The Backward Logic of Chickenpox Parties

Anyone who has had chickenpox shares one distinct memory: the relentless, all-consuming itch.

Ciara DiVita was only 3 years old when she caught the virus, but she remembers it well—along with the oven mitts she was made to wear to stop herself scratching. She also recalls being taken to hang out with her cousin while covered in blisters, in the hopes of deliberately infecting them.

DiVita, now 30, was actually the second in the chain, having been taken by her parents to catch chickenpox from an infectious friend. “I imagine the chain continued and my cousin gave it to someone else at a chickenpox play date,” she says.

A lot has changed over the past three decades, most notably the development of a chickenpox vaccine, meaning the virus is no longer the childhood rite of passage it once was.

Thanks to the vaccine’s success, children today are much less likely...

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