Why Do We Need Separate Chicken-Pox and Shingles Vaccines?
The two diseases are caused by the same virus but strike different groups of people.
For most of the time that humans have walked on Earth and scratched at itchy, red rashes, there was no reason to think chicken pox and shingles are related. They look so different.
Chicken pox usually strikes small children. It manifests as red bumps, eventually distributed over the whole body. In the 18th century, a German doctor dubbed chicken pox “varicella,” a diminutive of his name for smallpox or “variola,” because chicken pox seemed to be its less severe form. Shingles, on the other hand, usually affects
