[HN Gopher] Polio is on the brink of eradication
___________________________________________________________________
Polio is on the brink of eradication
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 292 points
Date : 2023-11-23 13:00 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| hilbert42 wrote:
| As someone who lived through the polio epidemic during my
| childhood and having seen kids die of the disease or end up in
| iron lungs or having to wear calipers for life, I can only say
| hallelujah I hope this announcement about its likely eradication
| ends up being true.
| orra wrote:
| Indeed, it'd be wonderful to see polio eradicated. Eradication
| has been a decades long program; they originally aimed to do it
| by the year 2000, then ?, then 2018.
|
| Even if the last stage of eradication is stubbornly slow, we
| have obviously been quite successful at limiting the number of
| cases.
| alfredpawney wrote:
| Honestly never thought i'd see the day.
| smegger001 wrote:
| Well it didn't help when the CIA got caught posing as health
| workers giving out polio vaccination in Pakistan.
| LordShredda wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-
| vacci...
|
| The taliban started attacking polio vaccine workers and the
| UN suspended operations. Polio exists in Pakistan,
| Afghanistan, and Nigeria
| codezero wrote:
| The scheme was for hepatitis vaccinations. The article
| linked below just mentions that only health workers giving
| polio vaccines had previously been able to access the
| compound.
| gumby wrote:
| FDR caught polio _in his 20s_ and was wheelchair bound after
| that.
|
| Mitch McConnell had a mild case of polio as a child and once
| you know that you can see the resulting trivial impairment in
| his gait and facial expressions. However his utterly evil
| attitude and actions have nothing to do with polio.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| I wasn't familiar with the term calipers outside of the
| measuring tool. For anyone else wondering, it refers to the leg
| braces used by those who have polio induced nerve damage and
| subsequent muscle weakness (poliomyelitis).
| Mistletoe wrote:
| It's amazing what vaccines can do when people take them and they
| aren't politically weaponized by AI and social media algorithms.
|
| Sorry if I'm bitter, I just had a nurse tell me yesterday to not
| take the flu vaccine because she said it doesn't prevent flu and
| why would I "put that junk in my body."
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The polio vaccine is also clearly more effective at limiting
| the disease than the flu or covid vaccines (granted that this
| is in part just the nature of the virus).
| philjohn wrote:
| Indeed - from my understanding, they have to "guess"timate
| which strains of Flu will be prevalent in a given year, if
| they get it right, fantastic - if they get it wrong, lower
| effectiveness. Of course, it's not really a guess so much as
| an educated assessment.
|
| Having said that, as an asthmatic I've had the Flu vaccine
| every year for the last 20 or so years, and knock on wood
| haven't had Flu since. I also had the multivalent pneumonia
| vaccine a while ago, so fingers crossed!
| inglor_cz wrote:
| TBH my last flu vaccine was something like 25 years ago (I
| am not antivax, I am just too lazy to get it) and I had
| "true" flu (not seasonal colds or covid) precisely once
| since then.
|
| My doctor friend doesn't get flu vaccine even when
| recommended, because, to quote her, "in my line of work, I
| was already exposed to everything ten times at least". She
| works as an ORL expert in a big hospital, so she is
| constantly staring down some sick throats.
| lawlessone wrote:
| I try to get them when I remember. There's more evidence
| , especially since Covid open peoples eyes, that colds ,
| flus etc can have long term effects even after they are
| gone.
| nolongerthere wrote:
| Just to be clear, there is no vaccine for the common
| cold, nor has there been any evidence, such as a properly
| conducted study, to suggest a cold can have long term
| effects.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| https://www.sciencealert.com/long-cold-a-hidden-form-of-
| chro...
| nolongerthere wrote:
| Interesting, I have many family members who work in
| healthcare and all who are in regular contact with
| patients are required, by hospital policy, to get the flu
| vaccine annually. They would not be allowed to clock in
| if they don't get vaccinated as its determined to be a
| risk to the patients (the Dr or nurse can easily become
| typhoid mary).
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Here, such policies vary even across a single hospital.
| Some healthcare workers are required by law to be vaxed
| against HepB or HepA, or measles, or rabies, but flu is,
| nation-wide, only "recommended".
| chimprich wrote:
| > (I am not antivax, I am just too lazy to get it)
|
| Startup idea - vaccine delivery service. Pay a fee or
| subscription and someone comes to your house or workplace
| and jabs you with flu vaccine plus any travel shots
| required.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Funnily enough, this was the first year I got a flu
| vaccine, because it was being offered basically at my door
| and I thought it'd be useful to have before visiting
| family. I still managed to get sick afterwards, just
| instead of a flu it ended up being a particularly bad viral
| cold.
|
| Not a slight against the flu shot, just a funny tidbit
| since it reminded me that the vaccine doesn't make me
| invincible from all similar disease.
| justsee wrote:
| While it's just an anecdote, it's more than just a funny
| tidbit as an increased risk of non-influenza respiratory
| virus is a possible side effect of flu vaccines.
|
| "We identified a statistically significant increased risk
| of noninfluenza respiratory virus infection among TIV
| recipients (Table 3), including significant increases in
| the risk of rhinovirus and coxsackie/echovirus infection"
| [1]
|
| That's one of the complications in assessing efficacy: if
| the benefit in flu vaccine is potentially quite modest
| (as determined by some long-running studies [2]), and it
| causes an increased risk of other noninfluenza
| respiratory viruses, then we need higher-quality, more
| detailed studies to understand what's happening.
|
| But based on the discussion of the Cochrane review it
| seems unlikely. [3]
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404712/
|
| [2] https://www.cochrane.org/news/featured-review-three-
| updated-...
|
| [3] https://community.cochrane.org/news/why-have-three-
| long-runn...
| lawlessone wrote:
| nurses are a diverse lot. You meet plenty that could be
| equivalent to or sometimes more medically experience than
| doctors.
|
| And then unfortunately the one you met(who is probably
| otherwise good at their job)
| 2devnull wrote:
| Same is true for doctors. Some good, some very bad. In fact,
| the same is true (don't hate me for saying so) various other
| types of pharmaceutical products, including vaccines that
| rely on herd immunity and those that are merely "vax
| treatments" or whatever they've renamed it to in late 2023 (I
| think I was told that they are allowed to call it a "jab" or
| a "spike vax" but not a booster.)
| maxerickson wrote:
| Are you relating a stupid thing a doctor said to you? It
| isn't entirely clear.
| epcoa wrote:
| Someone is feeding you BS information.
| dmd wrote:
| > who is probably otherwise good at their job
|
| What would make you think that?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Because unless one's a researcher, their job doesn't
| require a fully consistent set of beliefs. Being wrong or
| even stupid about one area usually doesn't affect any other
| areas - if it does, it probably means one's spending too
| much time rethinking everything from first principles, when
| they should've long ago developed a feel for it.
| NateEag wrote:
| Being a researcher doesn't require a fully consistent set
| of beliefs.
|
| You do need to be willing to go where the evidence leads
| you, but that doesn't require or guarantee a fully-
| consistent belief system.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I recommend reporting them to their employer. If you don't
| believe in the efficacy of vaccines, you don't belong in
| healthcare. If you hold the belief outside of healthcare,
| that's a right and a choice.
| vasco wrote:
| Flu vaccines are many times not effective. It's not like they
| told them to skip a tetanus vaccine. I know it became a
| polarised topic but we don't need to pretend like all
| vaccines are the same. It's possible and likely to take a
| yearly flu shot and still get sick:
| https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm
|
| > CDC conducts studies each year to determine how well
| influenza (flu) vaccines protect against flu. While vaccine
| effectiveness (VE) can vary, recent studies show that flu
| vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40%
| and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most
| circulating flu viruses are well-matched to those used to
| make flu vaccines
|
| > How well flu vaccines work (or their ability to protect
| against a certain outcome) can vary from season to season.
| Protection can vary depending on who is being vaccinated. At
| least two factors play an important role in determining the
| likelihood that vaccination will protect a person from flu
| illness: 1) characteristics of the person being vaccinated
| (such as their age and health), and 2) how well the vaccines
| "match" the flu viruses spreading in the community. When flu
| vaccines are not well matched to some viruses spreading in
| the community, vaccination may provide little or no
| protection against illness caused by those viruses.
|
| Compare it with something like tetanus vaccines:
|
| > Today, diphtheria and tetanus are at historic low rates in
| the United States. No one has ever studied the efficacy of
| tetanus toxoid and diphtheria toxoid in a vaccine trial.
| However, experts infer efficacy from protective antitoxin
| levels. A complete vaccine series has a clinical efficacy of
| virtually 100% for tetanus and 97% for diphtheria.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/dtap-tdap-td/hcp/about-
| vacc...
|
| It's not crazy to behave differently around something with
| 40-60% efficacy and something with 97-100% efficacy.
| carbocation wrote:
| There is steelmanning an argument, and then there is
| completely changing it.
|
| There is a world of difference between having your
| healthcare provider tell you "the flu vaccine has to be
| made in advance and often targets the wrong strain, so can
| therefore be ineffective even the majority of the time" vs
| calling the vaccine putting "junk in [your] body".
| vasco wrote:
| I'm not sure what was so wrong about the reply, the
| person I replied to said it should be a fireable offense
| to "not believe in the efficacy of vaccines" but the
| specific vaccines they were talking about have around
| 40-60% efficacy vs 97%+ for other types. Maybe I'd agree
| that they could be fired / reprimanded for addressing
| such topics without more rigor (and not call them junk),
| but the specific point I addressed I think wasn't
| "changing the point".
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Words matter. If you tell an unsophisticated healthcare
| consumer a vaccine is junk, you should be fired. If you
| provide efficacy around different types or classes of
| vaccines and allow the healthcare consumer to make an
| informed decision, that is reasonable. It is about the
| information delivered and its delivery in significant
| matters.
|
| Tangentially, there is no value in arguing with
| antivaxxers or conspiracy theorists. You might as well
| attempt to talk them out of their religion. Effort better
| spent elsewhere. Regardless, informed consent must be
| mandatory in a healthcare or medical setting, so the
| patient can make a choice with all available information.
| I am not arguing choice in this subthread. I'm also not
| willing to argue vaccine safety data or statistics.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not crazy to behave differently around something with
| 40-60% efficacy and something with 97-100% efficacy_
|
| Why is 50% less flu not a good thing?
|
| This is like the sterilising argument about the Covid
| vaccine. It's somehow damning for the Covid jab but not for
| polio.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Is it logical to assume all vaccines are equally well-made,
| safe and effective? By calling something a "vaccine" do we
| elevate it above all reproach?
| thinkcontext wrote:
| The remarks about "junk in my body" is a huge red flag.
| That's blatantly unprofessional.
| TheBlight wrote:
| It lacks tack, IMO, but maybe there's a reason for their
| comment. Doesn't seem like it hurts to ask someone why
| they have their particular opinion vs. knee-jerk bucket
| them into a stereotype we have imagined and completely
| dismiss them.
| Ekaros wrote:
| So the Covid vaccines were sterilising and not single person
| who got it got the Covid? If you believe that you should be
| banned from participating in society in my mind.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _So the Covid vaccines were sterilising and not single
| person who got it got the Covid?_
|
| Per the article, sterilisation and total efficacy is not
| even true for the polio vaccines.
|
| Could you imagine the histrionics we'd be facing if our
| modern vaccines resembled the live polio vaccine, _i.e._
| the one that's actually sterilising?
| o11c wrote:
| Also, when the CIA doesn't ruin everything.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| > On May 2, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that the
| US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had located and killed
| Osama Bin Laden. The agency organised a fake hepatitis
| vaccination campaign in Abottabad, Pakistan, in a bid to
| obtain DNA from the children of Bin Laden, to confirm the
| presence of the family in a compound and sanction the rollout
| of a risky and extensive operation. Release of this
| information has had a disastrous effect on worldwide
| eradication of infectious diseases, especially polio.
|
| > On May 16, 2014, the White House announced that the CIA
| will no longer use vaccination programmes as a cover for
| espionage. The news comes in the wake of a series of militant
| attacks on polio vaccination workers in Pakistan, with
| legitimate health-care workers targeted as being US spies.
| The attacks have forced organisations such as the UN to
| suspend polio vaccination efforts in Pakistan, and have
| severely hampered anti-polio efforts, with parents refusing
| to have their children vaccinated. News of the vaccination
| programme led to a banning of vaccination in areas controlled
| by the Pakistan Taliban, and added to existing scepticism
| surrounding the sincerity of public health efforts by the
| international health community.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-
| vacci...
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6.
| ..
| danans wrote:
| > News of the vaccination programme led to a banning of
| vaccination in areas controlled by the Pakistan Taliban,
| and added to existing scepticism surrounding the sincerity
| of public health efforts by the international health
| community.
|
| If I recall correctly, the conspiracy theory that emerged
| was that vaccines were secretly being used to render the
| people sterile.
|
| It is interesting how 8 years later nearly the same line of
| thinking took hold in the West (albeit with claim of
| injected mind control chips) amid anti-vaxxers.
| krapp wrote:
| >It is interesting how 8 years later nearly the same line
| of thinking took hold in the West (albeit with claim of
| injected mind control chips) amid anti-vaxxers.
|
| That line of thinking always existed in the West, among
| the "Mark of the Beast" set. The interesting thing is the
| degree to which it, and conspiratorial politics in
| general, became so normalized in such a short time. Also
| how the anti-vax movement switched from a generally
| leftist ideology to being captured by right-wing identity
| politics.
| starcraft2wol wrote:
| The parties have realigned around populism.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Interesting how many people realigned their values
| instead of changing their party loyalty.
| starcraft2wol wrote:
| Indeed, although some of the same groups still feel
| supported but just not for the same reasons as before.
| Kye wrote:
| The actual program of sterilizing indigenous people and
| experimenting on black people in the US sure didn't help.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterilization_of_Native_Ame
| ric...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
|
| Notions of conspiracy form easily when reality provides
| so much material.
| vGPU wrote:
| Considering the United States forcefully sterilized some
| 70,000 people, and that there is an ongoing investigation
| over nonconsensual sterilization procedures being
| performed by the government _three years ago_ , your
| handwaving over "conspiracy theorists" is pointless.
|
| After all, it isn't like the government has a long
| history of eugenics, forcefully drugging people for weeks
| at a time with combinations of LSD, barbiturates, and
| other fun stuff, right?
|
| Our government would never do that.
| danans wrote:
| > Considering the United States forcefully sterilized
| some 70,000 people, and that there is an ongoing
| investigation over nonconsensual sterilization procedures
| being performed by the government three years ago
|
| Context is everything. The US government did that in the
| context of their genocidal war against indigenous
| peoples. There were fully transparent laws on the books
| that rewarded people for murdering native populations. No
| conspiracy needed.
|
| As for your claim from 3 years ago, you've thrown out an
| allegation without providing any evidence. Involuntary
| sterilizations likely do occur, but that's far from an
| indication of a systemic government conspiracy.
|
| The context of COVID vaccines was a global pandemic, not
| a genocide.
|
| Also, nobody has shown up at the hospital yet to discover
| that their ailments were caused by a malfunctioning mind
| control chip delivered in a vaccine. Defect rates for
| such a "chip" if it existed would not be that low.
| kian wrote:
| "Three generations of imbeciles is enough" doesn't ring a
| bell for you, eh? Those who don't read history...
| vGPU wrote:
| > Of the 7,600 women who were sterilized by the state
| between the years of 1933 and 1973, about 5,000 were
| African American.
|
| Stop lying. You come in with a false faith argument and
| can't be bothered to research elementary facts.
| bhk wrote:
| One thing that boosts conspiracy theories is the
| existence of conspiracy agencies in the government.
| HorizonXP wrote:
| Yeah I remember hearing about this and being similarly
| appalled. I get it. The US really wanted to kill Bin Laden.
| But the manner in which they did it is sickening.
|
| The ends cannot justify the means.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > The ends cannot justify the means.
|
| Oh they absolutely can in an utilitarian sense. But a
| basic utilitarian argument would tell that jeopardizing
| an entire region's vaccine rollout program to get revenge
| on some asshole already living the rest of his life out
| of a hole was not worth it.
| NateEag wrote:
| And any utilitarian thinker who wanted to do the op would
| tell you that they weren't going to get caught, so that
| outcome won't be relevant to their calculus.
|
| Is that good reasoning? No.
|
| Is it what some humans will do? Yes.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Given she's a health care professional I'd probably follow up
| with her for more of her reasoning. Has she seen it fail
| clinically? Is she aware of any adverse side-effects? Is it an
| issue with this specific brand?
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Health care professional covers a huge range of people. This
| is not in any way meant to dismiss the incredible hard work
| that these people do, but health care is a notoriously low
| paid profession and many people have little to no
| qualifications. If you are assuming the "health care
| professional" equates to informed and well trained then I
| have a bridge that you might be interested in...
| vGPU wrote:
| > health care is a notoriously low paid profession
|
| Where is that, exactly? Because it certainly isn't in the
| US.
| dartos wrote:
| It depends where in healthcare.
|
| Geriatric nurses tend to not get paid well, but resident
| nurses in hospitals do.
|
| It's a wide field.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Surgeons and specialists are high paid. Regular
| physicians not so much. Nurses are not at all highly
| paid.
| vGPU wrote:
| As a nurse I make $100/hr.
|
| Try again.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| You must be in California.. in many states, RNs are
| making more like $15/hr and BSNs closer to $20-$25/hr.
| vGPU wrote:
| No, I'm not. Nor am I in any of the other high paying
| states you might name.
| nradov wrote:
| Median annual wage for a Registered Nurse in the US is
| $81K. That is way higher than the national average worker
| income of only $54K.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291141.htm
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| In the UK nurses appear to start around PS22K
| https://www.nurses.co.uk/careers-hub/nursing-pay-guide/
| TheBlight wrote:
| Every profession has a spectrum of quality of worker. Any
| health care professional is more experienced than me. What
| does it hurt to follow-up for clarity? Her rationale may be
| completely unconvincing and that's fine I can then ignore
| it. Or she might tell me something interesting I can keep
| in mind and see if it gets corroborated by other sources.
| Izkata wrote:
| > Has she seen it fail clinically?
|
| Flu vaccine efficacy has been <50% for over a decade. Usually
| it floats around 30-40%. So even by the official numbers, it
| doesn't do a lot for groups not really at risk.
|
| This is not a surprise: The yearly shots are for a subset of
| flus, created in the spring/summer for the strains they think
| will be most prevalent in the fall.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| That did not happen. Uff tiresome to read the conspiracy crap
| on vaccine usage, all of a sudden even nurses are anti-vaxxers
| (or whatever rage inducing crap gets comment votes these days).
| I am stating the comment is for internet points only and never
| happened and Id bet money on it.
| Kiro wrote:
| > politically weaponized by AI
|
| What is this referring to?
| thinkcontext wrote:
| You should report the nurse. They could be doing real damage to
| community health.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I would report her to the responsible in the hospital and to
| the regulatory agency in your country.
|
| I did it twice during the pandemic. In one case it was someone
| I trusted for many years.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| This comment is solely to collect internet points. Never
| happened. Id be money on it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| My partner works with a lot of nurses and some of them say
| things that are this uninformed.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| I've done pro vaccine advocacy work like testifying as a
| parent at bill hearings. The anti vaccination folks
| testifying include nurses and will be very loud about that
| fact. We've also had problems where a nurse doing pre natal
| classes turned put to be anti vaccine.
| syedkarim wrote:
| Was this a registered nurse (4-year nursing degree)?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Maybe she was confused with Tamiflu which only works when
| administered no more than 48 hours after onset of symptoms, at
| which point there can be no certainty it's an influenza
| infection at all without the expense of testing.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Calling it a vaccine (like COVID vaccine) is a problem IMO
|
| Non-immunizing treatments should not be called vaccines, the
| annual flu shot should not be considered a vaccine, nor should
| the mRNA COVID "vaccine", for which they had to change the very
| definition of what a vaccine is to even include it for legal
| purposes.
|
| For the flu shot it is a crap shot, as there are soo many flu
| variants annually they make a best guess as to which one(s)
| will likely because prominent based on trends and package them
| up, often they are correct sometimes they are not...
|
| For more traditional vaccines like Polio and other long term
| immunizing vaccines society ends up suffering because of the
| inclusion of these short term annual or less treatments and
| over all is a net negative
|
| As to " politically weaponized by AI and social media
| algorithms" it was more than AI and Social media that made
| these things political, it was the political branches of
| government that made it so by mandates and rhetoric that pitted
| people against each other. Attempting to exile people that even
| questioned their government masters... That is what made it
| political.
| samatman wrote:
| The problem is that they are vaccines, "vaccine" doesn't mean
| what you think.
|
| The best vaccines are sterilizing, meaning that they prevent
| disease and transmission often enough that very high rates of
| vaccination extirpate the virus.
|
| It might be useful for discussion purposes if "vaccine" meant
| "sterilizing vaccine" and vaccines which don't work as well
| had some other name, but that's not how it works.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>"vaccine" doesn't mean what you think.
|
| yes they keep changing the definition to include more and
| more things legally as "vaccines" are shielded from any
| liability so you can not sue big pharma if they injury with
| their "vaccine"
|
| this however does not change the fact that the way the law
| (and you) use the term is very very very different than
| what the ordinary person thinks and understands a vaccine
| to be
|
| When this person then discovers that the government uses a
| different (your) "correct" definition to include things
| they traditionally would not think of as a vaccine this
| erodes trust in the entire system.
|
| This was made very very clear with COVID.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Nobody changed any definitions - laymen started becoming
| interested in the topic due to obvious reasons so the CDC
| and others clarified some publicly facing websites but
| nobody involved was remotely confused about the vaccines.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Non-immunizing treatments should not be called vaccines_
|
| What do you consider immunizing?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > it was more than AI and Social media that made these things
| political, it was the political branches of government that
| made it so by mandates and rhetoric that pitted people
| against each other
|
| But social media did wonders at spreading & amplifying that
| message, since pitting people against each other in endless
| arguments generates lots of "engagement".
| jfengel wrote:
| If it doesn't contain cowpox it's not a vaccine. Definitions
| are always strictly limited to their first use, and must be
| studiously maintained or we'll destroy the English language.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > I just had a nurse tell me yesterday to not take the flu
| vaccine because she said it doesn't prevent flu
|
| The flu vaccine is notoriously kinda like shooting in the dark
| because it's hard to predict which strain will dominate the
| winter.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The flu vaccine has upwards of a 30% reduction in all cause
| mortality in at-risk populations. It's insanely effective
| even when the chosen variants aren't ideal. People are so
| ridiculous, they'll get a flu vaccine, contract a flu that
| makes them pretty sick and then decide that the vaccine
| didn't work rather than realizing it did work and saved them
| from a much worse illness.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| https://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/
| tomohawk wrote:
| From the article, wild polio cases have been less than 50 per
| year for the past 3 years, but vaccine derived cases have been
| 300 - 900 per year. The details in the article as to why this is
| are interesting and alarming.
|
| It just shows that a lot can go wrong in this process and good
| intentions are not enough.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Well, during the 80's there were 300,000 to 400,000 cases
| worldwide per year[1], so I have a hard time seeing how this is
| bad thing.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/polio
| User23 wrote:
| It's a bad thing for the hundreds of children crippled every
| year. Eradication means those vaccine injuries go away. The
| hundreds of persons a year who would otherwise be crippled
| see it as a very good thing I expect.
|
| Edit: to all you religious fanatics who can't stand the idea
| that your Science Sacrament can ever be harmful, the oral
| Poliovirus vaccine contains live virus and very much can and
| does cause polio in the persons receiving it in some cases.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _those vaccine injuries_
|
| If you're vaccinated against polio, the vaccine-derived
| virus can't harm you. The people being injured are by and
| large the unvaccinated.
| gwervc wrote:
| Circular logic. Vaccines can injure people, it's a fact.
| I've seen it first hand with a relative of mine get an
| hepatitis from a vaccine. Trying to silent that just
| foster conspiracy theories, because once trust is lost
| it's hard to rebuild. So better not lose it by hiding
| scientific and medical facts.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Vaccines can injure people_
|
| Nobody said otherwise.
|
| What's being contested is the framing of those who are
| getting vaccine-derived polio as vaccine injured. They're
| not. They're side effects of the sterilizing polio
| vaccine. If they were vaccinated, they wouldn't have been
| injured.
|
| > _silent that just foster conspiracy theories, because
| once trust is lost it 's hard to rebuild_
|
| Nobody is silencing anyone. We're in an era of the
| opposite of silencing.
|
| It's increasingly clear there is a psychographic or
| political profile that will not get vaccinated, facts be
| damned. I don't think they should be forced to. But they
| shouldn't be allowed into the healthcare profession, and
| they should be restricted from public spaces in
| healthcare crises. (Countries should also be free to
| restrict them from entry.)
| samatman wrote:
| This is wrong even on its own logic, which is
| circular/bad.
|
| Someone who gets polio from an oral polio vaccine _is
| vaccinated_. That 's how they got the infection: from
| vaccination against polio.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Someone who gets polio from an oral polio vaccine is
| vaccinated_
|
| Vaccine-derived polio cases are _not_ in the person who
| got the oral polio vaccine [1].
|
| The vaccine recipients are vaccinated. But they can
| spread that live, attenuated virus to others. If it keeps
| spreading--among the unvaccinated or IPV recipients--it
| can mutate and become dangerous. Eventually, dangerous
| enough to cause polio.
|
| But only to the unvaccinated. The original vaccine
| recipient isn't injured. They got the attenuated virus.
| And nobody vaccinated around them is injured, either.
| It's solely the unvaccinated around them who got the
| monster that virus mutated into.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/11/16/780068006/how-the-
| oral-polio-...
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I agree, it is and would like it to be eradicated. But it's
| hard to argue that the vaccines are worse than no vaccines,
| right? Do you believe the conditions would get better or
| worse if we stopped vaccinating? I can see polio returning
| to its previous numbers, and to me, that's objectively
| worse.
|
| Feels like we're rejecting good because it's not perfect.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _details in the article as to why this is are interesting and
| alarming_
|
| Why is it alarming? The sterilising vaccine produces vaccine-
| derived polioviruses. The non-sterilising type does not.
|
| First you sterilise, then switch to non-sterilising as the wild
| type is eradicated. It's a precedented playbook which makes it
| the opposite of alarming.
| dopylitty wrote:
| Polio virus isn't close to eradication and people who work on it
| are coming to the conclusion that it probably never will be
| unless a different sort of vaccine is created. [0]
|
| Polio the disease caused by polio virus could be eradicated with
| widespread and continuous vaccination.
|
| The problem is the current vaccine used in most places around the
| world is an attenuated live virus vaccine.
|
| It gives the recipient immunity by infecting them with a strain
| that doesn't cause disease in most people but is still able to
| replicate in the gut and spread to others and eventually reverts
| to being able to cause disease. So anyone who isn't vaccinated
| can still get the reverted vaccine strain. The most common cause
| of polio outbreaks now is the vaccine strain.
|
| In rich countries they use an inactivated vaccine that works
| great against disease and can't become virulent but is expensive,
| requires more infrastructure for delivery (needles etc), and
| doesn't give enough immunity to prevent spreading the virus if
| infected.
|
| There are possible solutions to all of these problems but they
| require research and the eradication campaigners are making
| research more and more difficult by restricting which labs can
| work on polio research.
|
| The podcast TWiV is hosted by the guy who first figured out the
| Polio virus genome and they frequently discuss it. The episode
| below is about a new attenuated vaccine that was recently created
| with hopes of not reverting but even it has reverted in some
| small number of cases.
|
| 0: https://asm.org/podcasts/twiv/episodes/driven-to-
| immunodistr...
| readams wrote:
| All of that, and the strategies used to combat it (including a
| better oral vaccine), are described in detail in the article.
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| How dare you assume someone who didn't read the article and
| then unknowingly posted contents from the article didn't read
| the article lol
| HorizonXP wrote:
| If it helps with the pain of downvotes, I appreciated your
| sarcasm.
| dopylitty wrote:
| Both the headline and the article imply that eradication is
| possible. Being "on the brink" even makes it sound
| inevitable. But eradicating the virus probably isn't possible
| and I think it's important for people who only read headlines
| and comments to understand that and why it's the case.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _eradicating the virus probably isn 't possible_
|
| Every domains expert disagrees. That most people get the
| non-sterilizing IPV is not a secret. Switching from the
| sterilizing, but virus-producing OPV to the non-
| sterilizing, but non-spreading (and more expensive) IPV is
| a well-run playbook.
|
| Yes, it means when an unvaccinated nutter from Brooklyn
| gets polio in Europe [1] that it spreads--inefficiently and
| without further consequence--through the vaccinated
| population. But those are edge cases which are diminishing
| in frequency as we switch from OPV to IPV on the periphery.
|
| First we eradicate the wild type. Then we eradicate the
| weaker vaccine-derived virus. It's a simple, precedented
| and achievable playbook. All we have to do is keep
| vaccinating (and keep our poop water away from our drinking
| water).
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/health/new-york-
| polio/index.h...
| HorizonXP wrote:
| Apt. Took the kids for vaccinations this morning and was telling
| kiddo last night about how amazing vaccines are and how polio
| doesn't exist anymore because of it. Sounds like I was
| technically wrong, but practically right.
|
| I also told him how amazing it is that when I was his age, I had
| the chickenpox, but that he will never get it because they
| developed a vaccine for it.
|
| None of this helped him today with not freaking out over getting
| a shot, but hey, I tried and I made it clear why I had to hold
| him down. Sometimes, irrational fears win. We'll get there, he's
| just a kid.
| gr2m wrote:
| My kids are into superheros. We explained how vaccines are
| basically super powers! Now they are sad when they go to the
| doctor and don't get one they also get all their friends and
| class mates pumped about vaccines which I take as a win
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| In a real sense, vaccinations _are_ superpowers. Immunity
| from pestilence was historically taken, across cultures and
| for obvious reasons, as signs of divine influence.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| I had no idea there was a chicken pox vaccine. That's awesome.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Only one human disease has so far been declared eradicated:
| smallpox_
|
| I was reading a post by someone, a few years ago, lamenting that
| we had "killed" a virus.
|
| I am not 100% sure they were being serious, but they gave every
| indication that they were.
|
| In any case, I'm sure that some bioweapons lab, somewhere (like,
| maybe, in Frederick, MD) has samples of the virus, "just in case
| it comes back."
| nolok wrote:
| Don't need to wonder, the US and Russian (Soviet at the time)
| have made it public that they keep samples of smallpox.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_debat...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm old enough to have a smallpox vaccination scar on my arm.
| dghughes wrote:
| I never got one since the doctor didn't like the look of a
| birthmark on my arm. I don't have that puffy scar. My
| sister got one though.
|
| Damn I just though I could have been a left arm bicep
| model.
| ls612 wrote:
| Ostensibly this serves a purpose beyond the MAD incentive,
| having stocks of the virus on hand makes manufacturing the
| old style smallpox vaccine easier should the need ever arise
| in the future. As we saw with monkeypox last year there is
| much more limited capacity for more modern pox vaccines due
| to the more advanced manufacturing process and limited
| demand.
| naravara wrote:
| Someday soon we'll just be able to sequence its genome and
| reconstruct it without needing to keep samples alive (and
| no longer have the risk with all the maintenance and
| security protocols that will entail).
|
| Of course however we store that genomic code had better be
| on physical media in a sealed vault that isn't even within
| spitting distance of anything with an internet connection.
| Gare wrote:
| https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/a-biotech-firm-made-a-
| smallp...
| kbenson wrote:
| Yeah, as you allude to in your parting sentence, I'm not
| sure if this idea makes me more or less secure. Chance
| for accidental infection at the storage facility goes way
| down, but should the sequence ever leak to the internet
| chance for accidental infection from some stupid amateur
| biohacker goes _way_ up in my opinion, and that 's before
| we get to purposeful infection.
|
| If it's going to be preserved, I think I'm happier with
| it not being digital and stored in highly secured areas
| by professionals, but perhaps the threat model in my head
| isn't accurate enough.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Someday soon we'll just be able to sequence its genome
| and reconstruct it without needing to keep samples alive
|
| That's already been done, I think.
| vgel wrote:
| Oh, we already sequenced it awhile back. As for physical
| media, that's not exactly what happened... https://www.nc
| bi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NC_001611.1?report=fast...
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Well, there are still 12 other viruses in the genus (including
| one newly discovered in 2015 and the monkeypox outbreak of
| 2022-2023) so I think we are still good on source genetic
| material. Still possible for one of those species to evolve to
| be more virulent and deadly...
| samatman wrote:
| Many variations of the full genome are available online, and
| current technology makes it feasible to synthesize de novo.
|
| Just in case you didn't have enough things to worry about!
| bushbaba wrote:
| Keeping samples is honestly a good thing as it allows for
| further research into the virus should it ever mutate and come
| back.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The sacredness of every species is a fundamental belief for
| many people!
| verisimi wrote:
| Banning chemicals from food, eg ddt, surely helps.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Banning chemicals from food, eg ddt, surely helps_
|
| No?
| huytersd wrote:
| The hell are you talking about. This is a viral infection.
| verisimi wrote:
| What do you think I'm talking about? I would be more clear, I
| could say more, but I'm already riding a line around here.
|
| All I'd say is: we are told this or that, viral infection,
| vaccines, etc... but how does one confirm any of it? Must one
| take pharmaceutical companies or their related organisations
| (WHO, Nature) at their word?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how does one confirm any of it? Must one take
| pharmaceutical companies or their related organisations
| (WHO, Nature) at their word?_
|
| No. But it takes some effort.
| slackfan wrote:
| We've been on the brink of eradicating polio for something like
| 60 years.
|
| And then vaccine manufacturers across the world fuck up and cause
| an outbreak.
|
| This is one of those cases that I have no sympathy for the hype
| piece, no sympathy for "the science", or the pharma companies
| making bank off of keeping this thing rolling. Only sympathy goes
| out to the people hurt by polio and human idiocy.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _then vaccine manufacturers across the world fuck up and
| cause an outbreak_
|
| What?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| In recent decades, infection from vaccines based on the live
| virus, instead of the killed virus, has been a primary source
| of outbreaks. The usual mechanism: Someone who was never
| vaccinated changes the diaper of a child who has gotten the
| live vaccine, gets exposed, gets sick.
|
| Many years ago on _Sixty Minutes_ , an elderly man who
| changed the diaper for his grandchild caught it and diagnosis
| and treatment was delayed because the doctor literally said
| something like "Decades ago, I would say this was polio. You
| have all the symptoms." and didn't consider that was possible
| because "we've eradicated it."
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| How is that vaccine manufacturers fucking up? Also, this is
| literally what this article is about.
|
| (And we use the non-sterilising, non-virus containing non-
| polio-producing IPV in the United States. So the
| unvaccinated can change babies' diapers without fear.)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm not suggesting it is. But "What?" is hardly a
| rebuttal a la "That's not a fuck up." So I explained what
| I think the OP likely is referring to because you sounded
| to me like you had no idea what they meant.
| Izkata wrote:
| > (And we use the non-sterilising, non-virus containing
| non-polio-producing IPV in the United States. So the
| unvaccinated can change babies' diapers without fear.)
|
| Not necessarily. All those migrants coming into the
| country? Mostly they got the cheaper OPV vaccine, if they
| got any. There was a case of it last year in New York:
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/vaccine-
| derived-p...
| flatline wrote:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/polio-
| era...
| chihuahua wrote:
| I'm not sure what exactly GP is referencing, but maybe it's
| the rare cases when the weakened virus in OPV mutates and
| someone excretes infectious, vaccine-derived poliovirus. I
| still don't see how that's the fault of the vaccine
| providers, since it's due to mutation and not a mistake in
| production of the vaccine, and OPV is a reasonable thing to
| use and certainly better than doing nothing.
| cyberax wrote:
| DON'T JINX IT!!!
|
| I've been visiting https://polioeradication.org/ over the years,
| and every time I get my hopes high, discover more polio cases or
| polio-positive samples are discovered :(
|
| They have a regularly updates summary:
| https://polioeradication.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/week...
|
| And the most recent case was on Oct 15 in Pakistan.
| mcstafford wrote:
| I suspect science has had more to do with the reduction than
| superstitions like jinxes.
| bendbro wrote:
| I pray to god people let go of their superstitions.
| kbenson wrote:
| Some people play lip service to superstitions like this as a
| form of fun or a way to communicate feelings on a topic, and
| not necessarily because they believe the superstitions.
|
| For example, if I followed up a statement with "knock on
| wood" it wouldn't be because I believe it helps, or expect
| anyone to actually take that physical act (I probably won't
| unless to emphasize my feeling more), it's to convey I hope
| something succeeds or does not fail in a way that provides a
| lot of context in a small amount of words.
| cyberax wrote:
| Jinxing means you hat people might consider the problem
| solved and pay less attention to it.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Their imagined future resurgence scenario -- someone in a lab
| gets infected, then travels abroad -- highlights one of the
| reasons developed countries need to help less developed
| countries: Out of enlightened self interest, not "charity" nor
| "the goodness of their hearts."
|
| We currently are de facto breeding antibiotic resistant
| infections in places without adequate sanitation or water
| infrastructure and you can go from pretty much anywhere on the
| planet to pretty much anywhere else these days in 24 hours or
| less. When people from developed countries get sick while
| someplace else, they are often medevaced out to get them good
| care in a modern facility, thereby potentially exposing people in
| their country to whatever they have.
|
| We need to do a better job of providing basics like adequate
| water infrastructure worldwide if we want to be free from such
| diseases in our cushy developed countries.
| genman wrote:
| We must collectively understand the reason why some countries
| stay "developing". The reason is very simple - the rate of
| population growth exceeds the rate of infrastructure
| development by large margin. You can make large investments and
| build everything for 1 million people, but after two decades
| there are now 2 million people and then 4 and then 8. Africa
| started out with 200 million people After the WW2 period. In
| the beginning of this century there were around 800 people. Now
| there are 1.5 billion people. The rate of population growth is
| just unbearable. And Africa is here just an example. The same
| problem affects also India and other places.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Malawi is one of the countries mentioned in this article as a
| source of polio outbreaks. A famous singer has invested
| millions in hospitals there and they still lack adequate
| water infrastructure. I imagine their post operative stats
| are probably not great. Getting surgery in a modern hospital
| and going home to inadequate clean water and inadequate
| nutrition likely actively fosters post operative infections.
|
| Population growth tends to stop with adequate education plus
| reproductive rights for women. Development isn't just about
| infrastructure. It's also about culture, education,
| developing the local population so they can sustain a more
| developed society.
|
| My recollection: water.org was started by a man who went to
| Africa with a medical charity, concluded that a lot of the
| health issues they were treating were directly caused by lack
| of clean water, decided _we should fix that._
|
| We already invest in other countries, just not necessarily
| wisely. Advanced surgery being brought to primitive
| conditions is more about people wanting to feel heroic than
| about really improving things.
| BariumBlue wrote:
| The Malthusian argument is incorrect and I disagree with the
| concept of physical infrastructure being the end-all-be-all.
| Japan, South Korea, Germany, as well as the USSR had
| explosive growth after WW2 not because they had massive
| existing infrastructure, but because of social systems &
| processes that enable a reliable, stable, productive society.
|
| If the societies are fragile (vulnerable to drought, markets,
| or violence), or rotting (corruption, superstition,
| tribalism), even great infrastructure can make for subpar
| growth.
|
| An analogy I always think of are Wadis (dry riverbeds); in
| very dry places with little rainfall (like Hudaydah in Yemen
| / Saudi Arabia), when it DOES rain, the dry dirt riverbeds
| don't soak up any water and transport it all out in flash
| floods - but it IS possible (and has been done) to invest in
| the land's ability to hold that water rather than purge it.
| Similarly, in a "always-developing" society, there'd have to
| be a investment in the people to ensure they can benefit from
| solutions to their issues.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| I don't think they're making a Malthusian argument. It's
| about the difference in the rate of change or two
| variables, not the absolute carrying capacity of a set of
| resources as in the Malthusian argument.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Although some might be interpreting the previous poster as
| having some bad motives for saying what they're saying, it
| does seem to be objectively true that population growth in
| developing countries is absolutely huge. If the population
| level had remained the same as 50 years ago the level of
| development would be much higher. But of course the
| population growth rate is declining so standards of living
| should hopefully start to catch up.
| genman wrote:
| Yes and no. This is my argument indeed that if the
| population growth stayed lower then a lot more people would
| have been able to rise above the poverty level (or even
| much higher).
|
| UN prediction for Africa is that they fall close to the
| reproduction threshold for the end of century. Until that
| the poverty trap will continue. It also means that by that
| time now 4 billion people require their needs satisfied
| instead.
|
| But the population growth has been huge and exponential.
| From 200 million to 4 billion in 150 years is an incredible
| amount of growth.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| That's not the reason that nations stay "developing". Nations
| stay "developing" due to extractive economic and political
| institutions that prevent economic growth. Great book about
| the topic by economist Daron Acemoglu ("Why nations fail").
|
| The reason that countries that have high population growth
| tend to be poor is because when a country gets rich its
| people have fewer children. The high fertility rate does not
| cause the poverty, instead its the other way around: the
| poverty causes the high fertility rate.
| genman wrote:
| I can't agree with this unfortunately. While getting rich
| further lowers the fertility rate then there is a certain
| threshold that must be first exceeded to get rich
| (relatively speaking of course).
|
| There must be a feedback loop that incentivizes to get
| better education, to get better productivity to get richer.
| Raising a child is expensive, raising a highly educated
| child is very expensive. If you have 8 children then you
| can barely feed them unless you are very rich indeed. Even
| if you manage to provide good education for few of your
| children then the larger part of them continues the poverty
| loop. Breaking out of poverty requires breaking of this
| loop.
|
| It should be very obvious - if your economy grows 5% but
| your population grows 10% then everybody is getting poorer
| as the growth per capita is negative. The same applies for
| everything, education, sanitation, food production. If you
| capacity to provide any of them is lower than the
| population growth then the amount of the poor continues to
| increase.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| And providing more basics, like improved agriculture,
| education and essential infrastructure like clean water
| access, is a better means to combat that issue than
| sending in surgeons to play hero and have a feel-good
| moment without making any real difference in the root
| causes that led to someone needing surgery.
| genman wrote:
| Current problem in Africa is that their capacity to
| produce food, while it is increasing relatively fast,
| doesn't increase enough to keep up with the population
| growth. This is why Russia can play with the grain
| shortage to begin with.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I don't think we really disagree per se. Not sure why you
| seem so adversarial.
|
| And Russia is probably not playing with the grain
| shortage. They had an agreement in place to let the
| country they are at war with sell grain because it's so
| critical.
|
| It's probably more complicated than that and a tangent.
| genman wrote:
| No, I don't think that I provided a counter argument but
| rather a supplementary one. Population growth rate is a
| huge problem that hinders capacity to provide enough aid.
|
| Russia certainly used the risk of hunger as a weapon to
| increase political pressure on Ukraine on the
| international level. Fortunately that attempt didn't play
| out and Russia was instead pressurized to make
| concessions. But they stopped the agreement the same
| moment they thought that it is not beneficial for them
| anymore. But this is just a side topic and was given as
| an example how the African incapacity to keep up with the
| population growth has wider geopolitical implications.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _why some countries stay "developing". The reason is very
| simple - the rate of population growth exceeds the rate of
| infrastructure development_
|
| Opinions are divided:
| <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8CzlFhc14#t=3m>
| genman wrote:
| Yes, the communist argument - everybody else is at fault
| but not myself. Yet the communist paradise, the 1/6 of all
| the land with incredible riches stayed poor and finally
| collapsed.
| harshalizee wrote:
| Also forgot the part where India and North/West African
| regions were incredibly wealthy in the past and were
| basically strip mined by colonialism. It's been only 50 years
| or so that they're trying to catch up.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| West Africa was never "incredibly wealthy". Yes, before
| Europeans it was part of long-range trading routes with the
| Muslim world, but empires were feudalistic and only a tiny
| elite had access to that trade-related wealth, while the
| vast majority of the population was barely surviving
| through subsistence farming and pastoralism, just like so
| many do today, or hunting and gathering.
| boxed wrote:
| This is the same reason rich people should put a ton of their
| resources into basic science, tech, and health infrastructure.
| mptest wrote:
| And since philanthropic approaches to such aspirations
| demonstrably do not work, we need extremely high taxes on the
| ultra wealthy.
|
| Before the six-seven digit earning engineers here lambast me,
| I'm talking billionaires.
|
| No one intelligent can/has yet looked me in the eye and told
| me earnestly: anyone with a billion + $ would have a single
| degree lower quality of life if their wealth was capped at
| 999 million
|
| If you want empirics google "highest marginal tax rate 1950-
| present" and "infrastructure spending 1950- present".
| weaksauce wrote:
| billionaires existing is an indictment on our greed and
| failures of our systems. nobody needs 1000+ million
| dollars.
| gwd wrote:
| You're confusing _resources they have control over_ with
| _resources for their own personal utilization_. Money is
| power; not to force someone to do what they don 't want
| to do, but to _pay_ them to do what they 're _willing_ to
| do. When capitalism works well, it 's because people who
| made "good" choices with their money-power were rewarded
| with more, and people who made "bad" choices were
| rewarded with less.
|
| Warren Buffet doesn't have an extravagant lifestyle. He's
| been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend our
| economy's resources in part because he's made good
| decisions in the past.
|
| Obviously it doesn't always happen this way; but the
| accumulation of wealth _by itself_ isn 't necessarily
| bad. It's bad when it can be accumulated by ways which
| destroy value for society rather than creating it; and
| it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by doing
| nothing.
| mptest wrote:
| >You're confusing resources they have control over with
| resources for their own personal utilization
|
| I don't know if they're as different as you portray in
| practice. I agree with the notion in theory, which is why
| I distinctly used "wealth" in my original comment and not
| "income".
|
| >He's been entrusted to make decisions about how to spend
| our economy's resources in part because he's made good
| decisions in the past.
|
| Sure, no one is saying don't aspire to a meritocracy when
| considering control of the state's purse strings.
|
| The key to your example and your "accumulation of wealth
| by itself isn't necessarily bad" notion is the reason I
| didn't say "no organization" should have more than 999m.
| I was strictly referring to excess personal accumulation
| of capital. Which harms us all.
|
| Like I said, no one's quality of life is going to get
| worse if personal wealth were capped at 999m, but I can
| think of infinite ways to make a lot of people's quality
| of life better with the money we'd have in such an
| organization of the economy.
|
| >and it's bad when it can continue to be accumulated by
| doing nothing
|
| I don't even know if I agree with this. A state fund that
| earns interest and spends that interest makes sense. I
| think the key is the first case you note where it's bad.
| rpmisms wrote:
| So, the state should control any large enough corporation?
| Or there should be a ban on over $999m in cash? Or should
| the government just not waste the absurd amounts of money
| we already give them?
| mptest wrote:
| >state should control any large enough corporation
|
| Not necessarily, company could be broken down in to
| smaller, become employee owned in some part, could have
| some amount of stock become owned by an infrastructure
| fund or something. There's many ways to skin a cat
| wingworks wrote:
| I'd love for this to work, but in practise I feel the
| owner on the 999m will more likely stop investing in sed
| company when it reaches 999m and spin up a new company or
| some other loophole to get around it. (or if it's
| individual wealth, then they'll use trusts or some of the
| many other options available to them.)
|
| If there are no options, you better believe they'll
| create them soon enough.
| mptest wrote:
| >or some other loophole to get around it. (or if it's
| individual wealth, then they'll use trusts or some of the
| many other options available to them
|
| Completely agree, it will always be a cat and mouse game.
| But it's a worthy aspiration, and I'd argue the reason
| the wealthy have been the cat more than the mouse in the
| relationship with the state is due only to the budget
| disparity between them.
|
| Start to shrink the disparity between the enforcement
| budget (think IRS special forces for the ultra wealthy)
| and the "avoid taxes" budget and the aspiration looks a
| lot more doable.
|
| >owner of the 999m will stop investing
|
| Maybe. Or maybe they'll get better and spending rather
| than hoarding and continuously need to replenish that
| stock.
|
| Even if these "winners" of a more 'social capitalism'
| stopped gracing us with their genius, the surplus of
| wealth in endeavors like free stem schooling for everyone
| (that wants it) would surely make up for that loss??
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Not necessarily, company could be broken down in to
| smaller, become employee owned in some part, could have
| some amount of stock become owned by an infrastructure
| fund or something. There's many ways to skin a cat
|
| If you think taking money from paper billionaires is
| going to make a material difference to the US's $6
| trillion spending each year, can you quantify how much
| are you expecting it to raise?
| mptest wrote:
| You're right that reducing spending, particularly the
| pentagon's blank check and the military budget is going
| to play a larger role but stop reading ahead! I can only
| push leftist politics one point at a time out here!
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| > _And since philanthropic approaches to such aspirations
| demonstrably do not work, we need extremely high taxes on
| the ultra wealthy._
|
| Pretty bold to claim that government intervention post-
| taxes would work better than philanthropic fundations.
| mptest wrote:
| Is it bold? What percentage of all of our modern
| infrastructure is from the benevolence of
| philanthropists?? I am sure it's not zero, but I can't
| imagine it being a majority... But please enlighten me.
| For "billionaires know best what to do with all that
| wealth, they'll take care of us" sounds an awful lot like
| what sbf was preaching.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This reasoning doesn't seem very sound. Infrastructure is
| far too broad, to the point of irrelevance. "Sounds like
| SBF" is also not reasonable.
|
| How about this: the state is bad because it declares war
| and sends people to their deaths. Its projects often go
| astonishingly over budget, corruption is high in many
| countries, and its funding is unreliable, as it's prone
| to not keeping the promises of the people previously in
| charge.
|
| That accurately describes almost every state that ever
| existed. If you have a similar list for all philanthropic
| institutions, that would be a good start in justifying
| your claim that philanthropy doesn't work, so we have to
| take the money and let the bureaucrats handle it.
| mptest wrote:
| >the state is bad because it declares war and sends
| people to their deaths
|
| Wouldn't it make more sense to conclude war is bad,
| rather than states themselves?
|
| >Its projects often go astonishingly over budget,
| corruption is high in many countries, and its funding is
| unreliable, as it's prone to not keeping the promises of
| the people previously in charge
|
| All of this I agree with. But the solution isn't "less
| states" it's... Better states, surely? What am I missing
| here?
|
| My point with the question about where a majority of our
| infrastructure comes from, (roads, schools, hospitals,
| water, electricity and sewage systems to specify as a
| start) the state or the benevolence of philanthropists
| was to demonstrate that there is quite a bit of evidence
| as to what structure is the better steward of societies,
| a bunch of rich guys, or a state with some mandate to do
| right by its constituents.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Alas, spending their untold riches to make the government
| _better_ is not in vogue. Never has been.
|
| Instead, their mission is to gut governments, "burn it all
| down" for the sake of eradicating those cursed regulations,
| in the name of making the government "more efficient". In
| reality it just means "get those pesky bureaucrats out of my
| way of making even more money with immoral, destructive, and
| even illegal ways".
|
| Instead we get "effective altruism" which basically means -
| "my mission is to get as rich as possible in unholy ways, and
| if you are lucky enough to be within the gravity field of the
| pet causes I happen to be a fan of, then you get some money".
|
| You cannot find a worse way of a _civilized_ way of
| distributing money to those in need. It 's ineffective by
| definition.
|
| People need to remind themselves once in a while that the
| world like this already existed. A bunch of feudal lords
| running around, trying to get favors with the king. Most
| people suffered, and rivers of blood were spent to shed that
| kind of system to create, you know, a _civilization_.
|
| So stop worshipping the ultra-rich - they are the most
| destructive anti-civilization force were are dealing with
| right now, unleashing their wrath if they are not adored
| enough, stewing in anger and grievances.
|
| And no, I am not saying Capitalism is bad. Sure, greed is
| good and all that, but running amok and without any
| oversight, it leads to no good.
| claytongulick wrote:
| > stewing in anger and grievances
|
| It seems as if the targets of your ire are not the only
| ones in the stewpot.
| Danjoe4 wrote:
| I mean, I sympathize with the "burn it all down" attitude
| because the (US) government needs to be culled. Education
| costs exploded in the last 50 years because the government
| got involved. Fiscal irresponsibility is the new normal
| because the government will get involved to bail out the
| banks; why not give out credit like candy? Housing costs
| are insane because governments get involved via zoning to
| artificially reduce supply. US military spending today is
| (inflation adjusted) _almost as high as during WW2_.
| Federal government spending is 37% of our annual GDP which
| is almost certainly slowing our economic growth.
|
| Someone needs to take an axe to the US fed. If we reduce
| federal spending by 75%, do you honestly think that would
| be a bad thing?
|
| The US has produced all the innovation and prosperity and
| our government was founded on the principle of "fuck the
| government". Government overgrowth is the problem.
| jona-f wrote:
| You're coming off rather paternalistic to me. At least in my
| circles calling countries "developed" and "less developed" is
| frowned upon. Might even be called racist. People would now
| probably rather call it "privileged" and "less privileged", but
| in my opinion it's the same paternalistic thing.
|
| Why not let others sort out there own problems while you take
| care of your own. Then work together on global problems like
| this one on equal terms.
|
| Also, instead of helping, stopping the exploitation would
| suffice. All this charity and "helping" is a public charade so
| people like you can keep ignorant about what's really going on.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| If you must insult me, the word you are looking for here is
| _maternalistic._
|
| Please and thank you.
| jona-f wrote:
| I did not mean to insult you, i actually tried to make an
| argument. Nor was I looking for maternalistic. That's a
| different thing and i meant the negatively connoted one.
| Also reading again I realize I went too far saying _all_
| the helping, which is an unfortunate generalization,
| surely, being compassionate is a good thing.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm a woman. It's pretty well established that lack of
| rights and education for women is a root cause of high
| birth rates and other negative factors being discussed
| here.
|
| "Paternalistic" implicitly assumes I'm male and that's
| kind of a problem if we are wanting to treat all people
| with respect as a baseline means to make the world a
| better place.
|
| We absolutely shouldn't be interfering in a _colonial_
| sort of fashion, but the reality is that "not
| interfering _at all_ " is not a realistic goal. The only
| way you get that is by not interacting at all and that
| amounts to calling for not trading with poorer countries
| which is an excellent means to ensure they remain poor
| and can't develop.
|
| The reality is we already do interfere and often in ways
| that make the people going in to "help" feel good more
| than _really helping._ Real help does, in fact (as you
| suggested), require one to have some kind of baseline
| respect for people that many people lack generally.
|
| I will suggest that if you think _maternalistic_ has
| positive connotations but _paternalistic_ has negative,
| you should spend some time examining your implicit
| assumptions about men, women, parenting roles, etc and
| wonder exactly why you think the female-coded version of
| that word is not negative but the male-coded version is.
|
| FWIW: I'm an environmental studies major (as background
| for wanting to do urban planning) and I'm far from
| _ignorant_. If you weren 't intending to insult me,
| leading with calling me paternalistic and ending with
| saying "...so people like you can keep ignorant..."
| seriously fails to achieve the stated intentions.
| codezero wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they were using the term to refer to the
| concept of paternalism:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternalism
|
| not as a gendered term targeted at you.
| constantly wrote:
| Just a heads up: paternalism or being paternalistic is a
| concept unrelated to the user's gender. It means
| advocating for action that limits a groups freedom or
| autonomy. Maternalism has a different meaning. You being
| one gender or another has no bearing on whether it was
| the correct word for the argument. It wasn't quite the
| right word, condescending would probably have been better
| given the context of their phrases.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Thank you. I stand by my opinion that gender issues are a
| factor in global poverty, so someone insisting the cure
| for such is to respect people and not think you know
| what's best for them should find gender-neutral terms to
| make that point in line with their stated values or at
| least check the gender of the individual they are
| attacking and insulting (in violation of HN guidelines)
| and use gender appropriate insults if they insist on
| getting personal.
| constantly wrote:
| Totally agree with your statement that gender issues are
| a factor in global economics, and that we should strive
| to use gender-neutral phrasing whenever practical.
| Danjoe4 wrote:
| The euphemisms are insufferable
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm actually not someone big on insisting we say
| "humankind" instead of "mankind" or similar. I did check
| the link talking about _paternalism_ and I can understand
| where the practice of using the word that way comes from,
| but it implicitly smears _fatherly_ behavior and
| implicitly reinforces an assumption that men have
| political and economic power and women don 't.
|
| Gendered language is kind of a thorny issue for the
| English language. Not all languages are like English.
| Japanese and Farsi default to gender-neutral pronouns and
| cultures that default to calling people by their family
| name instead of their given name also sidestep a lot of
| these issues.
|
| The US had a women-only baseball league during World War
| II and someone said (or somewhere I read) that it was the
| era of _radio_ broadcasts and baseball defaults to
| referring to players by their last names, so listening to
| a game of baseball with women-only was experientially
| nearly identical to listening to men 's baseball:
|
| "And Smith is up to bat and knocks it out of the park for
| a home run, winning the game!"
|
| It's probably a fiercely fought battle with English
| because it's the default lingua franca for the world and
| doesn't play well with a lot of cultures that feel forced
| to use it. Various proposals for fixing it come from
| interest groups rather than arising naturally in an
| _emergent_ fashion and strike people as unnatural, top-
| down solutions to a problem they personally may not have,
| so see no reason to pursue.
|
| /off-topic tangent, oops, because linguistics and social
| issues are both interests of mine
| theduder99 wrote:
| stop misgendering me!!!
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Nah, my personal policy is to ignore that in most cases.
| If you aren't insulting me while lecturing me that _the
| cure for what ails this world is genuine respect for
| others_ , I generally interpret that as "DoreenMichele
| fits in with this overwhelmingly male forum and her
| behavior doesn't just scream _I 'm a woman._"
|
| You would know that if you read my blogs. I wrote a long
| and detailed blog post about that once.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| "Why not let others sort out there own problems while you
| take care of your own."
|
| Literally the entire point of the comment you were replying
| to was to explain why you help others sort out their
| problems.
| hpenvy wrote:
| TIL it's paternalistic to give people in 3rd world countries
| free things that they like.
| iwontberude wrote:
| I had this realization when I was like 8 years old. It goes to
| show how undemocratic our governments are that we still cannot
| get the leaders, who are more insulated from the effects, to
| act on our vulnerability.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > We currently are de facto breeding antibiotic resistant
| infections
|
| For my understanding, if no one else's: are there a lot of
| places without decent water, but with antibiotics? What's
| causing that strange inconsistency?
| dralley wrote:
| Yes, absolutely. Proper water infrastructure is both
| difficult and expensive to develop, and requires constant
| maintenance.
|
| Antibiotic pills are cheap and easy to distribute.
| akdor1154 wrote:
| Anecdotal, but most towns in Vietnam you'd want to boil your
| water, and if you want antibiotics you go to the pharmacy,
| pay about $2, and get some.
|
| What's causing it? The free market is working great to build
| the systems to get drugs to people. In fact if a pharmacist
| refused to give out antibiotics when they weren't needed, the
| pharmacist would probably just go out of business because the
| customer would just head up the street to the next guy.
|
| The free market is not so hot at building expensive
| infrastructure like safe water in a tropical biome, that
| requires government involvement (not meaning to rag on SE
| Asian governments: building this stuff is difficult even if
| your country has been stable for the last 100 years, which is
| a luxury they haven't been lucky enough to have)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _In a global assessment for 103 countries, after accounting
| for type of governance, education, economy, health care
| spending and community infrastructure, it was concluded that
| reducing antibiotic consumption alone would not control
| resistance. Independent of antibiotic consumption, poor
| infrastructure (e.g. sanitation), poor governance (e.g.
| corruption) and low health expenditure were all associated
| with higher rates of resistance._
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7782542/
| piker wrote:
| My dad is a severe paralytic polio survivor and turns 70 next
| year. He's a happy man, but his life has been hard in
| incomprehensible ways. As a father now, I cannot imagine what his
| parents went through when he was paralysed in the hospital at the
| age of 2. The world will be a better place without the fear of
| polio. Let us hope.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I wish we would also figure out how to fix people damaged in
| this fashion rather than accepting that you will just be maimed
| for life.
| kbenson wrote:
| What are you referring to peiple accepting? That polio has no
| cure, or that we we don't know how to cure paralysis due to
| nerve and motor neuron destruction?
|
| The former I think people accept because if we can eradicate
| it through vaccination then it's a problem solved, so we are
| working towards that. The latter I don't think anyone
| actually accepts, it's just a hard problem and progress is
| slow.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| You tend to hear mostly about research into repairing
| nerves damaged due to injury. It seems to me that a broken
| neck would be a harder thing to fix than neurons impaired
| by infection.
|
| It seems likely to me that if you can identify the
| nutrients depleted by the infection and also actually clear
| the infection from the body, this should be relatively easy
| to repair compared to something like a broken neck.
|
| I did a quick search ("are there any organizations working
| specifically on polio paralysis" on Bing) and most hits are
| about the news currently under discussion, not about
| research into treating the paralysis. I did find this page
| on The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation site:
|
| https://www.christopherreeve.org/todays-care/living-with-
| par...
|
| They indicate there are a lot of studies on Post Polio
| Syndrome, which is not per se research into treating
| paralysis. Some stats from the page:
|
| _Over 12 million people, worldwide have been affected by
| polio as indicated by the CDC.
|
| There is no central system for reporting post-polio
| syndrome, but it is estimated that 300,000 individuals are
| survivors of polio in the United States and have mild to
| severe symptoms.
|
| Of the 300,000 survivors of polio, it is estimated that of
| one fourth to one half may develop some form of post-polio
| symptoms._
| dralley wrote:
| > It seems to me that a broken neck would be a harder
| thing to fix than neurons impaired by infection.
|
| Does it? We're still unable to cure MS, just slow or
| stall the progression of it.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Yes, _it seems to me_ that way.
|
| AKA _personal opinion_.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I'm from Pakistan, and polio eradication has been frustrating to
| say the least.
|
| Polio teams workers still get killed regularly, and in fact, in
| searching for news on polio workers, discovered tragically that
| one worker was killed just today:
|
| https://twitter.com/TNNEnglish/status/1727695070906957889
|
| and polio vaccination drives have been delayed in other areas too
| (separate from the unfortunate incident above)
|
| https://twitter.com/MajidBuhair/status/1727755867666452722
|
| I mean what can I say of others, back in my own extended family,
| I have cousins who refused to vaccinate their kids at all, like
| no vaccine of any kind, and nothing I or anyone can say will
| change their mind. Thing is that they are _not_ illiterate, they
| have been to schools, they are just.. stubborn.
|
| That means attack vectors exist in all directions.
|
| I personally discovered this the hard way when I randomly caught
| a case of mumps despite having been vaccinated as a child with
| the MMR vaccine (my dumbass doctor thought I had "mild-
| tonsillitis" and sent me home with antibiotics) Not sure where I
| caught it from but thankfully it was mild and I recovered after
| 10 days of absolute misery.
|
| But the moral of the story is, not only is polio unlikely to be
| eradicated, but even people like me who thought they were covered
| by vaccination from dutiful parents, are still vulnerable to all
| these diseases, either as patients or carriers.
|
| Our vaccination drives are not forming effective vaccine shields,
| and that means we have to think of treatment and not prevention
| as the "first" step of our fights against diseases.
|
| ____ > The result came back a month later: it
| was wild polio type 1, not seen in the continent since 2016.
| > Sequencing traced its origin to Pakistan, but also revealed
| that the virus had been circulating for two years undetected --
| possibly in Malawi, and possibly elsewhere. Because Malawi had no
| wastewater surveillance at the time, it was impossible to know.
|
| If we can re-introduce polio to a place where polio had been
| eradicated, then I fear one day the world will get frustrated
| just decide to quarantine us, and I wouldn't know who to blame.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| What I saw on Pakistani TV/newspapers was people complaining
| that government just wanted them to get tika (vaccination) but
| wouldn't listen to them about anything else or fix any of their
| other problems (roads, schools, jobs)
| serial_dev wrote:
| > even people like me who thought they were covered by
| vaccination from dutiful parents, are still vulnerable to all
| these diseases
|
| I was surprised to see that some of the vaccines I thought are
| rock solid share some traits with the great COVID vaccines: not
| everyone develops immunity, and the immunity gets worse and
| worse over time, so you need "boosters" every 5-10 years, and
| most adults have very little actual protection against the
| diseases they thought they are vaxxed against.
|
| Example, whooping cough:
|
| > In children, DTaP protects: > (...) About 7 out of 10
| children for five years after the fifth shot. > In adults, Tdap
| protects: > About 7 in 10 people for the first year after the
| shot. > About 4 in 10 people for four years after the shot.
|
| https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/drugs/21639-pertussis-...
|
| These numbers don't look all that great to me.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| For some added context on the vaccine distrust:
|
| > In the early 2010s, the CIA ran a fake vaccination program in
| Abbottabad, offering free Hepatitis B vaccines to children in
| an attempt to collect DNA evidence linking Osama bin Laden to
| the compound where he was suspected of residing. It is unclear
| how samples were to be collected or how they would lead to bin
| Laden, but when news of this scheme broke, it added proof to
| existing conspiracy theories about vaccinations. As a
| consequence, many local leaders began urging people not to
| vaccinate their kids, various districts banned vaccination
| teams, and the Taliban issued a fatwa against vaccination
| programs. To this day, local leaders rail against vaccines as
| Western spying programs.
|
| - https://www.vox.com/first-person/22256595/vaccine-covid-
| paki...
| niemandhier wrote:
| Polio would likely be eradicated already, if not for a CIA op
| that used a vaccination program as a cover to get DNA from bin
| Laden.
|
| Source:
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
|
| As a result part of the Afghan and Pakistani population stopped
| believing in what WHO workers told them.
| actuallyalys wrote:
| The CIA operation was definitely a setback for polio
| eradication and doubtless caused other harms to public health,
| but the article this thread is about discusses numerous
| challenges to eradication so I suspect even without the CIA
| campaign, we'd still be a ways away from eradication.
| Animats wrote:
| Polio is coming back, a little.[1]
|
| There are two polio vaccines. One takes four injections, spaced
| months apart, and cannot cause polio because it doesn't contain
| an active virus. The other is a live-virus vaccine, as a pill,
| and has about a one in a million chance of causing polio. These
| are both 1950s technology.
|
| "For most people, (polio) has no symptoms. For about a quarter of
| people who get the polio virus, they will have mild symptoms that
| may include fever, gastroenteritis, upset stomach, aches, and so-
| on--in other words, flu-like symptoms. Most people would not know
| they have a polio infection because those symptoms are so common
| to many other infections."
|
| "Somewhere around one in 200 to one in 1000 people that get
| infected with the polio virus will develop poliomyelitis, which
| is also known as paralytic polio or acute flaccid paralysis but
| can also include presentations that are less and more severe,
| including delayed post-polio syndrome with mild disability or
| acute respiratory failure and death."
|
| Those who are not suffering still spread the disease.
|
| What happened when the anti-vaxxers reached Pakistan.[2]
|
| [1] https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/is-polio-making-a-
| com...
|
| [2] https://archive.is/wJhkF
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Polio is coming back, a little_
|
| This was a valid question in 2022. I don't think it's the case
| anymore in 2023. We seem to have eliminated it from the African
| continent. At this point, it's contained to Pakistan and
| Afghanistan. One of those is cooperating with vaccination
| efforts; the other is effectively quarantining itself.
| serial_dev wrote:
| You mean the CIA reached Pakistan.
|
| > The CIA's efforts to capture Osama bin Laden via a fake
| vaccination drive in Pakistan led to a rise in vaccine
| hesitancy in the years after the scheme was revealed.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2277145-cias-hunt-for-o...
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| That is great news. I sincerely hope we continue that trajectory.
| I am afraid at the uptick of recent antivaxxers but hopefully
| that is just temporary.
|
| I went to the ER recently and saw an orthodox jewish kid in a
| polio bed. I felt so sad for him. (This was in NYC).
| MrDresden wrote:
| After seeing news about a rise in polio cases last year I
| immediately looked at my vaccinations.
|
| Turned out I was a few years overdue for a 10 year booster (which
| was immediately remedied).
| scottLobster wrote:
| Don't worry, Rockland County NY will ensure it remains "on the
| Brink" indefinitely.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Unfortunately, I believe the vaccine-type cases won't be
| eliminated for decades or maybe centuries...
|
| Stopping vaccinating populations with oral polio vaccine tends to
| make cases trend upwards, and the only fix for that I suspect is
| to change over to injectable vaccines for a whole generation of
| people (ie. 50 years).
| raincom wrote:
| First polio cases linked to new oral vaccine detected in Africa:
| https://www.science.org/content/article/first-polio-cases-li...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-23 23:00 UTC)