To think it's bonkers to not vaccinate against chicken pox

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Especially if you have multiple kids who haven't had it who would probably get it back to back meaning potentially 2-3 weeks off work for parents while waiting for them to scab over.

Genuinely curious as to why people don't vaccinate. It is more expensive to have the time off work than to vaccinate and it's a nasty uncomfortable avoidable illness for kids and a standard vaccine for a lot of the rest of the world. So if you haven't, why not?

Nutjob

I’m not an anti vaxxer but I put yabu. I wouldn’t get a vaccine for it as it’s not that big of a deal to me. It’s very rare for someone to get seriously ill with it.

This is COMPLETELY WRONG.

The chickenpox virus and the shingles virus are the same. You only get shingles if you've had chickenpox. The virus stays in your nervous system for life after having chickenpox. And gets reactivated in older age to produce shingles.

If you have chickenpox naturally, you will be at lifelong risk of shingles.

If you're vaccinated against chickenpox and don't catch it, you literally cannot have shingles as you don't have the virus in your body.

Molecular biologist and midwife here, by the way, in case anyone questions my credentials.

I so wish people who have no knowledge of virology or immunity would stop spreading misinformation. It is really damaging.

I didn't know til reading this thread? Are kids in UK vaccinated for it now?

When my were small it was a case of waiting for them to get it, sucking it up as far as missing work and looking after them and dosing them up with Calpol and whatever that cream you stick on the spots is called!

I didn't know there was a vaccine available in the UK!

@HellNoWay Currently the vaccine is only available privately in the UK

However, the JCVI have recommended it go into the vaccination schedule so it's likely it'll be introduced in the next couple of years.

There are lots of things you could say this about though, you just happen to have decided that this one is the most important.

Swimming lessons, for example. People say "oh swimming is essential, a life skill" and children are more likely to drown if they can't swim. But it's pricey - even if you didn't do lessons, at our pool it'd be £8 a time to take a kid swimming. People prioritise their limited money differently. If I can only afford swimming lessons or a chicken pox vaccine for my 5yo, which should I prioritise?

I think the more people vaccinate the more necessary vaccination will become. I think getting chickenpox young is not dangerous, but the more vaccine in society the less common the illness will become leading to kids getting it in adolescence or adulthood instead. Then it's more of an issue.

Mine weren't vaccinated, and all three DC got chickenpox at the same time and coped well. My experience is that we've never met anyone who has lasting effects of the disease so had no reason to worry. I've always been happy to outsource vaccine decisions to the professionals and get all the recommended vaccinations.

The vaccine is a live vaccine though, so it doesn't prevent kids catching chickenpox, it literally gives them a weakened version of chickenpox. It doesn't stop the virus entering your body.

When I started working in the NHS they did immunity testing for chickenpox. It's standard if someone doesn't have a clear history of having had it. I had zero immunity and had to be vaccinated. Occupational health were surprised as 90% of people brought up in the UK have had exposure to it by the time they're in their mid teens.

I mentioned it to my GP to check my vaccine record had been updated and even though they don't offer chickenpox vaccinations themselves (as they're not included on the NHS schedule) they were clear that any adult who thinks they've never had chickenpox should consider getting vaccinated. You do not want to get it as an adult.

Particularly if you're female. Most women in the UK have immunity so chickenpox in pregnancy is rare here (think it's something like 3 in 1,000?) but any complications (thankfully rarer still) can be serious for both mother and child.

Just something to consider if a child hasn't had chickenpox by the time they're 16. Even though it currently means finding the money to get it done privately.

The downside is that the varicella vaccine is much less effective in teens and adults than when it's given to children.

JCVI have now recommended it, bringing the UK in line with many other countries.

The previous reasons they didn't recommend were not due to lack of benefit from the vaccine. It was a combination of cost and the hangover effects of Wakefield on vaccine hestitancy, with a side helping of the now debunked "lots of chickenpox circulating protects older adults against shingles" theory that never had much evidence behind it anyway.

Ironic.

The vaccine introduces chickenpox to the body so you can indeed get shingles after taking it BUT it’s less likely and shingles cases are milder.

We vaccinated. Nursery is £80 a day, chicken pox vaccine was £140 for a course. We’d lose a lot more than 2 days of nursery.

I recently had influenza A and my daughter didn’t catch it because she’d been vaccinated this year, unlike me. I’m not in a risk group and the vaccine was hard to come by in my area.

No, having the vaccine protects against shingles to an extent. You can still get it but not as high a chance of getting it and generally not as badly.

The reason they didn’t do it was to protect the over 60s. They thought that vaccinating children would increase the risk of shingles in older individuals who hadn’t had chickenpox.

They’ve now reviewed the evidence of 30 odd years of vaccination in the US/Canada/Australia/Germany and that concern is now considered to be unfounded.

It’s been recommended now by the JCVI to be added to the childhood immunisation schedule.

Yes I know, I just read the article. They say it's because children didn't spread it in lockdown and so more of them aren't immune. Fair enough.

There's a shingles vaccine anyway so I don't think that needs to be a huge factor in whether we vaccinate against chickenpox.

Loads of other countries don't vaccinate, and tbh I don't have strong feelings either way. It's not my area of expertise, I get the vaccines offered to me and leave the science to the professionals.

My older three all had it years ago, I don't think the vaccine was available, if it was I didn't know about it. My youngest is 4 and I was planning on saving for the vaccine if she hadn't had chicken pox by the time she was about 6, she caught it a couple of weeks ago and thankfully had it pretty mildly. I don't work so taking time off wasn't a consideration anyway.

The advice we’ve received in the UK has changed over time as data and evidence on longevity of protection, impact on shingles etc has grown and been reassessed. That’s the great thing about science and medicine - keep reassessing as evidence builds. So of course people who looked into it 15 years ago will have been given different advice and seen a different body of evidence than people looking into it now. And as this thread shows, it takes a while for newer information to come through.

Plus in the UK we tend to trust that if it’s important, it’ll be on the vaccination schedule. Most people would have only paid for other vaccines if they’re travelling somewhere with specific requirements, or the most prevalent set in my mind is all the people wanting to pay for separate mmr vaccines because they didn’t trust the combined vaccine- and that was generally viewed as “people who did bad Google research thinking they knew better than the medical professionals”.

So it’s pretty sweeping to describe choices here as “bonkers” - advice from the nhs has changed over time, and I’m glad it’s about to be included on the schedule.

This isn’t true so far studies on the vaccine have shown it to be similar to measles vaccine in terms of immunity. It was introduced in us in 1995 so people there who have had it are well into adulthood and there have been no issues like you have described so far .

I had it twice as a child, both times totally miserable experiences. Now I get shingles. All of my children are vaccinated.

My kids got chicken pox, first the 3 year old, then the 11 month old.
The interesting thing was that the 11 month old had started out of the blue with eczema at 6 months. The eczema cleared up along with the chicken pox spots. I'm grateful for that.

Says the person spreading misinformation.

Isn't it the case that being exposed to someone with chickenpox as someone who's had it gives a little immunity booster? So the rates of shingles in the UK are lower than in the States cos they don't get that additional immunity bump as adults?

Feels like this is a hard one & the perfectly impossible situation would be for everyone to magically be vaccinated at once without exception. Otherwise you end up with a group who are more at risk of shingles cos the vaccine wasn't available when they were children. Ie - having chickenpox in the population means less shingles.

I might be wrong but I thought that toss-up was part of the reason it was decided the vaccine wouldn't be standard with MMR etc?

(pro-vaccine person here, just think this particular one is interesting cos it's not clear cut. Nothing to do with the vaccine itself)

Edited to add - just checked the most recent info on this & it seems it isn't clear cut about the immunity boost either. Been a few years since I looked it up

They've looked at the US who have vaccinated since 1995 and they haven't found that to have been the case. Although you'd really think it would, logically speaking.

@Caerulea I don’t believe that’s true. Even if you catch it, there’s no guarantee you won’t get it again. It’s rare, but it happens. My chickenpox was mild (as a kid) and I developed shingles on my orbital bone when I was 11. I’m lucky it didn’t go into my eyeball and cause blindness. (It has come back a couple of times in the same area and right across my bra line on my back as well. Because shingles makes you feel still and it’s so painful, I didn’t hesitate to vaccinate my kids. (Plus my friend’s baby that I mentioned above.)