3 ms·
Polio is about literal shit in the water in places like India, not so much the vaccines. Polio was eliminated in the developed world mostly by way of water chlo
by a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
Polio is about literal shit in the water in places like India, not so much the vaccines. Polio was eliminated in the developed world mostly by way of water chlorination.
I'm not an "anti-vaxer" and am not well read on the subject of vaccination, but online discussions of this topic seem essentially religious. People who clearly have no particular expertise go on about how we will be damned if all are not vaccinated. Note in the article that nobody died from the measles outbreak. Some kids just got sick, like they still do from chicken pox. Please also note that people do in fact die every year from vaccines. They are not risk free. Might some calm discussions about statistics and risk assessment be in order? Maybe, maybe not, but the quality of discussion online I've seen essentially precludes it.
Also consider that the essential problem here, as seems to happen over and over again with infectious disease outbreaks, is travel to and from the third world. People are ready to crusade for vaccines but apparently the highly effective 19th century technology of mandatory quarantine is totally out of the question.
- nsgi 12y agoSanitation can make polio a more serious problem, since it increases the average age of infection, and the risk of paralysis increases with age.
- janlin1999 12y agoI'm not terribly well-informed about the evidence linking vaccines to death, so I briefly looked this up: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm#cause http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm#cause ("the risk of death from vaccines is 'extraordinarily low'" -- quoting a IOM 1994 report) Do you have links to more recent and more informative publications from widely accepted sources that I should look at?