I'm headed out on for a ride, so this may seem brusque (sp?)

  • Up to 30% of people who contract mumps are asymptomatic. You may have it and never suffer from it at all.
  • In Iowa, 64% of those developing symptomatic mumps in this outbreak have had 2 doses of the MMR. Another 10% have had 1 dose. Three percent are confirmed to be unvaccinated. The rest are unknown pending searches of medical records.
  • It takes up to 2 weeks for the vaccine to become effective.



This is the mumps information the CDC gives to professionals on their website:

What about mumps complications?
Severe complications of mumps are rare. However, mumps can cause acquired sensorineural hearing loss in children; incidence is estimated at 1 in 20,000 cases. Mumps-associated encephalitis occurs in < 2 per 100,000 cases and approximately 1% of encephalitis cases are fatal.

Some complications of mumps are known to occur more frequently among adults than among children. Adults have a higher risk for mumps meningoencephalitis than children. In addition, orchitis occurs in up to 30-40%of cases in post pubertal males. Although it is frequently bilateral, it rarely causes sterility. Mastitis has been reported in as many as 31% of female patients older than 15 years who have mumps.

Other rare complications of mumps are oophoritis and pancreatitis.
Aseptic meningitis occurs in 10% of cases and is associated with a good prognosis. Although mumps infection in the first trimester of pregnancy may result in fetal loss, there is no evidence that mumps during pregnancy causes congenital malformations.

We talk a lot in this forum about acceptable risk. You can't make an informed decision about that acceptable risk if the facts (in this case, statistics) are not all available to you.