vaccines: "Thanks, Mom" (and science)!

This is a good reminder of a piece of history that still exists in one pocket of the world, and is still SUCH a hot button topic today.

"I found my old vaccine record, quite touchingly in my mom's handwriting at top. Thanks, Mom. How many of you know that smallpox was eliminated through a global vaccine program, which is why no one gets this vaccine any more? Polio has been nearly eliminated through the same means."

According to the CDC: "In 1988, when the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) began, polio paralyzed >350,000 children across 125 countries. Today, only one of three wild poliovirus serotypes, type 1 (WPV1), remains in circulation in only two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This report summarizes progress toward global polio eradication during January 1, 2019–June 30, 2021 and updates previous reports (1,2). In 2020, 140 cases of WPV1 were reported, including 56 in Afghanistan (a 93% increase from 29 cases in 2019) and 84 in Pakistan (a 43% decrease from 147 cases in 2019)." I know people who had polio and knew one old woman who'd had smallpox, and I know the scourge both diseases were in their day.

Brief History:

Although major polio epidemics were unknown before the 20th century, the disease has caused paralysis and death for much of human history. Over millennia, polio survived quietly as an endemic pathogen until the 1900s when major epidemics began to occur in Europe. Soon after, widespread epidemics appeared in the United States. By 1910, frequent epidemics became regular events throughout the developed world primarily in cities during the summer months. At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, polio would paralyze or kill over half a million people worldwide every year.

The fear and the collective response to these epidemics would give rise to extraordinary public reaction and mobilization spurring the development of new methods to prevent and treat the disease and revolutionizing medical philanthropy. Although the development of two polio vaccines has eliminated wild poliomyelitis in all but two countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan), the legacy of poliomyelitis remains in the development of modern rehabilitation therapy and in the rise of disability rights movements worldwide.

via {rebecca solnit} and {wikipedia}