I think the vaccine is only covered by insurance (USA) for people over 50 in most cases. If you are lucky enough to have coverage, get the vaccine. Shingles as an otherwise healthy 42 year old was no picnic, I can't imagine how bad it must be for someone older or more immuno-compromised.

AFAICT both the options for shingles vaccination are just variants on the chickenpox vaccine - one being more directly just a high dose of it.

This doesn't undermine anything you say, I'm just bemused at the lag time between the chickenpox vaccine (1984) and Zostavax (2006).

Had chicken pox in my 30s. Not good. The shingles vaccine isn’t expensive, thank heaven. It’s a quarter century later and my mom got shingles at about this age…