Vaccine Advisory Board Chair: Would Polio Really Be Such A Bad Time?
What if we brought polio back? For funsies!
In 1952, a major polio outbreak resulted in over 50,000 cases — nearly half of which resulted in paralysis for the victims. In 1959, there were 1200 people in the United States living their lives in iron lungs. Now, there is just one — Martha Lillard, who contracted the virus at just five years old during a trip to an amusement park called Joyland in 1953. We haven’t had a single diagnosed case of indigenous wild poliovirus since 1979 (we had one imported case in 1993 and one in an unvaccinated individual who got a vaccine-derived strain of the virus in 2022). This is all thanks to the fact that, in 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, becoming a hero and frequent crossword puzzle clue to us all.
Well, to a lot of us anyway. Because now the guy in charge of RFK Jr.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) isn’t so very sure that we need to bother with that anymore. You know, because maybe polio just won’t come back if we stop immunizing against it. Just like how measles didn’t come back when people stopped vaccinated against that.
Oh, wait.
In an appearance on the podcast Why Should I Trust You? last week, ACIP chair Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a senior fellow at the anti-mRNA vaccine Independent Medical Alliance, word salad-ed some ideas about how it might be fun to try going without the polio vaccine for a while.
“I think also as you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then. Our sanitation is different. Our risk of disease is different. And so that, those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not.
“We have to take, we have to take into account that ‘Are we enjoying herd immunity right now?’ That it may look like it’s better not to get a vaccine than to get a vaccine, but if we take away all of the herd immunity does that switch, does that teeter totter switch in a different direction? So that’s how I would look at both oral polio or polio vaccine and the MMR vaccine. And you guys have probably seen this data, is that often — that the incidence of disease is going down even before the vaccine had been started.
“When we look at the risk and we talk about the risk of of, let’s say measles, many of those risks of not of getting measles without having a vaccine was in the 1960s. We take care of children much differently now. our ability to have pediatric hospitals, children’s hospitals, pediatric ICUs, how we look at the whole gamut of how we can treat measles is different. So that’s a, that’s something that comes into play. Are we looking at real today data with our population?”
Yes, we are. Because the rest of us realize that it’s probably better that kids do not get sent to pediatric ICUs with polio and measles, even if they are better now than they were in the 1950s and ‘60s. It also seems worth mentioning the expense and the lack of access to healthcare. Hospitals have actually been closing pediatric ICUs because they’re not profitable, and rural areas especially are experiencing a critical shortage at the moment.
But hey! Maybe if we bring more infectious diseases back, they’ll become profitable again!
The other thing to note here is that, although there have certainly been a lot of medical advancements since the vaccine was first introduced, there still is not a cure for polio or for the lifelong health issues caused by it — which is why poor Martha Lillard is still in an iron lung requiring 24/7 around-the-clock care.
The American Medical Association is not so keen on the idea of bringing polio back, and, on Monday, released a statement to that effect.
“The American Medical Association is deeply alarmed by efforts to weaken long-standing evidence-based vaccine recommendations, including suggestions that polio vaccination should seemingly not be routinely recommended to patients.
“This is not a theoretical debate—it is a dangerous step backward.
“Vaccines have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated devastating diseases like polio in the United States. There is no cure for polio. When vaccination rates fall, paralysis, lifelong disability, and death return. The science on this is settled.
“Moving away from routine immunizations, which involves discussions between clinicians and patients, does not increase freedom—it increases suffering. It puts children, families, and entire communities at risk and undermines the public health protections that generations of Americans depend on.
“The AMA strongly urges policymakers to follow the evidence and the expertise of physicians and public health professionals. Weakening vaccine recommendations will cost lives, and that is a price our nation should not be willing to pay.”
The idea that polio would just stay gone if people stopped immunizing against it is absurd. There are still cases of wild poliovirus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, precisely because they have low vaccination rates (thanks to the Taliban). There have also been cases, in countries where people have recently started not vaccinating against it (and the aforementioned 2022 case here in the United States), in which the unimmunized have contracted the mutated, vaccine-derived strains of polio from those who have been immunized against it.
On the podcast, Milhoan explained that what ACIP is doing “is returning individual autonomy to the first order — not public health, but individual autonomy, to the first order,” which one might suggest defeats the point of having an advisory committee on vaccines to begin with, or any public health committees at all. He supports this “individualistic” approach, in which people decide for themselves, based on their “individual” risks whether or not to get vaccinated, as “opposed to what was sort of more of a heavy-handed authoritarian thought of the vaccine schedule that led to mandates that if you didn’t have this set of vaccines exactly how they were prescribed then you didn’t get into school.”
That’s not “authoritarian.” Not allowing kids into public schools without immunizations is not a punishment for being naughty, it’s a safety measure meant to protect the other students and to protect those who can’t get certain vaccines they are too young for or for actual medical reasons. This approach actually takes away the autonomy of those children, who must now be at risk for deadly viruses because some other child’s parent believes stupid things. Just like how the COVID vaccine gave us our freedom to go places without worrying we might die or cause someone else to die. Because some of us actually do care about the latter.
Oh, hey! You wanna know what really kills autonomy? Having to live in an iron lung and requiring 24/7 care for the rest of your life. Big, big autonomy killer, that one. Or dying. It’s definitely very bad for one’s autonomy to be dead.
Unfortunately, the “individual autonomy” of idiots will soon be affecting the “individual autonomy” of those of us who prefer not to die or see children die of preventable illnesses in the future. Thanks to the growing opposition to vaccines in the United States, Moderna says it’s not even going to invest in new late-stage vaccine trials, for fear they will not be profitable.
“You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the US market,” CEO Stephane Bancel told Bloomberg TV at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.
So now, not only are these “individuals” putting everyone else’s health at risk by refusing to get the vaccines we currently have, they’re actively taking away vaccines the rest of us could have in the future.
These next three years cannot go by fast enough (for those of us who survive it).
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Nothing pisses me off more than pro-disease fascists. Who in the world thinks kids in ICU are a good thing???
Antivax morons only exist because of herd immunity. 😐
It's a fucking death cult.
Good thing we dodged the bullet of having a (gasp!) woman president! Could you even imagine?!