Posted on 03/31/2006 1:44:21 PM PST by flutters
A puzzle for health officials and a worry for parents. Iowa is experiencing an epidemic of mumps.
State health officials say 245 confirmed, probable or suspected cases were reported as of yesterday. State epidemiologist Patricia Quinlisk says that's enough for officials to call it an epidemic and not just an outbreak.
Quinlisk says before this year, Iowa counted only about five cases annually. The illnesses that have spread across more than a third of the state add up to the country's only mumps outbreak, and Iowa's first such epidemic in more than 20 years.
Federal health watchers say they have no answers yet about the cause.
My Mom told me that when she was a kid when a neighbor kid got the measles, all the other moms in the neighborhood would bring their kids in to get exposed. That way they all got it over with at once.
This is the first I heard of this</i>
A cough! A cough! Consumption be done about it? (olde joke)
"We're trying to figure out why is it happening, why is it happening in Iowa and why is it happening right now. We don't know," she said.
CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell said the federal agency has no answers yet. But Quinlisk said one theory is that the infection was brought over from England _ perhaps by a college student _ because the strain seen in Iowa has been identified by the CDC as the same one that has caused tens of thousands of cases of the mumps in a major outbreak in Britain over the past two years.
"It may have been a college student, since we did see the first activities on college campuses, but we can't prove that,"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101016.html
My mom put this funny looking thing like an upside down lampshade around my neck so I couldn't reach my face to scratch.
They're just spreading the diseases Americans won't spread...
You're right. I know some refuse to get their kids vaccinated. Mistake, IMHO.
I had to Google that.
....or whopping cough........;-)
Or perhaps are carrying a strain the current vaccine doesn't protect against?
I think South Park did an episode along those lines...one of the kids got chicken pox, and right away, all the other moms brought their kids over, so that they would all also get chicken pox, and get it over in one big swoop...did not really watch the episode, for some reason or another, but I do think that was the jist of it..
NO ONE said Mexicans until you brought it up. Are you a racist?
Oh my! They use those things on dogs and cats. Poor you! ;-)
I had a friend in grammar school who got it... missed a lot of school recouping from it. As far as I know... he didn't have any heart damage.
Don't just blame Mexicans it could also be OTM illegal alien invaders who are obviously not screened for infectious diseases..nor are their children...who are bringing diseases America once eradicated..back into America's schools...
5 cases being the norm... & a large influx of illegals in Iowa
The odds favor this being a distinct possiblity...
I DID have the messles
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