You don’t need a medical degree to understand basic infectious diseases and NOT understanding it doesn’t seem to be a career killer. All of the information I have is freely available from more reliable sources than either Quadgop or I.
[QUOTE=dropzone]
Quote:
And what difference does the fact that the virus is not eliminated make?
Because that is where adult attacks of shingles come from, you moron. Recurrent infections require a primary infection.
[QUOTE]
I may be wrong here, but I believe shingles is not caused by direct exposure to the varicella virus, but rather to some sort of phenomenon where the varicella virus lives dormant in people who have been exposed to it as chicken pox. If that’s so, then being vaccinated with a weakened virus would not prevent shingles - the virus would still be in the vaccinated body and could be triggered out of dormancy by whatever it is that triggers it in people who have actually had chicken pox. My further understanding is that having a mild case of chicken pox makes one MORE prone to shingles later than a severe case of chicken pox does.
I’m thinking that the primary infection part COULD come from the vaccination, no? Thus making the potential for shingles higher? Can anyone either confirm this or debunk it?
dropzone, your assertions don’t make a lot of sense, and I’m not going to repeat everything I said before to try to parse it out for you. But as I’ve already noted over and over, childhood immunization does not seem to confer guaranteed adult immunity. Thus there is a real concern that we are sparing our children a (usually) mild illness to put them at risk for a very serious one as an adult. I hope it’s not the case, and some preliminary data is starting to come in showing more benefit than risk, but it’s not a black and white situation.
As for the youth on chemotherapy, Mom was following the oncologist’s advice. Continue normal activities (to pull her from school to avoid the frequent cases there was considered detrimental), and report if any contacts came down with the disease, in which case, give her immune globulin. Which was done. Pretty much SOP for her chemo regimen, underlying diagnosis, and the era.
The UK and Ireland don’t have VZ Vaccine as a routine childhood immunisation, basically it’s a cost/effectiveness thing… they’re not sure about what it will end up costing or how effective it is.
In healthcare systems where all immunisations as well as hospital treatment, medications etc are government funded, they tend to be wary of introducing vaccines that require 10 yearly boosters for illnesses with very low morbidity and mortality in the demographic usually most affected.
VZV is reserved for high risk, non-immune people (health care workers and school teachers for example). Non-immune women exposed in the last 2 weeks of pregnancy up until 3 weeks after the birth are given VZIG, like the child QtM mentioned. infection in early pregnancy will not harm the foetus.
Besides, our earlier attempts to get elfbabe to come down with CP had been abysmal failures, and we were taken by surprise when she suddenly came down with spots. We learned later it was probably from an exposure to a teacher at school (The same school the chemo kid was at), who had her outbreak as an adult, suffering far more than elfbabe or her sister.
Herbert Spencer
Qadgop, we know that any “childhood immunization does not seem to confer guaranteed adult immunity” but the evidence is pretty good it does with the help of herd immunity, explaining the few cases these days of the classic infectious diseases that we have vaccines for.
Sorry about being an asshole. We both made choices when your elfbabe and my Dagan were young. Of course, you, as an MD, assumed you were right regardless what anybody else said I was forced to listen to the CDC. 
I would like to know which of my assertions don’t make a lot of sense. The last time I looked it wasn’t 1705, there is a fairly effective chickenpox vaccine available (though neither of us was that sure about it ten years ago), and recurrent infections of varicella-zoster virus causes shingles. We might even agree that exposing someone with a compromised immune system to an active case of chickenpox is a bad idea. We might also disagree which of us is a moron but we seem to agree on most points.
My grandfather never had chicken pox.
Fast forward to his late 80’s or early 90’s, he got them…and the stress of it all brought on the shingles.
He was miserable.
No doubt. Being itchy and in pain can’t be a whole lot of fun.
Here I am trying to find an answer to a question in a pit thread. Chastise me if you see fit
I had a weakened inmune system when I was a young kid after a catastrophic kidney failure and long years of treatment. I had had mumps before I came down with the kidney disease, but never got measles (called rubeolla around this here parts) or chicken pox. In fact my parents went to great lenghts to protect me from chicken pox, going as far as pulling me from school if kids started getting chicken pox or sending me to stay with my aunt when my brother (who picked childhood diseases like he picked lost puppies) got it.
I am pregnant now, soon our child will be able to pick it in school or somewhere. What am I to do? Get a vaccine as soon as I finish breastfeeding? Hope for the best?
Smilie aside, that last bit seemed pretty assholish still. Don’t be horribly shocked if he tells you to fuck off, or ignores you entirely. And frankly, the tone of your posts thus far intimates a certain amount of aggression toward the medical profession.
Whether or not it’s 1705 (and I think we can all agree that it is, in point of fact, not 1705) has absolutely dick-all to do with what Qadgap was saying about the smallpox vaccine. He was referring to the “OHMYGAWWWWDD, that is so incredibly stupid and dangerous!!! Are you CRAZY!!! WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN” stuff. Jenner got that same sort of reaction, is all he was saying.
The fact that there’s a chicken pox vaccine available doesn’t meant that you should automatically get it. Right now, we really don’t know what the long-term outcomes of vaccination are re: adult immunity, susceptibility to shingles, etc., but we do know that your infected child has a 99.7% chance of not being ill enough to go to the hospital. The risk-benefit analysis is far from a slam-dunk in favor of vaccinating against this particular disease. It could really go either way at this point. So while vaccinating your kids isn’t clearly the wrong thing to do, it’s not clearly the right thing to do, either.
You need to speak with your physician about it. AFAIK, what’s going to be the best course of action will probably depend on whether or not you’re still immunocompromised and to what extent.
An anecdote: I had a very mild case of chicken pox when I was 6 months old or so. I got chicken pox (slightly less mild) again when I was 3 years old or so. I got shingles at 5 or 6, mono three times in college, mumps at 6 (infected my dad, badly), measles at 6, whooping cough, you name it. I also got every single vaccination there was (not a VZ vac, as there wasn’t one).
Nothing guarantees immunity to anything, folks.
Dropzone, if you don’t understand the basic functioning of immunization (infection with a weak or dead virus to build antibodies, immunization, as I understand it, GIVES you the disease) you shouldn’t be posting about medical issues, and you should certainly lay off QtM.
Are you sure that you were vaccinated? It would be interesting to find out if other patients who were vaccinated by the same doctor had the same problems you did. Maybe some slime cut the vaccines to increase profits or something.
Unbelievable.
When I saw this thread had gone to 3 pages, I assumed that the anti-poxers had piled on the pro-poxers. Not so!
Two statements:
[ol]
[li]Some people (myself included) have never had CP, enjoying a life free (so far) of little red spots. Some people (no idea on %) go their whole lives w/o.[/li][li]People can get CP more than once.[/li][/ol]
The first statement, if read logically, implies that it is not necessary to get the full disease, as not all people w/o exposure eventually get the disease.
The second statement should tell us that the varicella (sounds like pasta) virus is not a sigular entity, but a virus with at least a few forms, rendering exposure (and contraction of) to a certain CP unnecessarily scarring (double meaning intended) and short-sighted.
As for _yax who asked where Drop_zone “got his medical degree”…ass. You don’t need a medical degree to have an informed opinion on matters medical. Go back to the playground. :rolleyes:
Yeah… except that he’s arguing with someone who does have a medical degree, which seems to indicate that his “informed opinion” is somewhat less than “informed.”
I also think your second conclusion is not warranted from the information provided in this thread.
Excuse me? In case you haven’t read the posts since I “questioned” Dropzone, you will see that I wasn’t the only one who thought he was being a bit of a jerk.
And while you don’t need a medical degree to have an informed opinion, and I have never said otherwise, when there is a choice between a medical opinion from a layman, no matter how smart, and a doctor - I think that most people will go with the doctor.
Since you have only been here for a month or so, maybe you need to get a better idea of how things work in The Pit. Go back to the playground yourself.
Except when that MD has it wrong, by the standards of the general medical community, which is what Qadgop’s opinion is if he holds the same one as he did when elfbabe was younger, as he seems to. The CDC may phrase it a bit less assholish than I did but they STRONGLY encourage chickenpox vaccination the new-fangled way. And encourage it for adults, too, and have since '99.
No doctor is absolutely right on everything and I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke (which I am sure does NOT apply to Qadgop), “What do you call the guy who came in last in his class at med school?” Do not believe as gospel truth everything your doctor, OR the CDC, tells you but learn all you can about all sides of the issue. And FilmGeek, I have a perfectly adequate understanding how vaccination works.
And please, no abusing the newbies for being new. Cemetary Saviour seems to have a perfectly good understanding how the Pit works, though the playground comment was a bit mild.
Qadgop never said not to get the vaccine, he simply defended the practice of exposing kids to other, infected children as a way of immunizing them. Has the CDC issued an opinion on that practice?
The basic flaw I see in this conclusion is as follows (apart from the fact that immunity due to this vaccine has been shown to last at least for decades): if, as we are already seeing, cases of chickenpox decline markedly as a result of widespread vaccination, there will be fewer kids with chickenpox in the future and significantly less opportunity for adults to catch it and get more seriously ill.
I had chickenpox as a child. It was no big deal. However, I, like anyone else who got it probably has dormant virus in the body, which could reactivate (particularly if the immune system got compromised) and cause shingles. And shingles is no joke. In some people the pain from shingles is so severe and unmanageable that suicides have resulted.
Vaccination (with or without a booster later on, the need for which has yet to be demonstrated) overwhelmingly alleviates the concern about getting shingles later on.
Getting back to the “chickenpox parties”, I would still like to see why it is thought anything less than socially irresponsible to promote infections that could harm or kill adults exposed to these children. I highly doubt that all kids attending these “parties” are immediately sequestered in their homes and for the duration of the infective period, and never get a chance to spread the disease to innocent bystanders.
Jackmannii, MD
Is there any point to a non-immunocompromised adult getting the CP vaccine? We had a bit of a scare a few years back when my boss came down with CP as an adult - after many phone calls to my pediatrician and my parents (parents couldn’t remember whether I’d ever had CP, as I’d had a number of other skin issues as a kid) medical records revealed no CP vaccine - it wasn’t available back then). The incubation period was a bit hair-raising; my boss was out of commission for weeks.
On the bright side, I discovered that I once had a pediatric dermatologist named Dr. Spot. Which made him a good match for my pediatrician, Dr. Gerber.