While I don't especially like the guy (he's the governor of my very state), the title is clickbait and the news is NOT ACCURATE.
Fedriga is 38 years old, just like me; and, when he was a child, just like me, chickenpox vaccination WAS NOT MANDATORY IN ITALY, nor it was recommended. I was not vaccinated against chickenpox, either, while I did all recommended shots.
It is mandatory TODAY, and he has already stated that his children ARE vaccinated.
The only reason because this was news is because he has stated that he's against the Lorenzin law which makes vaccination required in order to go to school.
EDIT:
In the 80s there was no chickenpox vaccine available at all.
Wikipedia claims the vaccine only appeared in 1995 [1] or 1984 [2] (and probably later in some countries). Either way a lot of the population could not possibly have been vaccinated as a child.
I didn’t see what is inaccurate, he is an anti-Vaxer and he has caught chicken pox. Low rates of vaccination, for whatever reason, carry significant risks of increased infection rates. He’s lucky it’s just chicken pox, but the reason this should be news and is important is that people are dying needlessly from
measles.
Infections and deaths from measles are on the rise in countries with significant anti-vacination movements. This nonsense is killing people.
Why is he an anti-vaxxer? He's got all his recommended shots, and his kids got those as well.
He's against the mandatory vaccination law... but you should remember his party is an opponent of the party who introduced such law. It's more about politics than being an antivaxxer.
And many countries in the world don't mandate vaccination - is it full of antivaxxers out there?
Also note that the NHS in the UK recommends against chickenpox vaccine except where there are indications that it would be helpful (ie: you spend a lot of time around immune-compromised people).
Chickenpox is complicated: it is the NHS view that catching chicken pox as a child is better than getting it as an adult. It’s not like measles where catching it at all is a really bad idea.
I am not an anti-vaccer, but that doesn't mean I should attack them disingenuously. I don't think that they claim that they do not need those vaccines because they cannot catch the underlying disease. I understand that they claim that some vaccines are causing more harm than the disease they are attempting to prevent.
Now I don't think they are right, I believe the harm caused by those vaccines is orders of magnitude less than the absence of vaccine, and I believe parents should be comfortable taking the small risk than their kid may have a bad reaction to the vaccine over the much greater risk of complications from the underlying disease.
But I think claiming that an anti-vax caught a disease proves that he is wrong is disingenous. In fact according to wikipedia [1] the vaccine is 70% to 90% effective, so he may himsef have been vaccinated for all I know.
He’s not an anti-vaxxer. He’s protesting the policy of not allowing children into school if they haven’t had a chickenpox vaccination.
There are different medical opinions on this: IMHO since a private chicken pox vaccination costs upwards of £100 in the UK, I can understand the public health system bias towards not supporting mandatory vaccinations. One could view a policy of mandatory chickenpox vaccination as a corruption of government by the drug companies.
I do wish him a fast recovery, but I don't mind him being mocked.
He knowingly preys on people's ignorance and fears and the damage he causes is not even confined to himself or the people who listen to him, but people who can't vaccinate their children for legitimate reason are put in danger because of his actions. Even people who do vaccinate their children are put at risk because herd immunity is compromised.
Chickenpox vaccinations are not mandatory in all of Europe. E.g. our daughter was vaccinated against chickenpox because we lived in Germany at the time (where they have been vaccinating against chickenpox since 2004), but kids in The Netherlands (where we live now) are not vaccinated against chickenpox.
The NHS also do not vaccinate for chickenpox in the U.K, arguing that vaccinating children (where chickenpox is mild) makes the the health risks for adults more severe
Fedriga is 38 years old, just like me; and, when he was a child, just like me, chickenpox vaccination WAS NOT MANDATORY IN ITALY, nor it was recommended. I was not vaccinated against chickenpox, either, while I did all recommended shots.
It is mandatory TODAY, and he has already stated that his children ARE vaccinated.
The only reason because this was news is because he has stated that he's against the Lorenzin law which makes vaccination required in order to go to school.
EDIT: In the 80s there was no chickenpox vaccine available at all.
EDIT 2: Fedriga's answer to his haters:
https://www.facebook.com/massimilianofedriga/posts/101620342...
(can't seem to make google translate work on fb, you'll need to copypaste the text yourself)