And pray they do or they risk shingles. Three kids in my family and for six weeks we stayed home because one after the other got them. This is good news. The stupid 24-hour media at it again.

The virus that causes chickenpox becomes latent after the infection and reactivates later in life causing shingles. Shingles can only develop in a person who previously had chickenpox. In no way does having chickenpox reduce the risk of shingles.

And be sure to tell the families of people who die from chickenpox how it was good news that they had it.

Now I think I have heard it all.

or you would have known this:

http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/about/complications.html

Before vaccination was common, deaths from complications of the disease averaged 100-150 per year.

Pick up a book.

You seem to believe that getting chicken pox PROTECTS you from shingles later in life. This is completely wrong. Shingles is a re-activation of the chicken pox virus. If you never get chicken pox, you never get shingles.

anymore.

Apparently you didn't have it or didn't have a bad enough case of it to experience growing up with permanent facial scarring.

In the catalog of illnesses that can befall one, it is true that chicken pox is towards the "less dangerous" side of the spectrum. But it is NOT benign.

Chicken pox swept through my daughter's classroom in the first grade and some of the kids missed weeks and weeks of school. I was lucky, Amanda only got a very light case.

It definitely is the cause of shingles as well. That's what the dr. said when my mom had an outbreak of that nasty, hurting, itchy condition.

she went from running around to running a high fever. If she hadn't had good emergency antibiotic treatment, I might have lost her.

There can be complications from chicken pox. Most notably, chicken pox pneumonia and chicken pox encephalitis.

Easily found on line stats -

Before the vaccine - 100-150 deaths per year, and over 10,000 hospitalizations
1995 - vaccine introduced/ 115 deaths that year
2007 - 6 deaths

usually children, beloved children, whose parents did not want them to die!

I was very hesitant- it was kind of new- there were rumors about side effects. Then my mother practically whacked me over the head- she was a pediatric nurse. Did her training in the early 60s- worked in a hospital til the late 70s. She told me if I did not vaccinate my daughter she would take her to the doctor herself. Mom told me that she watched quite few kids not only die from the chicken pox but some ended up blind. Also pregnant woman who were infected ran the risk of the baby having birth defects. Needless to say- vaccines won. Chicken pox might seem to be a "harmless" childhood disease but believe me we are better off without it.
*** edited to add I am not anti vaxxer- daughter had all the other vaccines it was just that this one was newer and had a few unknowns.

Curious.

can be made mandatory. Certainly with flu shots some people can't take them because of allergies or medical conditions that might make them dangerous. However, just as some schools require vaccines in order to attend, I do think employers have rights in that regard. My sister is a retired RN and she was required to have certain vaccines as a condition of her employment. I think employers in businesses with a lot of public contact would be within their rights to require flu vaccines (and should pay for them) unless the employee can't safely take them.

It lies dormant in nerve tissue and once the virus reactivates it's in the shingles form.

Having chickenpox will not prevent someone from getting shingles - and a person with shingles can potentially infect someone with chickenpox.

Vaccination is the best course of action - first for chickenpox and later in life for shingles.

http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/about/transmission.html

That's why I thought it was the other way around.

undoubtedly exposed to the virus, since she wouldn't get shingles without having the virus in her system.

I had chickenpox as a child; a very mild case. As an adult, I was exposed to an infected child - I became very ill, but did not develop the classic rash; just severe digestive issues. Upon examination, the doctors told me I had chickenpox; apparently it can manifest in different ways.

I will be getting the shingles vaccine this year, for sure.

I know we tend - especially if we're a bit older - to think of childhood diseases as common and uneventful - and for most people they are. But because of that smaller number who suffer more, sometimes with lifelong impact, occasionally even death, vaccination is really the wisest course.

I would hate to think that my child (or at this point, my grandchild) was responsible for giving a disease to someone who rather than flying through with a few days discomfort, developed a septic infection, brain inflammation, or worse.

They have a new Pneumonia vaccine coming out next year that they say is great.

...who caught it all from us older kids, and went from being a blooming infant to a sickly thin child the rest of her childhood.

Then there was the kid I met in high school who was a survivor of complications of mumps: encephalitis can leave you crippled for life. She was blind and wore heavy braces on her legs, used crutches, went to "special" school.

Damn right I had my kids vaccinated.

Yes, I had ALL of them when I was a kid and luckily they were pretty mild for me. Still, there WERE kids who had very bad outcomes as a result of these diseases which are now totally preventable.

My wife had chickenpox as a child also - a few pox bumps which disappeared in a few days, no fever, no further complications. But now the doctor is checking her for shingles and we are very aware of it.
In other words, it can manifest itself as a full-blown rash or just a few here and there. Get vaccinated.

I don't remember having chicken pox either because I was only about two years old but I did and I also got shingles as an adult. Subsequently I got the vaccine, making it much less likely I will get shingles again.

CDC has some smart folks working there believe it or not-

So that might be why your mom thought she hadn't had it.

In fact it is just the opposite. You will not get shingles if you haven't had chicken pox. But it is true that if you have not had chicken pox as a child you can get it later in life and then get shingles. Chicken pox is not a harmless disease, however. Complications from chicken pox and/or shingles can be serious, even cause death. Complications from the vaccine are much less of a risk.

https://www.aad.org/dermatology-a-to-z/diseases-and-treatments/q---t/shingles/who-gets-causes
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/immunizations/Pages/Chickenpox-Vaccine-What-You-Need-to-Know.aspx

Quite normal? Yes, and it is quite normal for kids to get measles, mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria and polio also if they haven't been vaccinated.

If you get the disease, you are going to be at risk for developing shingles for the rest of your life. There is a vaccine for that, but it's only partially effective.

I'm afraid it's not the media that are stupid in this case.

not only won't get chicken pox, but will never be at risk for shingles, either.

Meanwhile, I believe we who got the real thing in childhood, are even more likely than adults in the past to get shingles. Something to do with the virus hanging out in our bodies gets bored doing nothing, and so decides to manifest as shingles. I know, it doesn't exactly work that way, but the flare-up of the virus as shingles is apparently quite random, but if adults keep on being exposed to chicken pox, as they were in the years before the vaccine, the virus would be reminded that the chicken pox had already happened to the adult, and didn't bother becoming shingles. Again, not quite scientifically rigorous.

I got the shingles vaccine about two years ago, expecting to use up the last of the money in my health savings account, but my health care plan covered it completely, not even a co-pay.

My younger son got shingles when he was 20. He's a few years ahead of the vaccine for chicken pox.

Not everyone gets shingles, but everyone who does had chickenpox at some time in their lives.

We all had chicken pox in the pre-vaccine days. One of my siblings has had shingles twice.

Shingles is a viral infection that causes a painful rash. Although shingles can occur anywhere on your body, it most often appears as a single stripe of blisters that wraps around either the left or the right side of your torso.

Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus — the same virus that causes chickenpox. After you've had chickenpox, the virus lies inactive in nerve tissue near your spinal cord and brain. Years later, the virus may reactivate as shingles.

I had the chicken pox as a kid and got shingles as an adult. As did my niece. Your information is totally backwards.

And I wouldn't wish shingles on my worst enemy

got chicken pox and everyone got measles. I don't remember when I had chicken pox, but I remember the measles. I don't recall being sick, but I had to stay home from school. I spent my time on the couch watching TV and popping up every few minutes to see myself in the big mirror over the couch (every house had that back then, too). I recall thinking how I looked then was how I'd look as a pimple-faced teenager. We all expected to get pimples during our teens, too. And we all got them.

on edit: Before someone posts I'm a liar because statistically not EVERYONE got the chicken pox and measles, I simply meant that most of us did. It was more common than not. A few lucky kids didn't get them and a few unlucky kids died before they could. Same with pimples.

Kids can get very sick from both measles and chicken pox and some will die. Getting vaccinated is far safer.

I took that as a comparison. I still do. No twisting needed.

Your finger might fall off with wagging it so much.

It can get pretty bad.

conversation on this topic.

I'm sorry, roll your eyes all you want, nothing you can do but post a full retraction, you obviously having nothing but misinformation to contribute to health topics.

A couple of kids I knew growing up in school were deaf from exposure in the womb to maternal Rubella. There were kids that were mentally impaired from such exposures as well. Pregnant moms would go to their general practitioners back then instead of OBs and contract Rubella from kids there and sometimes miscarry, have stillbirths or children with birth defects. I never received any childhood vaccines and had all the childhood illnesses too. People today don't really understand what it was like growing up in the 50s and 60s before vaccinations became widespread. I barely remember the kids in braces from Polio, it was a little before my time but my older siblings have told me horror stories. Anti-vaxxers will get shrill because a child got a fever reaction from a vaccine and talk about toxins in vaccines. Disease pathogens produce nothing but pure toxins. Toxins that are programmed to attack our systems and weaken, injure or kill us.

Not everyone got measles. I might have had a light thing of mumps; don't recall. However, pretty much everyone got chickenpox. We knew it was better to have it as a kid as opposed to an adult, so if someone had chickenpox, the mothers would get the kids together (or sometimes it just happened at school) so they'd all get it, and be done with it.

with the disease during one instance.

Maybe German measles. Don't remember for sure. When i was that age, it was the early 60's. (Born in '56)

Although i recollect having the German measles. Since both parents have passed, i can't ask to be sure i'm remembering it right.

I definitely did have chickenpox, measles and mumps, though.

The vaccinated kids probably did just fine. Non-vaccinated are now immune as a result of the outbreak.

Vaccinate your kids. It saves time, money and is easier on the kid.

Sounds crazy, right?

It is. But I've heard that from anti-vaxxers. Usually right before I'm accused of being a shill for big pharma/lizard people/the Illuminati.

Those things get pretty crowded these days.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLL

I am not an anti-vaxxer and my youngest child was forced to be vaccinated against chicken pox or he would not have been admitted to school. However there are a number of reasons why this particular vaccination is not necessarily a great idea. Even my pediatrician at the time believed it wasn't necessary or advisable.
Edited to add: my two older kids both had chicken pox before the vaccine was required for entrance into school. So did I, so did my sisters, so did my parents and grandparents, etc. etc.

Mostly anti-vax and vaccines cause autism bullshit. Chicken pox vaccine is necessary. If you think it's not, you're enabling anti-vax assholes.

Last edited Fri Dec 11, 2015, 07:33 PM - Edit history (1)

Post #64 references three New York Times articles and yet is deflected by a fact-free ad hominem attack in post #70? Your bluster is breathtaking, not to mention your ignorance.

What do other countries do? First, check out the question of mandates; then, recommendations.

Only three Western European countries have vaccination mandates as follows: France (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus), Portugal (diphtheria and polio), Belgium (polio). Germany, the United Kingdon, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and others have ALL abolished compulsory vaccination. Israel does not have vaccination mandates either.

http://www.euractiv.com/sections/health-consumers/distrust-vaccinations-rise-across-eu-313296



Distrust of vaccinations on the rise across EU
Published: 27/03/2015 - 07:55 | Updated: 27/03/2015 - 07:56

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For recommendation, against obligation

If there is one domain within the sector that tends to keep its nose clean, says Selon Serge Rader, it is vaccination. In Europe, France is the only country to maintain the policy of compulsory vaccination against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.

Portugal has kept compulsory vaccination for diphtheria and polio, and Belgium just for polio. Elsewhere in Europe, Germany, the United Kingdon, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and others have all abolished compulsory vaccination.

More.

http://www.euractiv.com/network

EurActiv Media Network

The EurActiv Network of both independent and integrated offices provides free localised EU policy news in 12 languages, reaching more than 667.494 readers across Europe and beyond, every month.

The co-branded partner publications produce editorial content in Brussels (Belgium), Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey – reaching over 80% of our readers in their mother tongue.

The Network partners complement the ‘Brussels perspective’ on EU news and policy debates with national angles and localise the coverage to the interests and needs of our readers.

<>

Admit you're against vaccines.

I don't CARE what other countries do, I care what the facts and science are. You know why those countries did away with compulsory vaccination? Because of anti-vax assholes.

Last edited Thu Dec 17, 2015, 01:40 PM - Edit history (1)

That is FAR from informed. That's downright lies. I support science. Not op-eds and bullshit.

Those who get chicken pox most likely will develop shingles at some point in their adult life.

Those who get vaxxed, most likely will not.

Anti-vaxxers are assholes. Luckily, infectious disease should take them out. Sadly, they're putting the rest of us at risk.

they can rejoin society when the start behaving rationally. Until then, they are more of danger to us than ISIS will ever be. (Yes, this happened on Australia, but it will happen here, too)