Italian ‘anti-vax’ advocate Massimiliano Fedriga catches chickenpox

>chickenpox vaccination WAS NOT MANDATORY IN ITALY

When he was a child there was no vaccine developed.

I didn’t see what is inaccurate, he is an anti-Vaxer and he has caught chicken pox. Low rates of vaccination, for whatever reason, carry significant risks of increased infection rates. He’s lucky it’s just chicken pox, but the reason this should be news and is important is that people are dying needlessly from measles.

Infections and deaths from measles are on the rise in countries with significant anti-vacination movements. This nonsense is killing people.

Wikipedia claims the vaccine only appeared in 1995 [1] or 1984 [2] (and probably later in some countries). Either way a lot of the population could not possibly have been vaccinated as a child.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickenpox [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_vaccine

Apparently - like other herpes viruses - the virus remains inactive after recovery and can resurface at older age. I had chickenplox as a child, ouch.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingles

I am not an anti-vaccer, but that doesn't mean I should attack them disingenuously. I don't think that they claim that they do not need those vaccines because they cannot catch the underlying disease. I understand that they claim that some vaccines are causing more harm than the disease they are attempting to prevent.

Now I don't think they are right, I believe the harm caused by those vaccines is orders of magnitude less than the absence of vaccine, and I believe parents should be comfortable taking the small risk than their kid may have a bad reaction to the vaccine over the much greater risk of complications from the underlying disease.

But I think claiming that an anti-vax caught a disease proves that he is wrong is disingenous. In fact according to wikipedia [1] the vaccine is 70% to 90% effective, so he may himsef have been vaccinated for all I know.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_vaccine

He’s not an anti-vaxxer. He’s protesting the policy of not allowing children into school if they haven’t had a chickenpox vaccination.

There are different medical opinions on this: IMHO since a private chicken pox vaccination costs upwards of £100 in the UK, I can understand the public health system bias towards not supporting mandatory vaccinations. One could view a policy of mandatory chickenpox vaccination as a corruption of government by the drug companies.

That's also the point in vaccinations. It protects us in both a personal and poluation level by decreasing the risk of contracting the virus.

I do wish him a fast recovery, but I don't mind him being mocked.

He knowingly preys on people's ignorance and fears and the damage he causes is not even confined to himself or the people who listen to him, but people who can't vaccinate their children for legitimate reason are put in danger because of his actions. Even people who do vaccinate their children are put at risk because herd immunity is compromised.

Chickenpox vaccinations are not mandatory in all of Europe. E.g. our daughter was vaccinated against chickenpox because we lived in Germany at the time (where they have been vaccinating against chickenpox since 2004), but kids in The Netherlands (where we live now) are not vaccinated against chickenpox.

Varicella (Chicken pox) vaccine was available in mid 80 (widely available in 90s) I didn't have it either.

That being said: while the news is mostly sensualist, the anti-vax movement is beyond sick and dangerous.

Please read the story before commenting on the click-bait headline. This is HN not Reddit or 4chan.