> An unvaccinated young adult from New York recently contracted polio, the first U.S. case in nearly a decade, health officials said Thursday.
Of course he's unvaccinated. Goddammit, people.
Of course he's unvaccinated. Goddammit, people.
The anti-vax 'movement' is in my view largely astroturfed, leveraging understandable parental and public uncertainty in the face of medical complexity, technological change, and conflicting economic interests. What may have begun as sincere skepticism was overtaken by financial and then strategic considerations. There's some evidence to show vaccine controversies have been shaped by nation state influence operations* and the COVID-19 pandemic has seen increasingly close ties between anti-vax activism and right wing radical politics.
* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/
This doesn't absolve governments and public health advocates of missteps in policy, logistics, and public communication, by any means. But I think it's fair to say that the resurgence of avoidable disease outcomes at scale is a kind of institutional sabotage with a body count of horrific proportions.
It wouldn't kill you; it would just sterilize you.
Do we blame or thank vaccines?
However, you need to understand that polio vaccines come in two cohorts:
1) The "modern" vaccines
These vaccines require refrigeration and infrastructure to support. These are the type of vaccine we use in first-world countries. They immunize without the ability to mutate into a real polio virus.
2) The attenuated live virus vaccines
These vaccines don't require refrigeration and consequently are the ones used in third-world areas with poor infrastructure. The problem is that occasionally it mutates into a fully functional polio virus. We don't use it in the first world, and we only use these in the third world when there is an active outbreak.
The problem is that polio is now sufficiently suppressed that giving the attenuated virus vaccines cause more problems than they solve. Consequently, getting the last few pockets of polio stamped out is becoming really hard. You can't do a general immunization with attenuated virus as it will cause more cases than it prevents, and you can't get your refrigerated vaccines into the really backwards areas.
I suspect this case in New York is fallout from the fact that England seems to currently have circulating polio that they haven't yet pinned down, though. We need the CDC to go make a trip to England and get that stomped out post haste.
Either way, this is from the oral polio vaccine. Its shelf stable, easily given to a child, and is extremely effective.
Downside? It is an attenuated virus. A weakened virus. And the stupid thing 'fixes' itself in the intestines, and causes fecal contamination with infection virus. Normal polio produces infectious poop, too. The person taking it is fine, but not always the unvaccinated around them.
So why still use it? NA and Europe don't use it anymore because of this, but it is stable and can be given orally in a non-sterile environment. You can just dropper it into a child's mouth and win. We even classically put drops onto sugar cubes so kids would find it palatable. It is the tool that's helped nearly eradicate polio in the world.
But then we get antivaxxers in the US who wouldn't even want OPV.