Rubella is dangerous to fetal development, but other viral diseases can be too, including chicken pox
Pneumonia, encephalitis, menengitis, cardiomyopathy, and opportunistic bacterial infections can all be sequeli of chicken pox in children and adults, all of which can be life threatening.
Not only would I worry about the pregnant women in your office, all the people who haven’t had chicken pox, but all the people who might be immunocompromised or who may have immunocompromised folk at home (cancer patients, folks on immunosuppressant drugs like yours truly, folks with HIV/AIDS and so on…)
You don’t fuck with that stuff.
Thanks for that info! I’m glad I got it as a kid. I was exposed to German measles when I was pregnant and it was pretty scary, but nothing came of it.
I’m at work; she’s not. She’ll be working from home for at least the rest of the week.
The fact that I may already have been exposed is worrisome. There are about five of us in the same boat. I should look into the vaccine for next time.
From eMedicine-
Mortality/Morbidity: In immunocompromised children, such as those with leukemia, mortality rates from varicella have ranged from 7-28%. The case fatality rate in the general population is 6.7/100,000. Bolding is mine.
The mortality rate in the general population (of children) is low. For adults the story is different.
*Varicella pneumonia is a complication usually of adult varicella and occurs in 1:400 cases.
*The mortality rate of adult varicella pneumonia is as high as 10% in immunocompetent patients and as high as 30% in immunocompromised patients.
And of course there is this:
again, bolding is mine.
This seems to indicate that there are severe problems with the vaccine. Not to mention that the lenght of time it provides immunity is unknown. Given the problems that chicken pox can cause in adults versus healthy children, it seems that getting it while you are a child is a better option, to me anyways.
I have yet to find a doctor willing to give me the vaccine, as both myself and my husband are immuno-compromised. Made for some really, really interesting times at work when we had an outbreak last year- not only among children who had had the vaccine, but also children who had previously had pox. Our nurse was at a complete loss, like her world had basically collapsed in on itself.
There is a reason I never, ever let the kids at work touch me, and rarely go onto their units.
Your cite says nothing about immunized vs non-immunized. If it’s your child in the ICU, the percentage is irrelevent. It becomes 100%.
Is there a vaccine for shingles, or are you saying that if you have the chickenpox vaccine, you can’t get shingles? If the latter, that’s the first I’ve heard…
Eh, it doesn’t always work. When the kids across the street had, my mom had my brother and I go over for a play date; he caught it, I didn’t. But I did catch it in my twenties and I second that you definitely i]don’t* want to catch it as an adult.
Yeeeah. That would be great if it worked, but it doesn’t always. My sister had it when we were kids and I didn’t catch it, even though my mother damn near locked us in a room together and made us play together until she was certain that I had contracted it, too. I didn’t. We lived in a very small house and shared a bathroom.
Immunizations in this country have been responsible for the elimination of polio, smallpox and many other diseases as anything but a very rare threat. Just because people don’t routinely die of chicken pox doesn’t mean that it’s some harmless, namby pamby bug that’ll give you the sniffles and a couple of days of soup and 7-up.
There was one issue with the vaccine that a doctor I worked with brought up. If a child gets chicken pox they are normally immune to it for life. However some of the vaccines produce immunities that wear off after about 10 years, meaning that if someone is vaccinated as a child they are not protected as an adult, when the disease is much worse.
He took the view that unless the child was high risk (immune issues etc.) it was better to try to get the actual disease when the child was very young. Then if they didn’t catch it, vaccinate when they were older to prevent them getting it when the disease would be more severe.
Oh the other hand since this is the Pit I suppose I should be posting his opinion of someone who waltzed into the office and exposed all their co-workers to a contagious disease…
I thought I might have had measles a couple of months ago - I called my boss on a sunday to let her know i’d be working from home that day (we’re also friends, so it’s not unusual for us to talk on a sunday). Anyways she called me back the next day to say I wasn’t allowed to come back to the office without a Doctor’s certificate declaring me well.
The measly rash turned out to be an allergy, and I got to work from home all that day in my PJ’s. Everyone won! Yay!
People in America honestly still get the mumps? I think of it as one of those diseases that’s archaic in the first world, like diptheria.
I got the vaccine as soon as it was available, when I was a teenager. I’d been immune to chicken pox as a child (numerous "go play with ___ and get the damned chicken pox, will you? events, but no disease), but you never know if you might get it anyway. Seriously, you don’t want it as an adult. Nobody seems to know if you can get shingles if you’ve had the vaccine, though, and watching my dad go through that was not at all pleasant.
My grandma got shingles in her eye.
I got mumps as a child - I have no idea if people still get them or not. Anyone with kids know this?
Because they won’t all get it anyway. I never caught it, even when my sister & all my cousins got it.
My doctor tested for antibodies, thinking maybe I got a very mild case when I was a baby, but I didn’t have any. I got vaccinated when I was in high school.
Well, you definitely get vaccinated for them as a child, and I had to get a booster to go to college in the late 90’s. It’s probably all used up and I’m due for a nice case of measles, mumps, or rubella.
A family friend had rubella (German measles) when she was pregnant, and her son is deaf. This was more than 40 years ago, though, and is why we vaccinate.
There was quite a worrisome outbreak in Iowa and Illinois last spring, largely among college students. IIRC there were some 600 cases in Iowa, as opposed to usual 12 or so. It was in the news around here for several weeks. My daughter had a massive case of strep at the time. Scared both of us quite a bit.
I vaccinated my kids (I had it as a child), and if they need a booster in 10 years, then they will get one. No big deal.
Chicken pox almost killed my uncle. They got down into his mucuous membranes and caused terrible problems.
In a related rant, a friend of mine got pinkeye because some stupid bitch came to work at the Lancome make up counter at Macy’s with it. Hello, stupid cunt? You aren’t just using the same telephone as your coworkers, you are touching customer’s faces! WTF?!?
Was it some kind of mumps that isn’t covered by the vaccines? Because unless things have changed that’s one of the vaccines you have to get to go to most colleges.