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In reply to the discussion: It's not the flu. You may not want to read this, but you need to. [View all]PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,746 posts)I know you merely misstated this. I've been aware of the connection for at least 40 years.
Here's the worrisome thing about this, and I'm somewhat oversimplifying it.
In the past, before a chicken pox vaccination, pretty much everyone got it and it was around all the time. Which meant that people who'd already had chicken pox were re-exposed to the virus throughout their lives. Apparently, that kept the virus quiet, instead of getting bored, acting up, and causing shingles.
Nowadays, thanks to the vaccine, younger people are never going to get chicken pox. Hooray! And because they will never get it, they will pretty much never get shingles. Double hooray! However, us old folks, who got chicken pox back in the day, still have the virus in our system, and for any number of us, it will wake up, look around, and decide to manifest as shingles. Goddammit.
Fortunately, there is a vaccine for the shingles. I've gotten the original one, and I still need to get the new, 2 shot version.