We should be vaccinating kids against all of them rather than sending them to Chickenpox parties.
This has been the standard of care ever since the vaccine became available in the 90s (US). The origin of the "parties" was that first-time chickenpox was perceived to be less harmful in children than adults prior to the vaccine, so you wanted to make sure people's first exposure wasn't in adulthood.
If you had an overwhelming chance of getting chicken pox, getting it in early school age reasonably seemed to be the best option.
The idea being that it's better for people to get it as kids, because if you give them vaccines as kids you'll have to give them boosters as adults. Whereas a latent disease will provide a lifetime of immunity.
Adults vaccinated against chickenpox do not need boosters as adults.
We do in the US. I was kind of surprised when my now 2 and 4 year olds were vaccinated against Chickenpox, since I remember doing the Chickenpox party thing myself when I was younger (staying home with some friends over, playing Daytona USA on my Sega Saturn, I think?).
For now. The current administration is chipping away at child vaccines, just today removing Hep B vaccine from the recommendations list. AFAICT you can still choose to get it for your kid, and insurance should still cover it, but I won't be the least bit surprised if before 2028 some of these vaccines are actually banned outright.
But while I agree that there's a chance, I think it's vanishingly small. I do hope that the dems can take the house in the midterms and put the brakes on the massive expansion in executive power.
To regain control of both houses with enough margins to ensure impeachment & conviction would be an incredible swing. I just don't see it happening.
Texas just got its redrawn maps approved by SCOTUS. I'm still expecting SCOTUS to reject California's though when that case comes to them. The court will do its part in keeping the GOP in power.
It was like a badge of honor.
They hide from the immune system inside nerves or other immune cells, and seem to have a lot of weird associations with other issues over our lifetime, particularly neurological and immune problems.
It wouldn't surprise me if it turns out all these tie back to immune dysregulation and are just triggered by different viruses in different people.
I've recently had shingles and, let me tell you, it sucks ass. I thought my liver was going to explode.
I'll be getting the shingles vaccine as soon as possible.
ETA: Since someone downvoted this: I'm not criticizing vaccination, and you should absolutely get your kids vaccinated! But for someone (like me) at the age where you've seen friends with Shingles (ugh), adding live chickenpox virus to your body feels like a risky idea, even before this news.
This is inaccurate. I know several people who got it younger than that after contracting shingles and recovering.
Also, I would like to point out that having shingles was possibly the single most physically unpleasant experience of my life and boy it sure would have been fantastic to have been able to get the shingles vaccine before I got shingles, as opposed to sometime after! because wow, having shingles sucks.
But the pharmacies are still reluctant to administer it. My doctor prescribed it for me but when I got to the pharmacy they made me fill out some forms... because I checked the box that said I had no serious health issues and I was under 50, the pharmacist absolutely refused to administer it even with a prescription.
Here’s a study that looks good:
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/226/Supplement_4/S470/6...
The headline conclusion is:
> Latent VZV can be wild-type VZV (wt-VZV) from natural infection, vaccine-strain VZV (vs-VZV) from immunization with live attenuated vaccine, or both. Based on available data in children and adolescents, the risk of HZ from vs-VZV appears to be approximately 80% lower than the risk from wt-VZV, with a lower incidence found in 2-dose as compared to 1-dose vaccine recipients [9, 10].
A major caveat is that the relevant age groups were very much too young for shingles vaccines at the time the study was published.
I had to argue with my doctor to prescribe the Shingles vaccine at 49. And when I had it in my 30s, nobody even bothered to give me any antivirals, which did exist at the time, or nerve pain relief.
After I had the shingles vaccine, nerve pain that I'd been suffering with every time I got the slightest little allergy or cold suddenly disappeared, and I haven't had it since more than a year later.
If you are under 50 years old, and had chickenpox, and especially if you've had one outbreak of shingles, force your doctors to prescribe the vaccine. It costs $100-$200 without insurance coverage, and it is worth it.
After my 43 y/o sister-in-law had a debilitating shingles outbreak last year I asked my PCP about the vaccine. He stated that he was wary to prescribe it to be. His reasoning was something like:
There was a previous shingles vaccine that didn't work very well. It was found that it didn't offer long-term protection and the protection could not be improved with a booster. The current vaccine is still new and the long-term protection and ability to be extended by a booster are unknown. Since most of the worst outcomes of shingles correlate to old age it makes sense to defer the vaccination hedging against the failure of the vaccine to provide long-term protection and to allow more time to elapse to learn more about how the vaccine works long-term.
Edit: My PCP's general advice was to defer the vaccination as long as possible. He felt that 60 was reasonable.
I haven't looked into the veracity of any of his reasoning, but I am willing defer to his expertise and bide my time. My sister-in-law had a really bad experience, and I remember my grandfather having a terrible experience when I was a child. I'm definitely fearful and would like to prevent it.
Especially when the delta is less than one year. That's just quibbling.
The age restriction seems obnoxious to me, too. I'd love to gather criticisms of this reasoning with citations that I can take to my PCP. It gives me the willies rolling the dice with this. I would much rather get the vaccination now but I also see his point. (I'm entirely too much the layman to go out looking for studies about the long-term protection of this current vaccine.)
re: the delta - He was advising me to defer the vaccination as long as possible. I'll edit my note to reflect that. Quibbling about a year is silly. He advised waiting until at least 60.
I'm 2 out of 3, any info on that scenario?
I wasn't aware the shingles vaccine starves off nerve pain. I've noticed more nerve pain with pins and needles and neuropathy now that I'm 41 which I assume is what you are talking about. I used to think I was getting pre-diabetic before this as I wasn't aware of nerve flare ups being a thing given how young I was when I found out.
Has there not been any studies around this with those with shingles taking the vaccine and freeing them from their symptoms? First time I've heard this.
Reputation is hard to build and easy to break, and well every decade there are enough events to break it even before dealing with propagandists and lumping all experts into the same basket. The experts said there were WMDs in Iraq too. Increased transparency combined with a less than stellar history means that institutions have fully earned their cynical reception. Horrifyingly is the damage that such misconduct has wrought, as even when they are actually 100% right this time people have reasons to doubt them.
ETA: Someone in comments above points out that the data is still coming in on this question. It looks like the best move is not to ever be exposed to varicella (maybe me?), and the second best move is to be vaccinated with chickenpox, and possibly the ultimate best move is to get Shingrix, but there's a lot of missing data and some timing problems here.
A lack of oral hygiene and gum disease is associated with nerodegeneration.
Lots of metabolic diseases have associations with nerodegenerative disorders. Insulin, kidney, liver dysfunction.
The gut microbiome...
Putting immune or metabolic stress on the brain can cause it to go into this disease state death spiral.
It's important to remember that association/correlation is not causality. People who brush their teeth reliably are probably more likely to exercise and do other healthy behaviors, too (avoid smoking, ...).
Kiss the wrong person (totally by chance) and you'll start getting cavities left and right.
There's a reason why this finding is valuable. It suggests a mechanistic hypothesis that bacteria are entering the bloodstream, heart, and passing the blood-brain barrier.
This is a very valuable line of investigation that can lead to a smoking gun for one class of casual mechanisms and potentially to preventative care or treatment.
If we blindly follow just the statistics, we'd never get any real science done.
Correlation does not imply causation. But when it gives you something to investigate, don't sit on it.
In particular this can seriously impair microglial cells which is something you really don't want to have happen if you value maintaining a well functioning brain.
This gives researchers (the lab kind) something to investigate.
I respect this kind of science a lot more than statistical paper pushing.
I’ve had chicken pox, mumps and measles growing up. Everyone I grew up with had those. No one is experiencing dementia or any sort of neurodegeneration. There was a chicken pox epidemic in my engineering university dorm. I didn’t catch it since I had it earlier as a kid. Either way none of the people who had it are having issues.
I think take the vax to prevent the disease. The neurodegenerative side effects are just advertisement for the vaccine.
Measles specifically cause lifelong disabilities, so yes, people do actually suffer those.
I mean chicken pox was pretty rampant. Everyone I knew got it - I mean everyone at some point before becoming an adult. It was just a rite of passage.
Keep in mind I’m not saying don’t take the vaccine. I’m just saying I don’t believe that these second order effects are as prevalent as they’re made out to be
Are you asserting dementia and neurodegeneration don't exist in India, or merely not in your set of close personal acquantances? Because if its the latter, that... hardly means anything. The expected prevalence even with a past history of diseases that increase the risk isn’t high enough that it not happening that you are aware of in your personal circle is... really noteworthy at all, unless your circle is large and/or you have detailed access to the private medical information of everyone in it.