Polio Has Been Detected In New York City Wastewater, Officials Say (nytimes.com) 86
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Polio has been detected in New York City wastewater, suggesting that the virus that causes the disease is probably circulating in the city, the health authorities said on Friday. The announcement came three weeks after a man in Rockland County, N.Y., north of the city, was diagnosed with polio thatleft him with paralysis. Health officials fear that the detection of polio in New York City's wastewater could precede other cases of paralytic polio. The spread of the virus poses a risk to unvaccinated people, but a three-dose course of the vaccine provides at least 99 percent protection.
Most adults in the United Stateswere vaccinated against polio as children. In New York City, the overall rate of polio vaccination among children 5 and under is 86 percent. Still, insome city ZIP codes, fewer thantwo-thirds of children in that group have received a full regimen, a figure that worries health officials. (The citywide vaccination rate dipped amid the pandemic, as visits to pediatricians were postponed.) Although many people who become infected with polio do not develop symptoms, about 4 percent will get viral meningitis and about 1 in 200 will become paralyzed, according to the health authorities. Parents of children who have not yet been fully vaccinated should see that they are immediately, officials said. "While the polio virus had previously been detected in wastewater samples in Rockland and neighboring Orange Counties, the announcement on Friday was the first sign it had been found in New York City," adds the report. "The city's health department did not provide details about where exactly in the five boroughs polio had been found in the wastewater, nor did officials provide dates for when the virus was detected or say how many samples had tested positive."
Further reading: Vaccine-Derived Polio Is On the Rise
Most adults in the United Stateswere vaccinated against polio as children. In New York City, the overall rate of polio vaccination among children 5 and under is 86 percent. Still, insome city ZIP codes, fewer thantwo-thirds of children in that group have received a full regimen, a figure that worries health officials. (The citywide vaccination rate dipped amid the pandemic, as visits to pediatricians were postponed.) Although many people who become infected with polio do not develop symptoms, about 4 percent will get viral meningitis and about 1 in 200 will become paralyzed, according to the health authorities. Parents of children who have not yet been fully vaccinated should see that they are immediately, officials said. "While the polio virus had previously been detected in wastewater samples in Rockland and neighboring Orange Counties, the announcement on Friday was the first sign it had been found in New York City," adds the report. "The city's health department did not provide details about where exactly in the five boroughs polio had been found in the wastewater, nor did officials provide dates for when the virus was detected or say how many samples had tested positive."
Further reading: Vaccine-Derived Polio Is On the Rise
Here we go again.... (Score:1)
Re:Here we go again.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really, most adults should already be vaccinated against polio. The whole anti-vax thing is a relatively recent development.
We actually used to be able to completely wipe out diseases with vaccinations because people saw it as their civic duty to do their part to help prevent the spread of a disease. Now, we've got folks who are all "my body, my choice", but only under the specific conditions that the body is male, overweight, and is wearing a shirt with the name of a beer company on it.
Re:Here we go again.... (Score:5, Informative)
> Now, we've got folks who are all "my body, my choice"
Do you have any example of diseases that could have been wiped out with vaccines that aren't being taken?
Polio.
Smallpox has been wiped out from the planet because people are/were vaccinated.
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Re:Here we go again.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Smallpox has been wiped out from the planet because people are/were vaccinated.
What's even more ironic about today's whiny anti-vaxxers is that receiving the Smallpox vaccine was no picnic. They'd literally jab you multiple times with a tiny serrated blade that had been dipped in a live virus (a variant of cowpox, which is where the term "vaccine" originated from). The resulting wound would then form a nasty scab, and you had to keep it covered until it healed or you could possibly spread it to other locations on your body or even to other people.
That was considerably worse than getting jabbed in the arm with a modern needle that you can barely feel, and then kind of feeling a bit "meh" for about a day. But in the old days, people sucked it up and got it done.
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That was considerably worse than getting jabbed in the arm with a modern needle that you can barely feel
I literally couldn't feel getting the Moderna shot. Could feel the Pfizer shot barely.
I wonder if modern mRNA tech could make a vaccine that would do a better job for Smallpox than the older one.
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I literally couldn't feel getting the Moderna shot. Could feel the Pfizer shot barely.
Thank whoever gave you the shots. Giving injections or drawing blood painlessly is an art & not everyone can do it well.
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I've had various pharmacists give me vaccines. Some are really good and others are not. One I didn't feel a thing. Probably first time ever getting a shot where I can say that. So clearly it's just down to the individual and not their title.
Depends on experience (Score:2)
Well it depends on the experience of the person administrating the vaccine.
Usually, the more experience, the better.
Currently: that means whoever is working in the large vaccination centres.
We're in a pandemics with large scale vaccination campaign, meaning that the med students/nurse students/etc. in the vaccination centres that do a bazillion vaccinations a day are the one with the most practical experience.
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I wonder if modern mRNA tech could make a vaccine that would do a better job for Smallpox than the older one.
Probably not significantly better protection (the old vaccine was good enough to completely eradicate the disease). The main advantages of mRNA vaccines are supposed to be much shorter time to develop and cheaper to manufacture.
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Turns out not all biology behaves the same.
hard mRNA for orthopox family (Score:3)
I wonder if modern mRNA tech could make a vaccine that would do a better job for Smallpox than the older one.
Hi, person doing large scale virus sequencing and national surveillance program in my tiny country here.
mRNA for small pox wouldn't bring as many advantage for smallpox as they did for SARS-CoV-2.
SARS-CoV-2 has a (relatively) clear a simple mechanism to enter target cells [expasy.org] that rely on exactly one single protein (Spike) that bind in a highly specific fashion a receptor on human cell (ACE).
It's a clear single target, so you "merely" need to throw the sequence of that protein in an mRNA vaccine. Vaccinated cel
Re: Here we go again.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, I have only one scar from that jab.
But most of the generations before me have two, and some are as big a 1EUR or 2EUR coin.
Can't remember when I got mine - probably was mild to me.
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Smallpox has been wiped out from the planet because people are/were vaccinated.
What's even more ironic about today's whiny anti-vaxxers is that receiving the Smallpox vaccine was no picnic. They'd literally jab you multiple times with a tiny serrated blade that had been dipped in a live virus (a variant of cowpox, which is where the term "vaccine" originated from). The resulting wound would then form a nasty scab, and you had to keep it covered until it healed or you could possibly spread it to other locations on your body or even to other people.
That was considerably worse than getting jabbed in the arm with a modern needle that you can barely feel, and then kind of feeling a bit "meh" for about a day. But in the old days, people sucked it up and got it done.
Just to elaborate on this, Vaccine comes from the Latin for cow, "vacca". Variants of vacca are still used in some romance languages (Spanish and Italian). Fun fact, in GTA V the "not" Lamborghini Gallardo was named the Vacca in reference to the Gallardo being named after a type of bull.
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That may once have been the case, but it wasn't the case when I got vaccinated. It was just another vaccination. It was worse than most, and formed a blister that left a scar, but the vaccination itself wasn't anything major. (This was in the mid-1950s.)
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Well, anti-vaxxers are cowards, wimps and egoists. They try to hide that by claiming the most outrageous and demented fantasy constructions.
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Do you have any example of diseases that could have been wiped out with vaccines that aren't being taken?
Polio?
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Not really, most adults should already be vaccinated against polio. The whole anti-vax thing is a relatively recent development.
We actually used to be able to completely wipe out diseases with vaccinations because people saw it as their civic duty to do their part to help prevent the spread of a disease. Now, we've got folks who are all "my body, my choice", but only under the specific conditions that the body is male, overweight, and is wearing a shirt with the name of a beer company on it.
Lol, no
"The city's health department did not provide details about where exactly in the five boroughs polio had been found in the wastewater, nor did officials provide dates for when the virus was detected or say how many samples had tested positive."
I doubt that your stereotype is the main poorly vaccinated demographic in question here, lol
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I don't think it's reasonable to form *any* presumption about just which group polio is spreading among. Contagious diseases flow where they can and when they can. They don't stay confined to where you last saw them.
Since this is polio, I think it's reasonable to assume that this is spreading among unvaccinated kids. Further than that its probably unreasonable to guess.
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We actually used to be able to completely wipe out diseases with vaccinations because people saw it as their civic duty to do their part to help prevent the spread of a disease. Now, we've got folks who are all "my body, my choice", but only under the specific conditions that the body is male, overweight, and is wearing a shirt with the name of a beer company on it.
Betcha that those young pups who took over Rush Limbaugh's radio talk franchise are already branding a Golden EIB Iron Lung.
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The whole anti-vax thing is a relatively recent development.
My great-great grandpa was anti-vax over 100 years ago. He was afraid it would poison his daughter. Fortunately that hesitancy was lost somewhere along the way, and my parents got me all my vaccinations.
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Aww, is fat arse incel troll boy triggered by public health measures? Typical Republicunt dumbfuck.
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Found the Nazi fuckface!
(I didn't want to interrupt your idiotic rant, but I wanted to let you know that your mom will be home late tonight. This time she'll be paid, I swear.)
Other way (Score:3, Funny)
The curve will bend then everything will be back to normal.
In Soviet America, Polio curves you!
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It's more complicated than that:
https://www.npr.org/sections/g... [npr.org]
Having a partially-vaccinated public can sometimes cause Type 2 Polio outbreaks among those who are not vaccinated. It certainly adds an interesting twist to the whole affair. If it is simply immigration causing polio to spread in New York (and show up in the sewer water) then it may not be a case where the oral vaccine is involved. But there are countries were use of the oral vaccine has caused persistent polio in sewage, and sometimes the
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Slashdot, where truth = -1, troll. Lmao, kids!
Ok so it wasn't 2 weeks. Maybe for polio, which was defeated in this country decades ago but brought back in from our shitty open borders policy from some third world shit hole, we could bend the curve in 3 weeks.
It was brought back in by a U.S. citizen traveling abroad. Would you prefer a closed border a la North Korea?
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That will be justified when ICUs are full of polio cases.
It's not like the right thing to do is the right thing to do in every situation. Circumstances matter.
That's OK (Score:2)
Andrew Wakefield: The gift that keeps on giving (Score:5, Insightful)
You can blame this guy's greed for this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Deer, Brian (5 January 2011). "How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed". BMJ. 342: c5347
https://www.bmj.com/content/34... [bmj.com]
He created a useless single-jab measles vaccine that had no market and so whipped up a frenzy to create a market for it. Antivax movement is the result with all the totally preventable disease, deaths and healthcare costs as a result.
Re:Andrew Wakefield: The gift that keeps on giving (Score:5, Insightful)
You can blame this guy's greed for this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Deer, Brian (5 January 2011). "How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed". BMJ. 342: c5347 https://www.bmj.com/content/34... [bmj.com]
He created a useless single-jab measles vaccine that had no market and so whipped up a frenzy to create a market for it. Antivax movement is the result with all the totally preventable disease, deaths and healthcare costs as a result.
Let's not forget the contribution of all the people peddling magic crystals, homeopathic "cures", yoga will cure your cancer, medicine is evil and all you need to do is to open up your chakras.
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There was always a fertile ground of ignorance.
Andrew Wakefield provided a fraudulent mask of science for it.
The fact that his whole study was exposed as a planned scam did not matter to the clueless cult.
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The fact that his whole study was exposed as a planned scam did not matter to the clueless cult.
That is what I find the most stringing thing here: The original lie was only about a specific vaccine in order to push another one. It has been conclusively proven to have been a lie, there is zero doubt left. Yet the anti-vaxxers are apparently so disconnected from reality they cannot even perceive the distant possibility that they may be wrong and completely disregard what actually happened back then. Theses people need to be classified as mentally disabled and not competent to make any decisions in the r
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That's not wrong, but anti-vaccine hysterias have a history. It's not like this is the first one to ever show up. People tend to react in unhelpful ways when an epidemic is spreading.
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You forgot another big reason - money.
He was encouraged by a lawyer to find the MMR vaccine caused autism so the lawyer could make some money suiting Big Pharma over what was effectively a fraudulent class action lawsuit.
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Sounds like somebody forgot their dewormer dose today.
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well shut down (Score:3)
WTF?
Well (Score:3)
That is lame. i mean it really, it can make you lame.
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Thanks antivaxxers (Score:5, Insightful)
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How long before somebody... ends up paralysed from a preventable disease?
Negative three weeks.
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The current spread of Polio isn't being caused by anti-vaxxers. It is being caused by vaxxers. Anti-vaxxers aren't spreading the Polio virus, according to the recent articles. Those who have received the Polio vaccine are spreading the Polio virus.
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Also from the article :
"Only inactivated polio vaccine has been used in the United States since 2000."
Calm down there, cowboy (Score:2)
This did not arrive in the US in an American anti-vaxxer, and there are not enough anti-vaxxers in the US for this to be much of an issue. Well, I'd better amend that - before COVID-19 there were not enough, but sadly the junk arguments over COVID vaccines (by people all over the political spectrum from Democrats in 2020 telling people not to trust vaccines approved by Trump to Republicans not trusting vaccines forced on people by Biden, to people in the middle confused by the bizarre arguments/policies/cen
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How long before somebody dies or ends up paralysed from a preventable disease? Antivaxxers you are stupid, stupid people.
Yesterday. The case in New York has resulted in paralysis in the 20 year old patient.
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I agree anti vaxxers are morons.
I'm curious if you feel so strongly about gay men whose behavior choices are LIKEWISE making monkey pox a World health crisis?
Blame "alternative medicine" (Score:3)
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I blame alternative medicine. Their sales strategy seems to be to imitate medical practitioners to make their pseudoscience sound convincing & then running campaigns about how terrible real medicine is. Judging by the surge in popularity of antivax, the PR & marketing seems to be working. That so many people now mostly get their medical advice from youtubers & Facebook is deeply worrying. Whatever happened to science education?
TLDR;
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Whatever happened to science education?
Have a look at the spread of the evangelical plague and other variants of brain-rot. Science is not desirable anymore. It contradicts the crap that gets pumped into people's minds.
Live with the virus (Score:2)
When it is fine to live with one (covid), then another (monkeypox), well, why not live with a third (measles), fourth (polio), ..., etc?
Once you value "the economy" above human lives, and accept "my convenience is more important than your health", then it is hard to turn things around when really nasty virus gets its turn.
bin laden hunt fallout (Score:3)
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/06... [npr.org]
More recently a new fear of being sterilized added in
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]
Background ... (Score:5, Informative)
Here is some background on what is going on ...
Polio is a fecal-oral disease, spread from the stools of an infected person to another via food, water, fomites, ...etc.
Wild Type Polio is almost non existent in the world, except for Afghanistan and North Western Pakistan. It appeared in Syria due during the height of their civil war. In both cases, lack of vaccination campaigns is the reason.
There are two types of polio vaccine (IPV or Salk, which is injected dead virus, and OPV or Sabine which is oral and attenuated). The oral one is easier to administer so it is used in most of the world. The USA still uses the injected one.
The oral virus infects the gut and provides immunity where it is needed. However, because viruses mutate, the oral virus can revert from the attenuated (infection causing, but non disease causing) to a form that can invade nerves and cause paralysis.
If everyone around the person who is shedding the virus is vaccinated, there is no problem. The problem is when that reverted virus finds its way to a person who is not vaccinated. Usually only 1 in 100 show severe symptoms. This has been happening in Africa for some time, because of lapses in vaccination. Now, we have a case in New York, and the oral vaccine strain is detected in Pennsylvania, and in eight boroughs in London.
The New York area where the polio was detected have also seen outbreaks of measles due to vaccine hesitancy in the past.
The person who got polio in NY was a youth who was unvaccinated, and got the virus that is vaccine derived (not the wild type). Perhaps he traveled to a country that immunizes with the OPV, or he got it locally now that this is detected in NY and other places.
If everyone gets vaccinated, whichever vaccine, there will be no problem ... the issue is with lapses in vaccination for whatever reasons ...
Listen to Dr. Vincent Racaniello, a Columbia Professor who studied polio for four decades: Polio In New York [youtube.com].
There are also efforts to modify the oral vaccine genetically to prevent this reversion. Studies are underway in Amsterdam [microbe.tv].
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How Many People Wiill Anti-Vaxers Harm This Time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: How Many People Wiill Anti-Vaxers Harm This Ti (Score:2)
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What they always make money from: snake oil and fake treatments.
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If you can't make the obvious connection between criticizing vaccines and selling alternative "cures", there is no hope for you.
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I am not going to bother arguing with someone who has swallowed and regurgitated Russia propaganda.
In fact, I have also wondered if much of the anti-vax propaganda has its origins in Russia.
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Not again (Score:1)
I remember people that had polio in my neighborhood as a kid. One of them was on an iron lung at their house. He didn't last long. I think all of them are gone, died years ago. I've met some older people later on that had it and managed to survive though it was always a problem every day of their life. It's horrible. I hope we can convey to people that they really need to be vaccinated.
Maybe there will be a market in iron lungs again.