Too bad you can't get it until you're over 50 or immunocompromised.
There are no dementia statistics versus vaccination for that demographic because vaccination started about 1995.
There is also a relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1950/
If you are thinking that dementia is caused by shingles, then also consider that shingles is caused by chickenpox.
not an antivaxx community, people got MMR and HPV and tetanus vaxx. this was normalworld suburban britain. I didn't even know there was a chickenpox vaxx until now.
(Got both of my kids (5&7) vaccinated privately. Don't regret it at all.)
what the fuck. why?
god damn I hate rNHS national cult. better get myself vaxxed to undo this idiocy.
1) That people who couldn't be vaccinated would get the virus later in life (because it would be less common), when it's a much more serious illness.
2) That there was a protective effect against shingles from having people regularly encounter the disease by encountering children with chicken pox.
But it turns out that the latter isn't actually an issue.
are there more vaccines they're hiding from us?
Over the last few years we have been discovering many diseases are secondary complications from viral infections, such as the linked study, or Multiple Sclerosis due to Epstein-Barr virus.
Perhaps that has rebalanced the cost/benefit analysis of some vaccines?
A childhood vaccine that prevents a percentage of dementia cases would be amazing!
I caught chickenpox as an young adult in the US. Recently paid NZ$700 to have shingles vaccination privately (NZ provides it free at 65; however I know many people that have had a hideous time dealing with shingles and I'd like to avoid that).
It's possible to find someone who would write a prescription for it anyway, as with many off label prescriptions with low perceived risk of harm, but insurance is unlikely to cover it.
Many/most doctors won't do that, though, especially without at least some kind of specific reason (like having recurrent cases already).
But there's a whole "evidence based medicine" thing that many of us usually try to champion, and it turns out the collecting such evidence is something expensive and priority-constrained. Due to lack of suitably targeted studies, there's just not formal evidence that the vaccine will be effective or lasting for us, or on what risks might apply to younger people with more robust immune systems.
There's also just a consideration about rationing the drug itself (it's seen shortages), and so prioritizing availability to more at-risk populations is not totally unreasonable.
All that said, it's not like it's impossible or illegal to get. You just need to find a prescriber who'll sign off for it (they exist), and you might need to pay cash rate for it at the pharmacy.
Prioritizing drugs in the event of shortages is totally understandable, though pretty easily fixable if you give the manufacturers time to plan for general availability (hopefully they would see it as an opportunity to make money by broadening market share, not an opportunity to make money by restricting supply).
We don't know the side effects or the beneficial effects since it hasn't been studied/approved for that (we likely have studied it, but not with enough rigor for FDA approval). It is, in all likelihood, fine, but when it comes to medication, we typically want a study rather than a guess.
It's not clear from the information on local private clinic web pages whether they'll make a fuss or not but I kind of doubt it. It's not uncommon that people manage to pay themselves to prescriptions for methylphenidate and amphetamine, it would be weird if shingles vaccine was more gatekept than those.
Early on there were also arguments that supply was limited, so the age minimum was to restrict supply to those who could benefit the most (frail elderly). But that ship has long sailed.