Mumps epidemic in UK

There is a Mumps epidemic in the UK, according to the BBC:

Cases are being seen in people born before MMR became routine in 1988 and children who have not been vaccinated, possibly due to vaccine safety fears.

(Snip)

The World Health Organization recommends that at least 90% of all those eligible receive the vaccine.

However, Dr Gupta's group said uptake of MMR among two-year-olds in the UK fell from around 92% in early 1995 to around 80% in 2003/4.

"In some areas of London, as few as 60% of two-year-olds had received a first dose of MMR.

"This would account for our recent experience with mumps in younger children," they said.

(My bold.)

Risks of disease v. risks of immunization:

Mumps

Cases: 200,000 per year before vaccine became available, currently 3,000-5,000 per year

Encephalitis: 2 in 100,000
Testicular swelling: 1 in 5 adults
Deafness: 1 in 20,000
Death: 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 10,000

MMR Vaccine (Mumps Component):

Severe allergic reaction: less than 1 in 1,000,000

Sigh.

Comments

[Niall Mc Laughlin]

There has been a mumps outbreak at my university recently. Most of the people who are at university now were born in 1984/5/6 -ish so we were not vaccinated as children.

I think this really shows just how successful vaccination programs have been.

By the way the reason small children are not being vaccinated was that the media reported an article in The Lancet medical journal saying that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism. This was later shown to be wrong but not before causing large scale panic and causing thousands parents to decide not to have their children vaccinated.

I don't think that journalists understand that just because something is in a journal doesn't mean that its right. Effects have to be repeatable before they are taken to mean anything.

[Jim Royal]

There a very real and human reason for the drop in the vaccination rate. Guilt.

If a child gets the mumps, that's an act of God, and the parent didn't cause it. But if the child has a severe allergic reaction to the vaccine, when they that's a result of a deliberate action taken by the parent.

The parent is thinking emotionally, not rationally. The parent doesn't want to be the proximate cause of the child's suffering. And if the child gets the mumps, the emotional logic says that it's not the parent's fault.

[latibulum]

And you can get over Mumps, but Autism is permanent.

[Skeptico]

latibulum:

Please go back and READ my article. Then tell me

(1) What autism has to do with the Mumps vaccine, and
(2) How the 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 10,000 people who DIE from Mumps "get over it".

[Orac]

Latibulum apparently labors under the erroneous belief that there is a connection between the MMR and autism. There is not, as multiple recent studies have shown.