Just last month Malawi also had a case (the first in Africa in more than 5 years apparently). Apparently the strain matches one from Pakistan, but they don't know how it made it to Africa.
They're performing a large scale inoculation drive since apparently only 1 in 200 cases leads to paralysis (which is when it is spotted).
You might wonder how polio gets reintroduced into Israel or anywhere else. The polio vaccines we currently use are imperfect.
The oral vaccine is a weakened form but it mutates in the neighborhood of one in a million cases to become effectively wild polio and some years this accounts for most of the poliomyelitis cases.
On the other hand, the fully inactivated injected vaccine is non-sterilizing: it prevents poliomyelitis but still allows for gut infection. This eradicates the disease but not the virus. This is why they previously found the polio virus in sewage samples even though there were no poliomyelitis cases.
Most anger at the un-vaccinated (due to the assumption that they are causing the spread) seems mis-placed since those vaccinated by the injected form (that's probably you commenting on Hacker News!) will spread the polio virus as well.
This is also somewhat complicated because, as the article notes, sewage monitoring in Israel picks up polio virus with some degree of frequency, despite there being no recorded cases - there's definitely shedding going on, and it's sort of an odd case due to a number of demographic and geopolitical factors.
This is not necessarily something that can be attributed to the vaccine. Will be curious to see what the results are if they try to trace it back.
This bears some correction. As the article reports, the strain that caused infection was traced from Malawi/Pakistan, where there is still endemic polio because of long-lasting vaccine hesitancy.
Part of the problem is that the weakened form is used because it doesn't require refrigeration.
So, the fully inactivated vaccine is the "better" of the two, but, because it requires refrigeration, is harder to deal with in the areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan where vaccination is most needed.
Does Israel even use the oral vaccine? As far as I know all countries that have the basic infrastructure that is needed for the injection one, use that one.
> Most anger at the un-vaccinated (due to the assumption that they are causing the spread) seems mis-placed since those vaccinated by the injected form (that's probably you commenting on Hacker News!) will spread the polio virus as well.
Seriously. In what population does polio spread, the unnvacinnated or the vaccinated? In what population are you exposed to it?
Yes but the vaccinated would have no one to make sick around them if there isn’t anyone unvaccinated around them. Doesn’t matter as much if we all have the virus, as long as it doesn’t develop as a sickness.
> Indications of the virus have been found in sewage samples in the area
Oh this decade is going to be insane. We have the technology to solve so much but people no longer have the education and thinking process to use it. Disease and war back on the front burners.
I'm pretty sure we're better educated than any time in human history.
EDIT: Thinking about it, I would guess that we don't have as much humanities education as the prior generation (because it's been devalued), and humanities are what address the questions and problems plaguing our society, the big ones that are too complex to yield to scientific method or algorithms.
> We have the technology to solve so much but people no longer have the education and thinking process to use it.
To me it's rather our blind reliance on technology that is the problem. People have become dependent on pills and drugs (and vaccines) of all sorts, treating the symptoms rather than the cause more often than not.
Chronic diseases are arguably more prevalent now than at other point in time: obesity, diabetes, cancer, coronary, circulatory etc. The COVID-19 crisis, which exposed the vulnerability of a large part of the population, is a case in point. Governments have spent all that effort and money to develop and administer vaccines on an unprecedented scale, but zero effort was made to make us more resilient, to ameliorate the environment in which we live (pollution kills ~9M humans per year [1]) or the food that we eat and out eating habits (~40% of the world adult population is overweight, ~15% obese [2]).
While COVID-19 may be gone (for now at least), the root causes of why so many millions of people succumbed to it are not. Technology might prove to be a good short term solution, but I believe the required changes are rather political, societal and even moral/spiritual.
I think polio actually became more of an issue in the early 20th century because hygiene improved, which meant that people tended to get polio during childhood, rather than in infancy like before. And polio is more dangerous to children than infants.
The article does not mention this, but it's quite probably the unvaccinated child in question is from the fast-expanding Hasidic community in Jerusalem, many of whom are strongly anti-vax. This has led to measles outbreaks in the past in NYC as well, and the community was also hit especially hard by COVID.
According to the Israeli ministry of health the kid got infected with the virus from the vaccination that includes a living weak virus, a vaccine that is not given in many countries and have been not given in Israel for almost 20 years.
The decision to give the weakened virus was based on live viruses found in the sewage of Bedouin community in Rahat.
Also the ultra orthodox Jews in Jerusalem are pro-vaccine and the number of the anti-vax people among them is much lower than the anti-vax secular people in Israel.
This isn't only a matter of antivaxers. If you're in a country in which Polio has been eradicated, such as the US, double check that you're vaccinated. Various vaccines are no longer recommended because of the virtually nonexistent risk.
I know that Africans receive the TB vaccine as part of our regular schedule, where many developed countries do not.
Instead of having an uneducated opinion, you should know that polio vaccines can sometimes cause... polio. Yeah, that's not even remotely debated, it's well known:
What most of us consider progress is based on how we manage to spread efficiently as a species, gathering more power and possessions, developing ways to push our inevitable death further away, no matter the cost. Exploit more ressources, other humans, other animals.
And while some of us aren't driven by these things, some always will, and will essentially always capitalize on it. They can take the form of corporations, religious groups, governments... They really are any organised groups. And to make things worse, power is addictive.
It doesn't seem to matter how smart we are, if we zoom out, we're as good as a self destructing virus eating up on its ressources as if it had an infinite supply of it. Following a path driven by greed. Making us a virus that's only smarter at how it gets to the outcome, not at changing the outcome itself.
The anti-vaccine movement developed as soon as vaccines forest existed, and it developed independently on at least 3 continents. Even if you could snap your fingers and make social media disappear, people would still at various times and places refuse vaccination.
Also your assertion that free will doesn’t exist is highly suspect. Either you’re coming from a place of collectivist ideology and work backwards or your reading about Libet’s button press studies. I’ll assume the latter, since is more interesting. Trying to pick apart awareness of intention to move, RP (readiness potential) as measured by eeg or fmri, and the movement in less than 300 ms using a clock the participant has to read is highly fraught. The setup could easily be wrong. Other researchers trying different approaches to measuring the awareness of the decision point have gotten the opposite results. There’s also absolutely no consensus among researchers on this topic. If you truly believe as you say that science is the key to progress, you must admit that the science of free will is very much unsettled. And we must also consider that cognitive neuroscience research has had a lot of embarrassing missteps, e.g. replication issues.
You may choose to believe people have no free will, but I feel agency in my actions so it’s real enough to me. One must also concede that there have existed totalitarian systems in living memory that predetermine all human actions that should happen in the system, and yet some people still rebel. There must be something there.
Thankfully polio is an extremely treatable disease. Vaccination is still the best form of defense against poliovirus. There’s no free lunch though, and more people are infected with polio from vaccines worldwide than with the wild virus.
This is a really dangerous comment. Thankfully polio is an extremely treatable disease -What exactly do you think is the treatment, beyond prophylaxis?
That the rate of vaccine caused infection is now higher than the rate of wild infection is no reason to stop vaccinating. It's really sad but this is why we have indemnity processes. Eradication depends on continual vaccination, well beyond any kind of epidemic. Even though it has been years since wild polio raged worldwide, this is no time to stop vaccinating.
I cannot fathom what you are trying to communicate.
[+] [-] animal531|4 years ago|reply
They're performing a large scale inoculation drive since apparently only 1 in 200 cases leads to paralysis (which is when it is spotted).
[+] [-] gregwebs|4 years ago|reply
The oral vaccine is a weakened form but it mutates in the neighborhood of one in a million cases to become effectively wild polio and some years this accounts for most of the poliomyelitis cases.
On the other hand, the fully inactivated injected vaccine is non-sterilizing: it prevents poliomyelitis but still allows for gut infection. This eradicates the disease but not the virus. This is why they previously found the polio virus in sewage samples even though there were no poliomyelitis cases.
Most anger at the un-vaccinated (due to the assumption that they are causing the spread) seems mis-placed since those vaccinated by the injected form (that's probably you commenting on Hacker News!) will spread the polio virus as well.
[+] [-] Fomite|4 years ago|reply
This is not necessarily something that can be attributed to the vaccine. Will be curious to see what the results are if they try to trace it back.
[+] [-] ckemere|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsder|4 years ago|reply
So, the fully inactivated vaccine is the "better" of the two, but, because it requires refrigeration, is harder to deal with in the areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan where vaccination is most needed.
[+] [-] legulere|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wolverine876|4 years ago|reply
Seriously. In what population does polio spread, the unnvacinnated or the vaccinated? In what population are you exposed to it?
[+] [-] moonchild|4 years ago|reply
Is that due to tradeoffs (cost, health risk, etc.) with other types of vaccines, or do we simply not know how to make them?q
[+] [-] jeromegv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jqquah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|4 years ago|reply
Oh this decade is going to be insane. We have the technology to solve so much but people no longer have the education and thinking process to use it. Disease and war back on the front burners.
[+] [-] wolverine876|4 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure we're better educated than any time in human history.
EDIT: Thinking about it, I would guess that we don't have as much humanities education as the prior generation (because it's been devalued), and humanities are what address the questions and problems plaguing our society, the big ones that are too complex to yield to scientific method or algorithms.
[+] [-] ciconia|4 years ago|reply
To me it's rather our blind reliance on technology that is the problem. People have become dependent on pills and drugs (and vaccines) of all sorts, treating the symptoms rather than the cause more often than not.
Chronic diseases are arguably more prevalent now than at other point in time: obesity, diabetes, cancer, coronary, circulatory etc. The COVID-19 crisis, which exposed the vulnerability of a large part of the population, is a case in point. Governments have spent all that effort and money to develop and administer vaccines on an unprecedented scale, but zero effort was made to make us more resilient, to ameliorate the environment in which we live (pollution kills ~9M humans per year [1]) or the food that we eat and out eating habits (~40% of the world adult population is overweight, ~15% obese [2]).
While COVID-19 may be gone (for now at least), the root causes of why so many millions of people succumbed to it are not. Technology might prove to be a good short term solution, but I believe the required changes are rather political, societal and even moral/spiritual.
[1] https://www.trtworld.com/life/pollution-causing-more-deaths-...
[2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and...
[+] [-] peter303|4 years ago|reply
Most mammals seem to be able to catch covid. Some specials like mink its more deadly than humans and kills many. Others like bats dont get sick.
[+] [-] dotancohen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zxcvbn4038|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ciphol|4 years ago|reply
I think polio actually became more of an issue in the early 20th century because hygiene improved, which meant that people tended to get polio during childhood, rather than in infancy like before. And polio is more dangerous to children than infants.
[+] [-] triyambakam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dustintrex|4 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/opinion/my-fellow-hasidic...
[+] [-] dalbasal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JamesAdir|4 years ago|reply
Also the ultra orthodox Jews in Jerusalem are pro-vaccine and the number of the anti-vax people among them is much lower than the anti-vax secular people in Israel.
[+] [-] martin1975|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whiddershins|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amluto|4 years ago|reply
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...
[+] [-] astura|4 years ago|reply
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...
[+] [-] sandworm101|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] base698|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stevehind|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] jacobsievers|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zamalek|4 years ago|reply
I know that Africans receive the TB vaccine as part of our regular schedule, where many developed countries do not.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ekianjo|4 years ago|reply
Instead of having an uneducated opinion, you should know that polio vaccines can sometimes cause... polio. Yeah, that's not even remotely debated, it's well known:
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/16/780068006/how-the-oral-polio-...
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/vaccine-derived-p...
[+] [-] axiolite|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] imapeopleperson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mondialisation|4 years ago|reply
And while some of us aren't driven by these things, some always will, and will essentially always capitalize on it. They can take the form of corporations, religious groups, governments... They really are any organised groups. And to make things worse, power is addictive.
It doesn't seem to matter how smart we are, if we zoom out, we're as good as a self destructing virus eating up on its ressources as if it had an infinite supply of it. Following a path driven by greed. Making us a virus that's only smarter at how it gets to the outcome, not at changing the outcome itself.
[+] [-] freddealmeida|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fleurjs|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ch4s3|4 years ago|reply
Also your assertion that free will doesn’t exist is highly suspect. Either you’re coming from a place of collectivist ideology and work backwards or your reading about Libet’s button press studies. I’ll assume the latter, since is more interesting. Trying to pick apart awareness of intention to move, RP (readiness potential) as measured by eeg or fmri, and the movement in less than 300 ms using a clock the participant has to read is highly fraught. The setup could easily be wrong. Other researchers trying different approaches to measuring the awareness of the decision point have gotten the opposite results. There’s also absolutely no consensus among researchers on this topic. If you truly believe as you say that science is the key to progress, you must admit that the science of free will is very much unsettled. And we must also consider that cognitive neuroscience research has had a lot of embarrassing missteps, e.g. replication issues.
You may choose to believe people have no free will, but I feel agency in my actions so it’s real enough to me. One must also concede that there have existed totalitarian systems in living memory that predetermine all human actions that should happen in the system, and yet some people still rebel. There must be something there.
[+] [-] imgabe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ed25519FUUU|4 years ago|reply
https://apnews.com/article/health-united-nations-ap-top-news...
[+] [-] ggm|4 years ago|reply
That the rate of vaccine caused infection is now higher than the rate of wild infection is no reason to stop vaccinating. It's really sad but this is why we have indemnity processes. Eradication depends on continual vaccination, well beyond any kind of epidemic. Even though it has been years since wild polio raged worldwide, this is no time to stop vaccinating.
I cannot fathom what you are trying to communicate.