Spare a little sympathy for kids who will never get chickenpox

Farewell then to the last of the old-fashioned childhood diseases. A proper “pox”, with erupting sores and drenching fevers. A miserable, debilitating, sometimes dangerous and occasionally fatal virus, for which the standard treatment in this country – bed rest and pink lotion – remains stubbornly antiquated.

Now the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended that all children in this country should be vaccinated against chickenpox as a matter of routine. Germany, Canada, Australia and America have been doing this for years. 

My American friends find it bizarre that Britain, the birthplace of Edward Jenner, has been so slow to adopt this vaccine. Instead, we have “chickenpox parties”, where the parents of an infected child invite round all the local toddlers so they can deliberately catch the lurgy. Like medieval pilgrims, they line up to touch the itchy, suppurating patient, before returning home with their precious viral load.

Having nursed three children through chickenpox, I will not mourn its extinction. But I also feel a tiny bit sorry for the children who will never experience it.

Chickenpox is an event, a rite of passage, imbued with a sickly glamour that no common cold can aspire to. The horrible spots command parental sympathy. School is out of the question for days, if not weeks. Cool flannels are applied to the brow, and normally forbidden foodstuffs, such as ice cream, suddenly materialise on trays.

It’s like being the hero of an Edwardian novel. You are bored and lonely but pleasingly special. Eventually, if your convalescence goes on long enough, you might discover a secret garden, or a race of tiny people living under the floorboards. At the very least, you will be transfigured by suffering.

It’s not just in fiction that illness leads to great things. History is full of geniuses who spent a chunk of their childhood confined to the sickbed, among them Frida Kahlo (polio), Thomas Edison (scarlet fever) and Mozart (smallpox). All that time alone in your own head, thinking, doodling, playing with melodies.

These days, of course, Mozart would just watch telly or play with his smartphone. So forget the nostalgia, and bring on the vaccine.

Paranoid Parents 

Being a parent of school-age children is like sending your internal organs out into the world every day, with no control over what might befall them. This anxiety makes us susceptible to some very bad ideas. Consider the Angel Watch – a £170 piece of kit that, once strapped on to your child’s wrist, uses GPS to track their movements and has sensors that record their heart rate, temperature and blood oxygen. It also offers “discreet” audio and visual check-ins.

What this means is that you, the parent, can connect remotely to the watch’s camera and microphone to spy on your child.

Digital campaigners in the US warned this week that the Angel Watch is one of the “creepiest” gadgets even invented. They couldn’t find any privacy policy, so fear sensitive data it collects could end up anywhere.

Besides which, the concept itself is wrong. Parental anxiety can’t be soothed by spyware. Quite the contrary: the more closely you track them, the harder it is to stop worrying. Information isn’t always power. Sometimes it’s just fuel for paranoia.