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Crip Dyke's avatar

This is where I tell you that the reason I am in Bellingham is for a close relative of my BFF. He contracted polio in the 1950s and was one of the lucky ones: his core muscles were unaffected while only his limbs suffered partial paralysis and muscle wasting. And his legs more than his arms and hands.

He is a determined guy by nature and was able to not only learn to walk again, albeit with crutches, but to travel to Chile with the Peace Corps, hike some trails in the Andes, and frantically evacuate barely ahead of Pinochet's takeover and Allende's murder.

He's taught, sold his woodworking, and generally lived a full life even if it was marked by pain and weakness and joint problems in his arms and shoulders from bearing the weight they weren't designed to carry. He even kept hiking -- shorter distances, but long enough to get away from the roads and parking lots in the national parks he visited -- well into his 50s.

I repeat: he's one of the lucky ones. Most people who survive a significant case of polio lose part of their heart muscle and die early of heart attack or suffocation when their weakened diaphragms give out. Not this guy. He's done more and seen more in his life than most, polio or no.

And when he hears about people refusing to vaccinate, he rages. He doesn't want anyone to catch his "mild" case of extremity-paralyzing, muscle-weakening polio. He hasn't even been able to use crutches for a dozen years now: it's all wheelchair all the time, even short distances inside the house.

NO ONE WANTS THIS. VACCINATE ALL THE KIDS OR GTFO.

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Crip Dyke's avatar

So when a Republican says we should avoid something like the plague, they mean... what, exactly?

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