@MiamiDAP - of course you can have an opinion on anything. But throwing numbers around requires some kind of factual back up and in this case, you don’t have any.
@MiamiDAP Here’s some data. Our local elementary school district has a wide range of immigrant percentages at the various schools. In the school with the highest percentage of low-income kids with Spanish spoken in the home (about 80%) and a high 1st generation in the US percent, the unvaccinated rate is 0.4% including opt-outs for medical reasons. In two schools with some of the highest average incomes, the unvaccinated rate is 9.5% to 11.5%. Schools with income levels in between have vaccination rates in between.
That was before the recent California measles outbreak, a local pertussis outbreak (started at a Waldorf that shared a campus with a public elementary), and some cases of chicken pox (caught by kids from an adult who came down with shingles). So, I hope the vaccination rate at the privileged schools has improved since all that.
It has long been popular to blame immigrants for diseases: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862341/
There were outbreaks of chickenpox and measles at some of the camps the children who arrived from Central America this past year, and of course that was concerning. Many of the adults working at those camps are 40-50 year olds who ‘thought’ they had had chickenpox but had not,or whose vaccinations had expired.
My kids were attending school in Florida at the time. Florida requires every child in a school or community center to be vaccinated and is very strict about it (took them hours to review every shot my kids had had). Well, the federal govt said the kids arriving had to be admitted to schools without any health records. I think most of them were processed and at least partially immunized immediately, but if they refused they still were able to go to school while a family relocating from another state could not until the records were processed by county health.
@dmd77 - and sometimes it was even fair to do so (“blame immigrants for diseases”):
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Columbian_Exchange
going back to @greenwitch about the HPV vaccinations for boys, HPV is the most commonly spread sexually transmitted infection, and logic would tell you that most females will get it from a male (who got it from a female, who got it from a male etc etc). As a mom of girls, I think it’s only right that the moms of boys should be taking them to get this vaccination to protect their future partners, as well as moms of girls obviously wanting to protect their daughters.
I don’t understand why parents who won’t get their kids vaccinated don’t also bubblewrap their kids and NEVER let them drive in a car across town, or even to the neighborhood grocery store. The kids have many more million times greater a chance of being harmed in a car wreck than by getting vaccinated.
@movemetoo - let’s not forget that HPV can cause anal cancer, oral cancer, genital warts, and penile cancer. Pretty good reason for getting the vaccine right there!
When I posted that on my friends FB page, someone replied with this:
and this:
The vaccine sounds much more reassuring to me!
I am surprised anyone that old thought they had gotten the chickenpox vaccine, because it wasnt around until the mid 90’s.
I say we just ask the boys, “Which would you prefer, three shots or a laser burning warts off your penis?” 
On a more serious note, when my needle phobic teen son was told by his pediatrician that the HPV shots could prevent his future girlfriend or wife from developing cervical cancer some day he didn’t hesitate to have them. I believe he was motivated in part by the fact that he’d already experienced what it was like to watch someone you love go through chemo hell.
People in their 40’s received the original measles vaccinations, and many have gotten the chickenpox vaccinations - not as babies, but when they headed off to college, or when they had their own children, or worked in a child care or health care situation. I had never had a flu shot until my daughter was born and was medically fragile. Her pediatrician suggested I get all the vaccinations I needed to prevent bring home anything that could make her ill.
Vaccinations that were originally thought of as ‘one and done’ now require boosters. My kids got the chickenpox one and when administered in the 1990’s, they thought that was it (one at age 1, one at kindergarten). Now there is another booster. Who knows if they’ll need another at age 30 or 50?
Boosting cpox vaccination is still better than getting it as an older teen or adult. It can be nasty at the least and life-theatening at the worst.
The cpox vaccine was first used about 1993 (my daughter was the first in our practice to get it). So there aren’t any 40 year olds who got it for college. Very few adults got the vaccine unless it was clear they were nonimmune (some healthcare workers who had titers checked, a few who absolutely knew they hadn’t had the illness, etc). The vast majority of those 40 and above had had the disease.
2644 -- If they were 40-50, did they get chicken pox (1st exposure) or shingles?
I’m not sure what your question is. I didn’t bring up ‘40 year olds’. Your first exposure to varicella virus is always chickenpox. Shingles is a reactivation of the dormant virus. Those who have had cpox can get shingles. Those who have had the vaccine rarely get shingles.
For example, my friend is an ICE agent and he was sent to one of the camps hosting the children coming across the border last year. He is about 45 years old, has 4 children who are 15-22 years old so all probably had the vaccine as children and he may or may not have ever had chickenpox. He would have been a good candidate to get the vaccine as an adult, going into a situation where he’d come in contact with unvaccinated or newly vaccinated children. I didn’t ask him but his wife was talking about all the precautions he was taking. One concern was lice, but he shaves his head and wasn’t worried (she still was). He’d be at the camp about 30 days on duty, then come home, then go back. Lots of opportunities to get chickenpox or measles and bring them home with him if he wasn’t vaccinated.
Recently my mother was concerned about my 53 year old brother. We all had measles when he was about 6 months old. The doctor said he had them too, but my mother said he only had one or two spots and was not as sick as the rest of us (ages 1, 4, 6 and 7) so she was never really sure he had the measles. When the measles outbreak happened this spring, there were recommendations on the news that any adult who wasn’t sure about what diseases he/she had had should get a vaccination. Many women got vaccinated before getting pregnant but many men have not had the disease or boosters or just don’t know. I don’t know if my 3 younger brothers ever had chickenpox either as we older kids had them when I was 2 but they weren’t born yet. Many adults are in the same position my family is in - my mother kept poor records, we moved several times when we were young so not great records from doctor to doctor, and we have all been healthy so not a lot of doctor trips anyway
I was originally responding to a post that said no adults 40-50 had had chickenpox vaccinations. No, not as babies but yes, as adults some have had vaccinations and those vaccinations may not have had a booster because no one really knows how long the original shots last.
My niece and nephew were born in the 80’s so never got the shots as babies, and I think they got them when they headed off to college, were told one was enough and probably never got boosters.
“Shingles is a reactivation of the dormant virus. Those who have had cpox can get shingles. Those who have had the vaccine rarely get shingles.”
Fwiw my D had the c-pox vaccine, still developed c-pox at age 5 or so, and had shingles in college. (Though we are very pro-vaccine - H is an ob-gyn and is a strong proponent of the HPV vaccine.)
If you don’t know if you had measles or the vaccination or not your doctor can order a simple blood test to check.
Yes, it’s called varicella titer.
And yes, you can get shingles after the vaccine but usually you’re the person who’s had the vaccine and then gets cpox anyway (5-10% of vaccine recipients before we did the booster), like Pizzagirl’s D. Shingles after ‘successful’ vaccination is pretty rare.
Good.