[Vendan]

Shingles isn't a separate disease. If you had chicken pox, you have the shingles virus in you already. If you had the chicken pox vaccine before you got exposed to chicken pox, you don't. And the only shingles specific vaccine is only for ages 50+, which isn't terribly useful for people like me, who get it at age 27.

[maxlybbert]

You're right. I wasn't thinking when I wrote the comment.

Still, the CDC's page for the chicken pox vaccine doesn't mention its effect on shingles ( http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/vaccination.html ), which suggests to me that avoiding shingles may be a great perk, it isn't the main reason behind requiring vaccination in school children.

With the caveats of believing Wikipedia, Wikipedia's page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_vaccine ) states both that being vaccinated reduces (but does not eliminate) the risk of shingles, and that vaccination of children raises the risk of shingles in unvaccinated adults slightly because the adults don't come into contact with the virus as often (near the end of the subsection on "Rates of immunity" and the second paragraph of the subsection "Rates of chickenpox").

Your case of shingles may, in fact, have been caused by widespread vaccination of children (I would expect that problem to disappear after a long transition; and, of course, it's impossible to say if your case was caused by this transition, but it's certain that some cases are).

[Vendan]

meh, I think I'll take the discomfort over: "Some people with serious complications from chickenpox can become so sick that they need to be hospitalized. Chickenpox can also cause death.

Some deaths from chickenpox continue to occur in healthy, unvaccinated children and adults. Many of the healthy adults who died from chickenpox contracted the disease from their unvaccinated children."

quoted from http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/about/complications.html

[jrs235]

According to this http://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-144377/zostavax-subq/detai... there is a [different?] shingles vaccine ZOSTAVAX available to older adults.

I assumed and thought the same as you, that once you got chicken pox then the vaccine for shingles is useless.

The link above states "This vaccine works by boosting the body's natural defense (immunity) against the zoster virus so that symptoms of shingles do not develop. It should not be used for treating active shingles, nerve pain caused by shingles, or for the prevention of chickenpox.

This vaccine should not be used in children."