10 ms·

UN says new polio outbreak in Sudan caused by oral vaccine

72 points by drummer 6y ago

pmiller2 6y ago
This is not big news. Wild polio is only endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan anymore, and it's known that the vaccine itself can cause a form of polio in a very small number of cases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_eradication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_eradication
- ars 6y ago
  That's the exact problem. It's not a small number of cases anymore. I read the documentation they put out about their plan to deal with this. The plan failed. Currently these mutated cases are the biggest risk to this entire process, bigger even than wild type. The only way to stop them is to immunize people against the subtype but they no longer are immunizing people because the immunization itself causes more mutated cases. So this new mutated vaccine derived polio is spreading unchecked because young children are not immunized to it. I suspect they may need to switch to using IPV to immunize, people but it will be ferociously expensive.
  - xbar 6y ago
    The plan was a gamble, just like using a live polio virus in the vaccine. For people in communities where the vaccine-derived strains are spreading, is there another choice except IPV?
    - chess_buster 6y ago
      Can CureVac's and BioNTech's mRNA-based vaccines be a solution?
      - ars 6y ago
        There already are vaccines that would solve this. It's just there is no infrastructure (cold storage, sterile needles, medical documentation/identity) in place to administer it. The new vaccines you mention are even more delicate than the existing one, so would not be helpful. The current vaccine (the bad one) needs nothing more than a backpack and a marker (to mark those who were vaccinated). There is research to develop a new, temperature stable, vaccine that can not mutate. But so far no success.
frabbit 6y ago
The article needs some more context: namely that the outbreaks are caused by an old vaccine from which many countries have moved away. But it is very interesting that the live attentuated vaccine can mutate. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00812-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00812-z
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >The article needs some more context Why? It seems like a pretty straightforward factual article. Are you trying to add context in a well-meaning attempt to short-circuit the potential for this article to give credence to anti-vaxxers? Or that the pro-vaccine perspectives tend to heavily imply (or explicitly state) vaccines are without risks and this is a bit of an embarrassment? To qualify that further: not arguing the efficacy of vaccines as all public health officials agree the risk-reward ratio tilts heavily towards vaccines and vaccine historical success is unprecedented ... just the arguments that are made in support of them by well-meaning 'debunkers', 'skeptics' and 'science-communicators'. Is that really what news is supposed to be? A way to drive narratives (well-meaning that those narratives may be), lest the readers take the 'wrong' idea if you just present the facts? In other words, is this article supposed to: 1) Provide a factual account of events in Sudan around the Polio outbreak, OR 2) Further the goal of large-scale vaccination efforts in Sudan, Africa and the world. #2 is certainly a worthy goal, but is that what the point of news is? Push worthy goals like #2, instead of doing #1? >https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00812-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00812-z Not a huge fan of "Argument by citing a random published study to supports my conclusion" either. Typically in these cases, there are thousands of studies on the topic, some with very subtle conclusions - but specific studies are cherry-picked to support a pre-defined conclusions, which tends to say more about what the arguer believes versus what's actually true. Here's my cynical conspiracy theory: This article would be flagged or banned on social media (Twitter/YouTube/Facebook) as misinformation, especially if shared by any non-mainstream outlet.
  - escape_goat 6y ago
    The article fails to mention that there are different polio vaccines and leaves the impression that there is a risk of polio infection from all vaccines.
foolzcrow 6y ago
CNN told me all criticism of vaccines is conspiracy theory. Good thing I beleive everything I hear on the news.
bsd44 6y ago
Poor countries have always been a testing ground for vaccine, since their lives are considered to be less worth than ours and their countries hardly have any regulations in place, let alone institutions to enforce those regulations. If there are negative side effects or even death, nobody has the means to go after BigPharma. Sad to see reservation towards experimental vaccine being labelled as "anti-vaxx" much like we've seen various points of view being discredited by pushing "racist" and "fake news" narrative.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Poor countries have always been a testing ground for vaccine, since their lives are considered to be less worth than ours and their countries hardly have any regulations in place, let alone institutions to enforce those regulations. Is this what's actually true (and you have evidence of). Or is this just your cynicism informing your personal belief?
  - jsrjenkins 6y ago
    Promising to eradicate Polio with $1.2 billion, Gates took control of India ‘s National Advisory Board (NAB) and mandated 50 polio vaccines (up from 5) to every child before age 5. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating vaccine-strain polio epidemic that paralyzed 496,000 children between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian Government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and evicted Gates and his cronies from the NAB. Polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously. In 2017, the World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines. By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines. In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by GSK and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court. In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a trial of a GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,049 children. During Gates 2002 MenAfriVac Campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Between 50-500 children developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for drug makers” [1] [1] from an article by Robert F. Kennedy. Looking for source
controversy 6y ago
Given that this type of outcome comes with vaccines that are not well researched, or driven to market too quickly (in this specific case an old vaccine that was cheap, but with risk), will we, as the West, need to take some time before deploying a COVID vaccine? There is talk of mandatory vaccinations (https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/11/07/state-bar-passes-mandatory-covid-19-vaccination-recommendation/?slreturn=20201015101623 https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/11/07/state-bar-p...). Others want to require vaccination papers in order to travel (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31034-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...). Given a disease may mutate in the storage case, will we risk making things worse for a disease that doesn't impact that majority of the population?
throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
Context (free article, no registration required): [0] [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7188410/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7188410/

72 points by drummer 6y ago

This is not big news. Wild polio is only endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan anymore, and it's known that the vaccine itself can cause a form of polio in a very small number of cases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_eradication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_eradication

ars 6y ago
That's the exact problem. It's not a small number of cases anymore. I read the documentation they put out about their plan to deal with this. The plan failed. Currently these mutated cases are the biggest risk to this entire process, bigger even than wild type. The only way to stop them is to immunize people against the subtype but they no longer are immunizing people because the immunization itself causes more mutated cases. So this new mutated vaccine derived polio is spreading unchecked because young children are not immunized to it. I suspect they may need to switch to using IPV to immunize, people but it will be ferociously expensive.
- xbar 6y ago
  The plan was a gamble, just like using a live polio virus in the vaccine. For people in communities where the vaccine-derived strains are spreading, is there another choice except IPV?
  - chess_buster 6y ago
    Can CureVac's and BioNTech's mRNA-based vaccines be a solution?
    - ars 6y ago
      There already are vaccines that would solve this. It's just there is no infrastructure (cold storage, sterile needles, medical documentation/identity) in place to administer it. The new vaccines you mention are even more delicate than the existing one, so would not be helpful. The current vaccine (the bad one) needs nothing more than a backpack and a marker (to mark those who were vaccinated). There is research to develop a new, temperature stable, vaccine that can not mutate. But so far no success.

frabbit 6y ago

The article needs some more context: namely that the outbreaks are caused by an old vaccine from which many countries have moved away. But it is very interesting that the live attentuated vaccine can mutate. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00812-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00812-z

macspoofing 6y ago
>The article needs some more context Why? It seems like a pretty straightforward factual article. Are you trying to add context in a well-meaning attempt to short-circuit the potential for this article to give credence to anti-vaxxers? Or that the pro-vaccine perspectives tend to heavily imply (or explicitly state) vaccines are without risks and this is a bit of an embarrassment? To qualify that further: not arguing the efficacy of vaccines as all public health officials agree the risk-reward ratio tilts heavily towards vaccines and vaccine historical success is unprecedented ... just the arguments that are made in support of them by well-meaning 'debunkers', 'skeptics' and 'science-communicators'. Is that really what news is supposed to be? A way to drive narratives (well-meaning that those narratives may be), lest the readers take the 'wrong' idea if you just present the facts? In other words, is this article supposed to: 1) Provide a factual account of events in Sudan around the Polio outbreak, OR 2) Further the goal of large-scale vaccination efforts in Sudan, Africa and the world. #2 is certainly a worthy goal, but is that what the point of news is? Push worthy goals like #2, instead of doing #1? >https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00812-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00812-z Not a huge fan of "Argument by citing a random published study to supports my conclusion" either. Typically in these cases, there are thousands of studies on the topic, some with very subtle conclusions - but specific studies are cherry-picked to support a pre-defined conclusions, which tends to say more about what the arguer believes versus what's actually true. Here's my cynical conspiracy theory: This article would be flagged or banned on social media (Twitter/YouTube/Facebook) as misinformation, especially if shared by any non-mainstream outlet.
- escape_goat 6y ago
  The article fails to mention that there are different polio vaccines and leaves the impression that there is a risk of polio infection from all vaccines.

foolzcrow 6y ago

CNN told me all criticism of vaccines is conspiracy theory. Good thing I beleive everything I hear on the news.

bsd44 6y ago

Poor countries have always been a testing ground for vaccine, since their lives are considered to be less worth than ours and their countries hardly have any regulations in place, let alone institutions to enforce those regulations. If there are negative side effects or even death, nobody has the means to go after BigPharma. Sad to see reservation towards experimental vaccine being labelled as "anti-vaxx" much like we've seen various points of view being discredited by pushing "racist" and "fake news" narrative.

macspoofing 6y ago
>Poor countries have always been a testing ground for vaccine, since their lives are considered to be less worth than ours and their countries hardly have any regulations in place, let alone institutions to enforce those regulations. Is this what's actually true (and you have evidence of). Or is this just your cynicism informing your personal belief?
- jsrjenkins 6y ago
  Promising to eradicate Polio with $1.2 billion, Gates took control of India ‘s National Advisory Board (NAB) and mandated 50 polio vaccines (up from 5) to every child before age 5. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating vaccine-strain polio epidemic that paralyzed 496,000 children between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian Government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and evicted Gates and his cronies from the NAB. Polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously. In 2017, the World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines. By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines. In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by GSK and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court. In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a trial of a GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,049 children. During Gates 2002 MenAfriVac Campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Between 50-500 children developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for drug makers” [1] [1] from an article by Robert F. Kennedy. Looking for source

controversy 6y ago

Given that this type of outcome comes with vaccines that are not well researched, or driven to market too quickly (in this specific case an old vaccine that was cheap, but with risk), will we, as the West, need to take some time before deploying a COVID vaccine? There is talk of mandatory vaccinations (https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/11/07/state-bar-passes-mandatory-covid-19-vaccination-recommendation/?slreturn=20201015101623 https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/11/07/state-bar-p...). Others want to require vaccination papers in order to travel (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31034-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...). Given a disease may mutate in the storage case, will we risk making things worse for a disease that doesn't impact that majority of the population?

throwawaybutwhy 6y ago

Context (free article, no registration required): [0] [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7188410/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7188410/