The New York Times reports some good news from the health front: it's been a year since anybody was diagnosed with polio in Africa.
The goal had seemed tantalizingly close in recent years, but polio always managed to roar back, particularly in Nigeria. Then officials embraced a vigorous new approach to vaccination and surveillance in that country, hiring thousands of community "mobilizers" to track down the unvaccinated, opening operations centers nationwide to track progress and seeking out support from clerics and tribal chiefs.
The result has been remarkable.
The last African case of polio was detected in Somalia on Aug. 11, 2014, the final sign of an outbreak with its roots in Nigeria — the one country where the virus had never been eradicated, even temporarily. But the last case in Nigeria was recorded on July 24, 2014.
According to Wikipedia, there were 416 cases worldwide in 2013, down from 350,000 in 1988. Since the polio virus only infects humans, this means that total eradication of the disease is now within reach.
The bad news is, polio still exists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we have the CIA and the Taliban to thank for that. In 2011, while looking for Osama bin Laden, the CIA used an immunization campaign as a cover. When this news came out, it reinforced an already widespread belief that vaccines are a Western conspiracy to sterilize Moslems. This means that a lot of people in the region are now either avoiding immunization, or shooting at health workers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:08PM
I mean the Taliban are certainly to blame for lots of horrible things, but they are surely not to blame for the CIA's choice of an immunization campaign as cover.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:23PM
If it wasn't for the Taliban, the CIA wouldn't have had to use such subterfuge.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:40PM
Now that's a twisted logic. But then, without the help of the CIA (back at the time when Soviet Rusia was the enemy, and religious fanatism seemed the ideal weapon against atheist communism), the Taliban would not have existed anyway. [emperors-clothes.com] So even with that sort of twisted logic, the blame comes back to the CIA.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 12 2015, @06:19PM
No, it's the Brits' fault because without all that tax on tea and whatnot the U.S. never would have existed to make a CIA organization to fund/train the Taliban to fight the Russians.
Or maybe you could say it's the Protestants' fault for starting the Reformation which led to the Puritans wanting to come over in the first place. Although religion wasn't the only reason colonists came over.
But more directly, it's fair to say that if the U.S. wasn't as powerful as it is militarily, the Taliban wouldn't be fighting us with asymmetric warfare. It's our own fault for having too-good technology :)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:01PM
It's the fault of Columbus, because without Columbus, nobody in Europe would have known that America exists.
But then, ultimately it's that meteorite's fault. Had that meteorite not extinguished the dinosaurs, humans would never have developed.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:46PM
On the other hand, the CIA using the immunization campaign as cover was against every rule in the books among international health organizations, in an attempt to prevent scenarios identical to this one. The CIA in general is not good at managing the larger trade-offs - if you give them a mission, they will complete it come hell or high water, but there are many times when after the fact you really wish they hadn't completed it because of the repercussions for how they did it.
Another way the CIA could have located Osama bin Laden was to cultivate double agents in the ostensibly allied government of Pakistan, because the Pakistani intel services knew exactly where bin Laden was.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:30PM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:56PM
And many Americans are anti-vaccination, too.
However there's a big difference between a general fear without data to back it up, and "look, there you have a real, documented case of a fake vaccination campaign being used against us." The latter spreads much more effectively, and is much harder to overcome.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 12 2015, @03:21PM
Talking about our own hippies or the Taliban? I suppose it doesn't matter.
Note that the most famous anti-vaxxer in the UK was just doing insider trading, I don't think he intentionally sprung a worldwide conspiracy theory, he just wanted to collect a bunch of money by entering a ton of financial trades before releasing falsified data and next thing you know instead of owning a small pacific island in retirement he's stuck leading a social movement on Oprah or WTF.
Anyway just pointing out there's more to anti-vax than just CIA dirty tricks.
As a side issue, since the government has no ethical or moral lower bound, I wonder if they were not just sneaking around under the cover of vaccinations but actively and intentionally infecting them with something. Presumably horrific diseases are destabilizing and maybe they figured they'd benefit from destabilizing the Taliban once it became clear the west wasn't going to be in charge. If it sounds like it would work, or that some idiot could be convinced it would work, other than the minor issue of being a war crime, then you can safely assume we were doing it, cause its not like morals or ethics ever stopped "us" before. So yeah we probably have been injecting target populations with "something" the only question is, what?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 12 2015, @03:38PM
Yes. I agree. But it sure-as-hell gives them credibility on that message that we didn't want them to have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:37PM
> Yes. I agree. But it sure-as-hell gives them credibility on that message that we didn't want them to have.
Fundamentally all anti-vaxxers are anti-vaxxers because of a lack of trust. It doesn't matter if it is taliban in caves or millionaire millennial moms in Bel-Air mansions. It all comes down to distrust of the motives of organizations providing the vaccines. So when the CIA co-opted the vaccine program they 'confirmed' all those unproven suspicions.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Wednesday August 12 2015, @02:54PM
The Taliban have been distrustful of ANY signs of western intervention for some time, including immunization. There have been rumors for a long time that the immunization campaign has secret ulterior motives. It's always been hard for immunization workers. That fact is on the Taliban.
The CIA's using an immunization campaign as cover has given a specific reason for the Taliban's mistrust - any elements that might have doubted that the vaccination campaign was a secret western front have been put to rest. That fact is on the CIA.
Analogy. Let's say there was hard evidence that one vaccine that was actually used (for example, a new vaccine in a clinical trial) had in fact been linked to increased autism risk in children. And there was hard evidence the CDC had covered up that finding.
The anti-vax movement would suddenly become a massively more powerful political force. The people who mistrusted the CDC all along for bad reasons would now have a GOOD reason to distrust them. "See, we were right all along!" Vaccination requirement laws would likely start coming down all over the country. It wouldn't really matter that the vaccine in question was experimental, or if the autism link had nothing to do with mercury or any of the other theoretical reasons why the anti-vax crowd believe vaccinations could cause autism.
The CDC's bad actions don't change the fact that the anti-vax'ers long-held position is out of step with mainstream medicine. The anti-vax movement doesn't suddenly spring from the bad CDC actions. One reinforces the other. Both are a problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 12 2015, @04:45PM
Completely understandably, I might add, because so far most times western powers have been involved in anything in Afghanistan, a lot of people end up dead. The most recent round is no exception to this rule.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.