Mumps outbreak hits US National Hockey League players

[riversedge]

I think our new Surgeon General needs to mount a public health campaign to get vaccinated.


Mumps outbreak hits US National Hockey League players http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30527474 …



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30527474

[Hekate]

1. That's not just painful but dangerous. Yes, a series of ongoing Public Service Announcements....

....is very much in order.

[riversedge]

3. "Religion freedom" has

entered the nays on this issue. Read about it a while ago with the measles outbreak.

[Hekate]

4. The anti-vaxxers are not about religion most of the time these days....

...but about the thoroughly debunked fear-mongering about autism from a doctor in Britain who had his license revoked, and non-doctors like Jenny McCarthy who get a forum on TV. Most of the non-vaccinated kids are from relatively affluent families with educated parents.

It's really sad. Whooping cough was almost wiped out in this country, but now we have an epidemic among infants in California. Infants who are too young for vaccinations themselves rely on their mother's immunity and that of their older siblings.

But if this thread is still active tomorrow, some of DU's own anti-vaxxers will show up to boast about their own robust immune systems and pooh pooh the need for anyone to ever be vaccinated for anything.

[Dorian Gray]

6. My immune system is

so strong. I eat 22 heads of garlic a day, get 3 hours of direct sunlight and drink a gallon of bone broth. It's all I need to be strong and healthy.

(Sarcasm.)

Anti-Vaxxers annoy me. I can't help it.

[Hekate]

7. LOL. My sibs and I had all the childhood diseases in the early '50s and were miserable...

DPT shots were available, as was smallpox, so we had those. But measles, chickenpox, and mumps, oh my. The problem was that our baby sister got them all from us by the time she was a year old, and after that was a very sickly child for years.

The anti-vaxxers are not old enough to remember this shit. I not only remember the last great polio epidemic, which scared the crap out of every parent in the country, but I remember that every school had its share of children in heavy leg braces and crutches (but not wheelchairs, because of all the stairs). When the miracle of the Salk-Sabin vaccine came along, our parents joined the rest of the town in lining up all the kids at the school where the clinic was held.

Polio still exists on this planet. Parents who won't vaccinate their kids against it are idiots.

But you know that. And anyway, that portrait of yours in the attic keeps you looking good!

[Dorian Gray]

8. Yes

Though I was born in the 70s and grew up with most of the vaccines in rotation now (with a few exceptions... Chicken Pox!!!!! Which I tested negative for immunity when trying to get pregnant despite having a mild case when I was six), I can't imagine not vaccinating my daughter. Of course, there are exceptions. Allergies to eggs or medical indications not to vaccinate... but then those children depend on herd immunity. And parents not vaccinating their healthy children who are capable of vaccination are irresponsible to society as a whole.


The three hours of direct sunlight a day keeps my skin looking young. (LOL)

[HockeyMom]

10. I am about your age

and an Only Child. I had measles at 6 months, chicken pox at 7 months, mumps around 18 months, and rubella at 2 years, but of course cannot remember how "devastating" it was. I did not require hospitalization for any. Certainly did not catch it from any siblings. From my parents because they were not vaccinated? They both had all those diseases themselves as kids, but Mom did not breastfed me at all, which is the only way she could have passed on her natural immunity after birth. Was your Mom still breastfeeding your sister when she caught those diseases from her siblings?

Herd immunity from vaccinations? So, have your yourself gotten vaccinated with MMR or had boosters? Isn't that the ONLY WAY for herd immunity?

Yes, I will pit my natural immunity from HAVING 100% of the disease, not a percentage or killed virus from the vax. Or maybe you think that is not true? Yes, I have been around children (working in schools/my own) with measles and chicken pox, did not go out and get any vax, and did not catch those diseases AGAIN. Was I the cause of those outbreaks of measles and chicken pox? lol Cannot catch them but spread them for being unvaccinated? lol

[KitSileya]

2. And mumps are especially bad for grown men.

It can make them sterile. They can thank anti-vaxxers for increasing the likelihood of that.

[Sheldon Cooper]

5. Sidney Crosby had all the normal childhood vaccinations, plus he had the mumps booster

shot before going to the Olympics last February. So, how he came down with mumps after all that is unclear, but it wasn't for lack of vaccinations.

[laundry_queen]

9. Apparently he wasn't the only one that had the booster

CBC wasn't very specific but they said a few of the players infected had their boosters in the last couple of years due to travel. There was one 'expert' on (I cannot remember his credentials) that said a certain percentage of the population just don't make antibodies to the mumps virus no matter how many boosters they get and he theorized Sidney Crosby was one of those people. It's also not clear that if the original players to contract the mumps if they were up to date on boosters or not. Basically, IMO, the adult population should be getting boosters since there seems to be an active reservoir of infection in adults. It's not just unvaccinated kids who harbor this stuff.

[Brickbat]

11. We may need to get boosters more often for some diseases.

http://regressing.deadspin.com/why-the-nhl-lost-control-of-its-mumps-outbreak-1670727885

Put simply, the vaccine loses strength over time. We know this because of some fascinating observational studies from the last major mumps outbreak.

In 2006, thousands of college kids in the Midwest became infected with mumps, despite the fact that most had received the vaccine. This phenomenon is called vaccine failure, and scientists divide it into two categories: primary and secondary. Primary vaccine failure occurs when the body doesn't produce antibodies in response to the initial immunization, but this is relatively rare with the mumps vaccine. Secondary failure occurs when the body fails to maintain an adequate level of antibodies, despite having an initially strong response to the immunization. This is what we're seeing in the NHL.

Back in 2006, researchers found that college students who came down with mumps had been immunized more than ten years earlier than roommates who didn't contract the disease. A subsequent study confirmed this, revealing that protective antibodies were much lower in students who'd been vaccinated fifteen years earlier compared to students who'd been vaccinated just five years earlier. The takeaway here is that the mumps vaccine works, we just don't know how long it works.

Epidemiologists see evidence of waning immunity all the time. Last year, nearly one thousand Brits came down with mumps and half had been vaccinated. This year in the United States, a massive whooping cough outbreak caused by a bacterium called Bordatella pertussis popped up in people who received the pertussis vaccine. These findings have prompted experts to rethink the current vaccination schedules. We need a flu shot every year, do we need other vaccines just as frequently?