Vintage Diseases Making a Comeback

An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC has a piece on a recent resurgence in some old-timey diseases. Mumps, Whooping Cough, and Rickets are making a comeback, back in style like it's 1955." From the article: "Public-health officials certainly weren't expecting to get 'bitten' by mumps this year. Although the virus has been circulating in British kids since 2000, it hadn't caused much trouble in the United States since an outbreak in Kansas 18 years ago. The Midwest is the epicenter again, but the victims are primarily college students, not children. Once a childhood disease, the virus has now taken hold in university towns. That's partly because crowded dorms and cafeterias are breeding grounds for germs that are spread by sneezing and coughing."

Comments

Re:Innoculations?

[bcmm]

Pressed submit too soon...

A population is considered protected if greater than a certain percentage of people are immune, because beyond that point an outbreak will tend to die out as people get better faster than others are infected. If the vaccine fails in 10% of people, it shouldn't really matter. However, worries (and tabloid scares) about side effects lead to too many people refusing the vaccine, which starts to put a lot of people in danger.

Scare story of the month...

[evilviper]

I guess we're getting this story now because people wised-up about "Bird Flu". Which, of course, was the successor to the short-lived "Super Volcanos" scare, which was itself the successor to the "World-ending Asteroid" scare story.

It's not that the stories themselves are complete nonsense, it's the way that they are handled. It's as if each one is the focus of world attention for a few weeks, then COMPLETELY disappearing when the ratings drop. Then a short intermission, and the next one comes along with more hype than the last.

I sure am glad that asteroids and bird flu aren't a threat anymore (who fixed them, BTW?), and I can focus on being scared by this new thing.