To hunt down these bastards who exposed my son to chicken pox

That's very good news!

There has been a shingles vaccine since 2006, now mostly supplanted by a newer one (2017), so they have been slower than necessary, but great that they're rolling it out.

The NHS are going to vaccinate children between 12 and 18 months now. They didn't before because they were worried shingles would increase as a result but the vaccine for that has been rolled out now.

No...it's almost always better that kids ARE vaccinated against chicken pox.

It's the fact that you are contagious before you show symptoms that makes vaccination desirable. Vaccination greatly reduces the chance of catching it so you can be pretty sure you're not unwittingly passing it to others.

CP can cause birth defects in fetuses if the mother is exposed in the first 20 weeks. I disagree that shingles is the worse thing. CP is far from the benign inconvenience it's being made out to be on this thread.

I'm 36 and never had chickenpox-can't be that rare to not ever have caught it surely? I rushed out to get the vaccine a couple months ago because my mum came down with shingles. Looking back it was a low risk catching CP from someone with a shingles rash but I panicked. Glad I had the vaccine now although I'm unlikely ever to be around kids with CP (no kids in our family) just because I know it's a lot worse in adults. You pay £75 a dose and you need two-but they are a few weeks apart, which is slightly better than £150 all in one go.

They're not unreasonable, but medical knowledge changes and develops. Smoking causes cancer and fewer women die from childbirth if doctors wash their hands as examples. The latest evidence now points to it being better to be vaccinated than to catch chicken pox. The NHS has been an outlier among developed countries in not offering the vaccine. They really should add it to the schedule, or at the very least, raise awareness that it exists and the reasons to give it to your children if possible.

The OP DID get her child the first dose of the vaccination, @Newusername3kidss - but he had such a bad reaction that he was hospitalised, and the doctors told her he must NOT have the second dose!

Absolutely. Mine are young adults now and I didn't know about this vaccination either.

There are a lot of assumptions and a good deal of privilege behind your statement that the majority of the healthy population can shrug off a virus with paracetamol. Chicken pox can be devastating to certain populations - and you can pass it on long before you reach for that paracetamol

But most adults will have had it as children anyway.

And you are contagious way before you show symptoms, so there isn't much you can do in that regard.

The worse thing is shingles, which is really nasty.

AAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!

Why are people unreasonable for not spending loads of money on a vaccine that the NHS didn't think was necessary until recently.

You presumably don't live in the UK if you are confused about why a child has not been vaccinated before school.

Maybe read the OP’s posts to relieve your confusion?

Like everyone on here I’m a little confused how he’s got to 11 not having it and you’ve not vaccinated. All my kids got it when they were around 2/3 but if they hadn’t had it before school I would have vaccinated.

Bad timing but it’s out of the way now.

Oh I didn't know that thanks

I'm not talking about "disclosure." I'm talking about a sense of responsibility to society, not doctor - patient privacy or whether your neighbours know you've been vaccinated.

Everyone is at risk of catching a virus like CP that is contagious before you realise you have it. You could sit on a bus beside someone whose spouse is doing chemotherapy, and pass it on. You could send a perfectly healthy looking child to school and she might infect a child whose mother is pregnant.

There are a lot of assumptions and a good deal of privilege behind your statement that the majority of the healthy population can shrug off a virus with paracetamol. Chicken pox can be devastating to certain populations - and you can pass it on long before you reach for that paracetamol.

You can if you want have a blood test to check for immunity (I did before TTC as didn’t want to catch chicken pox whilst pregnant).

When I got DC vaccinated the pharmacist said a lot of adults in 30s /40s were having the vaccine.

Where are you getting that from? Somebody should tell the rest of the developed world - most of which has been vaccinating against chicken pox as standard for many years. Also they should tell the JCVI who recently recommended adding chicken pox to the standard childhood immunisation program in the UK.

You realize it isn’t recommended for health reasons? It’s safer to get chickenpox than the vaccine for majority of people . Idiot.

Do you think that possibility makes it easier for someone to magic up £150, though, @MrsSunshine2b?

I suspect that they are keeping their fingers crossed that their child will not get chickenpox, and if they do, they cobble together a patchwork of help from family and unpaid leave.

The bottom line is that if there isn’t a spare £150 lying around, many, many families will not be able to get the vaccinations.

How are the people who can't fork out £150 coping with the inevitable 1-2 weeks off work to care for a sick child though?

Priorities...
And I only saw much later that OP mentioned financial hardship.

@SlippyYinzer - do you think everyone has £150 lying around spare, to pay for the vaccine? During a cost of living crisis?

Yeah, god forbid you should have to spend money to protect your child!

As an adult I've not had chickenpox
No vaccine back in my day.
It's not just children you have to think about taking your post child out and about