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by jyounker 20 days ago
That seems like being penny wise and pound foolish.
2 comments

Looks like the GP is in the UK.

I tried to go private (also not 50), but everyone just refused. Pharmacy, GP, private GP.

Currently I'm arranging it in the third country because WTAF.

(UK becoming the dirtiest and sickest country of Europe one more time)

The age for shingles vaccine in the UK under the NHS (so free) is 65.

Of course I got shingles when I was 64. Caught early and got anti-virals and had no lasting effects.

I'm glad you got lucky. I got it identified and treated with antivirals early (first 12 hours), a friend of mine turned out to be a research dermatologist who took over treatment in the first 36 hours, and still I ended up with long term effects. (Apparently if I'd gone another 12 hours without significant response, he would have put me on intravenous antivirals.)

I'm glad you didn't have any lasting effects.

I wanted to pay the full price, but pharmacies (Boots, Lloyds, couple of small ones) refused citing NICE guidance, GP and private GP refused to "prescribe" it.
Weird, I went to a travel vaccination clinic in London and got it no questions asked (the nurse was even familiar with the dementia research). Try calling privatemedicalclinic.com ?
Thanks a lot!
Close, I'm in the US. I don't need a script to get it, only if I want the insurance to pay for it.

But if I couldn't I could still go to Mexico and buy brand name Shingrix.

> (UK becoming the dirtiest and sickest country of Europe one more time)

Big Yawn

Don't let the facts to discourage you from yawning.

> [1] Of the reported 22,289 bathing waters across Europe (EU-27, Albania and Switzerland) in 2025, 84% were rated excellent quality. This share reached 85% at the EU level.

[1] https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/publications/european-...

> [2] In 2025, 297 bathing waters in England (66.1 per cent) met the Excellent standard

Note the sharply increasing amount of "Poor" waters.

And that's despite the methodology allowing to presence of untreated sewage and human faeces in the "excellent" waters: https://www.theferret.scot/scottish-beaches-excellent-pollut...

[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/bathing-water-quali...

With treatment waiting times, dental treatment availability and deaths while waiting for the ambulance I don't think I need to get into gory details.

I think the bigger thing is that the vaccine has a peak response window, and the current medical guidance lines that up with when you're epidemiologically most likely to experience a shingles outbreak (for most people, that's very unlikely when you're young, because your immune system is so jumpy, but that wanes with age). If you get the vaccine early, its effect can be attenuated right when you need it most.

(I don't like this logic and if I had the option of just going to Walgreens and getting vaccinated, I'd do that this afternoon. I'm just saying, there's a logic to it.)