I’m sorry to hear what happened to your Dad. Shingles on the face (and in the eye!) is Bad News. If it’s not diagnosed or treated properly, it’s possible you can go blind. Source: my personal experience, which was deeply unfun.
In no way does this justify the bourgeois pricing of this boutique vaccine. Quite the contrary, it means this should be subsidized through NHI to make it more accessible to all.
Guy
For the record, that is roughly double the cost I paid in Canada for my first shot.
Guy
Thanks! It sounds like we should join together to shop around; maybe someone can find a better price. I’ll ask at NTUCC today.
Edit: just asked. The price is fixed by GSK, so it’s no cheaper here.
Not free in Canada?
Alberta Health, I have heard, covers it. Perhaps other provinces too, though I am unaware of those details.
Alas, I am not covered by Alberta Health.
Guy
An update: I received my Shingrix booster (it’s a two dose vaccine) in early February here in Taipei. It required some phoning around, and found a clinic in Daan which had it in stock. It was not cheap (about NT$8900 if I recall correctly). This was around double what I paid for the first shot in Canada. Well at least it’s done!
Guy
I should also mention the side effects which have also been described above. I had the fever / chills combo, just as I did with the first shot, which kicked in about six hours after I received the vaccine and then lasted around 24 hours. This time I also experienced quite a bit of muscle pain, almost a full body ache. It was not great, and then the side effects simply disappeared, roughly 36 hours after the shot.
Guy
I just received the first dose of Shingrix in Taipei. Here are the details of the clinic for anyone looking for more information:
Nice Clinique 尼斯診所
No. 51號, Lane 190, Section 1, Dunhua S Rd, Da’an District, Taipei City, 106
0227782255
1 dose is NT$8800, so total cost will be NT$17600
2 doses required within 6 months, preferably 2+ months between doses
NHI is not accepted for this
The whole process was very efficient. I had a quick consultation with a doctor, and the nurses administered the vaccine shot.
I contacted them via Facebook messenger and made an appointment. They seem to have 1 nurse who can speak English, so replies in English may take a day or two.
Good to hear you could get this done in Taipei. I do wish though the prices in Taiwan were not that insanely high. When will this vaccine be NOT treated like some kind of boutique product?
Guy
Certain large vaccine companies have been charging outrageous amounts for optional vaccines, such as against cervical cancer and shingles, for many years now. While I recognize that there are development costs, there are in my considered opinion also ethical limits on profit margins when a product can save lives and prevent true suffering. Now life and health are available only to the wealthy, which means that such prices and profit margins only serve to increase the disparities in our societies. It is my assumption that due to its unethically high prices, big pharma (and much of the medical industry) has deep pockets and probably strong control over our elected representatives in Congress who could act to stop such behavior with things like price controls, threatening to remove preferential tax treatments or impose punitive ones, or even, when the public good outweighs the traditional justifications for laissez-faire (good ones, including incentive to create new vaccines), to allow other firms to produce the same drug without remuneration or with only limited fees to an abusive monopolist. I’m a centrist when it comes to the balance between laissez-faire and socialism, I guess, but it’s cases like this and medical bills in the US, including abusive surprise additions of very high consulting fees for doctors the patient hasn’t even consulted, and failure to disclose detailed costs in advance, as well as failure to make exceptions for the relatively non-wealthy or even downright poor, which push me in the direction of government intervention here.
There are pharma companies that have not behaved this way, and have even made life-saving or life-prolonging treatments for rare illnesses (including mine) available for free to such patients, while charging reasonable prices on drugs in most other countries. I don’t buy the arguments of pharma-defenders that the US situation is justified by either laissez-faire or incentive to produce new medicines. Anyone who defends abuse of monopoly which results in only the wealthy being able to afford health care must have something broken in their heart.
Isn’t part of the problem here the Taiwan side importing these vaccines? The price being charged is roughly double what I was quoted in North America. 
Guy
In comparison, the cost for a full course, 2 doses, of Shingrix at non-NHS clinics in the UK ranges from £450 to £600 (NT$17400 to NT$23,000), so maybe not THAT bad a price in Taiwan.
It’s only available for free on the UK NHS for over 70s.
“Isn’t part of the problem here the Taiwan side importing these vaccines?”
It doesn’t happen AFAIK with other vaccines; only with the optional ones that some big pharma unethically decide to treat as luxury items to gouge the rich, without giving a shit that they exclude the poor, are hard on middle-class budgets, and without any apparent care for the general welfare of the population — their eyes being only on their own bottom line. At least that is my impression.
Hello! I currently live in Thailand, and Shingrix is not available here. Finding somewhere I can get it is complicated because of needing 2 doses. (I am British, and I could get it privately there, but the cost of flying back to the UK twice within a few months is prohibitive.)
I read that it’s been licenced in Taiwan now, but this forum topic is the only useful information I can find about it online. (Other than medical information sheets and so on.)
I know absolutely nothing about the medical system in Taiwan. Is it realistic to think that a visitor could contact a clinic and arrange the shots during a short trip there? Or would that be wildly unlikely?
(I will be in Taipei for a few days next month anyway, so it would only be the second dose that required a special trip.)
Thanks for any advice you can offer!
I know three people who had really bad recurrences of shingles following their COVID-19 vaccine / booster. All of them had previously had shingles when they were much younger, and hadn’t had it flare up for years, even decades before this. All of them are 50+ years old.
how old are they? shingles is pretty uncommon for people under 50 from what I understand?
One in their 50’s. Father-in-law is 80. My friend’s mother-in-law is in her 70s.
I know the history of my father-in-law the best. He had shingles in his late 30’s, and hadn’t had a recurrence until last year.
Correlation is not causality. But of course you know that.
Guy
I have never tried anything like this, but I think the clinics in Taipei would take your money (bring NTD cash), as Shingrix is not currently covered in any way by Taiwan’s National Health Insurance plan.
Budget some time in your trip to handle the side effects, which can be—as noted above—quite rough.
Guy
The chance of another flare-up increases over time. So the younger you are when you have the first episode, the more likely (statistically not causally) you are to have it again.