AIBU to think vaccines are becoming less effective?

[MsMarthaMay]

There have been a number of confirmed cases of mumps in dd's primary school half over the cases are in children who have been vaccinated!

Can virus like mumps mutate? And if so doesn't that mean vaccines become less effective over time?

Many viruses do change their genetic make up over time, particularly when there are enough unvaccinated people for them to be prevalent.

Not sure whether or not the mumps vaccine is one of those, though.

Dd is vaccinated but I'm wondering wether I should keep her off!

Vaccines work by something called herd immunity. Quite often, if there isn't enough of the population vaccinated you can get an outbreak of an illness like mumps and it will affect even people who have been vaccinated because some will be lower responders to the vaccine. Another reason why not vaccinating your child is ridiculous- you make the choice for everyone who they come into contact with too.

My (amateur) understanding is that yes, vaccines can become ineffective. Especially when uptake isn't great and the disease is given chance to spread and mutate.

No idea whether mumps is one of those but I would be looking into it if I were you and weighing up the pros and cons.

I'm not into 'chicken pox parties' but mumps is one of those things that is much worse as an adult and I would be seriously considering the risk/benefit of dc gaining a natural defence against a strain that couldn't be vaccinated against. That's said by someone with very little knowledge of mumps though - it's all down to arming yourself with facts though.

Is there a school nurse or someone at your gp you could query it with?

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/467627/WN1541.pdf

This is a link to the weekly NOIDS report (where the stats for all notifiable diseases are published). The numbers for mumps are down on the last couple of years (won't feel like that if you've got a local outbreak, though).

The vaccine (like all vaccines, unfortunately) won't be 100%. So there will be some cases amongst those who have received the jab, and there should be epidemiologists keeping an eye on whether the number of cases in the immunised does change (for example, in measles outbreaks, typically about 7% of cases occur in the vaccinated). But you need to aggregate quite large numbers to get a reasonable idea of what is going on.

When enough people decide not to vaccinate then the herd immunity is threatened. Therefore even children who have been vaccinated sometimes contract the illness.

There are sometimes reasons why vaccination is unwise or impossible but that's why herd immunity is so important. For the most part, not vaccinating is a hugely selfish thing to do.

Dd has been a bit under the weather anyway so I think I'll be keeping her off. It's not something I want to risk.

About 88% effective, after two doses, about 78% effective after one dose.. So, in theory, expose 100 unvaccinated kids, and most of them will catch it. Expose 100 fully vaccinated kids, and an average of about 12 of them will catch it. (If not old enough to have had both jabs, then more like 22 would catch it). If almost everyone immunises, then it can't spread, so very few people get exposed to have a risk of catching it. If immunisation levels drop, then there are more people catching it, and sharing it, so enough immunised kids are exposed for some of them to catch it. And spread it.

Herd immunity is the biggie for this one, though on an individual basis at least the immunisation shifts the odds in your favour...

My understanding is that it is relatively well known that the mumps vaccine has a life span of about 15-20 years, thereby wearing off at one of the key points (puberty) that it can cause big problems, especially in boys.

I'm actually wondering if dd does have it! She's been quite poorly over the weekend and I'd just put it down to a normal bug but now looking at the symptoms I think she may well have it!!! Should I take her to the GP?

Ring your GP first as it's highly infectious - you don't want to risk exposing any unvaccinated infants who happen to be at the surgery.

As said above the MMR is somewhat less effective against mumps than measles and rubella, especially in children who haven't had their booster (and some single mumps vaccines have been found to be completely ineffective).

Fully vaccinated LO (5) has had mumps since Saturday. We are doing the decent thing and isolating ourselves for the recommended 5 days - but fortunately LO does seem to have had it relatively mildly apart from two grim days, so both of us are going a bit bonkers now staying in! Don't want to risk infecting anyone vulnerable though.

Unfortunately it's not the vaccine which is the issue, it's the none vaxxers. The vast majority (over 90%) need to vaccinated for it to work. Luckily vaccines usually means that those children get less severe cases.

Thank all for the information and advice. I'll give the GP a ring first thing.