Polio could make a comeback in the US (article)

southernbubby

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 4:46 pm

http://matzav.com/could-polio-.....16158

amother

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 7:04 pm

I do vacinate my kids, but that article wasn't terribly convincing that it will make a come back. Of course, I would rather be safe then sorry.

Nu, anti vaxers, what do you say?

southernbubby

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 7:07 pm

I don't think that there has been any polio in the US for a long time.

Hashem_Yaazor

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 7:25 pm

FTR, measles was never gone, but I digress.

Hashem_Yaazor

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 7:27 pm

With regards to polio, nothing has changed this year from last year from the year before. Polio has always existed in the world. No reason to induce unnecessary fear specifically now. Media hype at its finest.

(300 cases worldwide is actually a tiny percent. There were more cases of measles last year in America alone -- yes, before the Disneyland "outbreak". )

No news here, carry on.

Hashem_Yaazor

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 7:30 pm

And this line was actually very informative to me:
"The vaccine makes people personally immune to polio, but if they come in contact with an infected person, they could still catch the virus and carry it in their intestinal tract. They would not be sick, but they could still pass it on to other people."

southernbubby

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 7:38 pm

It looks like they are talking about a theoretical possibility rather than an actual threat.

Dolly Welsh

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 7:38 pm

I guess that is one way a disease can remain present in the general environment, necessitating ongoing vaccination programs, even after one no longer sees cases of the disease.

Well, we knew they did this.

There must be a variety of ways to do this, and this is one.

There is no way to Clorox nature.

Hashem_Yaazor

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 7:43 pm

southernbubby wrote:

It looks like they are talking about a theoretical possibility rather than an actual threat.

Right, media hype at its finest. Let us scare everyone with something that has not happened but could have always happened and pretend it's news.

(Weren't you the one against unnecessarily scaring people about breast cancer? Can you see where I am coming from?)

southernbubby

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 7:50 pm

Hashem_Yaazor wrote:

My thing about the breast cancer is that when people are being diagnosed, they are given the wrong information. The story about polio, and probably the reason that it was posted on matzav, is that people can hopefully prevent it by vaccination.

smss

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 8:26 pm

southernbubby wrote:

what story?

southernbubby

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 8:28 pm

smss wrote:

what story?

basically that this was said:

“We have a perfect storm for polio to make a re-appearance in the American scene,” Dr. Robert Daum of the University of Chicago says.

That’s because polio still exists. More than 300 cases were reported overseas last year.

chani8

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 10:40 pm

southernbubby wrote:

Doesn't polio still exist because they're using a live polio vaccine? My one year old was just given the live polio and my thought was, but what if I had a newborn in the home? Wouldn't that be putting the newborn at risk?

ally

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 11:13 pm

chani8 wrote:

No - the opposite. They use the live polio vaccine in regions where polio still exists.

chani8

Tue, Feb 24 2015, 11:29 pm

Ally, what came first, the chicken or the egg?

That still doesn't answer my question. If I had a newborn, would the live polio given to my 1 year old put the newborn at risk??

Hashem_Yaazor

Wed, Feb 25 2015, 5:46 am

Yes. They started giving the live polio vaccine again in E"Y because it's in the middle east where polio is detected in the sewage water from neighboring countries. But it was stopped before (and in America too) because that does have a risk of making someone sick with polio itself.

There is no story, though, southernbubby. Nothing has changed all of a sudden from the past 30 years. Polio has been around in the world all that time (and in much higher numbers than 300/year! ) and there has been international travel in all that time as well. The story is mainly to tell people nothing new in order to create panic.

Scrabble123

Wed, Feb 25 2015, 6:33 am

chani8 wrote:

Ally, what came first, the chicken or the egg?

That still doesn't answer my question. If I had a newborn, would the live polio given to my 1 year old put the newborn at risk??

Actually, Chani: Newborns infected with Polio are at significantly a lesser risk than older children and that is even from the actual disease. That's actually why better sanitation practices fed into the "outbreaks" of polio. When babies got polio as infants, they almost always had asymptomatic cases, but as better sanitation practices meant that children were exposed to polio later on, the world started seeing the more typical polio cases that come to mind when we think polio.

The OPV has in extremely rare cases cases paralysis which is why it is not given in countries without active polio infection. It is however the vaccine of choice when there is an outbreak because it also keeps those vaccinated from being carriers (which the IPV does not do), and also sheds to offer those who may otherwise have not been vaccinated protection. So why it could shed to the newborn, it is really unlikely that the child should be "at risk" from anything other than possible immunization against polio. Most adults received the OPV as infants as well: countries that choose to offer only 1 dose of OPV (which was the case in the Israel after they found it in the sewage - not sure if it's still the case) choose to do so after pa previous dose of IPV becuase they have not seen cases of paralysis under those circumstances (even though even without a previous dose of IPV paralysis is extremely rare).

Furthermore, 300 cases most likely means the 300 individuals who were symptomatic: it has been documentation that up to 95% of those infection with polio are actually asymptomatic so in a way it's not something like measles where you can isolate the individual and do contact counting and it means that if 300 had symptoms of polio it means that there were likely 6,000 infected (on a global scale that is a pretty small number, but considering that travel is just around the corner, 300 could easily become 3,000). I don't think that people need to be alarmed by this aritcle because why the risk is there, it's not something that is likely going to happen tomorrow (I suppose that statistically speaking it is possible though). Furthermore, we know how to protect ourselves against Polio and in the case of it somehow making its way into the US and infecting here, doctors would know how to control it. There actually were some cases of Polio in an Amish community back in 2009. Polio is not a joke, but we know how to handle outbreaks and protect individuals.

black sheep

Wed, Feb 25 2015, 1:14 pm

chani8 wrote:

Ally, what came first, the chicken or the egg?
?

Polio came first. then the vaccine to fight it.