Six Reason to Question Vaccinations

Ivor the Engineer said:
I'd have two questions for him:

1) Does the immunity provided by the vaccine wane?

2) Will people who have already had chickenpox be more likely to get shingles if mass vaccination takes place?
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Yes. Oddly enough, the people who's jobs are to know about these things have actually thought about them.
 
Are there any figures on shingles for the US pre/post chickenpox vaccine introduction.
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I think the research is conflicting.
Even when they find that shingles is increasing, it's hard to say it's not just the result of increased corticosteriod use, it seems. Like this:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=285060

We estimated age-specific herpes zoster (HZ) incidence rates in the Kaiser Permanente Northwest Health Plan (KPNW) during 1997–2002 and tested for secular trends and differences between residents of two states with different varicella vaccine coverage rates. The cumulative proportions of 2-year-olds vaccinated increased from 35% in 1997 to 85% in 2002 in Oregon, and from 25% in 1997 to 82% in 2002 in Washington. Age-specific HZ incidence rates in KPNW during 1997–2002 were compared with published rates in the Harvard Community Health Plan (HCHP) during 1990–1992. The overall HZ incidence rate in KPNW during 1997–2002 (369/100000 person-years) was slightly higher than HCHP's 1990–1992 rate when adjusted for age differences. For children 0–14 years old, KPNW's rates (182 for females, 123 for males) were more than three times HCHP's rates (54 for females, 39 for males). This increase appears to be associated with increased exposure of children to oral corticosteroids.
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It's an interesting fulltext, if anyone can get it.

And what is the uptake of the vaccine like?
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It was 88% in 2005, and it's probably around 90% by now.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/G/coverage.pdf
 
How does (from the report):

"During a 13-month period between 2002 and 2003, 188 cases of chickenpox complications leading to hospitalisation were reported to the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit. Of these, 112 children met the criteria to be included in the study - a rate of 0.82 cases per 100,000 children. The average age of those suffering complications was three."

Become (BBC):

"For every 1,000 children who catch chickenpox, on average between two and five of them will end up in hospital."

Chickenpox just got a more serious disease in the UK in the space of 8 hours!

Complete and utter bollocks.
 
Ivor:

Just a thought, but might the report (I don't know where, exactly, it is so I couldn't get more context on your quote) be comparing # of serious cases vs. total number of children, while the second statement is # of serious cases vs. number of children with chickenpox?

SO the first is the overall chance of a child getting a serious case of chickenpox. The second is the chance of a child with chickenpox already developing a serious case?

As I said, just a thought, but seems that might be the intention there.

ETA: On reflection, I'm almost sure that's the case. If 112 serious cases means .82 per 100,000 cases of chickenpox, that would mean there were roughly 13,600,000 cases of chicken pox. That has to be per child...the 2 to 5 per 1000 is of the subset that already has pox.
 
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Huntsman said:
Ivor:

Just a thought, but might the report (I don't know where, exactly, it is so I couldn't get more context on your quote) be comparing # of serious cases vs. total number of children, while the second statement is # of serious cases vs. number of children with chickenpox?

SO the first is the overall chance of a child getting a serious case of chickenpox. The second is the chance of a child with chickenpox already developing a serious case?

As I said, just a thought, but seems that might be the intention there.
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As virtually every child currently gets chickenpox (90%+) in the UK, there should be little difference.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
How does (from the report):

"During a 13-month period between 2002 and 2003, 188 cases of chickenpox complications leading to hospitalisation were reported to the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit. Of these, 112 children met the criteria to be included in the study - a rate of 0.82 cases per 100,000 children. The average age of those suffering complications was three."

Become (BBC):

"For every 1,000 children who catch chickenpox, on average between two and five of them will end up in hospital."

Chickenpox just got a more serious disease in the UK in the space of 8 hours!

Complete and utter bollocks.
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I found a reference to the latter figures here (from references 2 and 4-6, haven't got time to look them up at the moment):

http://press.psprings.co.uk/adc/october/ac130518.pdf

Edit - here are the references.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7321/1091?ijkey=a62d623c6766cfef204206445d03280d1b65c796

http://www.pidj.org/pt/re/pidj/abst...TxyypQWlMCHdb3r!-1947435345!181195628!8091!-1

http://journals.cambridge.org/actio...A210275A96.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=137495

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/e...med.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus
 
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Ivor the Engineer said:
How does (from the report):

"During a 13-month period between 2002 and 2003, 188 cases of chickenpox complications leading to hospitalisation were reported to the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit. Of these, 112 children met the criteria to be included in the study - a rate of 0.82 cases per 100,000 children. The average age of those suffering complications was three."

Become (BBC):

"For every 1,000 children who catch chickenpox, on average between two and five of them will end up in hospital."

Chickenpox just got a more serious disease in the UK in the space of 8 hours!

Complete and utter bollocks.
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Perhaps not every child hospitilisation is reported to the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit. (That's a sinister sounding name)

I'm trying to find a copy of the report rather than reviewing it through the Scotsman or the BBC, anybody know how it can be found?
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
How does (from the report):

"During a 13-month period between 2002 and 2003, 188 cases of chickenpox complications leading to hospitalisation were reported to the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit. Of these, 112 children met the criteria to be included in the study - a rate of 0.82 cases per 100,000 children. The average age of those suffering complications was three."

Become (BBC):

"For every 1,000 children who catch chickenpox, on average between two and five of them will end up in hospital."

Chickenpox just got a more serious disease in the UK in the space of 8 hours!

Complete and utter bollocks.
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Because the 112 are those with "severe complications", not all those who were hospitalised.

Edit: Alternatively, maybe those figures were just from somewhere else, since the article never claims they were actually from that particular study.
 
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And from the US:

http://www.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUSN1429730720070314

BOSTON (Reuters) - Merck's chickenpox vaccine Varivax not only loses its effectiveness after a while, but it has also changed the profile of the disease in the population, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
The study confirmed what doctors widely knew -- that the vaccine's protection does not last long.

And with fewer natural cases of the disease going around, unvaccinated children or children in whom the first dose of the vaccine fails to work have been catching the highly contagious disease later in life, when the risk of severe complications is greater, they said.
"If you're unvaccinated and you get it later in life, there's a 20-times greater risk of dying compared to a child, and a 10 to 15 times greater chance of getting hospitalized," said Jane Seward of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, who worked on the study.
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While 73 percent of the youngsters who became ill in 1995 were under age 7, the rate dropped to 30 percent by 2004 because the children who got chickenpox tended to get it at an older age.
And when vaccinated children were infected, they tended to be sicker, probably because they were older.
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The report.
This study could not have included data on all varicella
hospitalisations, as this would have been unmanageable with
the methodology used, for which the BPSU specifies a limit of
around 300 cases per year. It was therefore necessary to restrict
ascertainment to severe cases.​
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and
Previous studies in the UK
have used retrospective analysis of routine hospital records. The
most recent study found overall hospitalisation rates of 16.17
per 100 000 children aged 0–14 years,(3) with highest rates
among 0–4 year olds (38.7/100 000), decreasing almost 10-fold
for children aged 5–14 years (4.6/100 000).​
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I just noticed that the 2-5/1000 mentioned in the article I linked to (which is a commentary on the study originally being talked about) does not specify children (unlike the BBC), just cases. And I think the hospitalisation rate is greater for adults.
 
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Well, that was easy, right at the beginning of the report:
188 cases were notified for the surveillance period, of which 112 (0.82/100 000 children/year) met the case definition and were not duplicates.​
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That number represents the number of cases they examined compared to the total cases in children per year.

The second (2 to 5 in 1000) is the number of hospitalizations per case.

One referes to the power and scope of the study (the size of their sample), the other to the degree of illness.
 
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From the conclusions (in the abstract) - my bolding​

This study provides a minimum estimate of severe complications and death resulting from varicella in children in the UK and Ireland.​
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Beat you to it Huntsman! :)

I don't see where the authors point to a 2-5 /1000 hospitalisation rate.
 
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Deetee said:
Beat you to it Huntsman! :)

I don't see where the authors point to a 2-5 /1000 hospitalisation rate.
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I wasn't looking so much for that part, as the quote there was quite clear on what they meant. However, see the link to the guardian I put up before...that came from the study authors, but may not have been part of the study. I'll look at the study and see where it came from.

I just mainly wanted to point out that comparing the two was apples and oranges, and there was no "scare tactics" or "fear mongering" involved in transmuting one figure to another, as was implied.
 
i see from the media reports that the rate of 2-5 hospitalisations per 1000 cases comes from "the authors" of the study, but they do not refer to it in the study.

i appreciate that they may refer to the rate of hospitalisations/1000 cases rather than hospitalisations /100 000 population but where is their data from? It may be apples and oranges (incidence versus what Ivor I think was getting at, namely prevalence - since nearly everyone will get chickenpox) but I would like to see the source of the info.
 
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Deetee said:
i see from the media reports that the rate of 2-5 hospitalisations per 1000 cases comes from "the authors" of the study, but they do not refer to it in the study.

i appreciate that they may refer to the rate of hospitalisations/1000 cases rather than hospitalisations /100 000 population but where is their data from? It may be apples and oranges (incidence versus what Ivor I think was getting at, namely prevalence - since nearly everyone will get chickenpox) but I would like to see the source of the info.
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Am I invisible today?
 
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