"Many people are not aware that before a vaccine was available approximately 10,600 persons were hospitalized and 100 to 150 died as a result of chickenpox in the U.S. every year."
I'm curious as to how many of those were elementary school-aged children (lets say under 10). From the same article it looks like about 50 children and 50 adults (all w/o other complications).
I wonder what the results would be if the standard was to give a vaccination at age 10 if the hadn't already contracted the virus normally. Then again, this would probably have a detrimental effect on 'herd' immunity, so it's probably worth it for just that reason.
If we can prevent children from having a potentially dangerous disease with an intervention that is both inexpensive and safer than the disease itself, why wouldn't we? It's much less expensive on a personal and societal level to use vaccines.
That's from the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/varicella/dis-faqs-gen.h...