Buncombe County officials report increase in chickenpox, whooping cough cases
BUNCOMBE COUNTY, N.C. (FOX Carolina) - The Buncombe County Public Health’s Communicable Disease (CD) Team is monitoring an increase in chickenpox and whooping cough cases.
In mid-November, county Public Health staff identified a chickenpox outbreak at a private school in the western part of the county due to a high number of unvaccinated persons...
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Buncombe Co. officials report increase in chickenpox cases
Officials have also reported an outbreak of whooping cough at a public high school in the Swannanoa/Black Mountain area, with 17 linked cases and potential spread into a neighboring public middle school. Officials also reported a large outbreak of influenza A in the same population.
RELATED: North Carolina reports first child flu death this season
Officials said that the state reported its highest number of whooping cough cases in 70 years in 2024, with this year’s cases already surpassing that total. Buncombe County and surrounding counties have seen an increase in whooping cough cases for the past several years.
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https://www.foxcarolina.com/2025/12/22/buncombe-county-officials-report-increase-chickenpox-whooping-cough-cases/COMMENT:I know first hand how bad symptoms of chicken pox are... it's horrible.. itchy like crazy.. kids wanna tear their skin off .. gets everywhere even in genitals..it's maddening.. it was so bad back when I went to school that some kids talked about how parents tried to relieve their kids of the agony of chicken pox by using turpentine (WARNING: don't use turpentine) on the itchy blisters. I say this so that press doesn't downplay how bad it really feels to have chickenpox. Imagine wanting to tear your skin off because you are going feverisshly insane and the itches are also inside you...
... do not downplay, underestimate, or be insensitive to how truly horrendous and miserable it is to be inflicted with these illnesses and diseases. Words cannot describe or do justice to this kind of suffering illness and diseases inflict upon us!
Often the press fails to be very descriptive and only uses words like "itchy," "runny nose," "feverish," & "uncomfortable" when in reality these words don't really capture how bad illnesses and diseases really feel. We often hear about the symptoms illness from the press but rarely in the voice of the victims. I'm 55 now I remember Chicken pox in elementary school really well and it was really horrible and those stories about parents trying to use turpentine to take their kids suffering away were true ..that's how bad it itched!...
...People deserve to know for the sake of the children that happened back in my day of surviving chicken pox as a child. Not trying to scare anybody but those are the facts those are my memories. It was bad when a chicken pox outbreak occurred ..very bad. kids trying to pull and scratch there own skin off and often chicken pox would be inside their throats and orifices and that's what we face during outbreaks. Children trying to Gouge out or scratch oozing Chickenpox on their lips and on an eyelids making you blink over and over burned like fire and endlessly itchy.. the itch never went away . Perhaps there are better treatments nowadays for chickenpox that I am unaware of that will console the reader who has never had chicken pox. I wouldn't know. All I can tell you is what I know.
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