So many children with chicken pox out at Warwick Castle yesterday.

[ScreamLikeYouMeanIt]

I was out at Warwick Castle yesterday with my DH who has an autoimmune condition so subsequently a compromised immune system. He has also never had chicken pox. It was a lovely day but incredibly busy and crowded in confined places. Throughout the day we came into close contact with 3 families where one of their children were covered in unscabbed chicken pox so still contagious. DH has today had to go to his GP who has given him the chicken pox vaccine to be on the safe side (but this is not without risks for him and has still made him feel really rough for the rest of the day) Clearly I think this is downright selfish but there must be otherwise pleasant families out there who don't think this. AIBU to ask why you not inconveniencing yourself by cancelling a family trip is more important than protecting more vulnerable members if the public?

Singlebutmarried that’s so strange. You can’t catch shingles though can you? And it’s caused by same virus as Cp which leaves me wondering how did you get it if you’ve never had cp??

As PP says, they give the chicken pox vaccine as standard in the USA, in fact, it's nearly impossible to get DCs into public (state) school over there if they haven't been vaccinated.

We lived there for a while and had to get a GP letter to say our DCs had had CP before we could register for school.

YANBU - DS2 has CP at the moment and hasn’t left the house for a week, except to visit the GP when we phoned ahead and sat in a different waiting room. My mum is immuno compromised so all half term plans with her are on ice. And now waiting for DS1 to catch it....

YANBU people knowingly bringing contagious kids out in public is the height of selfishness. Chicken Pox is also a potential serious problem to pregnant women and any adult who hasn’t already had it.

Oh god singlebutmarried, i’ve had shingles and it’s awful! It was all over one side of MY FACE!!!

guess it doesn’t cause the NHS enough problems for them to warrant a campaign and maybe they don’t want too many people asking for the vaccine because of cost implications

That’s not the reason.

The NHS have decided not to vaccinate against chickenpox routinely, because the herd immunity would mean that children whose parents won’t/can’t vaccinate them will be far less likely to catch it during childhood when it is almost always a mild illness, leaving them open to catching it in adulthood when it is far more serious.

Also, there is evidence that shingles is more widespread/serious when a population is mostly vaccinated against chickenpox. Because one factor that stops you getting shingles is repeated exposure to the virus through interaction with (perhaps your own) infected children, boosting your immunity in adulthood. In a society where everybody has one exposure (the vaccine), but don’t get exposed again as the virus isn’t in circulation, people’s immunity would not get a boost and they would be more likely to develop shingles.

@megyn678 if you get the chickenpox vaccine you're exposed to a weakened form of the virus, which is very unlikely to reactivate as shingles later in life. So shingles is only a short term problem, for the people who have had chickenpox. Over the years, as we all die out and the remaining population are vaccinated, shingles should become rare.

And in the meantime there's a shingles vaccine which is given to older people by the NHS, although the take up isn't very high at the moment.

People who take kids out with serious contagious diseases like chicken pox are selfish twats tbh,

This is why we've just sorted the vaccination for our DS12. He hasn't had it yet and I was a very late starter catching it. So many irresponsible people around

And I find the argument about herd immunity leading to unvaccinated people catching it at an older age a bit odd. Surely this is also the case for other illnesses, such as measles, mumps and particularly rubella (mild illness but dangerous in pregnancy), but no one, anti vaxxers aside, is suggesting we should stop vaccinating against those.

How does a shingles vaccine work? So you have the virus dormant once you’ve had cp, so does giving a vaccine dose just activate your immune system to suppress more vigorously?

Singlebutmarried you must have had chickenpox to have had shingles. It's the reactivation of the chicken pox virus which lies dormant in your body after initial infection. A small percentage of chickenpox infections are subclinical (symptomless) or so mild they may go unnoticed.

It is selfish. I think people don't understand the risks and just assume everyone gets it eventually.

Sorry your DH felt rough, at least he's protected now.

In a society where everybody has one exposure (the vaccine), but don’t get exposed again...

Isn't that why there is two doses?

Why does the UK think it's got better Intel into this than the US, Canada, Australia etc who do vaccinate against it?

Grandmaswagsbag the shingles vaccine contains a weakened form of chickenpox. I guess it boosts your immunity to the virus, and means that it's less likely to reactivate as your immune system would then fight it off. Similar to the way that regular exposure to children with chickenpox is thought to reduce your likelihood of shingles by giving a natural booster.

This thread makes me wonder why my 2.5 year old hasn't caught chicken pox yet despite nearly her whole nursery class catching it last week.

I never caught it in childhood, despite half the school catching it when I was in primary, babysitting children whose spots emerged a day or two later and my little brother getting it. I finally caught it from a middle-aged neighbour when I was 36 and it made me really ill.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, I then got several attacks of shingles and now have attacks of post-herpetic neuralgia.

Taking poxy children out is proper selfish imo.