20 yo DS has mumps and so do 5 of his friends

[LoveRoyalBlood]

All have been vaccinated.

They were all at the same party 2 weeks ago .
He’s really poorly with it 😢

I had it at 19 many years ago despite having had the mmr vaccine. Only on one side, but I'll never forget the pain and how sick I was.

Hmm, who to believe? The internationally recognised global authority on health or Jenny from Mumsnet? Tough one.

The current crop of 19/20 year olds are the ones who were babies at the peak of the Wakefield claims yes? Let's hope it's just a blip caused by the drop in vaccinations at that point and the wider uptake will prevent widespread outbreaks in the future. I feel very sorry for all those suffering at the moment, especially if they are in the midst of exams.

I think this states a case for older teen vaccs
Not really. You can get any disease you are vaccinated against although it is generally less severe. What we’re seeing now is the effect post Wakefield. The 20 year olds of today are the ones who’s parents had to decide right in the middle of the high profile media about MMR, whether to vaccinate, when MMR plummeted and herd immunity was down. This is why Universities are badly hit by it. Hopefully, as we move away from it and uptake has recovered, outbreaks will be less common.

Hmm, who to believe? The internationally recognised global authority on health or Jenny from Mumsnet?

With all due and sincere respect to the WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control does more original research and is just as respected scientifically.

I think this states a case for older teen vaccs

I had a load of boosters when I was 16 (polio, diphtheria, tetanus, I think, but can't be bothered to get my card to check.) I thought it was usual when you were about to leave school. Though that was the 1980s, and things can have changed.

I never had MMR, as I'm too old, but I had separate measles as a baby and rubella at 11 (we girls all lined up outside the headmaster's office for it.)

The only childhood disease I have knowingly had is chicken pox. I don't remember anyone at school having mumps (that doesn't mean they didn't, of course,) and a mumps vaccine didn't exist back them, as far as I know.

Which was all a very roundabout way of saying we must have been protected by herd immunity, which must have been from all our parents having had it as children.

I discovered through a blood test that I wasn’t adequately immunised against MMR when I was 24. I regularly travel to an area of my country with low immunisation rates and measles outbreaks. I would have unknowingly been exposing myself and any unborn babies to serious health problems.
Turns out my mum doesn’t believe in vaccines any more, not that she thought I should be allowed to make that choice for myself.
If you’re in doubt, you can have a blood test to check your immunity to MMR.

HCP in the east mids here, have seen loads of Mumps lately, and a few cases of measles. Measles were mostly from a community of unvaccinated people. Mumps cases were almost all uni students or in contact with.

With regards the measles cases, several had been sat in communal waiting areas waiting to be triaged, etc so generic texts have been sent out to all patients in waiting rooms at same time as infected people with instructions on what actions to take if vaccinated/unvaccinated/immunocompromised.

I was only partially immunised against mumps. I got it when I was snogging a lot of people 17yo. It really fucked with my education as I ended up with a post viral thing and I had to repeat Upper 6th.

I think No/Partial Vaccine + Age of lots of kissing = Mumps.

Jenny is struggling to keep up.

Outbreaks (in general) linked to the rise in the number of people not vaccinating.

This particular outbreak (the OP's son) - nobody knows for sure why OP's son got mumps. However, the rise in the number of people getting mumps and the fact that mumps is circulating more widely now is because of less uptake of vaccination.

Now, go back to drinking your own urine and seeking out open sores to swab. Oh, and of course the colloidal silver, we mustn't forget that (the cure for everything from mumps, to hayfever to infertility).

Oh gosh, i had it as a child. It was the only time i can remember being delirious. Your poor DS. I wish him and his friends a speedy recovery

I had mumps about 12 years ago (vaccinated), it's horrible :(

Children shouldn’t be in school if they haven’t been vaccinated (excluding those who can’t, not won’t, of course) It’s a disgrace

I caught mumps in my 20s, as did a few of my colleagues. We had all been vaccinated and had the booster at 12/13. None of us had any long term effects like deafness or infertility but I've never forgotten how ill I felt for so long. From what I've researched, having the vaccine protected me from a much worse dose. Of course catching it after being vaccinated against it wasn't ideal but I dread to think how much worse it would have been if I hadn't.

If people think mumps and measles are bad, wait until polio and diphtheria make a return

I am old enough to remember seeing children wearing leg irons due to polio. This would have been in the early 1960s. Why any stupid idiot wants to go back to that is beyond me
And why do people think they are medically qualified to make such stupid decisions? I agree that there needs to be more unbiased advice about important decisions like this, but when every doctor I know has had their children vaccinated it makes sense.

Most people who do not vaccinate are educated and middle class if that means anything

I find that really difficult to digest, but I agree that it is probably true. These people have access to all the quack anti vac rubbish on the internet and search selectively to find any old rubbish that they agree with. However, if they were really intelligent they will also talk to medical professionals. These thick people don’t understand how the medical profession measure risk. Of course any kind of drug/vaccine carries a risk. Vaccines work because the very small risk of adverse side effects is far, far less than any adverse effect from catching the disease itself. Intelligent people can understand that.

The reason that vaccine damaged children get a higher profile in the media is simply because it is rare enough to be newsworthy. Just like the current mumps outbreaks.

Mumps is a notifiable infectious disease. My GP had to notifiy when they thought I had caught it a few years ago. Turned out not to be and they couldnt tell me what I had had which was odd!

Just to take perhaps younger people back to the 2000-2005 period. There wasnt nearly as much information available about the vaccinations as there is now. And there was a lot of worry. Medical staff wouldnt talk to parents about pros and cons of eg single vaccinations vs. MMR. Things have really improved in that respect in that more and better information is now available.

Sponge my children were born in 2000 and 2004. There was plenty of information telling us that the vaccinations were safe. They were both vaccinated as were all my friends children. To be honest there was a lot less Internet rubbish back then.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/

Hi, I’m am immunisation nurse. The current school based programme offers HPV x 2 injections in year 8, boys will be offered from September for the first time too. Year 9 children are all offered tetanus diphtheria polio booster, and a shot for meningitis strains ACW and Y. No routine mmr is offered, you would have to ask your gp to check your child’s health record to check if they are up to date.

The anti vaxxers on this thread - how do you explain smallpox and polio if you think vaccinations don’t work? I can’t understand your perspective at all

I am not an anti vaxxer, but if you look at charts like this you will see polio was nearly gone before the vaccine was introduced in the US. Hopefully the link works, it is an interactive chart. Many believe this is due to better hygiene practices.

ourworldindata.org/polio

Did you even read the link? It talks about successful vaccination programs reducing or eliminating polio

if you look at charts like this you will see polio was nearly gone before the vaccine was introduced in the US. Hopefully the link works, it is an interactive chart. Many believe this is due to better hygiene practices.

If by "better hygiene" you mean the closure of public swimming pools and cinemas to avoid point of contagion you may have a point, but the real systemic reduction came after the vaccine was introduced.

Polio Elimination in the United States

In the early 1950s, before polio vaccines were available, polio outbreaks caused more than 15,000 cases of paralysis each year in the United States. Following introduction of vaccines—specifically, trivalent inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) in 1955 and trivalent oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) in 1963—the number of polio cases fell rapidly to less than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s.

Polio has been eliminated from the United States thanks to widespread polio vaccination in this country. This means that there is no year-round transmission of poliovirus in the United States. Since 1979, no cases of polio have originated in the United States. However, the virus has been brought into the country by travelers with polio. The last time this happened was in 1993. It takes only one traveler with polio to bring the disease into the United States. The best way to keep the United States polio-free is to maintain high immunity (protection) in the population against polio through vaccination.

you will see polio was nearly gone before the vaccine was introduced in the US. Hopefully the link works, it is an interactive chart. Many believe this is due to better hygiene practices. That really isn't what that says!
Snippet:

[polio in the US] is seasonal and is mostly transmitted during the summer months. By October 1916, enough New Yorkers had been infected and developed immunity in response so that in combination with the natural seasonal decline of the virus's spread the case numbers had already dramatically dropped and would not surge again. This can be seen in the graph as the US recorded less than 5,000 cases in the following year. Containing the second major outbreak in the USA in the 1950s, on the other hand, was largely aided by the successful development of polio vaccines that would hinder the transmission of the virus.

So earlier epidemics ended because people survived and became immune. Later epidemics were controlled by vaccines!

What is it about anti vaxers that makes the clutch at non existent proof? It really does make them seem utterly bereft of basic reading comprehension!

Is it just that they really want to belive or are desperate to justify their own choices? I don't get it! I really, really don't!

I also don't get it! I really don't!

Why are Facebook Mummies more credible than medical experts?

Why is anecdata worth more than actual research?

Why would experts recommend vaccination if it doesn't work/is dangerous?

Why would a cash-strapped health service provide this to everyone if it wasn't at all beneficial to the individual and the population as a whole?

Why do they accept advice and treatment from healthcare providers in all other areas? Why can't they be trusted only when it comes to vaccination?