While it is true that chickenpox disease (varicella) is mild for most people, this particular document contains enough distortions to make the unsuspecting user minimize varicella (a consistent tactic throughout these PIC group documents).

In rare situations, varicella can be fatal. Most fatal cases of varicella occur in adults age 20 or older.⁴

While this is technically a true representation of the statistics of the 1990s, again, death is not the sole bad outcome we wish to avoid with varicella. Even relatively mild disease can leave the child suffering from varicella, quite uncomfortable. PIC also forgets (or hides) the pneumonia, tissue damage, pain, pain of later herpes zoster, and potential hospitalization that can occur in other people who have to deal with varicella.

For some people, varicella virus can remain in their body after they recover from chicken pox, and the virus can reactivate later in life and cause shingles. However, severe complications or death from shingles is very rare.

This sentence uses minimizing language on purpose. If you speak with anyone you know who has actually experienced shingles, it is one of the most painful experiences of their entire lives (and at times can reactivate in the face, placing eyesight at risk). Vaccination (and adult boosting) decreases the risk of this not necessarily deadly, but substantially quality of life limiting, side effect of childhood chickenpox disease.

Immune globulin is also available for immunocompromised patients who are exposed to chicken pox, such as those on chemotherapy.³

The PIC group fail to understand a couple of things with this statement. One is, there are several kinds of immuncompromise that carry vaccination contraindications. That means that these people depend on their community to protect against the severe outcomes of chickenpox. Next, while immunoglobulin is indeed available for such people, it carries a time limit where it is most effective, and assumes that the particular person will not have endured serious complications by the time the immunoglobulin is actually given. 1-2/400 may require hospitalization from all people who catch varicella, and that number is higher in the immunocompromised.

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states, “It is not known how long a vaccinated person is protected against varicella,” and, “Several studies have shown that people vaccinated against varicella had antibodies for at least 10 to 20 years after vaccination. But, these studies were done before the vaccine was widely used and when infection with wild-type varicella was still very common.”⁷ In other words, it’s possible that the antibody counts observed in vaccinated populations were affected by exposure to wild-type varicella.

They try to deceive by taking quotes of context and engage in misinterpretation. If a particular person’s antibodies were boosted by both the vaccine and wild-type varicella, that’s great. In the other part of this quote, the CDC is being transparent about the known waning of varicella immunity. This is a big reason why chickenpox boosters exist.

The manufacturer’s package insert contains information about vaccine ingredients, adverse reactions, and vaccine evaluations. For example, “Varivax Refrigerated has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or its potential to impair fertility.”⁸

Again, the pharmaceutical companies do not have the ability to run massive studies that test millions of people for every side effect under the sun in order to achieve full licensure. The logical fallacy here is to assume no studies were ever done after vaccine licensure. While it is correct to be worried about varicella vaccine’s effects on birth defects (in general this should be deferred during pregnancy), there is no evidence of fertility issues in this animal study. The other logical fallacy here is to assume a vaccine’s active ingredient can stay in the body from childhood until pregnancy – and for this, there is no evidence that it occurs. Remember, the varicella vaccine is typically started in childhood. The major childhood vaccines have been tested for their association with cancer, and there is no association with cancer (in fact, in certain cases, there is an apparent lowered risk). In general, it is not right to say vaccines lower the risk of cancers across the board, but there are two vaccines that lower the risk of two specific cancers – Hepatitis B lowers the risk of liver cancer, and HPV vaccination lowers the risk of certain cervical, neck, oral, and genital cancers.

 The IOM also found that the “evidence convincingly supports a causal relationship between varicella vaccine and vaccine-strain viral reactivation.” Therefore, similar to natural infection with varicella, vaccine-strain virus can be reactivated and cause herpes zoster (shingles). However, the IOM states, “the rate of shingles and other infection-related adverse events associated specifically with the varicella vaccine virus are not known… [W]hile the rate of shingles can be estimated…in most cases the virus is not characterized, meaning no test is done to determine whether the virus is wild or vaccine type.”

The logical fallacy committed here, again, is implying that no varicella vaccine research ever occured after the IOM report, which is objectively false. The other important fallacy is taking all these statements out of context. If I showed the reader of my blog just one filament of a mushroom, the reader would be hard pressed to determine that the filament was originally a mushroom. Same sort of thing is happening here. While it is correct that the vaccine for varicella is an attenuated virus, the amount of reactivation is very infrequent when you look at which ones were actually clinically relevant. Worded in other terms – while the vaccine can reactivate (with vaccine strain chickenpox), the amount of times this causes symptoms to a patient is very very small, and has really not been reported in the immunocompetent human. Shingles reactivation can be differentiated from vaccine reactivation by special viral testing should it occur, by specialized lab testing.

It has not been proven that the varicella vaccine is safer than varicella.

This has been proven, the PIC group just doesn’t want to hear it. I’ve just cited a source above that reports no significant evidence of varicella reactivation that occurs to the level that makes symptoms in the immunocompetent human. Varicella on the other hand, by the same source, is capable of causing hospitalization, pneumonia, liver infections, low platelets, needing breathing support, and facilitating bacterial infections over broken skin (that was damaged by the virus). In addition, getting varicella for the first time as an adult is considerably more risky than as a child. None of these conditions are things to be gambled with.