alt Hacker NewsI wonder when we'll finally accept that there's no such thing as a harmless latent disease. Chickenpox, EBV, HPV, they're all associated with either neurodegeneration or cancer.
We should be vaccinating kids against all of them rather than sending them to Chickenpox parties.
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> We should be vaccinating kids against all of them rather than sending them to Chickenpox parties.
We do in the US. I was kind of surprised when my now 2 and 4 year olds were vaccinated against Chickenpox, since I remember doing the Chickenpox party thing myself when I was younger (staying home with some friends over, playing Daytona USA on my Sega Saturn, I think?).
We vaccinate for many of those already. The vast majority of seniors have the shingles virus already. Only a small percentage would likely have dementia not linked to another likely cause. Just as HPV only causes cancer in some individuals.
It wouldn't surprise me if it turns out all these tie back to immune dysregulation and are just triggered by different viruses in different people.
I don't have any unique insight on it, but I think herpesviruses are probably worse than we realise.
They hide from the immune system inside nerves or other immune cells, and seem to have a lot of weird associations with other issues over our lifetime, particularly neurological and immune problems.
I am part of the tail end of purposely exposing kids to chicken pox, I got them in 1989 and the vaccine was released a few years later. I wish the vaccine would’ve been available, I know multiple people that have experienced shingles in their eyes. Crossing my fingers until I make it to 50 and can get my shingles vaccine.
I looked into a chickenpox vaccine a while back, but it turns out the current varicella vaccine uses a live virus. So if you're fortunate enough not to have been exposed to chickenpox, taking the vaccine could put it into your body. The Shingles vaccine, on the other hand, has no live virus at all. But you can't get that til 50.
ETA: Since someone downvoted this: I'm not criticizing vaccination, and you should absolutely get your kids vaccinated! But for someone (like me) at the age where you've seen friends with Shingles (ugh), adding live chickenpox virus to your body feels like a risky idea, even before this news.
Most of the herpesvirus family have associations with neurodegenerative disorders, also including HSV.
A lack of oral hygiene and gum disease is associated with nerodegeneration.
Lots of metabolic diseases have associations with nerodegenerative disorders. Insulin, kidney, liver dysfunction.
The gut microbiome...
Putting immune or metabolic stress on the brain can cause it to go into this disease state death spiral.
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I grew up in India (70,80,90) before coming to the US in 2000. I’m not a vaccine sceptic. But this sort of thing makes me cringe.
I’ve had chicken pox, mumps and measles growing up. Everyone I grew up with had those. No one is experiencing dementia or any sort of neurodegeneration. There was a chicken pox epidemic in my engineering university dorm. I didn’t catch it since I had it earlier as a kid. Either way none of the people who had it are having issues.
I think take the vax to prevent the disease. The neurodegenerative side effects are just advertisement for the vaccine.
> We should be vaccinating kids against all of them rather than sending them to Chickenpox parties.
This has been the standard of care ever since the vaccine became available in the 90s (US). The origin of the "parties" was that first-time chickenpox was perceived to be less harmful in children than adults prior to the vaccine, so you wanted to make sure people's first exposure wasn't in adulthood.