10-04-2022, 05:37 PM
(10-04-2022, 12:04 PM)Outsider Wrote: I still got Shingles after my 2nd Covid vaccination, even though I'd been vaccinated for it 3 years before. It's quite common apparently.
Yes, shingles is very common. Apparently 1 in 3 people who have had chicken pox will get shingles later. 1100 people per year are hospitalised for it. About 1% of people over 70 get it each year.
There are two shingles vaccines, the unfunded one apparently more effective than the funded one (see https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/immu...ngles#22-3) but even the better one is only 90%.
So with the number of people having the covid vaccine and the number that get shingles every year, there are going to be some who coincidentally get shingles after the covid vaccine, and there are going to be some for whom the shingles vaccine is less effective than hoped. So you probably drew the short straw on both counts.
There does also seem to be some evidence of a possible relationship between covid and shingles in that when the immune system is busy fighting covid, it may let in a reactivation of the latent herpes virus, a reaction that appears to also be related to autoimmunity. This is being researched.
I see that MedSafe has an acknowledgement that there have been cases reported following the covid vaccine and they are being monitored. 344 cases out of nearly 4 million people vaccinated is a pretty low occurrence rate. As always, catching covid when unvaccinated is pretty much the higher risk for any health relationships you could look at.
I hope you have recovered from the shingles. It's nasty. I've looked up the data above because it's easy for people to take coincidence as cause and effect and be unnecessarily fearful of being vaccinated. Best wishes