It is believed among the faction opposing universal vaccination is that doctors stop diagnosing disease X once a vaccine for disease X appears.

A good test case of this hypothesis is Chickenpox, or Varicella. Chickenpox is a diagnosis any school-child could make. The classic "dew-drop on rose-petals" rash appears in crops approximately once per day, then crusts over. Back in the day, parents wouldn't bother taking their children to the doctor to make the diagnosis (unless the child became ill with complications). Instead the neighbors' children would be invited over for a "Chickenpox Party". Better to get the illness young.

In fairness to contemporary school children, unless they are Juniors in high-school and have terrific memories, they would not be able to diagnose Chickenpox today. That is because widespread vaccination began in 1995. Pace my critics, the Chickenpox has become a rare bird.

So it falls to doctors to diagnose Chickenpox. But what if the doctor won't diagnose the illness because it's a VPD (vaccine-preventable disease)? The way to test this would be to bypass doctors and ask private citizens themselves if they've had Chickenpox. Researchers at the CDC and Harvard Medical School have been conducting a phone survey for years called the "Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System". In 1998 they added questions about Chickenpox and its big brother Shingles.

What they found was this:

Similar studies have been replicated in other states and have been confirmed with school-based cohort studies.

One interpretation of these data is that private citizens, like doctors, are unwilling to diagnose themselves with Chickenpox "because it's a VPD!" If so, then the conspiracy is widespread indeed. The truth is, regardless of how the data are collected, Chickenpox is becoming increasingly rare.

Having said all that, the Chickenpox vaccine has proven disappointing, though not a complete failure. Like Measles vaccine 40 years ago, Chickenpox vaccine will very likely turn into a "two-shot deal" before long. You heard it from Flea first.

It also needs to be said that Chickenpox is a largely benign, self-limited disease of childhood that at worst killed 100 people yearly in the U.S. One could argue on humanitarian grounds that these are 100 lives worth saving, but that is not the argument used by the proponents of the vaccine. When the cost-benefit analyses were banged out, it turned out that lost work-days on the part of parents factored heavily into the decision to make Chickenpox vaccine mandatory. In this flea's opinion, prevention of lost-work days is at best a weak justification for mandatory Chickenpox vaccination.

There have been two unintended consequences of Chickenpox vaccine for this flea. First, parents frequently call me in a panic because they believe their child has been exposed to Chickenpox. Previous generations would fall out of their rocking chairs laughing at these young parents. The second consequence is that parents who choose not to vaccinate against it are having an increasingly difficult time finding a Chickenpox Party. In six-plus years of practice in this state I have not heard of a single successful purposeful Chickenpox exposure.

Flea has seen one case of Varicella in his office in the last 4 years, in an 8 year-old unvaccinated immigrant from Central America. We reported it to the local Department of Public Health.

Hey, we live in weird times.