Short answers, pulled from the story.
Whooping cough, also called pertussis or the 100-day cough, is a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable bacterial disease caused by Bordetella pertussis. It spreads easily through the coughs and sneezes of an infected person.
Whooping cough is called the 100-day cough because the violent coughing usually lasts one to six weeks but can stretch to ten weeks or more. After a fit of coughing, a high-pitched whoop may occur as the person breathes in.
Whooping cough is especially dangerous for infants, with about 50 percent of infected children under a year old requiring hospitalization and an estimated 0.5 percent, or 1 in 200, of US infants under one year dying. First-year infants are also more likely to develop apneas, pneumonia, seizures, and encephalopathy.
Whooping cough is typically treated with the antibiotics erythromycin, clarithromycin, or azithromycin, with newer macrolides favored for fewer side effects. Antibiotics work best when started early, treating people over a year old within three weeks of cough onset and infants and pregnant women within six weeks.
The multi-component acellular pertussis vaccine is 71 to 85 percent effective, with greater protection against more severe strains. A 2011 CDC study indicated that protection may last only three to six years, which covers childhood, the time of greatest exposure and risk.
Bordetella pertussis was discovered in 1906 by Jules Bordet and Octave Gengou, and the bacterium was later named in Bordet's honor. They cultured it successfully and developed the first inactivated whole-cell vaccine in 1912.
An estimated 16.3 million people worldwide were infected in 2015, and pertussis resulted in 58,700 deaths that year, down from 138,000 deaths in 1990. A 2017 study estimated the global burden at 24 million cases per year with 160,000 deaths among young children, about 90 percent of them in developing countries.