What Is Whooping Cough?

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This is an unnecessary article. It’s unnecessary because the disease I am going to talk about can be prevented. This disease affects infants and children, and it kills. I am talking about whooping cough, also known as pertussis.

What Is Whooping Cough?
Pertussis is an infection caused by a bacteria named bordetella pertussis. The infection is spread through the air when a person coughs, which means that it is easily spread from an infected person to a susceptible one.

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What Are the Symptoms of Whooping Cough?
A classic infection with pertussis goes through several stages:

Stage 1: Incubation: The incubation stage is the time when the infection is present but before symptoms show up, and it’s generally 7-10 days. This long incubation phase makes it difficult to tell where a person got the infection

Stage 2: Catarrhal: Catarrh comes from a greek word meaning “to run down,” and is just a fancy way of saying a person has a runny nose. I guess calling it the “snot phase” wouldn’t sit well with civilized professionals. This phase lasts 1-2 weeks, and looks pretty much like a common cold.

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