To keep my kids away from chicken pox party?

[Badgerboop]

More of a WWYD?

One of my friends is having a kids party tomorrow and both of my children have been invited. I've just found out via Facebook that the birthday girl has got chicken pox in the contagious stage. The mother is not going to postpone the party and it's still going ahead.

Neither of my kids have had it. I wouldn't mind the eldest one catching it as I think she would cope with it but I really don't want my youngest to catch it as she's just getting over a cold, ear and chest infection which has knocked her for 6 and neither of us have had any sleep for the past 5 days!

Shall I just decline the invite or just take them? She's the type of woman who will get funny with me if I decline. I thought about just taking the eldest but if she catches it she will obv pass onto th youngest

I'm also struggling to understand why there is so much condemnation for parents who want to gain a semblance of control over when chicken pox happens, but not for those who choose not to vaccinate

It's not a 'decision' not to vaccinate for some parents - £150 is a lot of money to many people, and they may not be able to afford it.

I will be getting my DC vaccinated as soon as they turn 12 months, but I'm lucky enough that I can afford it.

Chicken pox isn't inevitable for all DC (my DH has never had it) and is fatal for some. WHY would you take the risk?

My post was in response to murmuration

Hedgehog - as I said, people would take the risk on the basis that:

It is extremely likely their child will get it anyway
If they don't get it as a child they may well get it as an adult or as an oap, with even more risk to their health (I can't imagine having to care for a child with chicken pox without having had it yourself)
They may get it at a time when they don't have access to decent medical care, again increasing their risk of serious harm

All of these are sensible factors to take into consideration.

Or you vaccinate.

It's interesting reading tyhe debate heer about vaccination.

When mine were of the relevant age 9they're mid-teens now) the vaccination option was just not there, really. Yes, it did happen in the US, but it just wasn't a 'thing' in the UK. I also know nobody of their age who was very ill with chickenpox in the sense of needing hospitalisation or anything other than being very, very spotty and miserable.

I don't know whether it is that the illness has become worse (e.g. virus mutation) or whether, as the more dangerous childhood diseases that my generation (late 40s now) had (measles, mumps, german measles, meningitis) have been eradicated or made extremely rare by vaccination, the perception of illness from chickenpox has gone up? I mean, chickenpox compared with measles is relatively mild, and the risks are relatively low, but once measles are gone, chickenpox compared with being well looks awful?

Fuck no. Absolutely not. If the mum gets funny she's totally unreasonable....in fact....she's unreasonable not to cancel.

What are the herd immunity considerations?

For those wanting the vaccination asap we were told that we had to wait for a month after the 1 year jabs, DD got it seven days after she turned one, unfortunate, but thought I'd share that you do have to wait apparently.

The decision not to include the vaccine in the infant vaccine schedule in the paper I read had nothing to do with the MMR and fear of parents and vaccination but that the mortality rate was significantly higher in adults than in children (24/25 of annual deaths), circulating wild chicken pox gives a natural immunity boosts to adults which does not occur in a vaccinated population. (In other childhood diseases the highest risk are to infants and young children). Immunity from vaccines wanes and by immunising young children, it could increase the risk of adults catching the disease and therefore the population mortality rate.

In fact in this example. .... by having the disease at a young age, children protect the herd by boosting the immunity of adults, who are those most at risk from fatal complications.

I think the evidence is that that's not correct. Looking at overall mortality in countries where they do vaccinate everyone.

www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2014/may/15/real-reason-british-public-chickenpox-vaccine-shingles

This article convinced me to vaccinate.

Dc1 had vaccine. No chickenpox. Dc2 only had one dose. He has just had what I think must be a very mild case with one spot that scanned over almost immediately, a few dots, and no fever or discomfort.

Yes, but it's only one generation of adults that present a problem, we need to vaccinate everybody (adult and child) for one generation, then once the current children become adults chicken pox will be a thing of the past.

It's a short term, and very manageable 'problem' that will eradicate chicken pox and shingles entirely. It's just going to be expensive, and in the short term, very expensive.

My daughter caught this just before her second birthday . Our doctor said to go ahead with the party , plenty of people do .. we cancelled it but many of the invited said they didn't mind coming . We cancelled because dd was quite unwell and wouldn't of coped with the party . My son however breezed through chicken pox .

The "immunity boost" only works to help prevent people who have already suffered from chicken pox getting shingles later on.

If you haven't already had chicken pox early in life, exposure to children with chicken pox won't boost your immunity, it just means you're likely to catch it from them (and so having not suffered as a child that increases your risk of having it badly and suffering complications).

In those circumstances your best bet is for everyone to start getting vaccinated as that will reduce your chances of exposure to the disease. Or you get vaccinated yourself.

i've not made it past the first hundred messages, but here is a BBC article about how serious chicken pox can be:

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1537231.stm

i had chicken pox twice - once as a baby and the second time when i was 11. i didn't get many spots, but they were extremely itchy and i was off school for a while. i still have scars almost 25 years later.

i also know people who have had shingles, it's very very nasty.

The decision not to include the vaccine in the infant vaccine schedule in the paper I read had nothing to do with the MMR and fear of parents and vaccination but that the mortality rate was significantly higher in adults than in children (24/25 of annual deaths), circulating wild chicken pox gives a natural immunity boosts to adults which does not occur in a vaccinated population. (In other childhood diseases the highest risk are to infants and young children). Immunity from vaccines wanes and by immunising young children, it could increase the risk of adults catching the disease and therefore the population mortality rate

The JCIV decision mentioned nothing about this. It mentioned shingles (from a theoretical model standpoint) and MMR.

It's notable that in subsequent meeting papers some JCIV members suggest the fact that the shingles data in other countries doesn't fit the model indicates a problem with the data rather that being willing to admit the model might be wrong.