I don’t believe the vaccine will help me. I asked our former jelly infectious disease doctor about it. I asked him if there were studies he knew if regarding people with recurrent episodes and if the vaccine helped. I also told him I was reluctant t get the vaccine (and he is very pro-vaccine) because in my mind, my logic, if an outbreak is not causing my immunity to spike, why would the vaccine? Theoretically, getting sick should boost our immunity. Like if you get measles you become immune to measles, that sort of thing. He agreed. He didn’t know of any specific studies, but he agreed the vaccine likely wouldn’t help me just thinking about it logically. Is still be interested if there are any studies done regarding situations like mine.
The shingles vaccine only has about a 50% efficacy rate to begin with. I’ve wondered about how those studies were conducted. I’ve never researched it.
One might think just get the vaccine, what do you have to lose and there might be an upside, but I’m a little vaccine shy, but not one of those anti-vaccine people.
In countries like the UK they don’t give the chicken pox shot yet, I’m not sure about the shingles shot. Some argue children getting chicken pox used to help boost the immunity of adults, and protecting children from chicken pox will create more shingles cases for now. I don’t know what I think about that. It sees to me people having shingles should boost immunity just as much as children with chicken pox. I think shingles is under-reported.
I’m much more concerned now that I started getting it on my face. Incidents of stroke go up among young shingles sufferers. I think even heart attack too, which I hadn’t realized. Plus, the concern about my sight.