Chicken pox used to be one of those regular childhood events. You’d get the itchy red spots for about a week and your parents would tell you not to itch them because they’d leave scars. Thanks to new vaccines, however, the varicella zoster virus doesn’t have to occur. It is highly contagious, however, and sometimes it can even be deadly. An average of 100 people every year die because of getting the chicken pox.
Get It As a Kid
If you’ve had chicken pox as a kid, then you don’t need to have a vaccine. It is very rare for someone to get the chicken pox twice because of the antibodies that the human body builds up against it. When it occurs in childhood, it is generally mild in nature and makes for a bad week of itching and feeling miserable. In adults, however, chicken pox can be quite dangerous.
1. It’s Random
Some people who get chicken pox may only have a few blisters here and their on their body. Others can have upwards of 500 different blisters on their body when they are experiencing an attack. The average is about 300 total blisters – and they all itch.
2. You’d Better Watch Out
If someone in a home gets chicken pox, then there’s a 90% someone who hasn’t had the virus will catch it and develop chicken pox as well. It is contagious up to 48 hours before the blisters occur and remains contagious until the blisters that have formed have scabbed over.
3. The Vaccine Can Hand It Out
Because a live virus is used in the vaccine, some people who get vaccinated against chicken pox can actually develop the disease. It’s often quite mild if this happens, with no fever and about 25% of the blisters that typically form in a regular outbreak. Someone who gets chicken pox from their vaccine, however, is still contagious and needs to be isolated until the blisters form scabs.
4. Protect the Roof
The same virus that causes chicken pox will also cause shingles later in life. It is not known why the virus can reactivate as people age, but it is believed that a weakened immune system, coupled by a vulnerable nervous system, will create the conditions necessary for an outbreak of shingles to occur.
5. Shingles Causes Chicken Pox
Shingles tends to occur in people over the age of 60, even if they had chicken pox as a kid. Shingles by itself won’t actually cause other cases of shingles. If someone has not had chicken pox and is exposed to someone with shingles, however, there is a good chance that they will develop chicken pox in the next 2-3 weeks.
6. Stop the Aspirin
When there is an active infection of the virus, it will interact negatively with aspirin when it is taken. The result is called Reye’s Syndrome and it causes the brain and liver to swell up. Hand out alternative over the counter painkillers instead, but watch out – this issue can develop during the recovery period of chicken pox and while recovering from the flu as well.