Hey all, I never frequent this board so I'm hoping to get some well reasoned advice here. Happy to conduct my own research as well, but I've found TexAgs really does know stuff.

Anyway, we take the family down to Mexico every year for a mission trip. We build houses. Love the experience and it's frankly been very safe.

That said, my daughter is coming up on 10-yrs from her original tdap vaccine. Let's just say we are very skeptical of all this industry mandating or recommending unnecessary injections. (Please do not divert this into a Covid thread, but that definitely has weighed in on our thinking. Up until that scenario, we followed all the recommended schedules. Other than Covid which we passed naturally. Now I look back and wonder why I ever approved a hepatitis b vax.)

Now my wife is pretty adamant that a tdap booster isn't needed since the original vaccine immunity should still be going strong. She's referenced the Children's Health Defense org and I've read some medical reports that shows immunity could be strong right on into adulthood, if not the lifetime. With that background, the wife basically wants to punt the responsibility and let them decide when they're adults, rather than risk any type of injury. TBH, I kinda like this approach. The one caveat is that I don't want my kids in harms way (Mexican job site) either. My compromise has been to kinda sideline the kids and just have them do softer duties on the sides like painting, prepping, and cleanup.

Thoughts?

Thanks for the input fellas. The whooping cough aspect is a good one for us to consider, especially if it wanes quicker.

No problem.

Forgot about this one as well:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/unvaccinated-year-boy-spent-57-days-hospital-tetanus/story?id=61556871

Tetanus fades to almost nothing by 10 years in most people. If you are big time anti-vax and don't care about your kid likely getting whooping cough you can ask for blood work to measure your tetanus titer.

As mentioned above this is an old vaccine with decades of good data, seems like a no brainer to get one especially with a high risk situation like you are describing.

The safer acellular whooping cough vaccine is not great. It starts fading after 5 years and by 10 years is very ineffective. The whole cell was much more effective but had lots of side effects like febrile seizures and weeks of inconsolable crying. It was changed to acellular in the mid 90s if I recall correctly.

Unfortunately, that is one that I have reacted to. My last acellular pertussis, my entire arm turned red, was on fire, and swollen. Looked like a horrible case of cellulitis.