newborn children from vaccinated mothers are at risk for serious complications from the disease.

In addition, whooping cough vaccine does not provide lifelong immunity to those who receive it. In fact, the CDC estimates that after five years, nearly 30 percent of those vaccinated are unprotected against whooping cough.

Yet the CDC also states that those 30 percent are protected from serious disease.

That statement has to be taken with a grain of salt. After all, it’s newborns to 1-year-olds who are at greatest risk for serious complications from whooping cough.

This waning immunity from the vaccine is the major reason the CDC keeps recommending more and more pertussis vaccinations.

It would be better if women contracted whooping cough naturally at a young age and passed antibodies on to their children. That’s what used to occur, in the days before mass vaccination.

But those days are past. Nearly all U.S. children have been vaccinated for whooping cough since the late 1940s, and this mass vaccination has caused a dangerous shift in the age that children are presenting with the disease.