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Mom posts devastating video of baby with whooping cough to raise vaccine awareness


“This video may distress some people but I’m sharing to show just how scary and dangerous whooping cough is to babies who are too young to be vaccinated,” says Sandra Tee in a Facebook video that has been viewed more than 420,000 times.

In the video, her 5-week-old daughter chokes and struggles to breathe, needing the assistance of an oxygen mask.

“Whooping cough is not always a loud obvious cough,” she warns. “The scary symptom for babies is when they don’t cough but silently choke and turn blue/purple from lack of oxygen.”

Tee’s daughter contracted pertussis from her son, who picked the disease up at school. She’s sharing the video in hopes of raising awareness for the importance of being vaccinated.

“Babies rely on herd immunity to keep them safe and unfortunately we cannot achieve that without high vaccination rates,” Tee said.

In a study earlier this year, researchers agreed that the less people vaccinated in a particular area, the higher the risk of these types of diseases spreading, even among those vaccinated.

“If there are a high number of susceptible or unvaccinated individuals in the community the risk of getting infected – even for vaccinated children – goes up,” explained senior study author Dr. Saad Omer.

ALSO SEE: New mother urges pregnant women to get whooping cough vaccination

While some have criticized Tee for posting the video, she responded by saying that “the head pediatrician wanted us to film it to show people how the cough isn’t always the worst/major symptom in babies. It’s the silent episodes which mean we are watching her 24/7 and very tired! Lucky my husband is amazing and we have been taking shifts.”

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