There are three things guaranteed in life: Death, taxes, and an update to the childhood vaccination schedule (No prizes for guessing the subject of this article)
Just as you’d finally committed those jabs to memory, along comes the new and improved MMR … V!
V for Varicella!
Up until this point, the UK’s recipe for chickenpox success (the so-called Chickenpox Party) has been as follows:
Step 1: Source an afflicted child and invite other local children to hole up in a room with them.
Step 2: Let them cough, sneeze and itch all over the others until they, too, are poxed.
Step 3: Charge a small fee and rake in the dosh.
Hottest MLM East of the Atlantic🤑
But this elite UK tactic didn’t quite catch on. That’s because other countries just … vaccinated against varicella instead. …for the last 20+ years.
Why has it taken the UK this long to vaccinate?
The UK decided not to do anything too rash. And that's because the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) were concerned about the ‘exogenous boosting hypothesis’:
They thought that childhood exposure to chickenpox would boost immunity and thus prevent reactivation as an adult.
Remove childhood chickenpox, and you remove the immune top-ups. So suddenly, adults everywhere might be developing shingles. Or so the theory went.
Add to that worries about disease burden shifting to adults (where chickenpox is much more severe) and early cost-effectiveness models that . The JCVI’s long-standing answer was a NO.
But other countries didn’t really give a shingle f*ck.
The USA, Canada, Australia and many others have all been varicella vaccinating since the ‘90s🤘
So what changed?
Why did the UK suddenly switch sides in the big ‘26?
In a nutshell: time
Thanks to those countries and their established vaccination programmes, we’ve been able to keep a close eye and get real-world data about the effectiveness of the jab. Turns out, the number of chickenpox cases, severity of cases AND complication rates all plummeted. Shocker.
Plus:
Updated modelling suggests there might be a slight increase in shingles, but only temporarily and far less than previously thought.
And now we have an expanded shingles vaccine too!
Data suggests the jab is cost-effective, potentially even cost-saving.
The burden of disease of chickenpox is significant, between missed school/work, GP visits and admissions, it’s estimated financially at £24 million a year
So the JCVI has listened and changed its tune. And from 2026:
The new combined MMRV vaccine will be given at 12 and 18 months
Kids under 6 can also catch up with the doses
It’s great news for Gen Alpha (+ Beta … an unfortunately named successor). And ironically, the update comes just as the US announces plans to cut the childhood vaccination schedule across the pond.
So even if taxes still exist, and we suffer daily with memorising ever-changing guidelines, at least we can take comfort in the fact that we’re slightly less shit than the States.
That’s national pride, baby 🇬🇧
