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posted by hubie on Friday September 23 2022, @04:37AM   Printer-friendly

US officially added to WHO's list of poliovirus outbreak countries:

The United States, one of the world's richest and most developed countries, has met the World Health Organization's criteria to be listed as a country with circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday.

The US now joins the ranks of around 30 other polio outbreak countries, largely low- and middle-income, including Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, and Yemen. Notably, the list includes just two other high-income countries—the United Kingdom and Israel—which have detected the circulation of a poliovirus strain genetically linked to the one spreading in the US.

[...] Inclusion on the WHO's polio outbreak list is a new low point for the US. On the one hand, it reinforces a key global public health message in the campaign to fully eradicate that virus, which is that "any form of poliovirus anywhere is a threat to children everywhere." But it mainly spotlights the dangerous foothold that anti-vaccine sentiments have gained in the country over the past several decades.

[...] Polio is a particularly prime target for anti-vaccine misinformation. Much of the poliovirus currently circulating in the world today—including in the US—is derived from oral vaccines, which use live, weakened poliovirus to spur immunity. Oral polio vaccines are highly effective at protecting against paralytic polio and are safe and affordable. But, if they're used in areas with low vaccination rates, the harmless, immunizing vaccine viruses can spread to others through poor sanitation and/or hygiene. If the vaccine continues to move from person to person, it can pick up mutations along the way that allow it to regain the ability to cause infection and paralytic polio. At this point, the vaccine virus is reclassified as a vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV).

The circulation of VDPV has been gobbled up by dangerous anti-vaccine advocates—such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his organization, Children's Health Defense—who giddily tout the false claim that polio vaccines cause polio. To be clear, polio vaccines are highly effective at safely preventing polio. As always, the lack of polio vaccination causes polio outbreaks.

The US has not licensed or used oral polio vaccines since 2000. Instead, the US and many other high-income countries now use an inactivated polio vaccine, which does not include a live virus. Nevertheless, a VDPV is what is spreading in the US. [...]

Related:
    1st Polio Case Reported in US in Nearly a Decade Detected in New York State
    Poliovirus May be Spreading in London; Virus Detected in Sewage for Months
    Ohio Lawmakers Want to Abolish Vaccine Requirements


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2022, @12:54PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2022, @12:54PM (#1273155)

    It wasn't a big deal to be "anti-vax" for a long time. Health conscious lefty moms would be all over it. Working class people just took their shots. "Everyone" was against big pharma.

    Now that the barely functioning covid "vaccine" became sacred and the "current thing" you have to support, any kind of refusal became societal murder. Regardless that the polio came from foreign sources and is establishing in lefty cities.

    This story is a thing only to support that narrative. They don't care that there is a polio outbreak, they want to sell the next round of boosters. Look at all those anti-vaxers that caused polio to come back, you don't want to be one of them, do you?

    The article s even full on double think. Vaccine derived polio is spreading and proves some vaccines are good, some are not but it's all their fault. The FALSE claim that polio vaccines cause polio......

    The truth doesn't matter. It's to be marked troll and purged. The people who say it are to be ostracized and ejected from society. Are they even human?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2022, @01:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2022, @01:36PM (#1273158)

    It was a tough call for them on this one,

    Publishing an article mentioning VDPV lets one cat out of the bag that they'd rather not have the great unwashed know about (as they're worried that people might start down the path of wrongthink...), so mentioning foreign 'live' vaccinations (with fingers pointing firmly and directly at the Indian subcontinent) isn't PC, but is/was their least worst option in this case, besides it being probably true.

    VDPV from UK vaccine (it does happen, historically at an extremely low rate) was on the table at the very start, then it was VDPV from an inferior foreign vaccine, now it's shedding from people who've had recent foreign live vaccinations...