Posted on 08/18/2022 10:33:10 AM PDT by lightman
A 20-year-old New York man was recently diagnosed with polio, which paralyzed his legs. Polio once crippled or killed many young people in the United States, but was essentially wiped out during the 1960s following development of a vaccine.
Because the New York man, who wasn’t vaccinated against polio, hadn’t recently traveled outside the country, it’s believed he became infected locally.
Moreover, poliovirus has been found in wastewater in Rockland County, N.Y., where the stricken man lives and in a nearby county. It also has been found in sewage in New York City, according to an opinion article in The Washington Post.
The article, written by Dr. Lena Wen, highlights concerns about a resurgence of polio and a drop-off in vaccination rates among children in the United States.
The New York State Health Department regards the polio case “as just the tip of the iceberg of much greater potential spread,” according to the article.
It notes most polio symptoms, which include fever, fatigue and diarrhea, are considered mild, and people often have no symptoms. With most doctors no longer looking for polio, it means cases could go unnoticed or attributed to other illnesses, according to Wen.
“The one diagnosed case severe enough to cause paralysis raises the concern that there could be dozens — even hundreds — of other infected people who could be unknowingly transmitting the virus to others,” Wen wrote.
Wen noted polio vaccine is considered 99% or more effective at preventing paralysis from polio. The disease was considered eradicated in the United States when 80% of the population had developed immunity, she wrote.
But vaccination rates for polio and other childhood vaccines have fallen, with the situation causing alarm among pediatricians and health officials around the country. The national vaccination rate for children entering kindergarten dropped by about one percentage point in 2020-2021 compared to the previous school year.
Some of the drop-off is attributed to disruptions to the health care system and medical appointments caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Wen writes, “I also worry about the insidious effect of vaccine disinformation and that backlash to covid restrictions has worsened trust in public health. Moreover, most parents of young children never experienced the terror of polio firsthand and might not appreciate the importance of preventing the disease.”
Pennsylvania has seen a decrease in polio vaccination rates for children entering kindergarten. The rate fell from 96.3% in 2019-2020 to 95.4% in 2020-2021, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
That equaled about 5,514 children who didn’t have four or more doses of polio vaccine, considered the full regimen.
According to the state figures, the total number of children entering kindergarten fell from 138,909 to 122,800. Pennsylvania allows students to enroll provisionally, meaning they are in the process of getting the needed vaccinations. That number was 4,635 in 2020-2021, up from about 3,000 the previous year.
The state denied enrollment to 136 students of kindergarten age in 2020-2021, up from 65 the previous year.
Hear, hear!
The FBI could have and should have fired him right there and then for that. So they have just made it worse and now paint the rest of the agency that way by their choice, not mine.
Can you blame her? (As a kid, you don’t care if you are crippled for life or have to live in an iron lung...you just want to get into that pool!)
The slightly not wiped out part was Afghanistan +Pakistan. Which should have been wiped out by now. Had their exceptions cooperated and allowed that then sole remaining reservoir of ‘natural’ virus to be cleared the strategy of switching from the more effective attenuated oral live vaccine to the inactive injected vaccine until the weak vaccine strains died out at which time nobody would need any polio vaccine would have played out successfully. It had worked for western hemisphere but required worldwide compliance to finish. Until done the 3/million dose reversion risk of the oral vaccine remains in the places where it’s essential. Cant’t best polio without using that in some areas. If we don’t try it will return and more will die or be paralyzed.
If the old recipe was followed I wonder why also, if not then I understand the hesitancy. The original polio vaccine was among the safest, and most effective, vaccines ever developed, and I stand completely behind it.
Always wondered who (besides Progressives and MSM) search through waste water (sewage) to determine if there is something in there.
No. Thank God she did what she did.
Lol, my mother had far more common sense than I did… But I would call that “damning her with faint praise”… :-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.