Kevin Teale Quotations

We're focused on stopping it right now. Maybe after we have it under control we'll explore the origins of the outbreak ... even if we knew what was causing it, it wouldn't change how we are addressing the situation.

We'd hate to say we're out of the woods.

We used to see about five cases a month. At the tail-end of December we realized we had a situation on our hands.

On one hand, given the 800-plus cases we have, this is a serious situation. On the same token, we have 2.8 million people in Iowa, so the relative risk of any single visitor getting mumps is extremely low.

Fortunately, for most people, mumps is a fairly mild illness and they get over it quickly. Some people may have it without even any symptoms and not even be aware that they're spreading it.

When it comes to infectious disease, college campuses are sort of a perfect storm - close quarters, where people are coughing and sneezing, where they are not thinking much about hygiene and think nothing of sharing a beer glass or sharing saliva via kissing. All those kinds of things that would easily spread disease happen on college campuses and probably contributed to what we saw all these cases in Iowa.

This year so far we're well over 500 and there's no signs that it's going to slow down soon.

There's been cases in Dubuque and Iowa City, but we don't know which campus was infected first. Any infectious disease spreads easier on a college campus.

It's hard to get anywhere (from Iowa) without connecting.

These people may have exposed other people on those planes or in these airports.

College graduation, high school proms, we're not recommending any be canceled. We just want to ensure that people are aware of the risk.

The college environment is a perfect situation for infectious disease, especially mumps. It's shared through saliva, so students can get it by living so close together, coughing, sneezing, sharing drinks and kissing. It tends to spread fairly easily.