I would love it if schools and nurseries started to disallow children who were not vaccinated.
Unfortunately there are enough parents to make "no vaccinated children allowed" (you are not allowed in if you've been vaccinated) schools viable. See "Measles parties" and the sending of items infected with chicken pox through the post for examples.
There are really measels parties? I've heard of chicken pox parties, which makes sense because there's no vaccine and the adult form is vastly worse than the infant form. But measels parties, that's just medieval.
EDIT: apparently there is a chicken pox vaccine, but it isn't administered to the general population in the UK, only NHS workers. Interesting.
That's interesting, the MMR vaccine is a normal vaccine here in the U.S. as part of the normal shots infants get. There's usually a booster shot as a young adult and again in middle-late age.
edit apparently I forgot reading comprehension, I see now that you were talking about Chicken Pox vaccines.
I didn't know either, I just know the MMR. AFAIK people just have Chicken Pox parties for their kids and make sure they get exposed. I remember when I was about 4 or 5 my mother was so thrilled when the lady who owned a store down the way had two kids who got Chicken Pox. The next day she took me out of school and I "met" their kids for about 30 minutes. Got the Pox sure enough right after that.
My Uncle somehow missed it and ended up getting it in his 40s. I think he spent part of it in the hospital. The difference between adults and children's responses to it is quite remarkable.
IIRC it's fairly common nowadays to administer the vaccine to children in Canada/US.
The main trade-off I've seen is that a small percentage of people who get the vaccine end up with pox at the age of 20-30 where the complications (pox on internal organs) can require hospitalization and/or cause death. The flip side being, of course, that a small percentage of people infected with chicken pox as kids also require hospitalization and/or die.
Are you talking about something other than shingles? This study seems credible enough (the Web MD article even manages to discuss how they dealt with several obvious confounding factors):
Yeah, there are measels parties, just like the old days. Though regarding Chicken Pox, to be honest, I'm real surprised that chicken pox isn't on the list of mandated vaccines at this point. I had them a tiny bit on the late side -- at age 8 -- and I still had a pretty miserable time with them, with a 104 degree fever, etc. Making the vaccine just available to health workers seems silly; it's a dangerous disease, even in childhood.
I generally agree, but some people really are allergic to some vaccinations. They present the same exposure risk as somebody who chooses not to be vaccinated for stupid reasons. Should they also not be allowed in?
That would be a viable medical reason, and could probably be exempted with a doctor's note or some other documentation of a medical condition (at least it should be). That's not comparable to deliberately denying otherwise-healthy children the means to stay healthy and not die of horrible and easily preventable diseases.
As a population, the people who legitimately cannot be vaccinated -- or who get vaccinated but a certain vaccination just doesn't take -- are small enough that the rest of us protect them. When people start voluntarily adding themselves to that group without medical reason things start to break.
Unfortunately there are enough parents to make "no vaccinated children allowed" (you are not allowed in if you've been vaccinated) schools viable. See "Measles parties" and the sending of items infected with chicken pox through the post for examples.