have you given your child the chicken pox vaccine

[passivehoovering]

Hi all,

DD is 3.5 and is about to start her second year at nursery. She hasn't had chicken pox, and I really don't want her to. I don't want my darling child to get ill, feel bed, get scars, have awful complications, be seperated from her friends...So I was thinking about getting the Chicken pox vacine for her. I have mooted this with friends who also have children but they seem to want their kids to get chicken pox so I am wavering a bit.

If you have vacinated your children could you tell me how you went about it and where you found info? I don't know if I should try her GP in the first instance and ask them for info from Medline and if they know of anywhere that does the vacine. Also how was your child after? Anything else you can tell me would be much appreciated too.

Thanks

Do I not count as 'people' orange? I'm not the only one who keeps their children quarantined with CP.

Yes, I do know that Farlo. Although the chances of you being around someone undergoing chemo in the 1-2 days before your spots come out are still quite small. So you think we should have a mass vaccination campaign to benefit all immunocompromised people? Should we all vaccinate against flu to protect them as well? What else? Where do you draw the line?

Bumbly, I have been on enough threads on MN (including yours btw ) to know that people indeed do not give a toss.
Which is why my DD caught CP when she was on chemo and died a few months later.

and why my experience has been dismissed over and over again on MN (including on your thread)

Which of my threads dismissed your experience orange?

I'm not sure why you are accusing me of not giving a toss again but I am sorry that you lost your daughter. (as I have said to you a few times on various threads)

Oh ffs I am not accusing you. That is why I said on your thread.
Not YOU SAID.

Do you understand?

Well, given that on average 25 people die from chicken pox a year in the uk like MrsDeVere's own daughter, and in the US the vaccination program has reduced their mortality rate by 88% with the lives saved disproportionately falling in favour of the under-20 age group (97%) that means that we could be saving 22 lives a year if we vaccinated as they do. So, yes. I personally would indeed prefer that a lot of children were given the discomfort of a couple of injections and mild symptoms to save 22 lives a year, than a lot of children went through the discomfort of an illness that can be very unpleasant. Personally I also get a vaccination against flu every year to protect the vulnerable patients I work with and I am very happy to do so.

I feel so sad that you have had your experience dismissed on MN, MrsDeVere. I can only imagine how painful that must be.

The ALL got her Farlo but the CP complicated things and caused her horrendous suffering.

You're being unnecessarily rude MrsDV. I'm just wondering which of 'my threads' dismissed your experience? I can't think of one myself.

When the occasional 'can I take my poxy child out because I'm bored sitting in the house' thread pops up the OP is pretty much unanimously squashed for even considering it. I would have thought that would actually demonstrate how many people do, in fact, give a toss.

On the Rawsom et al study you linked to Farlo

Here

"More up to date figures from the Office for National Statistics, however, show that chickenpox mortality is decreasing in adults (from 32 deaths in 1996 to 18 in 2000?see figure (a)). Furthermore, the number of deaths from chickenpox and case fatality rates were significantly higher in 1995-7 (period of the analysis) than at any other period. The claim by Rawson et al that deaths in adults are rising is therefore misleading."

I am not, I am being irritated.
And I can assure you that for every one person who says they are wrong, 10 will jump on and disagree.

I know this because I am on most of them.

I will try one more time to explain.
I did not say that 'your thread dismissed me'
I said that I had been 'dismissed on your thread'

Do you see the difference?

So incredibly sorry for all she went through , ALL is one cruel evil bastard of a disease and the suffering children with cancer go through is horrific enough without enduring chicken pox as well.

Yes, I understand. Which of my threads?

I'm sorry, but I completely disagree that 10 times more people will tell someone to go out compared to those who would tell them to stay in. I am on most of those threads too - as part of the majority saying 'stay in'.

I would still like to save those 16 lives and spare a lot of children from suffering and permanent scarring if it was in my power.

shingles is a hideous disease, but immunity inadults is boosted by exposure to cp virus. so on the one hand we have a non vaccinated population with the attendent risks to a small percentahe of kids and adults compared with mass childhood vacs leading to mass adult risk of shingles with no herd exposure tp protect a large percentage. what the cost/health ratio is one v the other i dont know. but i get severe opthlmic shingles along my optic nerve, i have to take massive doses of antivirals and fear losing my sight in one eye at least three times a year....maybe we should vaccinate for both in an ideal world but perhaps the cost/health ratio makes it untenable. as it stands in the uk, im not sure privately paying to avoid cp yet raise risk of shingles later seems counter intuitive. and selfish. and a bit barmy. special cases excepted.

It would surely only raise your risk of shingles later, Madame, if you did not pay for a booster dose some years later. DD's dose was prescribed by a consultant on the NHS, but I am more than happy to pay for her to get a private booster to avoid her catching it later in life. I cannot speak for others, however, are people vaccinating privately at a young age and then not re-immunising later?

but farlo, how many will pay? or indeed afford to pay? and as it is something that affects all of the population i dont think it can be considered a purely private matter. if immunising your children and yourself would also help others then yippee. unfortunately it does the opposite in the case of shingles which is, as i said before, hideous. and also life threatening though i will admit i do not know what number of adult die of it yearly.

but farlo, how many will pay? or indeed afford to pay? and as it is something that affects all of the population i dont think it can be considered a purely private matter. if immunising your children and yourself would also help others then yippee. unfortunately it does the opposite in the case of shingles which is, as i said before, hideous. and also life threatening though i will admit i do not know what number of adult die of it yearly.

It doesn't say that all those adults were immunocompromised Farlo. Many of those lives could have been saved if they'd had their immunity tested and gotten themselves vaccinated. A mass vaccination campaign of children isn't the only way to save lives.

Boosters are less effective in adults Farlo.

One of mine has CP at the moment. Had to explain to exH why he wasn't to take him infectious into supermarkets although ds2 would have been infectious 2 weeks before the spots appeared and obviously I've been taking him out and about. I am pleased he's caught it young. It's just not on the NHS agenda here, I don't know why. I don't personally want CP vaccs for the dcs because I worry about over-vaccination and impact on the immune system but I have a friend whose ds developed CP whilst in the USA and she said she might as well have said he had 'smallpox' given how horrified other parents were.

94% of the adult population are immune to CP, either having caught it themselves or exposed to the virus but not contracted it and built immunity. There are some people though whose immune system doesn't trigger and they can have CP more than once. Pregnant women, newborns less than 4 weeks old and those immunosuppressed are considered vulnerable. You can catch CP from shingles, but NOT shingles from CP.

a quick google says shingles was cited as the major cause of death in 100 deaths in 2008. it affects 250,000 peple each year.

Madame I was responding to your post specifically saying private immunisation would raise their own risk of shingles, not suggesting everyone should pay privately for it.

I don't really see why kids should necessarily have to suffer an illness that can be damaging to provoke an immune response in others in preference to vaccinating those that might need a boost to their immune response, treating those kids and lost earnings of parents costs money too. I don't have any figures as to what would cost more financially though, a vaccination for anyone older who needs a booster or the costs involved in all those ill children. The booster may be less effective in older people, but if kids were vaccinated so that chickenpox became as rare as it is in the US now, then shingles would also become very rare.

I brought up immunocompromised people as an extra reason, bumbley, not the only reason it might be considered. Children are vaccinated for these things as they tend to be by far the most effective vectors of these infections, which is why they are called childhood illnesses after all, and if you leave it raging in that population then you have no effective herd immunity to protect anyone who is not able to have the vaccination or for whom it is ineffective because there are so many infectious youngsters running about.

However, on vaccine threads we will have to agree to disagree as always.

Gold pic, they are only infectious 1-2 days before the spots break out. It can just incubate for up to 3 weeks - you aren't contagious that whole time.

I wish more people knew about having to keep them in until the spots crust over. My friend had her lo out when her spots had just broken out because she thought they were no longer contagious once the spots appeared.

Just to clarify, it's non-immune pregnant women that are at risk, not all pregnant women. Also, maternal antibodies protect newborns - yet another reason to make sure you're immune!

Shingles is a much nastier disease than the vast majority of CP cases and there is usually a requirement for some form of treatment for shingles when there isn't in CP cases so it would seem more sensible to vaccinate against shingles imo. Added to that the potential for shingles suffers to infect others with CP and you saving potential CP cases too. If they were to vacinate children for CP, it would still leave adults vulnerable because the vast majority won't bother to be checked and might not know they have no immunity.

There will always be difficulties deciding at what point the needs of the few, like the immuniosuppressed should dictate the treatment of the majority. Before I accepted the argument that millions should be vaccinated to save the few, I would want to know the risks and potentail mortality rates arising from having the vaccine. Nothing is 100% safe for everybody. It is a hideous choice to have to make though, especially if the final decision causes pain and suffering to even a few people. There are no right answers a lot of the time.

I also disagree that threads are 10 to 1 in favour of parents not bothering to keep their child in when they have CP. I have been on MN a long time and every thread I have seen on taking sick children out when there is a risk of infection spread has firmly come down on the side of playing it safe and staying home. Granted there are always a couple of posters who say go out but they get jumped on.

Farlo, you know you can have 'natural' herd immunity to a disease don't you? Where do you think the concept of herd immunity wrt vaccines came from?

The point about immunocompromised people is that they can't, themselves, be vaccinated. A healthy adult who contracts CP could have had their immunity tested and been vaccinated against it.

shingles is much higher in us because of vaccine application. sorry if i am channelling sm atm. on crap phone in dark!