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Thursday, December 29, 2016

Mumps spreads on college campuses

Caroline Brown, a sophomore at the University of Missouri, got a fever over Thanksgiving break. Soon it became painful to bite down, and her cheek began to swell. A trip to her physician confirmed it: she had the mumps.

"Mumps kind of sounds like this archaic thing," Brown said. "We get vaccinated for it; it just sounds like something that nobody gets. So I just didn't think that it was possible that I would get it."

But mumps is back, and is having its worst year in a decade, fueled in part by its spread on college campuses. Since classes began at the University of Missouri in August, school officials have identified 193 mumps cases on campus. Nationwide, more than 4,000 cases have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - nearly triple the number in 2015 and the largest increase in 10 years.

Some public health officials are asking questions about the vaccine protocol.

Dr. Susan Even, executive director of the University of Missouri's Student Health Center, said she hasn't seen anything like the current outbreak in her 31 years at the school. She said all of the students her team treated for mumps had two MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine doses - a school requirement - but they got sick anyway.

"The fact that we have mumps showing up in highly immunized populations likely reflects something about the effectiveness of the vaccine," Even said.

Outbreaks are affecting several other universities..

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So the vaccinations they rant about just might not be so effective?

Huh.

Anonymous said...

Come on, we (American's) have been/were vaccinated. Universities like to make $$$$$ and how do they make more $$$$$$? Out of state tuition. Who are the most out of state tuition - foreigners! Do they abide by our vaccinations? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Heck, now we are seeing that our American vaccinations for common things like mumps, measles, chix pox are no longer working because those strains from outside the USA are stronger and mutated so Americans are now coming down with sicknesses we "thought" were vaccinated.

Why?? To obtain the almighty dollar of course!

GREEEEEEEEEEEED is GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD (Gordon Gecko - Movie Wallstreet 1987)

Anonymous said...

How come I don't get these diseases when I spend a month or two in these other countries if my vaccine is weak and the diseases are "strong like bear"? Take your foreigners are spreading disease crap elsewhere. Same thing were said about italiann and irish coming to america.