What about Chickenpox Parties?

A frequent question from those struggling to make the shift out of the virus narrative

Making the shift in one’s thinking from “viruses cause disease” to “viruses don’t exist and there’s no such thing as contagion” can happen fairly quickly, or it can take a while. The story of the germ theory, viruses, and contagion is so familiar and so ingrained that it has the aura of something that has always been true. Often, when people are in the midst of making this shift in thinking, questions come up about situations and experiences that seem to uphold the germ theory or validate contagion.

One of the most frequent questions asked by those starting to wonder about the reality of viruses and the germ theory narrative for the first time is about chickenpox parties. These events seem to validate both viruses and contagion.

So, what about “chickenpox parties?” If it isn’t a virus passing between the children, why do they seem to get chickenpox from each other at these parties? And why would parents want their children to have this illness?

Once we start to ask these questions and remove the blinders on our thinking that are placed there by the virus and contagion model, we are entering territory that medical research ignores. A number of possibilities for what chickenpox is have been suggested; it may be one of them, several of them, or something different. Until we have more research and documentation—research that, of course, does not involve the purported finding of the varicella zoster or any other virus—we won’t know for sure.

Hypotheses I have heard include:

• Chickenpox is a way the body detoxes from childhood vaccines.

• Chickenpox is the body detoxing from some other toxic assault, like any skin rash.

• Chickenpox is a developmental challenge that children’s bodies need to go through to optimize their adult structures and processes.

• Chickenpox and other childhood diseases when experienced in childhood strengthen the body against many health conditions in adulthood.

Skin rashes are a means that the body uses to push out something that doesn’t belong. This would be the explanation for chickenpox being a detox of childhood vaccines or other toxic presence. However, it’s fascinating to consider that chickenpox may be a process that children’s bodies need to go through at around the age of seven. The child’s body is pushing out something that it no longer needs or that is in the way of a new, perhaps more complicated, biological process that will strengthen the child’s terrain and prepare it for the next phase of development. This may be similar to a snake shedding its skin so it has room to grow. The result is a body that can better meet toxic challenges that it will face as the child grows into adulthood.

A (Supposed) History of the Chickenpox Virus

The virus narrative tells us that the chickenpox virus, varicella zoster, originated in Africa. The currently circulating “strains” of this virus, however, are claimed to have been traced back to Europe 300 years ago.[1] Chickenpox was named in 1768, when English physician William Heberden supposedly differentiated it from smallpox,[2] a familiar skin rash disease that has been known across the world for thousands of years. We know that smallpox afflicted people due to unhygienic living conditions, not a contagious virus. We also know that “pox” diseases that involve a skin rash are all variations of the body’s detoxification process and are only differently named for purposes of selling more vaccines and also making claims about either the prevalence or the elimination of a given disease. This would argue for chickenpox being a detox process of some sort.

Before the chickenpox vaccine came into regular use in 1995, almost all American children had chickenpox, regardless of the type of conditions they lived in.[3] Although there is no pre-vaccine data for which countries or areas of the world were known to have cases of chickenpox, data since 1995 seems to show that chickenpox is a universal disease.[4] These two data points suggest that chickenpox is something different from an ordinary body detox via the skin.

The Appearance of Contagion

Why children seem to “catch” chickenpox so easily, as they would at the chickenpox parties that parents used to host before the vaccine, is another question that medical science has not seen fit to research because the narrative says that viruses spread by contagion. End of story. If we can look beyond this narrative, however, what may actually be happening is the same mechanism by which colds and flu seem to transmit from one person to the next. The body of the person who is experiencing symptoms of a body detox emits a resonant or energetic signal that the bodies of others nearby pick up. If those individuals need to do a detox, they may develop symptoms also. If not, they won’t.

These resonances may be similar to the energetic signals that cause us to yawn when we see another person yawning, or laugh when someone else laughs, or even cross our legs when others in the room have crossed their legs.[5] Evolutionary biologists have speculated that these “contagious” behaviors may have their origin in the evolutionary benefit of nervous system regulation within the group. Yawning, for example, is thought to regulate brain temperature, and contagious yawning signals a need for this adjustment.[6] This could apply also to illness—if members of the tribe can synchronize their detoxes when the symptoms will be mild, there’s less likelihood of someone being more sick later and thus unable to fulfill their role in the group because their recovery takes longer.

If chickenpox is a developmental passage, a similar type of resonance is probably occurring. When a child is going through this upgrade, almost every child who is in the range of that developmental step will pick up on the signal which communicates to their bodies that it is time for this stage. Just as happens with colds and flu, not every child at a chickenpox party will come down with chickenpox. Each body determines whether it needs the chickenpox upgrade at that time. Exactly what that upgrade entails may not be scientifically discoverable, but it would be a fascinating study for researchers who are not lost in the virus narrative.

Health Benefits

However, even researchers who are still focused on viruses are finding out that having chickenpox as a child has health benefits when those children reach adulthood. An extensive study published in 2016 with participants in five countries compared 4,533 cases of adults over 18 years old with glioma, a type of brain cancer, and 4,171 controls (adults of similar ages who did not have glioma). The study concluded that those who had chickenpox as children were 21% less likely to develop glioma, and that the protection was more significant for the most malignant types of glioma tumors.[7]

Although this study was done under the assumption that chickenpox is caused by the varicella zoster virus, the researchers used medical history, not blood tests, to determine which people had had chickenpox and which had not. The viral cause of chickenpox was assumed, not integrated as part of the study; this means that the protective effect of having chickenpox found in this study was not directly linked to the existence of the varicella zoster virus or its effect on the bodies of children or adults. In other words, the beneficial effect had nothing to do with the virus per se, but with the experience of the child’s body with the symptoms that are known as chickenpox.

Other studies have found a similar protective effect of chickenpox as well as other childhood illnesses such as mumps, measles, and rubella. People who experienced these childhood illnesses at a young age had a lower incidence of all types of cancer except breast cancer[8] in one study. Other studies found the same effect specifically for Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma,[9] acute lymphoblastic leukemia,[10] ovarian cancer,[11] and heart disease.[12] Most of these studies have been done in the past 20 years; evidence is piling up that children who experience childhood illnesses are less prone to devastating diagnoses later in life. Perhaps when the belief in viruses ceases to be the only game in town for medical research, studies will be done to find out exactly what it is about having chickenpox, measles, mumps, and other childhood illnesses that protects adults from these forms of cancer and perhaps other serious conditions that have not yet been studied.

Chickenpox Parties

Chickenpox parties have happened far less since the vaccine was introduced in 1995. Before the vaccine, parents understood that almost all children would have chickenpox at some point. They also understood that the older the child was, the more difficult it would be for them. That’s the nature of chickenpox: it’s supposed to happen when the child is under 9 or 10 years old. Parents wanted their children to get this illness when they were younger, say between 5 and 7, when it would most likely be mild. Generally chickenpox involved staying home from school for a few days with a skin rash that might be itchy and uncomfortable, or might be barely noticeable.

Despite propaganda from the CDC warning that chickenpox can result in serious secondary conditions such as encephalitis and can even lead to death, chickenpox is not a dangerous disease. Before the vaccine was introduced, there were 100 to 150 deaths per year in the United States attributed to the varicella zoster virus.[13] Less than half of them were children; most were adults. For all countries, the WHO estimates that the yearly total of chickenpox cases since the introduction of the vaccine is 4.2 million, with 4,200 deaths.[14] Death rates have been higher in countries with high levels of poverty and unsanitary living conditions, a fact we seen also for many other “pox” diseases such as smallpox and measles.[15] According to Dr. Sam Bailey, three American children died from chickenpox between 2012 and 2016. One had leukemia, one had an immunodeficiency condition, and one had been vaccinated.[16]

Parents who favor chickenpox parties understand chickenpox as a non-threatening condition that, if nothing else, offers an opportunity for both parent and child to step out of the high stress and rapid pace of daily life for a few days and appreciate their connection. Although vaccines are pushed by public health agencies such as the CDC and the WHO, the studies showing the protective effect of chickenpox for brain and other cancers later in life may be just the first discovery of why this “disease” is an important rite of passage for children and should not be suppressed with a vaccine.

If there is no chickenpox virus, why has chickenpox declined by 95% since the vaccine was introduced? It seems as if it is giving children immunity to the chickenpox virus. What is the vaccine doing, if not that?

Chickenpox has declined, but there have been injuries from the vaccine, including encephalitis, low blood count, seizures, pneumonia,[17] and severe cases of shingles in young children.[18] All these vaccine injuries are more serious conditions than typical chickenpox. At least one death has occurred attributed to the vaccine.[19]

What the vaccine is doing to reduce chickenpox to such an extent is an excellent question, and one that also needs the attention of medical researchers who are not stuck in the virus paradigm. According to the package insert, the Varavax vaccine contains “live, weakened varicella virus” and the following stabilizers: sucrose, hydrolyzed gelatin, monosodium glutamate, sodium phosphate dibasic, potassium phosphate monobasic, and potassium chloride. It has no preservatives. Its “residual byproducts” include protein and DNA from MRC-5 human cells used to grow the virus in the cell culture. These cells come from the lung tissue of a 14-week-old male fetus in 1966 and are used in the development and production of many vaccines.[20] Other “residual byproducts” include sodium phosphate monobasic, EDTA (a chemical used in chelation therapy and also possibly connected to the risk of blood clots when it is used in vaccines),[21] neomycin (an antibiotic), and fetal bovine serum.[22] As with all vaccines, most of these substances should never be injected into a human body.

What the vaccine is doing to reduce chickenpox to such an extent is not obvious, and is a question that also needs the attention of medical researchers who are not stuck in the virus paradigm. Something in the vaccine evidently does suppress the process in the child’s body that would normally include the experience of a skin rash and possibly a fever or headache—the symptoms known as chickenpox. The fact that scientific evidence shows a protective effect in adulthood for people who do have chickenpox as children indicates that the vaccine has interfered with the development of that protective effect.

As long as science, doctors, and everyday people continue to believe that a virus causes chickenpox and that it should be suppressed with the vaccine, we will not know the full story of chickenpox—and we will continue to not only expose children to negative impacts of the vaccine that are far worse than the experience of chickenpox, but deprive them and the adults they will become of the protective effects of this body-strengthening childhood challenge.

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[1] Pontremoli, C. Forni, D., Clerici, M., Cagliani, R., & Sironi, M. (2020). Possible European origin of circulating varicella zoster virus strains. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 221(8), 1286–1297. https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/221/8/1286/5485413

[2] Galetta, K., & Gilden, D. (2015). Zeroing in on zoster: A tale of many disorders produced by one virus. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 358(1), 38–45. https://www.jns-journal.com/article/S0022-510X(15)02471-5/fulltext

[3] History of Vaccines. (2025). Chickenpox (Varicella). The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. https://historyofvaccines.org/diseases/chickenpox-varicella

[4] Well Wisp. (2025). How Many People Get Chickenpox? Unraveling Facts. https://wellwisp.com/how-many-people-get-chicken-pox/

[5] Ohwovoriole, T. (2023, August 9). What Is the Chameleon Effect? Verywellmind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-chameleon-effect-5114522

[6] Cleveland Clinic. (2023, April 25). Why Do You Yawn—And Is It Contagious? https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-do-you-yawn-and-is-it-contagious

[7] Amirian, E. S., Sheurer, M. E., Zhou, R., Wrensch, M. R., Armstrong, G. N., Lachance, D., Olson, S. H., Lau, C. C., Claus, E. B., Barnholtz-Sloan, J. S., Ilyasova, D., Schildkraut, J., Ali-Osman, F., Sadetzki, S., Jenkins, R. B., Bernstein, J. L., Merrell, R. T., Davis, F. G., Lai, R., Shete, S., Amos, C. I., Melin, B. S., & Bondy, M. L. (2016). History of Chickenpox in Glioma Risk: A Report from the glioma international case-control study (GICC). Cancer Medicine, 5(6), 1352–1358. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cam4.682

[8] Albonico, H. U., Bräker, H. U., & Hüsler, J. (1998). Febrile Infectious Childhood Diseases in the History of Cancer Patients and Matched Control. Medical Hypotheses, 51(4), 315–320. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030698779890055X?via%3Dihub

[9] Montella, M., Dal Maso, L., Crispo, A., Talamini, R., Bidoli, E., Grimaldi, M., Giudice, A., Pinto, A., & Franceschi, A. (2006). Do childhood diseases affect NHL and HL risk? A case-control study from northern and southern Italy. Leukemia Research, 30(8), 917–922. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145212605004662?via%3Dihub

[10] Urayama, K. Y., Ma, X., Selvin, S., Metayer, C., Chokkalingam, A. P., Wiemels, J. L., Does, M., Chang, J., Wong, A., Trachtenberg, E., & Buffler, P. A. (2010). Early life exposure to infections and risk of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. International Journal of Cancer, 128, 1632–1643. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.25752

[11] Cramer, D. W., Vitonis, A. F., Pinhiero, S. P., McKolanis, J. R., Ficherova, R. N., Brown, K. E., Hatchette, T. F., & Finn, O. J. (2011). Mumps and ovarian cancer: modern interpretation of an historic association. Cancer Causes and Control, 21, 1193–1201. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10552-010-9546-1

[12] Kubota, Y., Iso, H., & Tamakoshi, A. (2015). Association of measles and mumps with cardiovascular disease: The Japan Collaborative Cohort (JACC) study. Atherosclerosis, 241(2), 682–686. https://www.atherosclerosis-journal.com/article/S0021-9150(15)01380-5/abstract

[13] Centers for Disease Control. (2024, April 22). Impact of US Chickenpox Vaccination Program. https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/vaccination-impact/index.html

[14] Varela, F. H., Pinto, L. A., & Scotta, M. C. (2008). Global impact of varicella vaccination programs. Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, 5(3), 645–657. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645515.2018.1546525

[15] Varela, F. H., Pinto, L. A., & Scotta, M. C. (2008). Global impact of varicella vaccination programs. Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, 5(3), 645–657. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645515.2018.1546525

[16] Bailey, S. (2021, August 18). Chickenpox Parties and Varicella Zoster Virus? [Video presentation]. https://drsambailey.com/resources/videos/viruses-unplugged/chickenpox-parties-and-varicella-zoster-virus/

[17] Kraus Law Group, Vaccine Injury Project. (2025). Varicella Vaccine Adverse Events. https://www.vaccineinjurylawproject.com/types-of-vaccines/varicella-vaccine-injury

[18] Moodley, A., Swanson, J., Grose, C., & Bonthius, B. J. (2019). Severe Herpes Zoster Following Varicella Vaccination in Immunocompetent Young Children. Journal of Child Neurology, 34(4), 184– 188. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0883073818821498

[19] Leung, J., Siegel, S., Jones, J. F., Schulte, C., Blog, D., Schmid, D. S. Bialik, S. R., & Marin, M. (2013). Fatal varicella due to the vaccine-strain varicella-zoster virus. Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, 10(1), 146–149. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/hv.26200

[20] Davidson, M. (2015, November 13). Human Fetal Lung Fibroblast Cells (MRC-5 Line). Florida State University. https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/techniques/fluorescence/gallery/cells/mrc5/mrc5cells.html

[21] Strich, J. R., & Kanthi, Y. (2021). VITT(al) insights into vaccine-related clots. Blood, 138(22), 2159–2160. https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/138/22/2159/482742/VITT-al-insights-into-vaccine-related-clots

[22] Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. (2025). Ingredients in Chickenpox (Varicella) Vaccines. https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/vaccine-ingredients/ingredients-by-vaccine/varicella-vaccines-ingredients