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It's not a case of just carrying on as we were. Here are the pockets of Polio: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/04/gitn_1204_polio.png http://vo

It's not a case of just carrying on as we were. Here are the pockets of Polio: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/04/gitn_1204_polio.png http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/04/gitn_1204... Why? 1) Vaccinators can't access some regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan because of violent resistance to Western aid. 2) Western vaccines are resisted by Muslim Nigerians who fear Polio vaccines are a Western plot to sterilise Muslims. 3) Hajj is a great opportunity for the disease to spread between members of these regions. http://www.irinnews.org/report/48667/nigeria-muslim-suspicion-of-polio-vaccine-lingers-on http://www.irinnews.org/report/48667/nigeria-muslim-suspicio... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150303-polio-pakistan-islamic-state-refugees-vaccination-health/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150303-polio-paki... Hearts and minds need to be won or brute force needs to be used, if decades of effort are going to pay off. Until it's eradicated in these regions, we're stuck vaccinating our children to avoid re-establishment of the disease.

bobjob 11y ago
As if brute force solves anything ... it is obviose that you did not learn anything from the past. Because brute force is the reason for no. 1) and 2). And it looks like you have a problem with islam religions, that you should solve before mkaking stupid remarks.
- beaker52 11y ago
  bobjob, you've totally misunderstood me. Addressing your issue with brute force: Firstly, you should understand that I'm a logical person, capable of moral and philosophical thought. Looking at the problem in it's raw form, Polio needs to be eradicated before we can halt expenditure on the eradication program, which comes at a huge global cost. To eradicate the disease, we have to destroy it. To destroy it, we use vaccines to reduce the number of carriers and available hosts to zero. This requires hosts to forcefully, or willingly be vaccinated. Humanity finds itself staring at a few pockets of the disease which are proving difficult to wilfully, or forcefully vaccinate. Humanity has two choices: Give up, or carry on Carrying on produces further choices: Humanity can, through the process of negotiation, wait for these pockets wilfully vaccinate, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. Humanity can wait for these pockets to develop their own wilful way of eradicating the disease from their population, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. Humanity can find a way to forcefully vaccinate these pockets, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. Humanity can find an alternative way to forcefully reduce the number of carriers to zero, such as selective murder or the less-selective, genocide. No more Polio. Problem solved. Humanity can wait for nature to reduce the number of carriers in these pockets to zero through natural disaster. No more Polio. Problem solved. These, whilst some of them horrifying, are solutions to the problem humanity faces, for the "greater good" and all that jazz. The cost and viability of these solutions are under constant consideration whether you like it or not. Why haven't they occurred? Well, People continue to resist the vaccine. Developing new methods of eradicating disease doesn't happen spontaneously in small populations. The moral price of forcefully vaccinating this population is probably on the cusp of acceptability. The practicalities are more challenging at this time, however I wouldn't be surprised if a solution of this type isn't being actively worked on. Nature works in it's own time. The global value of the lost life is too high for decision to be made to enact mass murder for the sake of eradicating Polio at this time. Upon finishing, answer not needed, let me ask: If we ran out of the ability to produce Polio vaccine for the world, would you rather: murder several million people, or, condemn humanity to a future with Polio, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives per year, on top of hundreds of thousands of new cases of disability?
  - avar 11y ago
    Good analysis, for those who have a knee-jerk reaction to this line of thinking, consider how you'd feel if we were talking about terrorist groups that we knew were planning massive strikes against civilization. If you view deaths due to diseases that would be prevented by vaccination in that light the money that we're spending on fighting terrorism versus spending similar amounts (literally trillions of dollars) on eradicating diseases by any means necessary (yes, even boots on the ground & forceful vaccination) the situation starts looking very different. Why can a few ignorant pockets of humanity hold the entirety of the rest of the species hostage in perpetuity? And unlike some needing to take out some insurgent group because they might attack the west it's pretty much guaranteed that these diseases will flare up again, with guaranteed deaths for untold amount of innocents. Just look at how close we came with the recent Ebola crisis.
  - bobjob 11y ago
    > bobjob, you've totally misunderstood me. > Addressing your issue with brute force: Firstly, you should understand that I'm a logical person, capable of moral and philosophical thought. You said that brute force should be used and I'm of the opinion that this is wrong. Not only will it not solve the problem(you can never catch all people), but it will create violence that will kill people. As a side effect will it foster the well grounded hatred of the affected(and a lot of unaffected) people toward "westerners". > Looking at the problem in it's raw form, Polio needs to be eradicated before we can halt expenditure on the eradication program, which comes at a huge global cost. To eradicate the disease, we have to destroy it. True > To destroy it, we use vaccines to reduce the number of carriers and available hosts to zero. This requires hosts to forcefully, or willingly be vaccinated. It does not require force, but patience. Mankind survived so far and we can carry the cost for some more time. The cost of doing forceful vaccination is simply to high. > Humanity finds itself staring at a few pockets of the disease which are proving difficult to wilfully, or forcefully vaccinate. > Humanity has two choices: Give up, or carry on Carry on as we do now and wait til they see reason(for that we have to stop using them as test subjects[1][2]). > Carrying on produces further choices: > Humanity can, through the process of negotiation, wait for these pockets wilfully vaccinate, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. I'm for this > Humanity can wait for these pockets to develop their own wilful way of eradicating the disease from their population, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. or for this > Humanity can find a way to forcefully vaccinate these pockets, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. And creating new problems, you know like war and terrorism > Humanity can find an alternative way to forcefully reduce the number of carriers to zero, such as selective murder or the less-selective, genocide. No more Polio. Problem solved. Same as the last one, you create new problems. > Humanity can wait for nature to reduce the number of carriers in these pockets to zero through natural disaster. No more Polio. Problem solved. Will not happen, there are to many carriers involved and you can not contain the areas they live in. > These, whilst some of them horrifying, are solutions to the problem humanity faces, for the "greater good" and all that jazz. The cost and viability of these solutions are under constant consideration whether you like it or not. And as long as people in power do not get stupid, they will not choose brute force. > Why haven't they occurred? Well, > People continue to resist the vaccine. For understandable reasons(see [1] or [2]) > Developing new methods of eradicating disease doesn't happen spontaneously in small populations. It does not, it needs time so that trust can be build. > The moral price of forcefully vaccinating this population is probably on the cusp of acceptability. The practicalities are more challenging at this time, however I wouldn't be surprised if a solution of this type isn't being actively worked on. The moral price is not acceptable and never will be. Especial if the reason for there resistance are actions from the outside(from there point of view). > Nature works in it's own time. > The global value of the lost life is too high for decision to be made to enact mass murder for the sake of eradicating Polio at this time. Mass murder is never a valid way to reach a goal, esp. if the murdered are people(e.g. in this case we are talking about feeling, intelligent, reasoning human beiings). > Upon finishing, answer not needed, let me ask: If we ran out of the ability to produce Polio vaccine for the world, would you rather: murder several million people, or, condemn humanity to a future with Polio, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives per year, on top of hundreds of thousands of new cases of disability? If we run out of the ability it is our own fault. We just need to stop bulling people and making war(martial, ecological, economical, moral) for profits sake. Not answering could be construed as me accepting your "final solution", sorry won't happen until you start repeating your arguments. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/02/aid-groups-cia-osama-bin-laden-polio-crisis http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/02/aid-groups-cia-... [2] http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/06/world/asia/pakistan-polio-vaccination/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/06/world/asia/pakistan-polio-...
lepouet 11y ago
Maybe if this http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccin... didn't happened there would be less resistance.
Natsu 11y ago
If Saudi Arabia were on board, maybe the Hajj could be a good opportunity to get vaccinations to some of those groups of immigrants? Imagine if they made it a visa requirement and they were the ones doing the vaccination rather than the US.
chimeracoder 11y ago
> 1) Vaccinators can't access some regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan because of violent resistance to Western aid. It might be relevant to actually mention the reason that this resistance exists[0][1]. There was resistance even before the CIA's tactics to assassinate Bin Laden were discovered, but it certainly doesn't help that we (the US) have legitimized these fears in their minds. Forcibly vaccinating people (as you suggest below) would be even more disastrous, for the same reason. If the problem is that people are concerned about Western hegemony in their local countries, the solution is not to forcibly subject them to medical treatment by Western powers. [0] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150225-polio-pakistan-vaccination-virus-health/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150225-polio-paki... [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccin...
- beaker52 11y ago
  Yes, of course, the implications are costly, but the costs of not doing so are also vast and must (and will) be considered very closely. Polio could be eradicated by subterfuge, humanity can claim it's victory and the world doesn't necessarily need to know how Polio was magically eradicated in these vaccine-resistant populations. Or perhaps the world could unite, West, East, Middle East, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists etc and force this vaccination upon these pockets in unprecedented unity. "It's not 'they' who want this of you, WE all want this of you". This is new ground. Humanity collectively has something standing in the way of progress. Humanity has the opportunity to approach it jointly.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I find this to be shortsighted. It might work, and polio might be eradicated because of it, but what happens with the next disease? You'll simply confirm their fears and cause even more resistance to medical science. It strikes me as being the same sort of thinking that caused the CIA to abuse the vaccination program in their hunt for bin Laden. In both cases, a focus on a single short-term goal harms more people overall because of the larger consequences.
Havoc 11y ago
>Hajj is a great opportunity for the disease to spread between members of these regions. Is this not also a great place to perform vaccinations though? I mean pretty much every Muslim is going to rock up there sooner or later & it is a mostly stable environment open to somewhat western influences (if the Saudis agree).
- beaker52 11y ago
  Children are the ones who need to be vaccinated.
yongjik 11y ago
1) Vaccinators can't access some regions of California because of violent resistance to vaccination. 2) Western vaccines are resisted by hippie Californians who fear Measles vaccines are a Western pharmaceutical plot to spread autism. 3) Disneyland is a great opportunity for the disease to spread between members of these regions. Let's see if Jenny McCarthy is forcefully vaccinated. Until then, it will be hard for me to take your "They aren't the same people as us, so let's use brute force, for humanity" attitude seriously.
- mikeash 11y ago
  There are major differences. First is that your point (1) is simply untrue. There is resistance, yes, but not violent resistance. More importantly, measles is still pretty widespread and there's no realistic prospect for near-term eradication. Getting all the California hippies to vaccinate wouldn't make a difference in terms of measles eradication, because they make up an insignificant proportion of global measles cases. Polio, however, is endemic in precisely two regions of the world, and getting those two regions to vaccinate would eliminate the disease entirely.
- philwelch 11y ago
  I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of CPS taking children away from anti-vax parents, and unvaccinated adults who refuse vaccination being forcibly quarantined.
- Mickydtron 11y ago
  One could argue that mandatory vaccination laws, which are being passed in some states, are a form of force. I think that these laws are good and useful, but they do point out that even Westerners need coercion at times. They also point out a potential way to apply 'force' to the remaining pockets, which is to introduce vaccination requirements into international treaties, either as requirements for trade deals or something else. The UN would probably be the proper vessel for this, rather than any individual Western country, although certainly those countries could spearhead the effort to make this happen.
- beaker52 11y ago
  Yes, luckily for these people, they live in a region where Polio is uncommon. Most of the world could stop vaccinating their children if they chose to. It'd be fine. Until the disease spreads to their population and people start to get infected. One case of Polio could quite quickly cause California to become a Polio infected region, like Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then we'd have to deal with that area too. Though without the conviction of other populations, I imagine a once-defiant Western population would quickly revert to willingly accepting the vaccine once they've seen the horrors of the disease with their own eyes.

bobjob 11y ago

As if brute force solves anything ... it is obviose that you did not learn anything from the past. Because brute force is the reason for no. 1) and 2). And it looks like you have a problem with islam religions, that you should solve before mkaking stupid remarks.

beaker52 11y ago
bobjob, you've totally misunderstood me. Addressing your issue with brute force: Firstly, you should understand that I'm a logical person, capable of moral and philosophical thought. Looking at the problem in it's raw form, Polio needs to be eradicated before we can halt expenditure on the eradication program, which comes at a huge global cost. To eradicate the disease, we have to destroy it. To destroy it, we use vaccines to reduce the number of carriers and available hosts to zero. This requires hosts to forcefully, or willingly be vaccinated. Humanity finds itself staring at a few pockets of the disease which are proving difficult to wilfully, or forcefully vaccinate. Humanity has two choices: Give up, or carry on Carrying on produces further choices: Humanity can, through the process of negotiation, wait for these pockets wilfully vaccinate, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. Humanity can wait for these pockets to develop their own wilful way of eradicating the disease from their population, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. Humanity can find a way to forcefully vaccinate these pockets, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. Humanity can find an alternative way to forcefully reduce the number of carriers to zero, such as selective murder or the less-selective, genocide. No more Polio. Problem solved. Humanity can wait for nature to reduce the number of carriers in these pockets to zero through natural disaster. No more Polio. Problem solved. These, whilst some of them horrifying, are solutions to the problem humanity faces, for the "greater good" and all that jazz. The cost and viability of these solutions are under constant consideration whether you like it or not. Why haven't they occurred? Well, People continue to resist the vaccine. Developing new methods of eradicating disease doesn't happen spontaneously in small populations. The moral price of forcefully vaccinating this population is probably on the cusp of acceptability. The practicalities are more challenging at this time, however I wouldn't be surprised if a solution of this type isn't being actively worked on. Nature works in it's own time. The global value of the lost life is too high for decision to be made to enact mass murder for the sake of eradicating Polio at this time. Upon finishing, answer not needed, let me ask: If we ran out of the ability to produce Polio vaccine for the world, would you rather: murder several million people, or, condemn humanity to a future with Polio, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives per year, on top of hundreds of thousands of new cases of disability?
- avar 11y ago
  Good analysis, for those who have a knee-jerk reaction to this line of thinking, consider how you'd feel if we were talking about terrorist groups that we knew were planning massive strikes against civilization. If you view deaths due to diseases that would be prevented by vaccination in that light the money that we're spending on fighting terrorism versus spending similar amounts (literally trillions of dollars) on eradicating diseases by any means necessary (yes, even boots on the ground & forceful vaccination) the situation starts looking very different. Why can a few ignorant pockets of humanity hold the entirety of the rest of the species hostage in perpetuity? And unlike some needing to take out some insurgent group because they might attack the west it's pretty much guaranteed that these diseases will flare up again, with guaranteed deaths for untold amount of innocents. Just look at how close we came with the recent Ebola crisis.
- bobjob 11y ago
  > bobjob, you've totally misunderstood me. > Addressing your issue with brute force: Firstly, you should understand that I'm a logical person, capable of moral and philosophical thought. You said that brute force should be used and I'm of the opinion that this is wrong. Not only will it not solve the problem(you can never catch all people), but it will create violence that will kill people. As a side effect will it foster the well grounded hatred of the affected(and a lot of unaffected) people toward "westerners". > Looking at the problem in it's raw form, Polio needs to be eradicated before we can halt expenditure on the eradication program, which comes at a huge global cost. To eradicate the disease, we have to destroy it. True > To destroy it, we use vaccines to reduce the number of carriers and available hosts to zero. This requires hosts to forcefully, or willingly be vaccinated. It does not require force, but patience. Mankind survived so far and we can carry the cost for some more time. The cost of doing forceful vaccination is simply to high. > Humanity finds itself staring at a few pockets of the disease which are proving difficult to wilfully, or forcefully vaccinate. > Humanity has two choices: Give up, or carry on Carry on as we do now and wait til they see reason(for that we have to stop using them as test subjects[1][2]). > Carrying on produces further choices: > Humanity can, through the process of negotiation, wait for these pockets wilfully vaccinate, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. I'm for this > Humanity can wait for these pockets to develop their own wilful way of eradicating the disease from their population, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. or for this > Humanity can find a way to forcefully vaccinate these pockets, reducing the number of carriers to zero. No more Polio. Problem solved. And creating new problems, you know like war and terrorism > Humanity can find an alternative way to forcefully reduce the number of carriers to zero, such as selective murder or the less-selective, genocide. No more Polio. Problem solved. Same as the last one, you create new problems. > Humanity can wait for nature to reduce the number of carriers in these pockets to zero through natural disaster. No more Polio. Problem solved. Will not happen, there are to many carriers involved and you can not contain the areas they live in. > These, whilst some of them horrifying, are solutions to the problem humanity faces, for the "greater good" and all that jazz. The cost and viability of these solutions are under constant consideration whether you like it or not. And as long as people in power do not get stupid, they will not choose brute force. > Why haven't they occurred? Well, > People continue to resist the vaccine. For understandable reasons(see [1] or [2]) > Developing new methods of eradicating disease doesn't happen spontaneously in small populations. It does not, it needs time so that trust can be build. > The moral price of forcefully vaccinating this population is probably on the cusp of acceptability. The practicalities are more challenging at this time, however I wouldn't be surprised if a solution of this type isn't being actively worked on. The moral price is not acceptable and never will be. Especial if the reason for there resistance are actions from the outside(from there point of view). > Nature works in it's own time. > The global value of the lost life is too high for decision to be made to enact mass murder for the sake of eradicating Polio at this time. Mass murder is never a valid way to reach a goal, esp. if the murdered are people(e.g. in this case we are talking about feeling, intelligent, reasoning human beiings). > Upon finishing, answer not needed, let me ask: If we ran out of the ability to produce Polio vaccine for the world, would you rather: murder several million people, or, condemn humanity to a future with Polio, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives per year, on top of hundreds of thousands of new cases of disability? If we run out of the ability it is our own fault. We just need to stop bulling people and making war(martial, ecological, economical, moral) for profits sake. Not answering could be construed as me accepting your "final solution", sorry won't happen until you start repeating your arguments. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/02/aid-groups-cia-osama-bin-laden-polio-crisis http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/02/aid-groups-cia-... [2] http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/06/world/asia/pakistan-polio-vaccination/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/06/world/asia/pakistan-polio-...

lepouet 11y ago

Maybe if this http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccin... didn't happened there would be less resistance.

Natsu 11y ago

If Saudi Arabia were on board, maybe the Hajj could be a good opportunity to get vaccinations to some of those groups of immigrants? Imagine if they made it a visa requirement and they were the ones doing the vaccination rather than the US.

chimeracoder 11y ago

> 1) Vaccinators can't access some regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan because of violent resistance to Western aid. It might be relevant to actually mention the reason that this resistance exists[0][1]. There was resistance even before the CIA's tactics to assassinate Bin Laden were discovered, but it certainly doesn't help that we (the US) have legitimized these fears in their minds. Forcibly vaccinating people (as you suggest below) would be even more disastrous, for the same reason. If the problem is that people are concerned about Western hegemony in their local countries, the solution is not to forcibly subject them to medical treatment by Western powers. [0] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150225-polio-pakistan-vaccination-virus-health/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150225-polio-paki... [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccin...

beaker52 11y ago
Yes, of course, the implications are costly, but the costs of not doing so are also vast and must (and will) be considered very closely. Polio could be eradicated by subterfuge, humanity can claim it's victory and the world doesn't necessarily need to know how Polio was magically eradicated in these vaccine-resistant populations. Or perhaps the world could unite, West, East, Middle East, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists etc and force this vaccination upon these pockets in unprecedented unity. "It's not 'they' who want this of you, WE all want this of you". This is new ground. Humanity collectively has something standing in the way of progress. Humanity has the opportunity to approach it jointly.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I find this to be shortsighted. It might work, and polio might be eradicated because of it, but what happens with the next disease? You'll simply confirm their fears and cause even more resistance to medical science. It strikes me as being the same sort of thinking that caused the CIA to abuse the vaccination program in their hunt for bin Laden. In both cases, a focus on a single short-term goal harms more people overall because of the larger consequences.

Havoc 11y ago

>Hajj is a great opportunity for the disease to spread between members of these regions. Is this not also a great place to perform vaccinations though? I mean pretty much every Muslim is going to rock up there sooner or later & it is a mostly stable environment open to somewhat western influences (if the Saudis agree).

beaker52 11y ago
Children are the ones who need to be vaccinated.

yongjik 11y ago

1) Vaccinators can't access some regions of California because of violent resistance to vaccination. 2) Western vaccines are resisted by hippie Californians who fear Measles vaccines are a Western pharmaceutical plot to spread autism. 3) Disneyland is a great opportunity for the disease to spread between members of these regions. Let's see if Jenny McCarthy is forcefully vaccinated. Until then, it will be hard for me to take your "They aren't the same people as us, so let's use brute force, for humanity" attitude seriously.

mikeash 11y ago
There are major differences. First is that your point (1) is simply untrue. There is resistance, yes, but not violent resistance. More importantly, measles is still pretty widespread and there's no realistic prospect for near-term eradication. Getting all the California hippies to vaccinate wouldn't make a difference in terms of measles eradication, because they make up an insignificant proportion of global measles cases. Polio, however, is endemic in precisely two regions of the world, and getting those two regions to vaccinate would eliminate the disease entirely.
philwelch 11y ago
I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of CPS taking children away from anti-vax parents, and unvaccinated adults who refuse vaccination being forcibly quarantined.
Mickydtron 11y ago
One could argue that mandatory vaccination laws, which are being passed in some states, are a form of force. I think that these laws are good and useful, but they do point out that even Westerners need coercion at times. They also point out a potential way to apply 'force' to the remaining pockets, which is to introduce vaccination requirements into international treaties, either as requirements for trade deals or something else. The UN would probably be the proper vessel for this, rather than any individual Western country, although certainly those countries could spearhead the effort to make this happen.
beaker52 11y ago
Yes, luckily for these people, they live in a region where Polio is uncommon. Most of the world could stop vaccinating their children if they chose to. It'd be fine. Until the disease spreads to their population and people start to get infected. One case of Polio could quite quickly cause California to become a Polio infected region, like Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then we'd have to deal with that area too. Though without the conviction of other populations, I imagine a once-defiant Western population would quickly revert to willingly accepting the vaccine once they've seen the horrors of the disease with their own eyes.