The virus that causes chicken pox, lies dormant in your nervous system, where your immune system can’t get it, for decades. Then much later in life the virus can reactivate, infect along those nerves, causing shingles.
This is the important part of the chicken pox vaccination the we don’t talk about nearly enough.
If you get chicken pox, you’ll probably be ok (although not everyone is) and get over it, becoming immune. But the virus will still lurk, opening you to shingles attacks when you’re much older
if you get the vaccination, you’ll probably not only not get chicken pox, but will also not get shingles
Supposedly something like one in three elderly will get shingles, when they can’t as easily deal with it. As current generation gets old, that illness will practically disappear
Doesn’t chickenpox turn into shingles by infecting the nervous system?
Could long covid be related to that?
The virus that causes chicken pox, lies dormant in your nervous system, where your immune system can’t get it, for decades. Then much later in life the virus can reactivate, infect along those nerves, causing shingles.
This is the important part of the chicken pox vaccination the we don’t talk about nearly enough.
Supposedly something like one in three elderly will get shingles, when they can’t as easily deal with it. As current generation gets old, that illness will practically disappear
If you have older relatives and friends (50+), do remind them that we have shingles vaccine: Shingrix.
And let them know it hurts for a few days, so get it on a Friday.