Skip to content

Here's Why Younger People are Getting Shingles

2022-09-16 · explainer · Hank · 3:58 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Health · mode: Explainer · tags: heavy topic

Hank, recovering from shingles himself, explains that the varicella zoster virus causes both chickenpox and shingles, and argues that US childhood chickenpox vaccination since 1995 removed natural immune boosting, so younger adults like him now get more shingles.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why viruses aren't named after diseases: shingles and chickenpox share a pathogen; SARS-CoV-2 and long COVID

  • ★★ Hank notes COVID-19 is a disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, and asks why it isn't simply called the COVID-19 virus. — 00:00:00 · COVID-19 pandemic
  • ★★★ Early in the last century doctors noticed shingles patients' children often later got chickenpox, and suspected both diseases had the same pathogen. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ After much work in the 1950s, the shared pathogen was confirmed separately, in two different ways, by Thomas Weller and Evelyn Nicol. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank says this is one reason viruses are not named after the disease they cause. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ SARS-CoV-2 may cause more than one disease: COVID-19, with a blurry line between it and long COVID. (hedged) — 00:00:29 · COVID-19 pandemic
  • ★★ Hank points viewers who want more on long COVID to SciShow's video on it, linked in the description. — 00:00:29 · SciShow, COVID-19 pandemic

00:00:58 — How the varicella zoster virus causes chickenpox, hides in nerves and returns as shingles

  • ★★★ Children get chickenpox from the varicella zoster virus through airborne droplets or rash fluid, or more rarely from a shingles rash. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ The child's immune system usually fights the disease off quickly, and the virus then hides for life at the base of nerves near the spine. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ When immunity weakens with stress, medication or age, the virus infects the nerve, causing tingling, itching, then pain as the nerve inflames. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Shingles almost always appears on one side of the body in one area because a single nerve is infected. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — Hank's own shingles; chickenpox vaccination since 1995 cut natural boosting, raising shingles in younger adults; the shingles vaccine

  • ★★★ Hank is getting over shingles: it was very, very bad, but he feels much better and it now only itches. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ The US now vaccinates almost all children against chickenpox, so far fewer kids get it and in future they will be much less likely to get shingles as adults. — 00:01:56 · United States
  • ★★ Hank says you don't catch shingles: it is, in effect, long chickenpox. (playful) — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Countries other than the US don't vaccinate children against chickenpox, for a reason Hank calls wild and possibly linked to his own case. — 00:01:56 · United States
  • ★★★ In the US 95% of adults have had chickenpox and so could get shingles, but only around one in three will. — 00:01:56 · United States
  • ★★★ In 1995 the US began vaccinating nearly every child against chickenpox; cases among kids plummeted, so younger adults were less exposed to the virus. — 00:01:56 · United States
  • ★★★ Exposure to sick kids acted as a natural booster, best for people in their 30s and 40s; without such reminders the immune system more often lets the latent virus replicate. — 00:02:43
  • ★★ Hank says the risk is higher with immunosuppressant medication and stress, both of which he has. — 00:02:43
  • ★★ Hank says that in effect he may have gotten shingles so that his son doesn't have to. (playful, hedged) — 00:03:13 · Orin Green
  • ★★★ Shingles rates have to rise before they fall: rates in young people have risen, apparently without affecting older people, for whom shingles is more dangerous. — 00:03:13
  • ★★ There is now a very effective shingles vaccine, separate from the chickenpox vaccine, but it is only given to people over 50 because it is in short supply. — 00:03:13
  • ★★ Hank guesses the shingles vaccine will eventually be available to younger people. (speculative) — 00:03:13
  • ★★★ Hank says this shows how complicated disease, epidemiology and public health are, and he is grateful to those figuring it out now and in the past. — 00:03:13

00:03:42 — Gratitude to researchers past and present, including Evelyn Nicol; sign-off

  • ★★ Evelyn Nicol was in her 20s when she first isolated the varicella zoster virus, and died of COVID-19 complications in 2020. — 00:03:42 · COVID-19 pandemic

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Chickenpox · Shingles · Varicella zoster virus

Also: People: Orin Green

Projects: SciShow

Concepts: immune system · Long COVID · SARS-CoV-2

Places: United States

Events: COVID-19 pandemic

Products: Varicella vaccine · Zoster vaccine

Only in the description or credits: Evelyn Nicol · Thomas Huckle Weller

Also centred on Chickenpox: I'm Sick Because of the Social Structures of Early Hominins

Also centred on Shingles: Tuberculosis and Hank's Shingles · I'm Sick Because of the Social Structures of Early Hominins

Also centred on Varicella zoster virus: I'm Sick Because of the Social Structures of Early Hominins

← Previous: A Million Things at Once · Next → Against Nihilism