crumpets
Posts: 1614
Joined: 11/5/2014 From: South Bay (SF & Silicon Valley) Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: angelikaJ "Shingles cannot be passed from one person to another. However, the virus that causes shingles, the varicella zoster virus, can be spread from a person with active shingles to another person who has never had chickenpox. In such cases, the person exposed to the virus might develop chickenpox, but they would not develop shingles." Good point. This is true, and actually astute. As I noted in a prior post, the first time you get exposed to Herpes Zoster, your body is like MacArthur in Manilla on December 8th, 1941 with planes lined up wing-to-wing so that the Japanese could blast them en masse. You get viral eruptions all over your body (including on the inside, yuck). Then your body fights off the Japanese, and they retreat into the jungle of the dorsal root ganglia, near the top of the mountain spine which is your spinal cord, and they remain there, coming out periodically like guerrillas to attack down the ravine of the peripheral nerve on one side of the mountain or the other - but - as long as your immune system is up to par - they can't get far - and nothing shows up on the outside (the battle is constantly going on inside, as are almost all immune system battles). At some point years later, these guerrillas who probe your immune system weakness every single day finally find a weakness (for whatever reason), and WHAM! They attack! Down the one side of the mountain along the deep ravine they go, blasting their guns and blowing up grenades and killing the livestock and people, causing itchy blistery eruptions. Luckily, the people of Manilla, who were massacred in the initial attack, but who have seen these attacks daily ever since, quickly mobilize the immune system and they fight back, hard - limiting the guerrillas to the deepest of the ravines where the immune system isn't all that good, until finally, the invading Herpes Zoster guerrillas are all forced back into their original mountain hideouts near the top spine of the mountain ridge, in the dorsal root ganglia caves. If, perchance, these guerrillas find an undefended person (e.g., an infant who has never had either the virus or the vaccine), WHAM! Chickenpox! Moms give it to their babies all the time.
< Message edited by crumpets -- 1/24/2016 4:26:41 PM >
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