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Roberta Gottlieb's avatar

When I was a pediatric resident in the 80s, I saw one case. The chief resident called many of us interns to see the child because he said that it might be the only case we’d ever see because of the success of vaccines. The child was not immunized. The 18 month old was struggling to breathe through the massive amount of mucus in his nose and airway. Fever was over 104 degrees and the child was limp and exhausted. NOT a fun disease with polka dots; rather, a miserable and sometimes fatal disease.

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Steve Kierkegaard's avatar

"Survivor immunity" does seem a better term than "natural immunity." After all vaccine immunity and immunity from exposure to a pathogen provoke the same responses by the acquired immune system, but the first is more survivable than the second.

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Steve Kierkegaard's avatar

By several orders of magnitude, because vaccine-related deaths are so rare, despite what the antivax propagandists claim.

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Don King's avatar

I also was a skeptic of chicken pox vaccine. I had a birthday party for my 6 year old daughter in June 1978 while she was infected telling parents to let their children get the pox now so they would not get it later during school sessions and miss school attendance. One of the few deaths for one of my patients in my career as a pediatrician was in a child with chicken pox.

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John Collis's avatar

Chicken pox vaccination doesn’t form part of the childhood vaccination schedule here in the U.K. being restricted to those who are immunocompromised.

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Don King's avatar

so-what do you think about childhood vaccination for the chicken pox?

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John Collis's avatar

To be honest I don’t know. I had chicken pox and I was off school for a couple of weeks when I was 8 years old. I think the problem has worsened over the past 60 years because I think children are catching it earlier. I was a nurse practitioner and I saw a 10 year old with shingles, one of my relatives is a paediatrician and has said they’ve seen an 8 year old with shingles.

My children all had chickenpox with varying degrees of severity. My daughter paid for her oldest child to be vaccinated because her baby was born at 32 weeks and spent almost 2 months in NICU, which makes him vulnerable. I think the U.K. government were considering introducing it, but I haven’t seen or heard anything since.

However, as the vaccine doesn’t prevent infection with Human Herpes Virus 3 (Varicella Zoster) then the virus will still infect B cells and become dormant. I presume that if around 95% of a population is vaccinated then transmission is reduced or even stopped.

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Laura T RN BSN's avatar

We are playing with fire

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Doug's avatar

That Brady Bunch episode was quite likely bracketed by Marlboro commercials. Does that mean that we're making a mistake by discouraging smoking?

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JB's avatar

what a strange comparison...

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