Africa Declared Free of Wild Polio in 'Milestone' (bbc.com) 111
Africa has been declared free from wild polio by the independent body, the Africa Regional Certification Commission. From a report: Polio usually affects children under five, sometimes leading to irreversible paralysis. Death can occur when breathing muscles are affected. Twenty-five years ago thousands of children in Africa were paralysed by the virus. The disease is now only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is no cure but the polio vaccine protects children for life. Nigeria is the last African country to be declared free from wild polio, having accounted for more than half of all global cases less than a decade ago.
Give it 50 years (Score:3, Insightful)
Once they have reached the point of effortless wealth the US has, maybe they too will have their own anti-vax movement and the resurgence of pestilence. I guess that's how we know a society has 'arrived' now.
Re:Give it 50 years (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't even need wealth; They just need enough time for people to forget the horrible consequences of the illness and how it used to be a regular part of daily life.
You don't need to be wealthy to be complacent.
=Smidge=
Re:Give it 50 years (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't need to be wealthy to be complacent.
Complacency doesn't matter. There is no wild reservoir for polio, so once it is gone, it is gone.
But it isn't quite gone. There are still infections in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The eradication effort in Asia was set back when the CIA infiltrated the vaccination teams and set up their own fake teams to gather military intelligence. This was a war crime and led to the Taliban targeting the vaccinators.
This was depicted in the movie "Zero Dark Thirty", but without any mention that it was a war crime or about the terrible repercussions for the people in the region.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no wild reservoir for polio, so once it is gone, it is gone.
There's still a significant reservoir of the non-wild varieties, mostly due to poor wastewater handling. Polio control uses a live vaccine of weakened virus, which can mutate to become a bit more potent, so proper processing of human waste immediately after vaccination, or simultaneous population-wide vaccination, is essential to completely eliminate it. Overall, a resounding success story, but the job is not done until we can get that under control.
Re: (Score:3)
The main focus should be on eradicating polio from South Asia.
The Taliban is not opposed to vaccinations. They just don't trust Western countries to administer them ... with good reason.
The UAE is funding and administering a vaccination campaign in Taliban controlled areas with good results.
Re:Give it 50 years (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No, it did not improve. In fact, it actually gave validity to the far right muslims that claimed that the west is poisoning them with vaccines.
I have to say that the CIA was stupid to have done that.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a dead polio vaccine which is less effective and harder to administer (it's injected). Once the only strain circulating is the vaccine-derived one, vaccination efforts can switch to the dead vaccine and as long as enough people have had the vaccine (either version), the vaccine-derived polio will stop circulating and no new vaccine-derived strains will appear.
When there's still wild polio circulating, it's best to use the most effective vaccine.
Re:Give it 50 years (Score:4, Informative)
It's not less effective, but you're right that it's harder to administer. The injection isn't really the main issue: you need multiple doses separated by months for full effectiveness. Someone in a reliable health care system can deal with this easily, but a remote area where health care workers come by yearly and records are poor... yeah, that's much harder.
So sadly, I don't think much of the world will get the inactivated-virus vaccine for a while yet, which means we'll have occasional cases caused by the live-virus vaccine (though still far, far fewer cases than if we didn't have the vaccine).
Re: (Score:3)
"A bit more potent" is an understatement. As I understand it, the vaccine-derived virus can fairly easily mutate to be as virulent and deadly as the original wild-type poliovirus was and has in fact done so, making elimination of the wild-type virus more of an obscure trivia fact than the major victory against paralytic polio this article tries to spin it as. The virus is still out there in Africa, just as dangerous as ever, except now genetic sequencing reveals that it came from the vaccine rather than the
Re: (Score:2)
the vaccine-derived virus can fairly easily mutate to be as virulent and deadly as the original wild-type poliovirus
It takes 12-18 months of circulation in a poorly vaccinated population and is a rather rare thing. Yes it can become potent enough to cause paralysis.
elimination of the wild-type virus more of an obscure trivia fact than the major victory against paralytic polio
No, it's a very important inflection point at which they can change up the vaccination program, since they no longer have to worry about the wild variety. All attention can be diverted to eliminating the vaccine-derived strain.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, and I recognize the broader point you are making, but Afghanistan and Pakistan are not in Africa.
Not actually gone, and still paralyzing kids (Score:2)
Even in Africa, it's not really gone. There's a really crucial caveat in the headline that isn't properly explained: "free from wild polio". You see, the polio vaccine used in the elimination program is a live vaccine containing weakened poliovirus, and for some time now almost all of the polio infections and related cases of paralysis in Africa have been from vaccine-derived poliovirus which has circulated in the community long enough to reverse the mutations that weakened it and made it safe to vacinate w
Re:Give it 50 years (Score:4, Interesting)
Then to make matters worse, many of our vaccines in the west are dead ones because we did NOT have wild disease running around. Now, between immigrants (legal AND ILLEGAL) combined with idiot anti-vaxers, the herd effectiveness of the dead vaccines goes away. As such, a number of ppl catch things like Measles and mumps, and then blame the dead vaccine for not working.
I really think that every state needs to follow Mississippi and require all kids to have them, except for REAL medical reasons (any doctor found cheating will have license taken away). The other choice is for small districts to require home schooling OR if large district, simply have a single school where all the un-vaccinated go. Oddly, when I suggest that idea, the anti-vaxers get all upset about either idea.
Re: (Score:2)
We as humans have a hard time remembering pain and suffering. However we are rather good at remembering the good times.
The world seems to be the best for the people who are in their Late Teens - Early 20s
So if you are in your 80's The 1950 and 1960's seemed like a wonderful time to live. Never mind that they were global political strifes, and on the verge of nuclear war.
If you are in your 70's the 1960's and 1970's seemed like a wonderful time, Never mind a rise in dangerous effects from drug culture, Vietn
Re:Give it 50.000.000 years (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They specify "wild polio" because for a long time people are much more likely to get polio from the oral (live) vaccine version than from "wild polio".
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and no. If you're given the expensive and complicated injections (4 times over a number of years when you're young), then it's 'dead' vaccine, and perfectly safe. Think USA and other rich places. If you're in Africa, then you get the cheap and simple one-shot 'live' oral version, which can indeed lead to outbreaks. Still, much better overall than no vaccination.
https://www.who.int/westernpac... [who.int]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. It's a cost and safety thing. Advanced countries use the inactivated-virus version because it can't cause polio, but it's expensive and needs a good health-care system to track the boosters. Poor countries use the live-virus version because it is cheaper, needs much less infrastructure, and causes way fewer cases than it prevents. But the wealthy in those countries, in areas with good health care, usually get the inactivated version.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, and no. If you're given the expensive and complicated injections (4 times over a number of years when you're young), then it's 'dead' vaccine, and perfectly safe. Think USA and other rich places. If you're in Africa, then you get the cheap and simple one-shot 'live' oral version, which can indeed lead to outbreaks. https://www.who.int/westernpac... [who.int]
NO. The dead ones are given to locations in which Polio is NOT active. So, at this time, Africa will likely switch to dead vaccines in a bit.
Nope. It's a cost and safety thing. Advanced countries use the inactivated-virus version because it can't cause polio, but it's expensive and needs a good health-care system to track the boosters. Poor countries use the live-virus version because it is cheaper, needs much less infrastructure, and causes way fewer cases than it prevents.
All of the above are true.
The live vaccine-- Sabin-- has an interesting side effect: it immunizes people who haven't even been vaccinated. This is because the people who are vaccinated excrete virus, which then immunizes other people. So it's preferable for eliminating polio fast in a region where you can't guarantee every person will be vaccinated.
But, more to the point, the live vaccine is a single dose, administered orally. The inactivated vaccine is an injection, with a recommendation of four doses.
Polio is not a problem (Score:2)
When you have a continent ravaged by AIDS.
In terms of the health of people in Africa, its irradiation is irrelevant. A few thousand cripples is nothing, and most people have few symptoms.
The reason that we are glad about polio in Africa, or care about it in Afghanastan, is that we want to be able to stop needing vaccination in the west.
We do not actually care what happens in Africa.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's a reason we don't give polio vaccines to people willy-nilly. One out of a million will actually get polio from the vaccine.
That is the "live" vaccine (Sabin). The "dead" vaccine (Salk) doesn't ever cause polio. There are advantages and disadvantages to each.
https://www.virology.ws/2015/0... [virology.ws]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Those already exist, Africa is saturated with ignorance and stupidity due to their borders being distributed by the Berlin Conference to deliberately cause as much conflict as possible so the continent could be exploited. This is pretty much the MO for Europe's history. Show up, start a riot, ???, profit.
EFFORTLESS wealth? Where can I get some? (Score:2)
Once they have reached the point of effortless wealth the US has, ...
Effortless wealth? Where can I get some of that? I've spent a lifetime busting my butt to get about half enough to retire on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Walk outside. If you live in America, the street lights exist and mostly work, the water is safe to drink out of the tap, virtually no one starves, most of the diseases are from excesses and not privations, etc.
If you don't see those as effortless wealth, you've never seen real poverty.
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't see those as effortless wealth, you've never seen real poverty.
It's not "wealth" I object to in the characterization. It's "effortless".
Those chunks of "wealth" are the result of a lot of effort - at first of people building, operating, and maintaining them in hard ways - later in easier ways, aided by tools that were also the result of a lot of effort.
For those aspects of it where I didn't personally labor, to hang streetlights and run sewage treatment plants and such: For starters that life
Re: (Score:1)
Finally...and at long last... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes...
At long last, we have some good news about Africa. You see, from all my childhood, Africa has always been associated with bad news, pain, suffering, wars, misery and everything bad [about humanity] one can imagine.
This is despite the fact that in a number of cases, folks on that great continent are more mentally stable and happier than those with a lot of material wealth.
We have good news this time, thank God!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Finally...and at long last... (Score:3)
Re:Finally...and at long last... (Score:5, Informative)
At long last, we have some good news about Africa. You see, from all my childhood, Africa has always been associated with bad news, pain, suffering, wars, misery and everything bad [about humanity] one can imagine.
This seems more like part of a general problem where slow and steady good news is not reported but bad news gets a lot of attention. Life expectancy in most African countries has been steadily trending upwards for the last 40 years https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy [ourworldindata.org]. Although it did slide back in some places due to the HIV crisis, the general trend has been positive. At this point, the average life expectancy in many African countries is a little over 65 years, which puts it close to US life expectancy in 1955. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy [macrotrends.net]. Places we think of as part of the "third world"/developing world are generally about 40 to to 50 years behind the rest of the world in many respects, but are improving rapidly. Similarly, literacy rates around the world including African countries have been growing steadily https://ourworldindata.org/literacy [ourworldindata.org].
This also connects with how people visualize things. Here for example is a picture of Abuja in Nigeria https://nairametrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Lagos-1-e1562133858839.jpg [nairametrics.com]. A similar picture could be taken almost anywhere outside Africa and it would look similar, just a normal developed area. And one could do the same thing with other cities.
The bottom line is that Africa is not nearly as badly off as people often estimate and has been steadily getting better in many respects. Progress is occurring. Slowly, and not as fast as we would like, and people suffer from that slow speed. And there's always danger of serious slides backwards, with climate change being the most direct threat in the next few years. But the overall trend is positive.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Excellent points. Alas, he's gone now, but Hans Rosling was a scientist with great presentation skills making similar points. Worth a watch: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans... [ted.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Looks like we found the optimist on Slashdot. There have been rumours for years such a thing existed.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps your news sources are being a bit selective - politics is involved. Have you considered that?
Re: (Score:2)
You see, from all my childhood, Africa has always been associated with bad news, pain, suffering, wars, misery and everything bad [about humanity] one can imagine.
Perhaps your news sources are being a bit selective - politics is involved. Have you considered that?
Yes, including fake news of course.
Re: (Score:2)
Robert Kennedy is not going to be very happy about this...
You know what they say... (Score:3)
I bless the rains down in Africa, gonna take some time to do the things we never had.
Re: (Score:2)
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev9Sz-UJmD8]That song gets stuck in my head all the time[/url].
The original's fine. This one is arguably better for those of us that lean a bit more into ostentatious instrumentation and over the top enthusiasm.
Re: (Score:2)
Dammit. Forgot where I was. Africa [youtube.com]. Better.
Re:CHINA, WHO, BILL GATES, HILARY CLINTON, GEORGE (Score:5, Funny)
SCARY! BIASED! Fake! Vaccine! Trump! MAGA! Israel! Disaster! FREEDOM OF SPEECH! More yelling!
"You look like you're trying to defend Trump! Would you like to turn on caps lock and turn off spell check?" - Clippy
ProTip: They didn't do this with Hopes and Prayers (Score:4, Insightful)
They did it with science and a plan.
Re: (Score:2)
And massive, overwhelming tides of people, help, money, expertise, yes science...from white people NOT in Africa.
Just sayin' that you might want to pump the brakes on that righteous victory lap.
Re: (Score:2)
Who is "they"? Africans? Because your comment seems like a slur against religious people, and there are many in Africa, both Christian and Muslim.
Many religious ppl are anti-vaxers. That includes BOTH christian and muslims ANd no, Religions do NOT push the vaccinations. It is SCIENCE and PLANNING that does.
If you're talking about your own America, let's not forget you used fake polio vaccinations as an excuse to find Osama Bin Laden. Thus crippling anti-polio efforts in Pakistan.
Got news for you. Taliban had been using polio vaccination as a bartering tool for decades. Even when they had control of Afghanistan, the west could not just simply give them the vaccines and let them admin it. The Taliban would insist on Payments, etc. CIA did not do any good with that idea, BUT, they did get OBL.
And it did NOT cause any more
Re: (Score:1)
BUT, they did get OBL.
Convicted by government hearsay, assassination without a trial. Didn't even read him his rights
Re: (Score:2)
Convicted by government hearsay, assassination without a trial. Didn't even read him his rights
ROFL. Yeah. Convicted. It had absolutely NOTHING to do with his saying that he was behind it and calling on more attacks. It had nothing to do with anything else. And since when do nations try other nation's citizens that are terrorists? Heck, even the Saudi's declared him to no longer be a citizen.
And reading rights is about POLICE, not about military, and oddly, not about citizens.
Getting OBL was good. W/GOP letting him go the first time was why things were so messed up.
Re: (Score:1)
:-) Wag the Dog
Horrible disease ... (Score:5, Informative)
Polio is a horrible disease, but if you are not from developing countries, or below a certain age, you would know anything about it.
The disease is spread through the fecal-oral transmission route. Most people are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. In a small percentage the virus attacks nerves, and causes paralysis. If these happen to be muscles that move the lungs, then the child dies (as the case was in developing countries), or put in an iron lung [wikipedia.org] for 60 or 70 years lying on their back with attendants. That is, if your parents can afford it.
If your child survives polio, they can be disabled for life. I had schoolmates who survived the disease, and it was completely heart breaking to see them walk.
To see how, watch Itzhak Perlman on stage [youtube.com], with two crutches, to realize how severe this can be.
Use this information to scare the anti-vaxxers you know into vaccinating their children.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly!
And that goes beyond just vaccination, and into other aspects of society
For example: forgetting atrocities committed (e.g. resurgence of neo-Nazis in some European countries), and so on.
Re: (Score:2)
It's more like two. It's been studied in a fair bit of detail.
Generation 1 has personal experience. Generation 2 is raised by people with personal experience. Generation 3 is sufficiently removed that it's mostly abstract knowledge.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Use this information to scare the anti-vaxxers you know into vaccinating their children.
Does not work that way. Anti-vaxers generally do NOT care about anybody, except themselves. They will only care when somebody close to them is injured or dies from a diseases. Then of course, they blame everybody else for their choices. Sadly, anti-vaxers are one of 2 types of extremists (far right/far left) who categorically deny all facts, will go to great lengths to lie to themselves as well as others (hello caffeinated bacon, AmiPro, etc).
A simple experiment to see how this is true, is simply sugges
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget the people who think the average Chinese should put out less then a quarter of CO2 as the average American and call it fair.
Re: (Score:2)
At this time, we ALL need to bring our CO2 emissions downward, not grow it. Only a small fraction of the nations are able to NOT worry about their emissions.
Re: (Score:2)
You brought up China,
Look at the number of ppl that scream about AGW (rightly), but then defends China's right to continue adding loads of new coal plants
Meanwhile, (sorry for the formatting and I guess I exaggerated by saying a quarter)
So China could build quite a few more coal plants and still be cleaner then America. I hope they don't but am more interested in my country lowering its emissions before preachin
Re: (Score:2)
BUT, China continues to build new coal plants in China and other nations and has NO INTENTION of shutting these down over the next 20, let alone 40, years.
And what I brought up was ppl that defend and lie abou
Re: (Score:2)
I saw an interview with him. From memory, his parents steered him towards music after he was disabled with Polio. So it did play a factor.
Still suffers
Re: (Score:1)
Why still extant in Pakistan and Afghanistan? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pakistan and Afghanistan too were well on their way for eradication. In Pakistan, the last remnant was a slum in Karachi with extremely poor sanitation. Its cesspool was the source of constant reinfection. It was this close to finishing it off in Pakistan.
Then CIA used operatives posing as health care workers to case the hideout of Osama Bin Laden. They killed him alright. But the backlash against public health workers was instantaneous and visceral. The dedicated nurses and doctors were thrown out of the slums and poor neighborhood. The vaccines were seen with suspicion. Poof, we lost that battle.
In Indonesia, some Moslem clerics declared the vaccine to be a diabolical plot of the Western countries to make Muslims impotent. Luckily the WHO officials did a clever thing by importing the vaccines made in Bangaladesh or some other Muslim nation and thus thwarted the fatwa against it.
If it was up to me, I would have let Osama live to kill the virus.
Re:Why still extant in Pakistan and Afghanistan? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing about CIA operatives is one day they can pose as health care workers, and another they can be tax collectors, and another they can be sweepstakes prize givers. You don't know and they probably won't use the same dirty trick twice if it isn't likely to work.
It's pretty unreasonable of people to be suspicious of all healthcare workers when the CIA (and KGB) can come from anywhere. There's a reason most countries execute spies... they're not exactly well liked.
Re:Why still extant in Pakistan and Afghanistan? (Score:5, Insightful)
The cluelessness of CIA ranges from destroying the credibility of healthcare workers in Pakistan to diligently entering the names of the terrorists in a no-fly list. Names are fluid in that region. Easy to acquire identities there. The real terrorist laughs at CIA and uses a fresh passport for each journey. While the brain surgeon whose name matches some terrorist gets the third degree in the airport!
The only thing you can say about CIA is, "Why blame malice, when their incompetence is sufficient to explain all their follies?"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
After all, it's not like the Mughal Empire was particularly well known for its enlightened governance, religious tolerance, and public education policies.
Actually: it was, and still is!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
He was an exception amoung one of about 20 ....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Talibahn had been playing games with vaccines LONG BEFORE the CIA issue.
Had that not been so, then pakistan/afghanistan would have been vaccinated along with India and the rest of Asia. The fact that it was NOT, should be proof that the stopping/slowing of vaccination occurred BEFORE 2011, esp. when all of the rest of Asia was done in the 90s.
Re: (Score:1)
Instead they should have given them all prizes for helping to kill him.
Re: (Score:2)
I am a polio victim, lucky mild attack, slight limp on the right leg, a couple of inches short thats all. Can't play sports but other wise not disabled. I got it in 1965, full 10 years after Salk's vaccine. It took about 12 years for the vaccine to make its way to rural South India. All my younger siblings have been vaccinated.
Pakistan and Afghanistan too were well on their way for eradication. In Pakistan, the last remnant was a slum in Karachi with extremely poor sanitation. Its cesspool was the source of constant reinfection. It was this close to finishing it off in Pakistan.
Then CIA used operatives posing as health care workers to case the hideout of Osama Bin Laden. They killed him alright. But the backlash against public health workers was instantaneous and visceral. The dedicated nurses and doctors were thrown out of the slums and poor neighborhood. The vaccines were seen with suspicion. Poof, we lost that battle.
In Indonesia, some Moslem clerics declared the vaccine to be a diabolical plot of the Western countries to make Muslims impotent. Luckily the WHO officials did a clever thing by importing the vaccines made in Bangaladesh or some other Muslim nation and thus thwarted the fatwa against it.
If it was up to me, I would have let Osama live to kill the virus.
I don't understand blaming CIA for Pakistan failing to eradicate polio. OBL killed 3000 Americans. Pakistan's Intelligence and military is not some unsophisticated backward and incompetent operation. OBL was living within a mile of Pakistan's military academy. The US has the same right as Pakistan to defend itself in war. We could have nuked the entire country. Seriously. It would not have been responsible or ethical, but it is within the rules of war... you understand? Operatives playing dress-up to reconn
Re: (Score:2)
It would not have been responsible or ethical, but it is within the rules of war... you understand?
No it would not. You were not at war with Pakistan. And OBL was not a parkistani, but a saudi arabian.
Re: (Score:2)
It would not have been responsible or ethical, but it is within the rules of war... you understand? No it would not. You were not at war with Pakistan. And OBL was not a parkistani, but a saudi arabian.
OBL living safely in Abbottabad within a mile of the PMA is a prima facia case that Pakistan and the Pakistani military was harboring a known terrorist. The friend of my enemy is my enemy. Regardless, no Pakistani was targeted in the operation and no Pakistani was injured or killed.
Re: (Score:2)
OBL living safely in Abbottabad within a mile of the PMA is a prima facia case that Pakistan and the Pakistani military was harboring a known terrorist.
extremely unlikely.
He could as well have lived in my neighbourhood and no one had known about it.
Re: (Score:2)
OBL living safely in Abbottabad within a mile of the PMA is a prima facia case that Pakistan and the Pakistani military was harboring a known terrorist. extremely unlikely. He could as well have lived in my neighbourhood and no one had known about it.
I think here you are employing a fallacy of the converse, also known as affirming the consequence, confusing necessity with sufficiency. Also, it is begging the question.
if OBL was hiding in Abbattabad, then OBL could have been hiding in yourtownUSA.
OBL was hiding in Abbattabad
Therefore, OBL could have been hiding in yourtownUSA
We don't know that it is true that OBL could have been hiding in yourtownUSA, but that he hid in Abbattabad does not prove he could be hiding in yourtownUSA.
Re: (Score:2)
And I think you don't grasp it.
If he lived in your town, had you accused your government of knowingly hiding him: yes or no?
No information was available. . . . (Score:2)
. . .on domesticated polio. . . .
(grin)
Re: (Score:2)
. . .on domesticated polio. . . .
... or the feral version.
awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
There are 2 different types of polio vaccines used. The main one is the dead one. It is not as effective, but there is ZERO chance of polio from it. It really makes good sense to use in areas that are clean of polio.
For areas where it is still wild, you need the live, but attenuated virus. VERY effective. However, a few ppl (read CHILDREN) do NOT have the ability to resist it, and it will do as much damage as the wild one will. In addition, it CAN/DOES revert to being deadly. VERY RARE, but it does happen.
Sadly, Afghanistan/Pakistan Taliban and AQ use this as a weapon. They continue to deny it to some kids while using this as a bartering tool.
THis alone, should be a reason to understand why Taliban can NOT be allowed to retake Afghanistan.
Re: (Score:2)
NOT be allowed to retake Afghanistan.
Lots of luck with that, it is practically a done deal. If you are suggesting we stay there another 20 years or even longer I say no fucking way. Way past time to go.
Re: (Score:2)
Science (Score:2)
And although Afghanistan and Pakistan are still problematic, I do believe that it can be brought under control there. And then, since polio has no other host, vaccines will have eradicated another deadly human virus.
For life? (Score:2)
There is no cure but the polio vaccine protects children for life.
The big news here is that the polio vaccine keeps you a child forever. Or maybe it just kills you, either way the statement would be true.
Except that there is a new Polio-like disease (Score:2)
I wouldn't blame them for antivaxing (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
That's not an option when the alternative multi-dose vaccine isn't likely to be administered properly.
Re: (Score:3)
Those cases of polio come from the oral polio vaccine which used a weakened live virus. The inactivated virus, which is the WHO recommendation, doesn't have that risk.
Re: (Score:2)
Live vaccines are ONLY administered where wild polio is at. Yes, some reverts. Yes, some ppl are hurt by their own immune system not being able to take the attenuated (which also means that upon exposure to the wild, they would have suffered far worse).
Dead vaccines can not revert. They can not cause issues in regular ppl. etc. As such, the ONLY place that will still have live vaccines is Afghanistan/Pakistan. ONCE it is out of the wild for 2-4 years, all vaccination will probably b
Re: (Score:2)
We can easily stop administering the vaccine. The problem is that science, logic and experience tells us that rather than about 1 in 2 million getting the disease from the vaccine, we'll have 1 in a hundred get the disease when it comes back.
Or you may mean "can we administer the safe vaccine rather than the dangerous one"? In that case, we can do that as soon as we can reliably give multiple booster shots at specific intervals, in areas without good healthcare or records. So, again, no, not now.