mainstream excerpts ..... for educational purposes of course

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" Would you say the anti-vaccination movement played a role in the low immunization rates in this case?

Maybe. It's hard to un-scare people, and it's easy to scare them. A significant number of people buy into some vague notion that vaccines cause disorders like autism. [Andrew] Wakefield's "study" did give this notion a boost -- he tied this feared common disorder for which there wasn't a known cause to vaccines. No matter how many studies you do to show it's wrong, people have a belief. "

h ttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/24/nhl-mumps-vaccines_n_6375744.html

Why is herd immunity weak in this case? Don't we all get vaccinated against mumps?

Mumps is included in the MMR vaccine, but of the three -- measles, mumps, rubella -- it's the weakest.

Mumps vaccine was first approved for use in the U.S. in 1967 in a single dose, but doctors discovered that immunity would fade, so in the early 1990s, a second dose became routine. Even then, it may not be enough for lifelong immunity. The second dose is administered in early adolescence, so about 10 years later, in late adolescents, you can see some outbreaks. For example, college campuses have outbreaks -- my son went to University of Richmond, where there was an outbreak last year, and Ohio State University had one recently. The hockey league, obviously, is another collection of people in their late teens who spend a lot of time together.

So it's partly because of vaccination rates and partly because it's just the weakest of the three.

Would you say the anti-vaccination movement played a role in the low immunization rates in this case?

Maybe. It's hard to un-scare people, and it's easy to scare them. A significant number of people buy into some vague notion that vaccines cause disorders like autism. [Andrew] Wakefield's "study" did give this notion a boost -- he tied this feared common disorder for which there wasn't a known cause to vaccines. No matter how many studies you do to show it's wrong, people have a belief.

And it's understandable -- we ask citizens to get vaccines for 14 illnesses, as many as 20 inoculations in childhood, as many as five shots at a time for illnesses. They involve needles, they involve unseen diseases and serums that the average person doesn't understand.

It's similar to the 2010 whooping cough outbreak in that it could happen because we have a generation of parents who were not scared of the disease. You didn't have to convince my parents to vaccinate their kids -- they saw teens die of [things like] diphtheria.

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" But there are sizeable parts of the U.S. and Canadian population who were never immunized because they're opposed to vaccines and believe, wrongly, that they are unsafe. "

h ttp://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nhl/2014/12/17/nhl-mumps-outbreak-could-happen-anywhere/20562733/

"It has nothing to do with hockey. This could happen anywhere," said Dr. Gregory Poland, a professor of medicine and the director of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

"It has and will happen in colleges. It used to happen regularly in military boot camps," Poland said. "So there's nothing peculiar to this."

It is unusual, however.

Before a vaccine was introduced in 1967, there were 186,000 cases of the mumps each year in the United States. The vaccine reduced those cases by 99 percent.

But there are sizeable parts of the U.S. and Canadian population who were never immunized because they're opposed to vaccines and believe, wrongly, that they are unsafe.

There also are people who are under-vaccinated – often unknowingly.

After several outbreaks in the late 1980s, the Centers for Disease Control increased its recommendation to two doses, one between 12 and 15 months and the other at 4 to 6 years old. Not everyone gets the second dose, however.

The vaccine is about 85% effective, meaning there are some people who won't be immune despite being vaccinated.

Put that all together, and the occasional outbreak is as inevitable as it is rare.

"To be very frank with you, if 13 students at a junior college in rural Arizona had mumps, you and I wouldn't be talking. It gets hyped because it's in (professional athletes)," Poland said.

And because once an outbreak starts, there's little that can be done.

Much like the flu epidemics that sweep through offices and schools each winter, the mumps is viral, spread through saliva and respiratory droplets, i.e., coughing and sneezing. Symptoms can include fever, headache, fatigue, muscle ache, loss of appetite and swelling of the cheeks and throat.

There is no antibiotic for the disease, no over-the-counter medicine that will help. So short of making sure players are up-to-date on their immunizations and observing basic sanitary precautions, the NHL has to let the disease run its course.....

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Outside of mumps, roughly how many other causes are there that may leave a person with a low-grade fever, sore & mis-shapened neck &  face, loss of appetite and headache such that once it/ these onset a person basically needs to let it run its course and  not get in the way which is to say - deal with it there are no mainstream  OTC nor prescribed remedy other than " drink plenty fluids and rest" ?   There are lots of people who experience these just as a result of going through their daily routines; " take out the garbage ....put the toilet seat down .... watch the kids .....clean up the mess .. walk the dog ..... gotta watch the big game ..... gotta go shopping ....gotta go to the big movie premier ... gotta go to church ...... gotta go to the family function .... gotta big date tonight .... oh not tonight honey I have a headache with low grade fever and misshapened neck ;)"    For sake of discussion, by conservitive estimate there are dozens of things in this world thst cause the same handful of nuisance albeit benign symptoms and many of these can be blamed on a given person's lifestyle and similar choices made wittingly, not the result of accidentally running into a rogue virus. Be this as it may, should mainstream concoct a vaccination and pressure the masses to accept so as to save, ostensibly, the masses from these numerous causes of the same short list of discomforts?