Chicken pox is a harmless illness and who cares if I get Shingles!

[Odin2005]

:banghead:

[realisticphish]

1. I wonder

if people just don't understand what shingles are

[laconicsax]

2. They have them on their houses, so what could be wrong with them?

:banghead:

[SheilaT]

3. I had chicken pox as a child.

More than fifty years ago now (I'm 62) and I keep on being amused every time I'm employed in a new job and they want proof that I was vaccinated against chicken pox. Luckily, my last two jobs have been at a hospital, so getting the "proof" is easy.

I personally don't worry about shingles, since there's nothing I can do about it. My older brother had an outbreak about 15 years ago. And my son, at age 20 had an outbreak. If it happens, it happens. Personally, I don't sweat the small stuff.

[Warpy]

8. You can get vaccinated and should

if you're over 60. That virus is lurking in your body and just waiting for your immune system to poop out enough so it can jump up again and give you some pure hell.

Shingles can blind you, paralyze your facial muscles, or be fatal, http://www.ehow.com/facts_5730250_can-shingles-fatal_.html , no medicalese.

It doesn't have to happen.

[SheilaT]

10. I have enormous faith in my body's

own immune defenses. I so understand that shingles happens when the still-lurking chicken pox virus is reactivated.

I also don't do flu shots. Oddly enough, I haven't had flu in about forty years. I guess that time I got the Asian flu gave me a life-long immunity.

I will not ask for any sympathy if I get shingles.

[TZ]

11. Actually you probably have gotten the flu many many times

And most likely have passed it on to other people. It is VERY common for people to get a infected but not show symptoms. Read about Typhoid Mary- she did exactly that. Flu shots are not just to protect the individual from getting sick. Herd immunity is pretty important especially for people who CAN'T get vaccinated. People who poo-poo flu shots really are being a bit short sighted.

[SheilaT]

14. Where in the world do you get off

assuming I've been a non-symptomatic carrier of flu? During the 25 years I was married my husband and two sons didn't seem to get the flu, so I sincerely doubt I was a Typhoid Mary. She earned her infamy in no small part because she was highly unusual.

All I know is that I avoid things like flu shots and I'm still the healthiest person I know. I'm 62 years old, rarely get sick at all, maybe a cold every other year or so. Last year I broke my right arm (non-displaced hairline fracture of the ulna) and was back at work two weeks later.

The immunity you get from actually getting a disease is far better than the (almost always temporary) one from a vaccination. And while plenty of vaccinations are good ideas -- such as smallpox when it was still around -- for someone who is as healthy as I am the flu shot makes no sense at all. I am NOT a danger to those who can't get vaccinated. But everyone who goes to work when they have a cold or the flu (which is what the vast majority of people do), THEY are a danger to everyone else, not healthy me.

[TZ]

15. I'm not attacking you. I'm STATING A KNOWN SCIENTIFIC FACT

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to be immune to the thousands of influenza viri that are floating around. I am a fucking IMMUNOLOGIST. I have to know this stuff for my job.
You reallly don't know what you are talking about. Plenty of people catch viri and never get symptomatic. West Nile Virus is NOTORIOUS for that.
And no, the immunity you get from being sick IS NOT BETTER THAN A VACCINATION- vaccines are actually much more concentrated and give you a better protection. People who get the chicken pox vaccine WON'T get shingles cause they were never infected throughout their body. If you have had chicken pox, you CAN get shingles because that damn virus never EVER leaves your body. Vaccines don't spread the viri everywhere.
If you are going to post here you better damn well have your facts straight. You are ill educated in this field.
And I told you...my sister has Lupus. She cannot get flu vaccines. If you were to walk into her house as an unvaccinated CARRIER you could KILL HER. And your colds from time to time? Could easily be mild flu.
BTW, I've worked for NIH and one of the world's formost vaccine specialists. I do know what I am talking about. Probably only a handful of posters here know more than me.
I have a natural immunity to small pox (I know this from attempts to vaccinate). But I have to be careful around people when I have that vaccine, because for a certain amount of time I could give them the live virus I was injected with even though its not hurting me-I'm basically a carrier.
All this is Immunology 101. I suggest before you respond to me again you LEARN some biology. Don't post old wives tales and anti-vaccine idiotic statements- "gettick sick is better than a vaccine" is classic anti-vaxx woo. Herd immunity is something you obviously don't understand. And yes, I think the Typhoid Mary reference is accurate. She had the same know it all yet ignorant attitude you do. Her case is a well publicized case of actually common behavior. H1N1, Sars, all these new pandemics are usually spread by a handful of people who aren't being careful.
- Your "almost always temporary" immunity claim from a vaccine is bullshit. I have titer (immunity) from small pox for some 35 years. And my titer from my Hep B shot in 1997 is still good 13 years later. Even tetanus is good for 10 years. Thats far from temporary.

[SheilaT]

17. If the vaccines are better,

why then do people need booster shots.

I recall when they suddenly discovered that young people who'd gotten the first round of some set of shots, maybe the MMR but I'm not fully certain, all of a sudden started breaking out in huge numbers with one of the M's because after about ten years the immunity had worn off. I happen to have had all three of those, and I don't need a booster shot.

And if I, who never get flu shots and never come down with the flu MUST BE ASSUMED to be an asymptomatic carrier, isn't every single person who gets the flu shot also an asymptomatic carrier for some period of time after getting the flu shot?

Please enlighten me.

I will repeat: I'm the healthiest person I know. I've had maybe two colds in the last three years. I don't get flu. I don't take any kind of regular medication of any sort, unusual apparently for someone over the age of 60.

I'm sorry about your sister. Lupus is a nasty disease. I know a small amount about the auto-immune disorders because both of my sons have alopecial areata, which is another auto-immune disorder. In their case (and this seems to be common among people with alopecia areata) they seem to have a hyper-active immune system because they likewise are almost never sick. Growing up each of them almost never got a cold after the aa occurred. They did get chicken pox, finally, after being exposed to it numerous times.

Tetanus is good for ten years. That's still temporary because it's not permanent. Permanent is forever, as in it never wears off. Ten years is a reasonably long time, but still not permanent.

[realisticphish]

18. because the flu mutates

people who got swine flu in the last generation were better protected (or at least so the theory is, I'm not sure of the research) for this go around.

Vaccines don't "run out." The flu mutates to the point where the body can't produce the correct anti-bodies anymore. This is true of natural immunity, as well. Influenza changes each and every year, which is why there is a new (and completely different) vaccine each and every year.

[lazarus]

19. I hate to say this

maybe I'm a mutant or something, but every time I've gotten a flu shot, I've been bed-ridden for two weeks. Am I a bad person for avoiding them now?

[realisticphish]

20. yes

you are a bad person, and should be shunned.


shuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun

[SheilaT]

21. Flu comes in three major types.

Imaginatively called Type A, Type B, and Type C. Type A is the most virulent. The 1918 (Spanish Flu) and H1N1 are examples of Type A flu. Types B and C are progressively less virulent, although they are always around, and from year to year it's as if they take turns as to which one becomes most common.

An important reason people over the age of 60 or so tended not to get the flu in the 1918 pandemic was that they'd all been through a Type A flu epidemic about fifty years earlier, and so were mostly immune to this new Type A.

Every year an educated guess is made as to which subtypes of flu are likeliest to show up for the next flu season and the vaccine is configured based on that guess. All in all they (I'm honestly not sure who does the guess work, the CDC maybe) do a very good job of guessing what will show up. Each year the flu vaccine is configured to at least two different sub-types of expected flu virus. I have no idea if there's a practical limit to how many sub-types could be included in one particular vaccine, but I suppose there is.

[TZ]

4. I'll gladly wish shingles on every single anti-vaxx idiot

Its one of the MOST painful diseases out there. And can go on for long periods of times. It might actually make them understand why the vaccine is a GOOD thing. Or adult chicken pox and a trip to the hospital.

[realisticphish]

5. i've heard

that shingles are the number one reason for elderly suicide.

I don't know how accurate that is, though

[rexcat]

6. Having had a case of shingles in my early 20's...

and it hurts like hell. Nothing relieved the pain. That was around 1975 when it occurred but treatment for the pain now is not much better. I have seen a fair amount of shingles in oncology patients and it is not pretty.

On a side note I was in the service and under a considerable amount of stress when my shingles occurred. I didn't really like the service and was bidding my time waiting for my discharge date. The lifers didn't like "first termer's" and like to make life hell on us. It is amazing what these assholes like to do just because they could!

[TZ]

7. A coworker of mine got shingles about 10 years ago

I still remember watching her suffer through it. Not pretty.

[laconicsax]

9. Homeopathic remedies would sell out, acupuncturists would be swamped, rare animals would go extinct.

Such an onslaught of alt-med idiots seeking pain-relief would create a boom in the alt-med industry.

[Curmudgeoness]

12. I care if you get shingles. A very painful affliction.

I didn't take the vaccine seriously, I never get any of the vaccines for anything. And I thought that the shingles vaccine was too expensive. Wait until you have to pay for the meds for shingles and you realize that the vaccine is cheap.

My only concern is...how effective is it? Seems I heard it wasn't great.

[TZ]

16. Its not 100% effective but most doctors think for high risk patients

like older immunocompromised people its better to be safe than sorry (shingles vaccine that is. Chicken pox vaccine is very effective). Thats why many people don't get it. Its also why the CP vaccine is important. You really can't get shingles if you have the original vaccine.

[beam me up scottie]

13. One of my old bosses had it, his wife is a nurse and kept him doped up on morphine.

It wasn't enough, he was in agony for weeks.

Several months ago I was at the pharmacy and the man in front of me had to reject the Valtrex scrip they had waiting for him because it was over $150.00 and he couldn't afford it. He told me he was supposed to take it to ease the symptoms of his shingles.

He left without it and probably spent the next couple of weeks wishing he was rich or dead.

[frogmarch]

22. One of my sisters

is in a wheelchair because of shingles (which, on top of everything else, caused her excruciating pain). Not only has she no feeling in her legs, half her face droops and her eye on that side won't open.

I got me a shingles vaccination, by gawd.