When is Shedding Season?

Have you heard of shedding season?

I’ll give you a hint, we aren’t talking about cats and dogs…

When is Shedding Season?

So it seems that some folks are really worried about vaccines and shedding.

Precautions against viral shedding? Was he giving out smallpox or oral polio vaccines?

While some vaccines do actually shed, it is really only the oral polio vaccine and the smallpox vaccine that we get concerned about with shedding.

And even then, shedding from the oral polio vaccine would only be a concern for someone with an immune system problem. Since the oral polio vaccine contains an attenuated virus, if that attenuated virus shed to someone else, they wouldn’t get polio except in the very rare situation when the virus mutates. Instead, they would get protection against polio. That’s one of the benefits of using the oral polio vaccine!

Still, we don’t use the oral polio vaccine in the United States anymore.

Although the smallpox vaccine can shed, it is from the site of injection, where a scab forms in the days to weeks after getting vaccinated. Covering the site should prevent other people from getting exposed to shed virus and fortunately, this vaccine is only used in very special situations.

And the rotavirus vaccine sheds, but you just have to wash your hands after changing diapers to avoid this attenuated virus. Are you going to get rotavirus if you are exposed to an infant who was recently vaccinated? Infants who get the vaccine don’t get rotavirus, so why would you if you are exposed to them?

And other vaccines?

While some live vaccines might shed in very specific situations, like if they caused a rare vaccine-induced disease, they otherwise don’t shed. That’s why we don’t worry about most folks with immune system problems getting exposed to people who have recently been vaccinated.

Don’t believe me?

Every time there is an outbreak of measles, someone insists that it was caused by a vaccine strain of measles that was shed from someone who was recently vaccinated. How often is that true?