Proof that vaccination works...

[Scornelius]

I caught chicken pox for the second time when I was 12 and had a compromised immune system. It very nearly killed me. My mom still tells the story of dotting me with calamine lotion from head to toe, and then having to start over because so many more spots had come out during the process. At one point my fever spiked to 106. Ironically, I was kicked out of the hospital I was in because I was too sick. I was sent to the infectous diseases ward of a local children's hospital instead. Good times.

A friend of the family didn't catch it until he was in his early 40's, and again, he nearly died. My DH doens't want to vaccinate our son (against CP, we're on schedule for everything else) because he sees it as a normal childhood disease that everyone survives, but that's just not the case.

 

[snarlingcoyote]

Darn it; I misread the title of this thread as "Proof that VACATIONS work". Guess I'll have to go to work today.

 

[snarlingcoyote]

I agree. Most people did not have any of the "major" illnesses when I was a child-measles, polio, etc. but you certainly knew people that had. Everyone took their kids to someone's house to expose them to chicken pox so they could be done with that and have it early. I remember having mumps when I was in kindergarten. I STILL remember how painful that was. It is similar to so many young people smoking again, they didn't grow up with parents that smoked and don't really see all the issues that causes.

My mother exposed me to chickenpox when I was 3, because it was known that an early case is much more survivable and easier on a child than a later case. I got a very mild case and recovered.

Then, of course, I got a very, very bad case when I was 11. To make matters worse, I was contagious the day we went to the Shriner Circus with a thousand other kids from all over our region. I didn't feel sick until we were halfway to the circus, so I just had to suffer with a high fever and vomit my way through the day. Lord only knows how many kids I infected. Just call me Chickenpox Coyote.

I'm too young to remember polio or mumps or any of those diseases, but I know enough history and have studied enough geneaology to know how many kids those diseases killed, how many entire families they wiped out.

I'm all for any vaccine that will keep us safe from communicable illnesses that can kill.

 

[Kath2003]

I'm interested too, as to why you'd roll out a national vaccination program for a disease from which 99.67% of people recover from without any serious complications and which is only fatal for 0.003% of cases.

Seems to be a little overreaction and hugely expensive, particularly compared to the major causes of death in the USA amongst young people (besides accidents, abuse and homocide (seriously...)) such as cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, suicide, flu, pneumonia, bronchitis, HIV etc. - all of which rank significantly higher in the death statistics. Even hernias are more deadly...

 

[snarlingcoyote]

I'm interested too, as to why you'd roll out a national vaccination program for a disease from which 99.67% of people recover from without any serious complications and which is only fatal for 0.003% of cases.

Seems to be a little overreaction and hugely expensive, particularly compared to the major causes of death in the USA amongst young people (besides accidents, abuse and homocide (seriously...)) such as cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, suicide, flu, pneumonia, bronchitis, HIV etc. - all of which rank significantly higher in the death statistics. Even hernias are more deadly...

Let's think about this in cost/benefit/risk tolerance terms.

Risk is defined as a combination of possibility and severity. Your tolerance is how you determine your reaction to those two events in combination with how easy it is to remediate (fix) the problem.

Bringing other diseases into it is a non sequitur, a specious argument - it has no bearing on this case, because the vaccine already exists. A vaccine does not exist for the other maladies.

There are two different sets of data to consider:

1. The possibility of death or impairment is extremely low, but it does exist. Hmm. What's the ease of remediation? A shot that is inexpensive and causes mild irritation. Most people would, in that circumstance, choose the shot.

2. The possibility of loss of work time for a parent and loss of school time for a child is almost certain. So that's an extremely high risk. The cost of this may be considerable in terms of quality of life (i.e. using up vacation days to nurse a sick child or loss of income for a week on the parent's side; loss of that time in a child's education on the child's side). The remediation is, again a shot that is inexpensive and causes mild irritation.

With that said, your tolerance for those risks may be higher than most. Personally, I can't see where anyone wouldn't take the shot to get the benefit of the vaccine.

 

[Kath2003]

There are two different sets of data to consider:

1. The possibility of death or impairment is extremely low, but it does exist. Hmm. What's the ease of remediation? A shot that is inexpensive and causes mild irritation. Most people would, in that circumstance, choose the shot.

2. The possibility of loss of work time for a parent and loss of school time for a child is almost certain. So that's an extremely high risk. The cost of this may be considerable in terms of quality of life (i.e. using up vacation days to nurse a sick child or loss of income for a week on the parent's side; loss of that time in a child's education on the child's side). The remediation is, again a shot that is inexpensive and causes mild irritation.

With that said, your tolerance for those risks may be higher than most. Personally, I can't see where anyone wouldn't take the shot to get the benefit of the vaccine.

I'm not saying it's pointless - I'm just questioning why THIS disease, when there are many others which cause far greater distress, inconvenience, death etc. to a far wider-ranging spectrum of people. In short, it seems odd that you'd develop a vaccination for something that is "relatively" harmless and occurs usually once in most people during childhood. Even developing a vaccination for a mild cold would receive greater benefits for parents and child in terms of lost time in education & employment.

That said, I come from a country where all healthcare is paid for centrally, and also where caring for your sick child doesn't result in any direct penalty to you (i.e. you can have a certain degree paid time off work without using vacation time or losing pay).

 

[scrapquitler]

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/25/deaths-from-chickenpox-down/


Awesome news. It's hard to fight statistics like these...

I always wonder about how the statistics might have been manipulated or what factors might not be being considered when quoting those statistics.

It looks simple enough to say that "now that more kids are vaccinated for chicken pox, deaths due to complications of chicken pox are down because of the vaccination" But then I wonder: well, do we now treat cases of chicken px more agressively now because they aren't as common? Do children with complications from chicken pox get hospitalized more often than they would have in the past and are those complications treated differently today than they would have been treated 10 or 20 or 50 years ago???? Sometimes the correlation between the statistics and the conclusions are not necessarily as cut and dry as the media make them out to be.

Or maybe I just took too many statistics classes and now have a jaded viewpoint when I see statistics being quoted...

ETA: Yes, I always see about 12 sides to every different argument, that's normal for me LOL

Having said what I did, my kids ARE vaccinated against chicken pox and every other thing that there is a vaccine for (well, except the flu).

And my personal experience with chicken pox: when my nephew was 5 he came home from K with chicken pox (this was before the vaccine). None of us thought anything of it. Two weeks later, my brother (who had chicken box at the same time as my other brother and I as a child) came down with chicken pox. Not too long after that, my brother #2 ALSO came down with CP, and then not long after, I did too. We did have them as children (it's in our medical records, and we all remember having them), and we all had them again as adults at the same time.

 

[tlbwriter]

I'm not saying it's pointless - I'm just questioning why THIS disease, when there are many others which cause far greater distress, inconvenience, death etc. to a far wider-ranging spectrum of people. In short, it seems odd that you'd develop a vaccination for something that is "relatively" harmless and occurs usually once in most people during childhood. Even developing a vaccination for a mild cold would receive greater benefits for parents and child in terms of lost time in education & employment.

You seem to be assuming vaccines for those other disease aren't available because scientists chose to prevent chickenpox instead, but that's not the case. I'm sure people are working constantly on a vaccine for the common cold. They just haven't been able to come up with one.

That said, I come from a country where all healthcare is paid for centrally, and also where caring for your sick child doesn't result in any direct penalty to you (i.e. you can have a certain degree paid time off work without using vacation time or losing pay).

Yeah, if you lived in the U.S. you might have a better idea of how chickenpox can impact the life of a working parent.

 

[cornflake]

I'm not saying it's pointless - I'm just questioning why THIS disease, when there are many others which cause far greater distress, inconvenience, death etc. to a far wider-ranging spectrum of people. In short, it seems odd that you'd develop a vaccination for something that is "relatively" harmless and occurs usually once in most people during childhood. Even developing a vaccination for a mild cold would receive greater benefits for parents and child in terms of lost time in education & employment.

That said, I come from a country where all healthcare is paid for centrally, and also where caring for your sick child doesn't result in any direct penalty to you (i.e. you can have a certain degree paid time off work without using vacation time or losing pay).

There are several things here....

First, you're forgetting that chickenpox DOES fairly cause serious complication - in adults, and does cause shingles, which is a serious thing, especially in the older population in which it's more common.

Second, your list seems to be forgetting that there is a national flu vaccination campaign.

Third, you seem to think it's just decision-making and, further, a zero-sum game. Like there are scientists sitting around and Bob says 'hey, let's develop a vaccine for the cold,' and Joe says, 'nah, how about for HIV?' and Gina says, 'nah, let's do Chickenpox,' and they go 'ok, whatever, Gina.'

People are working dilligently on vaccines for all sorts of things - scientists around the globe have been trying for an HIV vaccine for 30 years now, whether it'll ever be possible is debatable.

Scientists are working on cancer vaccines all over the globe, some are in late-stage testing. Pox vaccines were some of the earliest developed - in a general sense, it's something we know how to do.

Cold vaccines seem a pretty low value option. It'd protect against very little, cost very much, it'd last very little timewise and the cold is generally not serious at all and even in a general case takes someone out of school or work for a couple of days - unlike Chickenpox.

 

[Kath2003]

You seem to be assuming vaccines for those other disease aren't available because scientists chose to prevent chickenpox instead, but that's not the case. I'm sure people are working constantly on a vaccine for the common cold. They just haven't been able to come up with one.

No, but vaccinations ARE available for a number of diseases which are not widely used (the flu vaccine, for example) because the cost of them outweighs the benefit. Some vaccinations are used throughout most developed countries (diphtheria, tetanus etc.) yet chicken pox isn't used throughout a large number of these countries so I am skeptical as to the cost/benefit ratio as yet. I may be wrong, given it's a relatively new vaccination, but the numbers do seem a little odd.

And you're right, I do not, and indeed hope I never need to, understand the dilemma having to sacrifice my wages because my child is unwell. I would hate to be, or see others, put in that position.

I did negate to mention the national flu vaccination programme, because it doesn't exist here. The NHS offers a free vaccination only to those who are "vulnerable". It does not consider it necessary for the majority of us

 

[scrapquitler]

I was born in 73 too, didn't have it . No one my age has it ,but my friends born in 69 or earlier all do for the most part. Go figure.

Just had my tetnus shot a few weeks ago. Guess I am good for another ten years. Let's hope I don't cut tip of my finger off again lol.

I'm going to have to look up my vaccine records because I was born in 1967 and I don't have the smallpox marks on my arm, nor do I ever remember hearing that I had the 'vaccine' for it.

 

[punkin]

I'm going to have to look up my vaccine records because I was born in 1967 and I don't have the smallpox marks on my arm, nor do I ever remember hearing that I had the 'vaccine' for it.

I was born in '67 and have a vaccine mark still.

 

[Hoodie]

I find the whole story of the chicken pox vaccine interesting. I'm not anti-vaccine, and my kids were vaccinated for CP, but looking objectively at the whole story is interesting.

Vaccine rolled out for a disease that for the vast majority of people is non-life threatening. My sister got the pox down her throat so I'm not going to call it an "annoying" disease or even a minor childhood illness because I remember being pretty sick, but in the grand scheme of diseases, chicken pox is one of the more mundane diseases. Vaccine is met with relief and skeptism. A few years after the vaccine is widely used, adults start developing shingles in much higher rates. Before the chicken pox vaccine, it was assumed that you got the pox once in your life and you were immune. Later, eldery adults may get shingles due to their aging and compromised immune systems.

Turns out, it wasn't actually getting chicken pox that caused the immunity, it was the constant exposure to it in the environment. Eldery adults would develop shingles because they would go long periods of time without exposure to children and the disease. Suddenly people weren't exposed as often and shingles became a lot more prevelant. Now we need a shingles vaccine because of the effect of the chicken pox vaccine. Also, now kids needed a chicken pox booster shot. It shows how little we knew about the virus for so many years and the unintended consequences if "fixing" one thing.

As for the statistics, the percentage is staggering, but look deeper into the article and you'll see that roughly 100 people died pre-vaccine, with half of them being children. So, roughly 49 children's lives are saved each year, and 88 overall.

I think the cost/results analysis a PP mentioned might be a vaild argument.

 

[snarlingcoyote]

I'm going to have to look up my vaccine records because I was born in 1967 and I don't have the smallpox marks on my arm, nor do I ever remember hearing that I had the 'vaccine' for it.

Your childhood doctor may have been like mine and decided to play the odds that it would get taken off the required list before you started school.

 

[Geoff_M]

I'm interested too, as to why you'd roll out a national vaccination program for a disease from which 99.67% of people recover from without any serious complications and which is only fatal for 0.003% of cases.

How about the prevention of over 50,000 chicken pox related hospitalizations from 2000 to 2006 in the US alone on top of the 100 or so lives saved annually?

 

[Kath2003]

How about the prevention of over 50,000 chicken pox related hospitalizations from 2000 to 2006 in the US alone on top of the 100 or so lives saved annually?

50,000 hospital admissions in 6 years is less than 10,000 a year.
There are an average of 3.5 million cases a year.
That's a hospitalisation percentage of 0.23%, and a mortality rate of 0.002%
It's tiny.

(For comparison, your chance of being murdered in 2009 was twice that of being killed by chicken pox... and that's assuming you even contracted chicken pox in 2009 - otherwise it's 7000 times more likely that you'll be killed in a homicide each year than you will be by chicken pox)

 

[Geoff_M]

50,000 hospital admissions in 6 years is less than 10,000 a year.
There are an average of 3.5 million cases a year.
That's a hospitalisation percentage of 0.23%, and a mortality rate of 0.002%
It's tiny.

(For comparison, your chance of being murdered in 2009 was twice that of being killed by chicken pox...)

Well, let's turn the tables and ask at what threshold would the Chickenpox vaccination programs make sense to you? How many lives would have to be saved annually? How many long-term complications prevented? How many prevented hospitalizations? How many fewer lost sick days?

 

[Kath2003]

Well, let's turn the tables and ask at what threshold would the Chickenpox vaccination programs make sense to you? How many lives would have to be saved annually? How many long-term complications prevented? How many prevented hospitalizations? How many fewer lost sick days?

My thought is it's merely an expensive way of curing what seems to be a very minor issue. You know as well as I do that the government needs to make choices as to how it spends its money - is this really a priority? Could the same money be used to bring bigger benefits, such as investing in vaccines for diseases that have far higher mortality rates?

It just strikes me as odd that a government would invest so much in what brings so little benefit. I probably just have a suspicious mind

 

[Geoff_M]

It just strikes me as odd that a government would invest so much in what brings so little benefit. I probably just have a suspicious mind

Well then don't worry too much because our government hasn't put a lot of money and resources into it. It doesn't pay for the production or distribution of the vaccine and research is largely in private and educational hands.

 

[Kath2003]

Well then don't worry too much because our government hasn't put a lot of money and resources into it. It doesn't pay for the production or distribution of the vaccine and research is largely in private and educational hands.

Each vaccine costs something like $84, let's say $80 to round it down.
There are about 4 million kids born in the USA every year.
To vaccinate them all therefore costs $336 million, per year.
Granted, not a lot when spread over a nation - but can you think of how else $336 million could be used?
You could use it to research far more vicious diseases, to buy resources for school (can you imagine if each class of 25 Kindergarteners had an extra $2000 to spend on resources?) or even donate it to the developing world to help them out?
(The malaria vaccine that GSK have developed will cost $500 million - that's less than 2 years worth of chicken pox vaccines...)

You don't have to agree with me, but the above would all make me uneasy about the whole thing.