h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the ladies where I work has somehow managed to contract mumps.

She is home bored out of her skull.

Some of her colleagues want to visit her - they are all inoculated against mumps. Is there any chance that they could bring any infectious little gremlins to work with them and infect anyone here who hasn't either had the illness or the jabs against it?

not really, I am sure you all are up to washing your hands and not coughing or snotting on each other and wiping it on to some one who is not inoculated

also if measles, mumps is doing a circulation perhaps it is a good time for those who are not inoculated to think about it, whiles people are thinking about it

Depends... ON how the mumps vaccine works... and I should remember, but can't Some vaccines work by producing an immunity in the host, which means they can still be a carrier of the virus/bacteria, but just show no symptoms/not actually have the disease as such... and I canny recall how the mumps vaccine works will try have a look if I remembe rto do so

well, the best I found so far, was in a pubMed article (I can only find the abstract...)::
Only able to get the abstract, from PubMed;
Transmission of mumps virus from mumps-vaccinated individuals to close contacts.
Fanoy EB,
Cremer J,
Ferreira JA,
Dittrich S,
van Lier A,
Hahné SJ,
Boot HJ,
van Binnendijk RS.
[Vaccine. 2011] -

From the end of the abstract;

......"We conclude that, in this particular outbreak, the risk of a close contact becoming infected by vaccinated patients was small, but present."

hmmm interesting - but aren't they talking about the risk of infecting non-vaccinated people by the people who have just been vaccinated?

I was sharing a bottle of water with her about a week ago so in a few days we'll know how good my vaccinations are

there is always that question

when did you have them Sho

at risk of if you are older shouldn't assume immumity,

I'm not sure how it is for mumps though, I think it pretty good for decades though, not like whooping cough

I'd avoid that sort of close contact of sharing a water bottle for now but if you are talking about visiting your friend who is bored witless

and you can avoid sharing the same fork over a pudding, supping from the g+t whatever, then why not?

Infections, yes quite possibly.

But why wouldn't anyone have their vaccinations up-to-date? Anyone that daft deserves to catch a life-threatening illness: it's good for the gene pool.

B

I had mumps in my twenties, and I can assure you it is a horrid disease. Nobody came to visit for weeks, which was totally reasonable back then, as there was no vaccine.

Just recently I had this same conversation with my son, who being born in '79 preceded the MMR vaccine. He caught mumps when he was at primary school. His medical placement requires up to date vaccination - a very good thing.

I just googled when the MMR vaccine was introduced to the UK, and it was in 1988, so neither of my children were young enough to have been given it. *Both* caught measles twice! That is even worse than mumps.

So, unless you a) are certain you had it already, or b) were young enough to be vaccinated, and your parents *did* vaccinate you - then I'd be wary.

On another topic, slightly related, whooping cough is also reappearing again. I've seen a friends baby with this, years ago. She'd been born prematurely and was not given the vaccine before she caught it. Truly awful to watch. I think my feeling is that because we've got used to hardly ever seeing one of these childhood illnesses, society has become complacent, and it is the generation who are now approaching their forties and older who are quite vulnerable, as well as those who are still too young to be vaccinated.

I'm up to date with all my jabs because of being in the army and after that I kept up with them (also when I took the Gruesomes for their jabs the doctor made sure I was updated too)

But it is amazing the number of people in my office who either don't know or haven't had the jabs.

Also, similar to the UK, there have been a lot of cases of measles here. I mentioned it at work and (frighteningly) 2 parents said "oh it's just a kid thing, I haven't had mine innoculated because jabs are bad"

So I'm afraid I googled measles for them...