WELL, THIS SUCKS: Whooping Cough Booster Shot May Offer Only Short-Term Protection. “The rapidly fading effectiveness of the pertussis booster vaccine may help explain recent widespread outbreaks of whooping cough. The United States stopped using a whole-cell pertussis vaccine in the 1990s and began using an acellular version called DTaP. Five vaccinations are given during childhood, and a booster vaccine, called the Tdap, is given to adolescents and adults. Researchers looked at 1,207 pertussis cases among children who had had the acellular vaccine in childhood. The study, in Pediatrics, found that when these children got the Tdap booster, it was 69 percent effective after the first year, then dropped to less than 9 percent two to three years later.” Not mentioned in this story — the option of going back to the old vaccine. Why not? It seems to have worked better.