We’ve officially annihilated a second strain of polio

arstechnica.com

5 pointsjoubert3 comments

Years ago, I'd think "Yay! Go science!"

Nowadays... don't worry, antivaxxers are going to bring it back.

I found out that "eradicated" doesn't actually mean "eradicated", it means "we think it is and hope it won't come back"

That said, I'm glad we've reduced the spread of this disease to the point where we think it doesn't exist anymore.

Think about it: a poliovirus is about 30nm in diameter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliovirus) It takes only one of them for it not to be eradicated.

We discover new species that are a million times its diameter (3 cm) or 10^18 times its volume all the time, and species that are 10 times larger still regularly (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/13/new-mamm...)

On the face of that, there’s no way we ever could decide it has been eradicated. We only dare make this claim because, to the best of our knowledge, the virus will not survive for long outside the human body (a few months, according to https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/polio/facts/en/index3...)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com