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Comment by ccostes | Hacker News Reader

It's really true that, as someone in my 20's, polio really did seem like a thing of the past before reading this. While I knew what an iron lung was (always disliking the name, though), I had no idea there were still people using them.

The most striking thing is how early in life these people were affected, while I feel like I've only just begun to experience life. Really makes me appreciate all the work that went into the vaccines and public health to make a disease that was so terrifying only a generation ago, virtually non-existent today. (And really hate that the anti-vaxers, who benefited from it, are working to undo such a great achievement)

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Here's the thing about the anti-vax movement: even in the outside chance that vaccines do in fact cause autism, a slight increase in the autism rate is worth eliminating polio for.

It's sometimes even rational for parents not to vaccinate their children. There are (very rare) side-effects, even up to death, for some vaccinations, and considering that everyone else vaccinates and thus the chance of getting infected and having a bad outcome is even lower than the rare incidence of vaccination side effects.

Of course, that only applies up to a certain point, where enough parents opt out to make vaccination individually the optimal choice. And of course, it's the right thing not to endanger the rest of the population.

That kind of game theory doesn't work because you'll never get close to 100% vaccination coverage so long as there are infants in the world who are too young to take the vaccine and adults who think the diligence of others will keep themselves covered.

Herd immunity kicks in at well below 100% vaccination coverage, and that is good news for those who really can't vaccinate.

Got any sources to back that up? 1% of an entire population is still a massive number of people. Or to put things another way: it's pretty easy to interact with 100 people each day so even just 1% of the population means you will bump into someone who isn't immunised during the course of your day.

There's some side-effects, even up to death, to preventable diseases like polio, whooping cough, measles etc too; I'd say it's a "greater good" kinda thing, small chance of complications if you take the vaccine, big chance of debilitating diseases for your child and people around them if you don't.

My point was, that in a situation with "herd immunity" even the unvaccinated have close to zero chance of infection.

Without herd immunity, benefits of vaccination strictly dominate, even if you just consider the individual.

But then again, since every medicine has side effects, I hope these parents have the same reasoning towards all of them, not only when it's "convenient" (considering the abysmally low side effects, I can't even consider vaccines that risky in the first place).

I had hoped I made it clear enough that there is a rational case on the scale of an individual and a rational/moral case on the scale of society.

The study was faked, removed from the journal and the "doctor" lost his licence because of his shit.

It's one damn google search away on a shitload of multiple, reliable sources.

My sister is one of those people. She got polio in the 1950s, when she was 5 years old. Fortunately it was a mild case, and she was cured with physical therapy. But it always made me sensitive to anything related to polio.

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