To be mad that some woman took her infected child to Tesco covered in fresh chicken pox?

[sausagerollsontheside]

Isn't it contagious like that??
I thought they had to be dried out.
What about people with compromised immune systems or very small babies.
She was with a friend buying sweets, not urgent!! Wtf!!
It is contagious like that isn't it?

My dd (2 yrs old) had cp 6 weeks ago and 2 weeks later to the day I came down with it (30+ yrs old!). She barely even noticed it, despite being covered in spots from her scalp to the soles of her feet. I, however, felt like I’d been hit by a bus with flu like symptoms before the spots came out, then didn’t sleep for 3 days due to the itching. I also ended up having to have a chest x-ray because I could barely breathe and there was concerns about pneumonia. Obviously I hadn’t had it as a child......my mum couldn’t remember if I had (thanks Mum!).

My doctor told me that you had to either had direct contact or be in a room with someone for at least 15 minutes to catch it.....I don’t know if this is true, but I went with their advice.

I’m also really pleased that my dd got it when she did rather than as an adult, although obviously that’s from the hindsight of her not having had a bad reaction.

Japan’s face masks are useless.

They aren't actually. Google scholar would tell you that.

That’s funny- it doesn’t

pram Thank you, really appreciate it.

Not sure what's funny glint.

open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/facultyresearchandpublications/52383/items/1.0048214

P7 'Two observational studies have shown that using any mask regularly is more protective than not using a mask regularly.'

I don't have the time to bring up those studies (I have read them in the past though) and there are others showing the protective element the other way (when the person wearing the mask is the one with the illness). If you don't want to find them, you probably won't though.

It’s a smile, stroppy. Don’t worry, I shall peruse in my own time

@jass I know some paediatric infectious diseases doctors and some are high up in vaccine planning. Apparently the UK and NHS is likely to bring in a chickenpox vaccine as part of the childhood schedule within the next few years.

They wanted to get men b / rota virus / hep b / rolled out first, plus the shingles vaccine for over 60s.

I agree, I've read all the research and seems there's really no evidence for vaccination causing increased risk adult chickenpox or adult shingles. And, this theoretical risk of increased rates of shingles in elderly is not really borne out when look at eg Australia which has had childhood jab for years. So it's a no brainer to me, let's roll out a vaccine programme asap. And if you can afford to, get it now.

I've seen 1 kid in ICU for a week, close to dying. Luckily fully recovered. A second kid I saw in ICU and the wards for months, they had to have loads of operations because of chickenpox causing the 'flesh eating bug' to run riot in their body. They have permanent changes to their body.

And I've seen 1 kid die (he was immunosuppressed from a cancer he would have had a full recovery from, had he not got chickenpox).

I've vaccinated my kids (£60 a jab, x1 is 97%effective, x2 is over 99%effective).

To all those saying - if it bothers you then vaccinate - the point is, immunosuppressed people CAN'T HAVE THE VACCINE as they would get full blown chickenpox from it. So until we have full vaccination for all kids then there will always be people at risk from catching it. So don't take infectious kids out to shops to get sweets!!

DD's chickenpox appeared while in the pool at Center Parcs. Not ideal. We were there for hours and she had a knee to elbow suit on so I didn't notice. Plus it was summer so they could have been bites. We'd been there for 2 days already.

DS had only 12 spots. We had to take him to the doctor to check as we were abroad so had to delay flying home. But again, we had already flown there so had spread it all about on the plane.

Both of these show that you can't avoid it easily because the kids are infectious before anything shows up.

Indeed sometimes you can't avoid being exposed, but if you know your kid is infectious you should make every effort to prevent them spreading it.

I appreciate that in this case it may not even have been chicken pox and the suggestion of it being bites may be possible based on the fact we all seem to have been ridiculously bitten recently.

But from responses here it's obvious there are a great number of people who think it's perfectly acceptable to take their kids out even if they do have chicken pox and think their desire to pop to the shops for a bit of time out the house trumps the desire of immunocompromised/pregnant people to not cause a disease that can in those cases be extremely serious.

Do I need to include a disclaimer that my PhD is in (a relevant) science?

*catch a disease

That’s great to hear, jelly! It feels like JCVI has been edging closer and closer to it.

The morality of ‘we’d like almost all children to be ill to reduce the risk of some 30 year olds getting ill with a disease they could choose to be vaccinated against’ is so incredibly dubious, even before you look at relative risk and broader economic cost.

I can’t get my head around some of these arguments.

any chicken could contain salmonella, no one is suggesting that you should never eat chicken just in case it contains salmonella.

But if someone gave you a piece of chicken and said “I’ve just injected this chicken sigh salmonella”, would you eat it?

There are always unknowns but that doesn’t mean you do something that you blatantly know is dangerous. It’s idiotic.

SinkGirl, I think the point is that the majority of chickenpox cases will most likely be because of being infectious before the spots come out. So going nuts about people nipping in to Tesco is a bit OTT.

BTW, I did keep mine in once I knew they had CP, but the circumstances both times meant they were in contact with hundreds of people in environments very conducive to passing it on. And I had no idea.

No, the point is that doing something totally accidentally without being aware of the issue can’t be helped, but there is no reason whatsoever to swell the numbers by those who know bloody well they’re infectious joining in . What’s difficult to understand about that??

Yeah, the majority probably are, because most people have the sense and decency to quarantine a child with a very infectious disease.

By the time the spots come out, you may have unknowingly affected a

Large number of people - that doesn’t mean you should just think “fuck it” once you do know.

What’s difficult to understand about that??

It's not difficult to understand. I'd just be interested to know what difference it really makes in the scheme of things, infection-rate wise.

Threads like this make me feel very guilty but there is zip-all I could have done about it. Should I have not flown home for Christmas, losing thousands, on the off-chance my child might be infectious because we found out the day before that another child was?

It's an emotive subject, but one that often glosses over the fact that we pass these diseases on unknowingly in the first place.

Should I have not flown home for Christmas, losing thousands, on the off-chance my child might be infectious because we found out the day before that another child was?

Where has anyone suggested that? If you’d taken your child on a plane with fresh pox that’s a rather different scenario isn’t it? And if they did have fresh pox, then yes I’d say the trip should be cancelled (one of the many reasons travel insurance exists).

You can’t quarantine your child if you don’t know they’re sick yet. During that time they may infect a large number of people.

You can quarantine your child when you know they’re sick, and prevent another large group of people from being infected.

They haven't. But he's as likely to have infected people than if his spots were out. And according to PPs on here that means life and death to others. Which I feel awful about. My point is obviously a moot one to some people. I'm not going to argue about it any more as I felt bad enough the first (and second) times.

Primal - if you didn't know then you didn't know! I would be "argh" but not annoyed at you. It's totally different to taking out a child you know is unwell

@jassyradlett The morality of ‘we’d like almost all children to be ill to reduce the risk of some 30 year olds getting ill with a disease they could choose to be vaccinated against’ is so incredibly dubious, even before you look at relative risk and broader economic cost.

I know!! I find it bizarre how some parents are so mother-lion overprotective about their own kids in general, but when it comes to chickenpox they argue tooth and nail that there shouldn't be a vaccine programme rolled out in the UK.

When you find out why, some of these parents seem to be altruistically motivated - they are more than happy for their own child to be ill, in order to theoretically lower the chance of a totally unrelated adult from being ill (which the science doesn't hold out for that in any case). Or the other reason given seems to be - I had it, I was ok, so I'm sure my kid will be ok.

I don't get it!!! I mean, don't you want better for your own kids than you had? And wouldn't you rather your own child avoided an illness than an unrelated adult that you don't know?

By the way, of the 3 severe chickenpox kids I discussed above, 2 were totally healthy and not immunosuppressed when they caught it (those were the two that survived).

Here's a list of some countries with chickenpox vaccination in their routine childhood imms schedule:

USA
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
Germany
South Korea
Brazil
Uruguay
Qatar
Taiwan
Parts of Spain and Italy eg Sicily, Tuscany
Greece
Cyprus
Latvia
Luxembourg

Here's a good guardian article which explains it better than I can:
clicky

@PrimalLass according to the NHS website chicken pox is contagious up to 2 days before the spots appear until all of the spots have crusted over so it seems that you have the potential to infect more people once the spots are out, because they are infectious for longer.

I think we can all be horrified when we don’t know the circumstances. Shock horror she was in Tesco shock horror she was buying sweets. There could be many reasons for this. Don’t judge when you don’t know! I think we can all safely say as parents a list of things we swore we’d never do as parents. well you can cross each and every item off that list pretty much from the second you become parents!

With regards to unknowingly infecting people - I guess it is like any infectious disease, if you don't know that you have it, or have been exposed to it, you can't help it if you inadvertently pass it on. If, on the other hand, you take the chance of infecting others in the full knowledge that you have disease or are incubating a disease then that that is an entirely different scenario.

The NHS advice is very clear. If you have CP stay away from nursery, school or work and away from pregnant women, the elderly and those with a compromised immune system until all spots have crusted over.

Although it doesn't state it implicitly, I am quite sure that includes shops, public transport, soft play etc etc etc.