RE: [Research] Polio: It's Still Here
I agree with you saying that we need to keep exploring and developing cures and vaccines, but please note that it's not false that we do have a (very effective) vaccine for poliovirus.
The fact that this virus belongs to a bigger family (with other viruses such as Coxsackie, echo, etc) doesn't mean that they're all as nasty as polio. Think of the smallpox and its vaccine: it was a different virus from the same family that allowed smallpox to be eradicated.
The fact that another virus such as the novel enterovirus can cause the same syndrome as polio doesn't mean that it's the same rose going by a different name; they are related, sure, belonging to the same family, but they are way, way more different than two different influenza strains (that are already so different that we need a new vaccine every year). They have very different infection rates and the percentage of afps complications is much lower.
Polio vaccine IS a story of success. This is a virus that can be eradicated, much like the smallpox, because it is not transmitted by other animals. If we keep vaccinations rates up, this disease could disappear everywhere.
I wish I could upvote you for more on this comment.
I agree the rates of infection seem different, but a couple points to consider:
1.) Diagnosis today is different than the 40s and 50s. They tended to diagnose by symptoms and there is a thought that more than one issue may have been blanketed by the poliomyelitis diagnosis. This was not helped by government funds being made available for children crippled by a poliomyelitis diagnosis.
2.) There is serious evidence going back to the 50s that doctors recognized by 1954 that the polio epidemic may have been iatrogenic, caused by the widespread tonsillectomy rate. There was an over-90% tonsillectomy rate and those who had complications nearly always were missing their tonsils. It's been since learned that the tonsils produce a natural serum that guards against poliovirus infection. Just this realization alone would change the rate of infection for complicated enterovirus.
3.) Some of the original epidemic may also have been caused by people being sprayed down with DDT, which has similar effects on the nervous system as polio. This would significantly effect our polio data if not all polio was polio. Story
Hence why I'm not sure polio eradication is a vaccine success story.
This reply needs some untangling.
While it's true that tonsillectomy has been linked to "significant risk of respiratory paralysis due to bulbar polio", the link with DDT has previously been debunked. It was actually the other way around- areas with high incidence of polio where treated with DDT when, in the beginning, it was thought that the disease might be transmitted by mosquitoes.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)61251-4/fulltext?code=lancet-site
https://www.google.nl/amp/s/vaxopedia.org/2017/10/19/is-there-a-ddt-polio-connection/amp/
DDT contribution: not truly debunked. Doctors at the time and since have pooh-poohed it as "denying germ theory", but it has since proven out that it was a reasonable question to ask and there is evidence that the DDT contributed to cases of paralyzation, if not cases of polio. In other words, there is no doubt that Poliovirus causes Poliomyelitis, but not all cases of paralyzation were necessarily caused by poliomyelitis. The data is incomplete, however, and I'd be willing to concede that it's hard to know what if any effect the DDT had on the situation.
However, I cannot link to the first source and considering the second has a high likelihood of outright dismissing evidence it doesn't like, this doesn't really break the DDT case.
The problem with discussions about polio is that it's usually assumed that if you try to see other causes besides just "the germ caused the disease", there is a correlating denial that the polio vaccine had an impact on halting the epidemic. Hence why the other factors are all erased from the explanation normally except that a germ caused the disease, the disease caused the paralyzation, the vaccine stopped the disease, end of story.
I forgot to say: to me it seems like another rose simply because I see serious potential for kids to be paralyzed very much as they were back in the 40s and 50s and I think holding out the hope that if we just get our kids vaccinated they'll be safe is very troublesome. I so want to be able to take comfort in that thought, but the more I learn the more I question that comfort and am seeking better ways to fight.