Chickenpox Outbreak Hits N.C. Private School with Low Vaccination Rates

npr.org

11 points·sndean··5 comments

My niece attended this school several years ago.

It's the typical Asheville trustafarian culture of naturalistic fallacy gone mad.

While the as antivaccers are morons, chicken pox is a pretty benign illness to make a big deal about.

No, it's not.

1. Latent VZV causes shingles in later life; a horrible, painful, debilitating condition.

2. It's a signal of intentionally creating other unnecessary, preventable epidemics of treatable, disfiguring and deadly diseases.

Chicken pox can be a rather serious illness. It can be mild--or, it can damage eyesight, put a pregnancy at risk, or merely cause very substantial misery.

The way of dealing with chickpox differs between (western) nations. In my country we don't vaccinate against chickenpox broadly, only some risk groups. We do vaccinate broadly for other illnessess, and the public mind is nudging towards denying child care for anti-vaxxers. I think a main driver for the non-vaccination of varicella is that the risk for children is small when compared to the risk to adults. Vaccination gives about a 90% protection after 14 years, probably decreasing over time. So we could replace the near 100% incidence of varicella in children with several vaccinations over a lifetime, but chose for natural protection.

I was surprised to find out there is a mandatory vaccine for chickenpox now (at least in Ontario). It is mandatory for all children born after 2010. When I was a kid there wasn't, in fact you would intentionally expose your child to it so they wouldn't catch it in adulthood.

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