<story><title>Spate of polio outbreaks worldwide puts scientists on alert</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02233-6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re very kind calling it &amp;quot;hesitancy&amp;quot;, too! I know that&amp;#x27;s the soft euphemism that the media has coalesced around, but &amp;quot;hesitancy&amp;quot; implies that one is on the fence, unsure, open to debate and open to being convinced. That&amp;#x27;s not what America is exporting.&lt;p&gt;America&amp;#x27;s Anti-Vax movement is religiously sure of itself. They aren&amp;#x27;t on the fence. They&amp;#x27;re not weighing the pros and cons. They&amp;#x27;re convinced that they know the secret capital-T Truth, and that spreading their gospel saves lives. COVID brought it mainstream, but if you look back at the &amp;quot;Anti-vax Moms groups&amp;quot; long before COVID, there was still no hesitancy. Their minds were also made up.</text></item><item><author>pm90</author><text>Im tired of saying this but it’s absolutely mind boggling how fucked up it is that one of the main exports from America today is vaccine hesitancy.&lt;p&gt;Science skepticism has always been a thing; its only in recent years though that internet has allowed the rapid spread of disinformation. Glossy content created for misinforming Americans inspires copycats in other countries. It’s really depressing.</text></item><item><author>_s</author><text>From my understanding - there are two main “strains” for polio; one that is “wild”; endemic to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and one derived from the oral vaccine, endemic in Africa and a lot of conflict zones, from Asia to
Europe to Central &amp;#x2F; Southern Americas.&lt;p&gt;The oral vaccine in use in a lot of the world contains a weakened version of the virus, and allows your body to fight it off without any negative effects. This is usually a 3 or 4 course vaccine.&lt;p&gt;This specifically engineered weakened virus has been shown to mutate and infect other partially or non vaccinated individuals, including causing paralysis, and is the one now popping up in more developed &amp;#x2F; inoculated areas - but again, in unvaccinated individuals.&lt;p&gt;Note - from what I have read, you can still get and spread polio even if you are vaccinated (much like Covid), but it’s an incredibly low chance - and furthermore, your risk of serious disease &amp;#x2F; paralysis &amp;#x2F; death is even lower (so we know the vaccines work). The oral vaccine (weakened virus) efficacy is much higher than the injected (inactive virus) vaccine too, and boosters are offered for those who had the vaccines as children and are now adults.&lt;p&gt;There is also another oral vaccine, with a weakened virus, that has been engineered to prevent certain mutations that cause it to spread (if I read some articles correctly), but is not currently approved for use in the US &amp;#x2F; UK.&lt;p&gt;Polio was one of the first few horrible diseases almost eradicated by vaccines. Whatever your stance on getting vaccinated, do understand that Polio has a 1 in 200 chance of resulting in severe symptoms and paralysis, and there is no treatment for it - only prevention via inoculation. It is not like Covid where mostly the older, more immunocompromised suffer - it will ravage children and healthy adults too.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;America&amp;#x27;s Anti-Vax movement is religiously sure of itself. They aren&amp;#x27;t on the fence. They&amp;#x27;re not weighing the pros and cons.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is the activist wing of the movement. Many more Americans are genuinely, in many cases reasonably, hesitant.</text></comment>
<story><title>Spate of polio outbreaks worldwide puts scientists on alert</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02233-6</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryandrake</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re very kind calling it &amp;quot;hesitancy&amp;quot;, too! I know that&amp;#x27;s the soft euphemism that the media has coalesced around, but &amp;quot;hesitancy&amp;quot; implies that one is on the fence, unsure, open to debate and open to being convinced. That&amp;#x27;s not what America is exporting.&lt;p&gt;America&amp;#x27;s Anti-Vax movement is religiously sure of itself. They aren&amp;#x27;t on the fence. They&amp;#x27;re not weighing the pros and cons. They&amp;#x27;re convinced that they know the secret capital-T Truth, and that spreading their gospel saves lives. COVID brought it mainstream, but if you look back at the &amp;quot;Anti-vax Moms groups&amp;quot; long before COVID, there was still no hesitancy. Their minds were also made up.</text></item><item><author>pm90</author><text>Im tired of saying this but it’s absolutely mind boggling how fucked up it is that one of the main exports from America today is vaccine hesitancy.&lt;p&gt;Science skepticism has always been a thing; its only in recent years though that internet has allowed the rapid spread of disinformation. Glossy content created for misinforming Americans inspires copycats in other countries. It’s really depressing.</text></item><item><author>_s</author><text>From my understanding - there are two main “strains” for polio; one that is “wild”; endemic to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and one derived from the oral vaccine, endemic in Africa and a lot of conflict zones, from Asia to
Europe to Central &amp;#x2F; Southern Americas.&lt;p&gt;The oral vaccine in use in a lot of the world contains a weakened version of the virus, and allows your body to fight it off without any negative effects. This is usually a 3 or 4 course vaccine.&lt;p&gt;This specifically engineered weakened virus has been shown to mutate and infect other partially or non vaccinated individuals, including causing paralysis, and is the one now popping up in more developed &amp;#x2F; inoculated areas - but again, in unvaccinated individuals.&lt;p&gt;Note - from what I have read, you can still get and spread polio even if you are vaccinated (much like Covid), but it’s an incredibly low chance - and furthermore, your risk of serious disease &amp;#x2F; paralysis &amp;#x2F; death is even lower (so we know the vaccines work). The oral vaccine (weakened virus) efficacy is much higher than the injected (inactive virus) vaccine too, and boosters are offered for those who had the vaccines as children and are now adults.&lt;p&gt;There is also another oral vaccine, with a weakened virus, that has been engineered to prevent certain mutations that cause it to spread (if I read some articles correctly), but is not currently approved for use in the US &amp;#x2F; UK.&lt;p&gt;Polio was one of the first few horrible diseases almost eradicated by vaccines. Whatever your stance on getting vaccinated, do understand that Polio has a 1 in 200 chance of resulting in severe symptoms and paralysis, and there is no treatment for it - only prevention via inoculation. It is not like Covid where mostly the older, more immunocompromised suffer - it will ravage children and healthy adults too.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anigbrowl</author><text>This seems to be a international effort, sadly. Article is also pre-covid.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC6137759&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC6137759&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>