> This statistic seems to be used by some people to avoid the vaccine
The FDA itself restricted access to the vaccine on the basis of age. Given that virions aren't even involved in the production process, its safety should have been deemed good enough for the entire population early on.
I think the main reason it isn't recommended for all ages is that it wears off. If you get it before 50, when your immune system starts declining, you might end up getting shingles when you're 60 or 70.
Insurance companies used to only pay for the vaccine at 60. They've reduced it to 50 now because people (like me) were getting it in their 50's. I got it in my left eye and because my immune system is kinda shit, I still have it, though it doesn't give me too much grief now. But it did trash my cornea in that eye, so it's messed my vision up pretty good. And since there's still an active infection (after 8 years), I can't get a cornea transplant.
My PCP actually recommended holding off until later in the 50s for this reason. There's not currently a booster so his suggestion was to play the odds & delay a bit in order to get longer protection in my elderly years.
Beg for forgiveness, don't ask permission. I got Shingrix when I was under the age of 40, and at no cost to myself even, simply by scheduling a Shingrix vaccine at CVS. It wasn't until I went back for the booster shot months later that the nurse was like "Wait, aren't you too young for this?", but they nevertheless gave me the second dose to complete the vaccine course. You can just so things.
I was unable to get a first dose just by asking the pharmacy -- they were happy to enforce the arbitrary 50 year age rule. But my PCP was happy to just prescribe it off-label. Do it; shingles is terrible and there's no reason to suffer it under 50.
Your average HN reader can absolutely afford paying a few hundred bucks to avoid getting a potentially life-changing disease, and should. I know multiple young adults who got messed up by shingles.
That’s not how drug approvals work. You don’t make assumptions about safety, you make decisions based on data.
The original trials were for a specific population - no prior HPV infection, young women. Hence the approval was for that population.
Additional trials have been run expanding the population, but the decision was based on data not “yeah, I’ll bet this is safe/works for this other group”
The FDA itself restricted access to the vaccine on the basis of age. Given that virions aren't even involved in the production process, its safety should have been deemed good enough for the entire population early on.