What is the Mumps Virus?
Recently, in the United States and other parts of the world there have been several Mumps virus outbreaks. The Mumps Virus is a dangerous infectious disease that has a long incubation period. The time period between when you get the mumps virus to when symptoms start to show is around two to three weeks. This is quite dangerous, because this means that an infected individual can easily spread the virus without even knowing that they are. This is why it is crucial to get children vaccinated, to not only protect them, but also their classmates and anyone they interact with. The initial symptoms include headaches, fatigue, body aches and poor appetite, which are common symptoms in many other viruses, making it difficult to distinguish initially. However, as the virus progresses some patients can develop painful swelling of the parotid and salivary glands. Additionally, some patients may experience swelling of the testicles or inflammation of the ovaries leading to low fertility. With no drug to get rid of mumps once you have it, it is crucial that people get vaccinated.
Prevention of the Mumps Virus
The Mumps Virus is a dangerous infectious disease that can be easily prevented with vaccination. The MMR vaccine is effective for the Mumps, Measles and Rubella. However, this vaccine has recently been highly present in the media, due to the speculation that this vaccine causes autism. There has been countless experiments, time and money poured into showing that this vaccine does not correlate with autism. However, limiting and unreliable experiments and articles have circulated in the media, causing fear and doubt in the minds of parents who are deciding if they should vaccinate their children or not. This anti-vaccination movement has led to mumps outbreaks in the US and other parts of the world. This shows that it is crucial to get proper education and correct information from health care providers and reliable sources when making decisions about vaccination.
Mumps Outbreaks
Recently, there have been countless mumps outbreaks in the US and around the world. These outbreaks can be linked to anti-vaccination movements that have grown due to the fear that the MMR vaccine is unsafe and causes autism. By July of 2017 there were approximately 3,000 reported cases of the mumps. One large and deadly outbreak occurred in Arkansas in a small, tight knit community where there is a-lot of community interaction and shared community spaces. This outbreak occurred in 2016-2017 and was the second largest mumps outbreak in US history with around 1500 reported cases in this single community. This outbreak shows the crucial importance of getting vaccinated, especially for the mumps virus. This is due to its long incubation period which leads to easy spread of the virus, due to lack of visible symptoms during the first two to three weeks that an individual is infected. Getting vaccinated is crucial to the safety of individuals and everyone in their surrounding.
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