to think I did the right thing and she was U and rude?

[twilight3]

was babysitting for my nephews ex-wife on Friday all day as she had job interviews to go to. Took her 3yo to nursery in the morning while she was getting ready and then went back home to stay with 2yo who has chicken pox.

Nursery was already informed about me dropping off/picking up and when I arrived in the afternoon with 2yo in a pushchair I stayed OUTSIDE, in the garden, waved at a member of staff who saw me through the window and they brought 3yo out to me. All good until a mother marched up to me and started barking about me bringing a child with chicken pox to nursery etc. I was so embarassed I just ran away, but I think I shouldn't have (although I didn't want 2yo around little kids any more than neccessary)

Was I BU? He's not infectious anymore, but that aside, what do you do? Leave him at home? I DID NOT go in any closed spaces, didn't let him touch anything, just walked into the garden. Could have walked past the garden with the same effect.
What do other mums do when in this position and noone to leave ill child with for the pick-up?

Oh ffs, if CP is so dangerous as to warrant ranting at strangers, there should be an easily available & routine immunisation for it. It's ridiculous to expect everyone to observe very strict quarantine for something that is so widespread.

And no, yanbu.

Thing that would worry me is possibly infecting any pregnant women picking up their older children. But I think by staying outside and having the 3yo brought out you did all you could - short of keeping the older child off as well.

Oh, and ragged, there are plenty of serious diseases for which no immunisation is available. You can't judge severity by whether there's an innoculation, that's just daft.

i was religious about keeping dd1 and dd2 away from people when each of them had it, the idea of passing it on to someone immunosuppressed is hideous.

the advice re crusting of spots etc is not that clear imo. iirc our doc told us something different to the NHS website. and regarding people who have had it before passing it on, the NHS helpline advised my (immune) sister from visiting her niece in hospital simply because she had been in contact with my poxy dd three days beforehand. they said it can live for days on clothes, hair etc. refused to budge even when sister promised she would shower...

The most contagious stage is 7-20 days before spots appear, no? It's airborne, in droplets from sneezing. My nursery won't have the children in with spots because they can't guarantee they won't scratch and get a skin infection.

Ragged - the parents who have lost babies due to this common childhood infection might take issue with your opinion and your way of expressing it.

Babies or children, I should have said.

CP is the only one of these alleged very dangerous illnesses which is A) widespread, B) has a readily available, much tested & proven vaccine, and C) which we don't have a vaccine already routinely offered for. It doesn't help prove the case for the alleged danger of CP that most of us have found it to be fairly mild -- no worse than a bad cold, really.

Expecting people to quarantine for mumps, measles, tubericulous, scarlet fever (etc.) -- reasonable because they are rare illnesses, and unlikely to be encountered, anyway. But CP is rife everywhere, and most people have very little choice about when or if they get it. I'm saying that if anyone believes CP is that dangerous than you should be screaming to the rooftops for a routine vaccine. And that expecting strict quarantine is unproductive, ineffective and unrealistic.

I agree - quarantine for a disease where specific symptoms are only apparent a significant time after the most infectious stage has passed is unworkable, however desirable.

Quarantine doesn't work:
Every year about 200,000 people in the UK get Chicken pox.
Quarantine is not legally required and is widely flouted:
How many of us can't say that we have seen in public, in the last 5 years, a child with apparently active chickenpox?
We have a completely inconsistent attitudes towards the possible risks:
Nobody realistically expects you to quarantine before spots appear, and yet the patient may be highly contagious during this time.
An expectation of strict quarantine after spots appear, and doing nothing else about preventing transmission, is a lousy way to manage the possible risks of CP transmission.

There is a chicken-pox immunisation available now? Are NICE getting it added to the usual childhood immunisation schedule? Or not? That would make a significant difference? (lots of ? cos I don't know, frankly)

mylovely, it's been available for several years now and it's routinely done is the states and many european countries (portugal, spain, greece and others). You can do it privately in the UK.

The argument against it is that it doesn't offer lifetime immunisation and there's higher risk of shingles with more complications later in life.

If you google it you'll get a lot of info on both sides of the argument, complete with statistics as the jab has been around for ages, it's worth a look IMO