The backwards logic of chickenpox parties

Anyone who has Chickenpox had one distinct memory: a constant, all-consuming itch.

Ciara DeVita was only 3 years old when she contracted the virus, but she remembers it well, as well as the oven mitts she was forced to wear to prevent herself from getting scratched. She also recalls being taken to hang out with her cousin while covered in blisters, in the hopes of deliberately infecting them both.

Devita, now 30, was the second in the chain, having been taken in by her parents for chickenpox from a friend who had the infection. “I imagine the streak went on and that my cousin gave it to someone else on a chickenpox play date,” she says.

A lot has changed over the past three decades, most notably the development of the chickenpox vaccine, which means the virus is no longer the childhood rite it once was.

Thanks to the success of the vaccine, children today are less likely to become infected at school or on the playground.

Chickenpox parties are also largely a relic of the past, a strategy to which many Generation X and Millennial children were exposed before vaccines became routine. But like the virus itself, latent and opportunistic, they have not completely disappeared.

Before the vaccine Chickenpox, caused by the varicella zoster virus, was there, and it was inevitable. In temperate countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, about 90% of children have been infected with the virus before their teens (in tropical countries, the average age of infection is higher).

It has nothing to do with chicken. This highly contagious blotchy, scratchy disease is likely named after the French word for chickpea. pois chicheAccording to one theory, it is because the round bumps caused by the virus are similar in size and shape. While most cases in infants are mild, teens and adults are more likely to develop serious complications.

That’s where the idea to “get it done and be done with it” arose, according to Maureen Tierney, associate dean for clinical research and public health at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

“You were trying to get your child to get the disease when they were at the greatest chance of not having complications,” says Tierney, explaining that, in general, the older the patient, the greater the risk of infection.

While varicella zoster is usually a mild illness that goes away on its own in children, it can be more serious — and sometimes life-threatening — in adults.

“I had a healthy adult patient who died of pneumonia caused by chickenpox when I was first exercising,” Tierney says. “You never forget those scenarios.”

The virus spreads quickly through respiratory droplets and contact with fluids from the characteristic blisters, meaning that if one child gets it, siblings and classmates are likely to be next, if they are not vaccinated.

Before social media existed, the idea that children must intentionally infect each other spread just as quickly in communities — in schoolyard conversations, church groups, and children’s waiting rooms — leading to the popularity of so-called chickenpox parties.

Parents exchanged advice about oatmeal baths and calamine lotion, and arranged to bring children together when one of them was thought to be infected—although this practice was never an official medical recommendation.

“They thought, ‘Well, if this is going to happen to my child anyway, it could happen in a controlled environment,'” says Monica Abdelnour, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. “Families were prepared to confront this infection, deal with it and then move on.”

While the majority of children who get chickenpox feel better again within a week or two, about three out of every 1,000 infected develop serious complications such as pneumonia, serious bacterial skin infections, encephalitis (inflammation of the brain), or meningitis.