@JLeslie http://answers.webmd.com/answers/1173647/is-shingles-contagious
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Shingles is contagious and can be spread from an affected person to babies, children, or adults who have not had chickenpox. But instead of developing shingles, these people develop chickenpox. Once they have had chickenpox, people cannot catch shingles (or contract the virus) from someone else. Once infected, however, people have the potential to develop shingles later in life.
Shingles is contagious to people who have not previously had chickenpox, as long as there are new blisters forming and old blisters healing. Similar to chickenpox, the time prior to healing or crusting of the blisters is the contagious stage of shingles. Once all of the blisters are crusted over, the virus can no longer be spread and the contagious period is over.”
I too am unsure I believe this. When my husband went to the doctors, there was a child running around, sitting on the seats and touching the magazines etc. He was covered in chickenpox soars – apparently *per our doctor’ the child had not been vaccinated because it was against his parents’ religion.
When my husband, who was under a lot of stress at the time, came down with a painful, debilitating shingles (he had had chickenpox as a child), the doctor was very suspicious. He knew the period that this child had been in hiis office and he researched and definitely in the office at the same time. Our doctor said the child’s soars were open. It was summer, he was very lightly dressed and rolling all over the furniture – our doctor was convinced that due to the overlap of time, Hub had picked shingles from the child with chickenpox. Our doctor told us that the rise in inoculated children was going to reawaken problems we hadn’t faced for many years.