[HN Gopher] Polio Detected in US
___________________________________________________________________
Polio Detected in US
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 229 points
Date : 2022-07-22 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| ryanbytes wrote:
| Havoc wrote:
| Polio is a solved problem. Stupidity on the other hand is not
| ars wrote:
| Polio is not solved. You need to learn more about it if you
| think that.
|
| There is currently an epidemic of vaccine derived polio (of
| which this is a case). We do not have a solution for this.
|
| I could write several pages of how Polio eradication is failed
| because of subtype 2, but maybe you could just read for
| yourself.
|
| Start here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_eradication#2022 and see
| how man countries are being infected with cVDPV which is caused
| by vaccination!
|
| Then scroll up and see how it's page after page after page of
| vaccine derived Polio.
|
| There's currently a huge problems: Subtype 2 doesn't exist in
| the wild, so normally you would not vaccinate for it. But if
| you don't vaccinate for it than vaccine derived subtype 2 takes
| hold - but if you do vaccinate for it, then you _create_ cases
| of vaccine derived polio!
|
| So how do you solve that?
| [deleted]
| marius_k wrote:
| Are you saying the problem is that we can't stop vaccinating
| for polio even if this normal type polio is gone? Because if
| we do stop vaccinating there is a risk of subtype 2
| spreading. This looks like not a big problem. And it can be
| solved by making a beter vaccine(?)
| ars wrote:
| > This looks like not a big problem. And it can be solved
| by making a beter vaccine(?)
|
| Yes, make a better vaccine, not a big problem, why didn't
| anyone else think of that?
|
| For your information they are trying, and have been working
| on it for years, it's called nOPV2.
| marius_k wrote:
| By "not a big problem" I mean it would be worse to still
| have pandemic of original polio and maybe with additional
| mutations.
|
| I am a layman in this field so I could be wrong.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| You solve it by vaccinating for it.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| Isn't the vaccine derived polio simply because it's the cheap
| version? If that's correct then the direct answer to your
| somewhat rhetorical question is: subsidise the expensive
| version globally so that we don't have to later pay for the
| externalities caused by a riskier vaccine?
| Vecr wrote:
| You can't eradicate polio (the virus, not the disease) by
| doing that though, IPV (Inactivated Polio Vaccine), even
| the enhanced version, can't produce gut immunity to the
| level required to stop transmission even with a 100%
| vaccination rate.
| shmde wrote:
| Until early 1990s India was hyperendemic for polio, with an
| average of 500 to 1000 children getting paralysed daily. India,
| has eradicated polio since a decade now.
|
| Its so ironic to see how a first world country in this date has
| detected polio and gone through a recent measles outbreak. Why do
| Americans try so hard to make things difficult for everyone
| around them. From Flat earth theories, loose gun laws to Anti Vax
| movement, anti abortion movements has something gotten to the
| average American population ?
| nicce wrote:
| > first world country
|
| Maybe U.S. is not anymore entitled for this title. No efficient
| and free healthcare or education like the other first world
| countries have. And other issues which you just stated. It
| feels that even democracy has serious challenges at the moment.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > No efficient and free healthcare or education like the
| other first world countries have. And other issues which you
| just stated.
|
| what is the cause of these issues? i've heard education used
| to be almost free in the us at some point... what happened?
| echelon wrote:
| It's not about healthcare access or education, both of which
| are free and ignored in the case of vaccines.
|
| It's about the increasing ideological fracturing of this
| country.
|
| It's probably natural too. Without an actual enemy
| threatening our way of life, we've turned inwards against
| ourselves. Like an under stimulated immune system attacking
| itself.
|
| Emotions are easy to manipulate with political subjects.
| Partisan narratives sell, they're mimetic, and they spread
| like wildfire. It turns into a religious war, and each side
| distrusts the other, stops listening.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| A lot of that internal conflict is actually the results of
| foreign acts of war though. Just look at how much money and
| other forms of support for the far-right came out of Russia
| - and not just for the US but also about half of Europe.
|
| And in any case the US has been continuously involved in
| some kind of war for like the last decades? Vietnam, Iraq
| 1, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq 2, anti-IS coalition...
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > Maybe U.S. is not anymore entitled for this title.
|
| The term is a Cold War relic in any case.
| pm90 wrote:
| Not sure why this is being downvoted, it's technically
| correct.
|
| First World: US + NATO + Friends (loosely termed "The West)
|
| Second World: Soviet Union + Warsaw Pact + Friends
|
| Third World: Rest of the world.
| mtoner23 wrote:
| As if no other developed country has problems with extremists.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| We decry extremists while giving them political power. You
| see how hypocritical it is, right?
| cinntaile wrote:
| > has something gotten to the average American population ?
|
| Social media makes it very easy to find like minded people and
| this is not always a good thing. It also makes it easy to reach
| people that are susceptible to disinformation.
| jefftk wrote:
| Worth reading about the two kinds of polio vaccine:
| https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/polioviruscontainment/diseaseandviru...
| koheripbal wrote:
| ...in the same county that had America's largest recent Measles
| outbreak in 30 years. Rockland county.
|
| My good friend is a pediatrician in the area and frequently gets
| calls from mom's who ask if he does "evaluations for potential
| vaccine injury" - which is code for "I need a note from a doctor
| to have my child exempt from vaccination".
|
| Unfortunately, their poor vaccination culture caused Measles to
| spread to neighboring New York City, and then across the country.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Its worth noting that on both the Rockland County and NYC
| sides, these outbreaks are largely contained to ultra-Orthodox
| Jewish communities that operate sort of adjacent to secular
| society.
|
| Not that this excuses anything; much has been written about the
| challenges within and around these communities and the lives of
| people within them. But the issue is less that the modern
| public health apparatus has collapsed and more that there are
| large groups of people in these areas who have extreme
| religious views and generally seek isolation from the secular
| world - an isolation that extends up to and includes public
| education and public health.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm torn on whether to see this as a problem that needs
| solving by people outside of those communities.
|
| I.e., the libertarian in me wants to let each community make
| its own choices based on their values, and then live with the
| resulting pros / cons.
|
| On the other hand, those communities aren't 100% insular from
| surrounding society. Maybe their lower vaccination rates
| increase the chances of spreading the virus to outsiders who
| _can 't_ be vaccinated, consume extra healthcare resources,
| and/or increase the odds of generating a new variant that
| current vaccines can't stop.
| namdnay wrote:
| The libertarian in me thinks that it's unfair for a child
| to be crippled for life because of the imbecilic views of
| their parents. That's where the "to each their own"
| philosophy breaks down for me - it assumes that children
| "belong" to their parents, and that it's fair for them to
| have to shoulder the consequences of their parents'
| decisions
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| There are children who can't be vaccinated because of
| medical complications. This is why we need herd immunity.
| [deleted]
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| >I.e., the libertarian in my wants to let each community
| make its own choices based on their values, and then live
| with the resulting pros / cons.
|
| Has the libertarian in you seen what happens when an area
| bans guns but the surrounding areas don't?
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| What happens?
| nradov wrote:
| Which areas have banned guns?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| The Supreme Court for one.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| OP is referring to a place like Chicago that has some of
| the strictest gun bans, is lambasted by conservative
| media, "look, gun bans but still high shootings," but
| generally fail to realize that Chicago is surrounded by
| areas with the loosest gun restrictions like next door
| Indiana. The guns just come right across state borders 5
| miles away.
| nradov wrote:
| Guns are not banned in Chicago. There do have tighter
| restrictions than surrounding areas (and some of those
| restrictions may be unconstitutional), but many
| Chicagoans legally own guns.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-chicago-gun-
| laws-30646...
| pessimizer wrote:
| They were for a very long time, but right-wing rhetoric
| takes decades to be updated. Most of it is recycled Ezra
| Pound/Eustace Mullins/John Birch shit.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| Is there a meaningful difference between ban and
| restriction? It seems pedantic. But maybe wrt
| specifically gun law there is a difference?
|
| I never implied all guns were banned in Chicago. "some of
| the strictest"
| yonaguska wrote:
| Yes, a ban would mean you'd be a criminal by mere
| possession, while restrictions means you have to jump
| through lots of hoops in order to not be a criminal. You
| can legally conceal carry a gun in Chicago. And based on
| my conversations with several members of law enforcement
| as well as a few notable cases of self defense, you
| probably won't be charged if you have a strong self
| defense case, even if you happen to be unintentionally
| breaking a law. Such as the woman that shot a man trying
| to rob/rape her while she was waiting for the bus. She
| would have been carrying illegally by virtue of using
| public transit, but no charges were pressed.
| fein wrote:
| And yet those states with lax gun regulations have
| nothing even close to the level of gun crime in the
| Chicago area. If it was availability of guns that was the
| catalyst for this behavior, one would expect to see
| similar patterns elsewhere.
| namdnay wrote:
| I think that's the point of the poster above? That the
| ready availability of guns around Chicago is a factor in
| the gun violence within the city
| mcguire wrote:
| Chicago has a firearm homicide rate of 29 per 100,000
| (https://oneaimil.org/the-issue/impact-of-gun-violence/).
|
| Illinois overall has a "firearm injury death rate" of
| 14.1 per 100,000 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/stat
| es/illinois/il.htm).
|
| Indiana overall has a firearm injury death rate of 17.3
| per 100,000 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/in
| diana/in.htm).
|
| Mississippi (28.6), Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri, Alabama
| and Alaska all have rates above 23 per 100,000 (https://w
| ww.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/...).
|
| " _Phillips County, Arkansas, with only 22,000 residents,
| had the nation's highest homicide rate. Meanwhile, Cook
| County, Illinois (Chicago), which often captures the
| media's attention around violence, had the 79th highest
| gun homicide rate._ " (https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites
| /default/files/2022-05/202...)
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Gary, the city in Indiana right next to Chicago, is a top
| contender for murder capital of the US year after year.
| Chicago never reaches the podium.
| https://madison.com/news/national/the-30-cities-with-the-
| hig...
| mmastrac wrote:
| Libertarianism always falters when it's up against one of
| the many commons we inhabit with our fellow humans. None of
| the single-word -ism ideologies work because the world is
| just too complex for us to reduce to a single way of
| thinking.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Libertarians believe (I know that's an impossible
| statement, they're too heterogeneous) that people should
| be liable for harm they do to others, so maybe that'd be
| grounds for a class action.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| > None of the single-word -ism ideologies work because
| the world is just too complex for us to reduce to a
| single way of thinking.
|
| This shouldn't be a controversial comment. How could it
| even be argued otherwise?
| js2 wrote:
| The ultra-Orthodox Jews in Rockland are wrong. They just are.
| I'm Jewish. Judaism places the value of life above all else
| (Pikuach Nefesh). There's 613 commandments that guide an
| Orthodox Jew's life and you are commanded to break virtually
| all of them to preserve life. Vaccines are life preserving.
| By what interpretation of Judaism they can refuse
| vaccination, I cannot imagine.
|
| At least that's my understanding of Judaism and how it was
| taught to me.
| woodruffw wrote:
| That's how it was taught to me as well.
|
| For people unfamiliar with the different Jewish movements:
| Rockland county is overwhelmingly Orthodox, specifically
| Hasidic. The Hasidim are a _modern_ conservative
| interpretation of Judaism: it didn 't coalesce until the
| 18th century.
|
| If I was going to be disparaging, I'd say that their
| closest Christian analogue is the nakedly revisionist
| evangelical Christianity of the the American 1970s and
| forwards.
| corrral wrote:
| > If I was going to be disparaging, I'd say that their
| closest Christian analogue is the nakedly revisionist
| evangelical Christianity of the the American 1970s and
| forwards.
|
| I think the current strain, as far as Biblical
| interpretation is concerned, goes back to Darby's crappy-
| but-popular 1909 Bible, incorporating extensive same-page
| notes from Darby:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scofield_Reference_Bible
|
| The 70s are just when the GOP's plan to sell itself to
| evangelicals, on social issues, as a deliberate ploy to
| capture them as a constituency to support the rest of the
| GOP agenda, really started to take off.
| speeder wrote:
| Ooooh... I am a non-US christian and been trying to
| understand certain things, tracked down a lot of origins
| for some of the more heterodox (in my view) beliefs. But
| never had heard of this bible, despite SEEING that bible
| multiple times.
|
| After opening your link and reading more about it a lot
| of more things make sense and "clicked" into place.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > If I was going to be disparaging, I'd say that their
| closest Christian analogue is the nakedly revisionist
| evangelical Christianity of the the American 1970s and
| forwards.
|
| That would be disparaging to the evangelical community.
| Even if you find modern evangelicals to hold distasteful
| beliefs, and I personally do, I don't think that's an apt
| comparison.
|
| A much closer analog would be the radical Mormon cults of
| southern Utah.
|
| A radical version of a controversial branch of the
| religion.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Here's the case I'll make:
|
| The radical Mormon sects, to my understanding (which is
| limited to Under the Banner of Heaven[1]) have somewhat
| strong textual justifications for their practices: it's a
| matter of historical fact that the early Mormons were
| polygamists, were vitriolic racists, &c.
|
| This is in contrast to both reactionary evangelicals (who
| do not make up all evangelicals) and Hasidic Jews (who
| are do not make up the entire Orthodox community), where
| both groups have largely substituted _contemporary_
| doctrine (as a conservative religious expression) for
| historical (and even canonical) interpretations. Compare
| evangelical interpretations of capitalism (and the
| "doctrine of wealth") to descriptions of wealth and
| charity thoughout both the Old and New Testaments.
| Similarly, Hasidic interpretation to pillars of Jewish
| doctrine (Pikuach Nefesh, Tikkun Olam).
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Banner_of_Heaven
| CSMastermind wrote:
| That's fair, I think you're looking at it from the
| perspective of similar belief structure and religious
| doctrine. I was thinking about community size and
| distance from the "mainstream" beliefs of those religion,
| not necessarily the way in which they diverge.
| driverdan wrote:
| Ultra orthodox is just another term for extremism.
| Extremists are not rational. Even within something that's
| irrational like religion they have even more absurdly
| irrational views.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Unfortunately, their poor vaccination culture caused Measles
| to spread to neighboring New York City, and then across the
| country.
|
| Is it accurate to single out Rockland County?
|
| Maybe my reasoning is too simplistic here, but I'd think NYC
| was only vulnerable if _they too_ had a poor vaccination
| culture.
| tialaramex wrote:
| It's normal to have a few people who can't or shouldn't be
| vaccinated, as well as some low level of refusal or
| negligence.
|
| Good coverage means NYC won't have a Polio epidemic, but not
| that nobody in NYC will get Polio if it has taken hold in
| adjacent areas.
| myko wrote:
| > Maybe my reasoning is too simplistic here, but I'd think
| NYC was only vulnerable if they too had a poor vaccination
| culture.
|
| Not the case. Vaccines aren't 100% effective. It's possible
| for an unvaccinated person to infect a vaccinated person.
| Ideally, everyone is vaccinated, and the risk becomes
| extremely small.
| danielodievich wrote:
| During COVID, we podded up with our son's best friend's family,
| husband and wife are both highly focused specialist doctors.
| One of them is an allergenist (hopefully I am spelling it
| right), a very straight up and no-nosnese person and I recall
| her telling us about a woman who showed up to her office about
| 9 months ago trying to get an allergenic exemption from vaccine
| so they could turn it in at work, as she wasn't going to be
| able to keep the job without it. He refused to provide it,
| because allergic reaction to the mRNA vaccine is not a thing,
| and it was doubly so for her.
|
| They're both aghast that people would be refusing proven
| science. My wife and I share that, although hey, Darwin awards,
| take yourself out from the pool if you really want to do it.
| It's just too bad that their behavior impacts us too.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| *allergist
| 99_00 wrote:
| People have no living memory of polio. Anyone who has been to
| or lived in a country with people who have been afflicted with
| polio would absolutely not have this attitude.
|
| We need better education.
|
| Public is becoming less and less informed.
|
| It's heartbreaking seeing young people afflicted with polio.
| People who should be running around, having fun, dating, will
| never experience that. And I'm sure it will continue to impact
| them as they age.
|
| Makes me sad to thinking about it.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| My father in law, mid Boomer American of rural upbringing,
| got polio as a child and sustained some muscle weakness which
| led to him swimming for physical therapy and later becoming a
| competitive swimmer. It was an interesting conversation to
| have when COVID was a concern and vaccines were just starting
| to get deployed
| pirate787 wrote:
| Interestingly, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is a
| childhood polio survivor and fights for eradication funding.
|
| https://rollcall.com/2018/07/10/mcconnell-gets-personal-
| disc...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Typical for republican congressmen, they only care about
| things that affected them personally. You see the same
| thing with republicans who suddenly have a child come out
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Then I hope McConnell gets many more illnesses so that he
| might fund their eradication.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > People have no living memory of polio.
|
| My grandmother tells the story of the big US polio outbreak
| when she was a child. Her parents were scared to death, so
| put her on a train in Indianapolis out to Iowa to live on her
| grandparent's farm . She talked about multiple towns that the
| train stopped in and let people disembark, but refused to
| allow boarding, and looking out the windows at the signs and
| evidence of widespread fear.
|
| It's not something you would forget, and she is definitely
| still alive ;)
| woodruffw wrote:
| I agree that public awareness is declining, but I don't think
| it's because of a lack of living memory. Almost no Americans
| have living memory of Ebola, but we all understand that it's
| very bad.
|
| (I'm still in my mid 20s, and my adult neighbor growing up
| was paralyzed from the waist down from childhood polio. He
| was born the year before the Salk vaccine.)
| sterlind wrote:
| My grandfather was paralyzed from polio, and ultimately died
| from complications of post-polio syndrome. It's a nasty
| virus. I have living memory.
| Asparagirl wrote:
| Mine too! He was a first generation American, born and
| raised in the Bronx. Caught polio at summer camp, probably
| in his very early teens.
|
| WAS IN AN IRON LUNG FOR A YEAR. HAD TO LIVE APART FROM HIS
| FAMILY FOR A LONG TIME. As immigrants working their way up
| from the sweatshops, and eventually running their own
| quasi-sweatshop, they could not leave to be with him
| through years of recuperation.
|
| Recovered. Never ever wanted to talk about what he had been
| through. My dad didn't even know until he was an older
| teen.
|
| Post-polio syndrome arrived. No medications available to
| help, because there was no interest from companies in
| putting money into developing the medications, because no
| one was ever going to get polio again, right?
|
| Contributing cause of death.
| danielodievich wrote:
| I know someone who has been sick with polio for all of her
| life, she's really old now. Her body is broken, although not
| completely paralized. That virus is a nasty piece of work.
| junglistguy wrote:
| ugjka wrote:
| [deleted]
| chitowneats wrote:
| Peak HN comment.
|
| Yes I'm sure this ultra-orthodox community of Hasidic Jews was
| indoctrinated into anti-vax beliefs on Facebook
|
| /s
| ugjka wrote:
| chitowneats wrote:
| Funny. The article doesn't mention Latvia at all. Nor does
| it mention COVID.
| ugjka wrote:
| chitowneats wrote:
| 92% of Americans are vaccinated for polio by age 2. We
| are not talking about the same disease nor are we talking
| about the same vaccines.
|
| Non-vaccination for polio is an extreme position in the
| U.S., often only held by fundamentalist religious
| communities.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/immunize.htm
| ugjka wrote:
| [deleted]
| ugjka wrote:
| jryan49 wrote:
| Pretty sure anti-vax sentiment has existed ever since vaccines
| have...
| ugjka wrote:
| (blanked)
| kergonath wrote:
| Yea, it has. Ever since Jenner and Pasteur did it.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Earlier. In 1721 in Boston, a bomb was thrown at proponent
| of smallpox inoculation. There were far earlier methods
| than that, I assume they too faced witchcraft-like
| accusations and such.
|
| https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/special-edition-on-
| infect...
| gregwebs wrote:
| If you understand the limitations of the two types of vaccines,
| then these polio stories that pop up are just something that
| should be expected to happen.
|
| The US vaccinates with the non-live version. This non-live
| version cannot mutate, but it is non-sterilizing- the vaccinated
| can still become infected in their gut- the vaccine prevents it
| from getting into their bloodstream and become poliomyelitis. We
| now we see this outcome in some articles about Polio showing up
| in sewage samples in the developed world where this vaccine is
| given.
|
| So polio is already spreading and the un-vaccinated population in
| question here is not necessarily increasing the spread of Polio.
| The tragedy though is that someone is now suffering paralysis
| from poliomyelitis which would have been less likely to happen if
| the person were vaccinated.
| yubozhao wrote:
| I have polio from the vaccination (mid 80s in China). Shitty
| vaccine then.
|
| The long term affect is not fun. And not to mention post polio
| syndrome.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| What's most concerning IMHO is that this appears to be from
| community spread with no known recent travel history (polio
| apparently incubates in 7-21 days so they would have caught it in
| the last few weeks).
|
| Even more troubling is that they were paralyzed which means they
| were one of the less than 1% of polio cases that turn into a
| severe event like being paralyzed. The vast majority of cases are
| asymptomatic or just give you diarrhea.
|
| How many people could be out in the community and spreading it
| without anyone knowing?
| mcguire wrote:
| This whole thing is very concerning.
|
| " _According to the New York State Health Department, a person
| was found to be infected by a vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2
| (VDPV2), aka revertant polio Sabin type 2 virus._ "
|
| "Vaccine-associated paralytic polio"
| (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/vaccine-
| derived-p...) is "a rare adverse event" following immunization
| with the Oral Polio Vaccine. "The United States exclusively has
| used IPV since 2000."
|
| I doesn't seem likely that a "young adult" who hasn't travelled
| outside the US would be exposed to the OPV. Possibly, from some
| of the other cases mentioned in the CDC article, someone the
| young adult interacted with had been exposed to it, though.
|
| The original article doesn't mention if the young adult was
| immunocompromised, which seems like a requirement for a
| secondary OPV infection.
| mike_d wrote:
| The risk of spread from weakened virus is completely
| eliminated under a proper vaccination program. You go into a
| community, vaccinate everyone, and you have zero risk.
|
| The fact the patient was unvaccinated was effectively their
| "immunocompromise" that allowed the virus to spread to them.
| robocat wrote:
| > zero risk
|
| * if you live on a spherical planet with spherical people
| xyzwave wrote:
| And cows.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
| makomk wrote:
| Unfortunately, vaccinating everyone is not actually zero
| risk. A small proportion of people who recieve the oral
| polio vaccine develop vaccine-associated paralytic polio
| which is exactly what it sounds like - full-on paralytic
| polio caused by receiving the vaccine. It's a rare
| complication, somewhere around one in a million, but back
| when polio had been eradicated in most of the world it was
| the main cause of paralytic polio. So we'd really like to
| fully eradicate polio and then stop using that vaccine.
|
| This is made harder by another similar but subtly different
| problem - circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses. They
| come from the oral vaccine too, but instead of affecting
| vaccinated people they spread amongst the unvaccinated
| population and evolve to regain the virulence and high rate
| of paralyzation of wild polio. It's one of those viruses
| that was found in New York. This poses a problem for
| eradicating polio and stopping vaccination, because once
| you're no longer vaccinating people they can catch and
| spread the virus from the oral vaccine and it can evolve
| into something dangerous. The current VDPV problem traces
| back to an attempt to finally finish eradicating the type 2
| poliovirus, which no longer exists in its wild form, by
| removing it from the oral vaccine and stamping out any
| subsequent VDPV spread. This failed badly.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Wikipedia states
|
| > A potential, adverse effect of the OPV is its known
| ability to recombine to a form that causes neurological
| infection and paralysis.[27] This genetic reversal of the
| pathogen to a virulent form takes a considerable time (at
| least 12 months) and does not affect the person who was
| originally vaccinated. The vaccine-derived attenuated
| virus is normally excreted from vaccinated people for a
| limited period. Thus, in areas with poor sanitation and
| low vaccination coverage, the spontaneous reversal of the
| vaccine-derived virus to a virulent form and its
| spreading in the environment can lead to unvaccinated
| people becoming infected.
|
| Which boils down to no, you cannot get polio from the
| polio vaccine but potentially some others could get polio
| from you for a short period a year later if they're not
| vaccinated.
| mike_d wrote:
| One in 200 infections leads to paralysis. So yes it is
| effectively zero risk compared to non-vaccination.
|
| If you eliminate the unvaccinated population, vaccine-
| derived infections are a non-issue. Which is how we
| addressed the problem prior to 1979 - largely due to the
| fact that everyone saw first had what the virus did and
| there was no vaccine hesitancy.
|
| But we haven't used weakened virus vaccines for polio in
| the last 20 years, so it's kinda moot.
| Fomite wrote:
| This does indeed seem like the unfortunate confluence of
| being exposed to someone shedding the vaccine-strain and
| community transmission. Which is exceedingly rare in the
| U.S., but is entirely foreseeable in low vaccination rate
| enclaves, which are growing more common.
| joeyh wrote:
| He did travel, to Poland and Hungary. The AP originally had an
| article claiming no travel, but later updated it.
|
| Vincent Racaniello covers this and other details, recommended:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-5KGHzHTsI
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| He didn't travel in the last 30 days I read, and the
| incubation time is shorter than that. I.e. he caught it after
| coming home.
|
| Vincent has been a very bad source of information for the
| COVID pandemic. He has famously been against vaccine
| boosters, and even declared he didn't think he needed one.
| Even now as the need for second boosters is clear (and the
| need for first boosters completely justified and verified) he
| still says they aren't necessary. This is on top of him
| downplaying every variant like Omicron and saying they
| wouldn't be a problem (and then they went on to be huge
| problems). He should not be platformed IMHO.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| The amount of times Fauci has been incorrect, he should be
| de-platformed according to your logic as well.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Fargoan wrote:
| I don't trust anyone who refers to the COVID vaccines as "the
| jab"
| mike_d wrote:
| > https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S02786915
| 2...
|
| Which has been thoroughly debunked by the scientific
| community. "Food and Chemical Toxicology" is not a respected
| journal, and most famously published the "GMO foods cause
| cancer" paper that ended up being retracted.
|
| Here is a good video on why the author is a quack:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwoRsj7AE7A
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| The Lancet data shows the same conclusion through different
| means. Did you have any thoughts on that?
| mike_d wrote:
| No it doesn't? Maybe you have the wrong link?
|
| The link you provided is just a standard vaccine efficacy
| over time study using data from Sweden. These are a dime
| a dozen and all show two things: 1) you are less likely
| to die when vaccinated, and 2) immune response reduces
| over time so you need boosters.
| mooman219 wrote:
| > [Rockland County residents], have some of the lowest
| vaccination rates in the state; Monsey's is the lowest in the
| state, at 17.8%, as of June 15, 2021
|
| Rockland County from the article.
| Izkata wrote:
| That's not in the article, a different comment here got it
| from Wikipedia.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> How many people could be out in the community and spreading
| it without anyone knowing?_
|
| I wonder whether anyone has checked Rockland county wastewater?
| This kind of testing recently detected it in London:
| https://www.science.org/content/article/poliovirus-in-london...
| cies wrote:
| voz_ wrote:
| Absolutely loony take. How does an engineer get like this?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| An awful lot of cranks are engineers (electrical seems to
| be the variety most prone to it).
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Some of the most intelligent, knowledgeable, respected-
| in-their-field distant family members of mine are like
| that. I've spent decade trying to figure it out, because
| selfishly it's terrifying and I don't want it happening
| to me.
|
| One thing that seems to be common and is my working
| _hypothesis_ , is that they're so smart and so respected
| in their field (or, in subset of cases, arrogant), that
| they simply trust themselves more than anybody else.
| There is nobody in their family and friends who can
| _truly_ "slap some sense into them"; provide perspective,
| course-correct, nudge into objective reality or
| mainstream story, whatever we call it. I've actually
| asked a couple of them point blank - and they admitted,
| nope, there's nobody that they trust more than
| themselves. Couple of them even said - if you don't have
| trust and faith in yourself, you're weak.
|
| So I'm hoping I'm _somewhat_ inoculated against going off
| the deep end by having at least 3 people in my life
| (wife, sister, and one good friend) who can, and _have_ ,
| slapped some sense into me when I was going off the
| rails.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'd argue that there is no nobody you should trust more
| than yourself. This does not mean disregarding expertise
| or imagining that you know, or can know, everything. But
| the moment that you grant final primacy over your own
| thoughts to somebody other than yourself is the moment
| that that person can make you believe, and consequently
| act, in nearly any way. And, at scale, that's quite a
| disconcerting thought.
|
| When people trust themselves above all it means we'll
| never have a utopia because we all can't help but
| believing some pretty stupid stuff at times. But at the
| same time we'll never have an absolute dystopia, because
| the diversity of thought ensures we'll never all fall off
| the deep end, or be pushed off it, together.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Science, as a discipline, is all about not trusting
| yourself because you can fool yourself easily if you're
| not careful.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| You shouldn't need someone you trust more than yourself
| to slap sense into you. You should view someone whom you
| trust strongly (but less strongly than your own thoughts)
| arguing _hard_ as an indicator, even if you disagree with
| them. You should be able to ask "Why do we disagree",
| and trace that back to (hopefully) some simple but core
| value difference, like "I like hotdogs and they like
| hamburgers".
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Your trust in someone also doesn't need to apply equally
| on all topics. I'm much likelier to trust a virologist
| over myself about virology than about the best way to
| cook pasta.
| Swizec wrote:
| I was reading a book on cognitive biases recently and the
| part that really stuck for me was: The smarter you are,
| the more likely you are to fall prey to the Narrative
| Bias/Fallacy.
|
| Super smart people are so good at constructing plausible
| narratives that they can convince themselves of almost
| anything. You have to actively look for ways to disprove
| your own narratives. This is hard because they sound so
| plausible.
| pklausler wrote:
| So smart people don't know when they're wrong because
| they're smart enough to convince themselves that they're
| right, and dumb people don't know when they're wrong,
| because they're too dumb to see how dumb they're being.
| We can't win.
| Swizec wrote:
| Yes, I think the lesson to take away is that you want not
| only to be smart, but also wise and humble. Wise enough
| to realize you need to poke holes in your ideas, humble
| enough to fix your hypothesis when facts change.
| pps wrote:
| > You have to actively look for ways to disprove your own
| narratives
|
| Socratic Method is one way, I can recommend "The Socratic
| Method - A Practitioners Handbook" by Ward Farnsworth.
| troutwine wrote:
| What book was that? I'd be interested in giving it a
| read.
| Swizec wrote:
| Looking at my Audible history it was either Think Again
| by Adam Grant or Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg.
| Can't remember exactly.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| protip: you can do this without being overwhelmingly
| smart, too. You need only be smart enough to convince
| yourself
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Perfect; that sounds like exactly what I've observed - in
| others as well as myself - but I did not have a name, so
| now I can google better, thx :)
|
| (any recommendations on that specific book?)
| designium wrote:
| Engineers are just human as others. Engineers is not
| equal to be rational in other areas of life.
| corrral wrote:
| They're very prone, in my experience, to _believing_ that
| their explanations are ultra-rational, though, reality be
| damned. And to falling for arguments with the trappings
| of rationality, but deeply flawed premises or early steps
| slyly skipped so the castle 's built on sand but _looks_
| like a perfect castle with all these crazy-tall minarets
| reaching for the sky (ahem, like a certain popular-online
| political & economic philosophy) and then treating
| everyone who doesn't agree that the castle's beautiful as
| irrational, probably-emotion-driven morons.
| mistermann wrote:
| > They're very prone, in my experience, to believing that
| their explanations are ultra-rational, though, reality be
| damned.
|
| Like for example, their analyses of "conspiracy
| theorists" (when what they are actually analyzing is
| their own incredibly flawed semi-conscious representation
| of conspiracy theorists). It's quite funny that the world
| is this way if you think about it deeply, because it
| could be otherwise.
| corrral wrote:
| How many exchanges building on this before we reach a
| particularly helpless flavor of solipsism, you think? I'd
| say about three more posts.
| pessimizer wrote:
| But many people are not rational in any part of their
| lives, so irrational arguments are not surprising from
| them. Some people don't actually know what a rational
| argument is - it's something that you learn in school,
| not something that is intuitive. They think that
| argumentation is when you make the other person shut up,
| rather than when you make a step by step case to get to a
| point from a set of agreed upon (at least provisionally)
| premises. You can recognize these people because they
| have a tell of repeating the same sentence over and over
| again to drown out the other person speaking. They're not
| trying to lay out a convincing case, they're trying to
| survive. If they trusted you, you could absolutely teach
| them argumentation and reason.
|
| Engineers _do_ know how to argue rationally, because they
| have to remember why things work to a pretty intense
| depth. The question is how people can wall off that
| ability instead of applying it to other things that are
| important to them.
|
| Being "human" isn't an explanation, though. That's just
| saying that humans are frail, and this is a failure,
| therefore it should be expected from humans.
| woodruffw wrote:
| And beyond this: engineers, _particularly_ programmers,
| are _particularly_ susceptible to flawed "first
| principles" thinking.
|
| Not every factoid in every field can be derived from a
| small set of first principles, _particularly_ when that
| field is primarily empirical in nature.
| rajup wrote:
| I think this is something barfed up by a GPT-3 model
| trained on OANN, Fox News and 4chan.
| Aperocky wrote:
| It's some interesting psychology.
|
| I've had discussion with a guy in lab of a top university
| and they believed 911 was an inside job. steel beams and
| all that.
|
| It doesn't seem to correlate to technical ability, there
| are something in psychology that draws a certain type of
| people towards conspiracy and in which they go into a
| mental state where normal explanations are removed from
| their logic and they go seek outlandish explanations or
| slightly hard to explain things and turn a twist into it.
| I don't understand why but I think a pretty decent amount
| of people subscribe to this kind of thinking.
|
| Neurology researchers here, please give us answers.
| [deleted]
| krisoft wrote:
| > they believed 911 was an inside job. steel beams and
| all that.
|
| 911 is definietly a conspiracy. A bunch of telecom
| engineers acting in unison with dispatchers and first
| responders. There is no other explanation how else
| police/emt/fire brigade shows up when you dial that
| number and tell them about an emergency. But what it has
| to do with steel beams I don't know. \s
|
| Joking aside: I have noticed that sometimes when I
| preceive that everyone around me thinks X i feel an urge
| to think the opposite of it. I only had mild and
| inconsequential cases of this (opinion about shows,
| products, etc), but I can imagine that this type of
| contraryness in edge cases can convince people that
| everyone is wrong about some important historical event.
| And it seems once they convinced themselves their belief
| is stable enough to make them stick with it.
|
| Obviously hating Game of Thrones when everyone was raving
| about it feels very different from subscribing to
| conspiracy theories, but maybe the phenomena is similar,
| just one latches on to a different subject?
| mcguire wrote:
| Hating Game of Thrones is perfectly justified. :-)
| tshaddox wrote:
| Funny that _that 's_ the conspiracy you reach for to make
| the joke. Not the one where people planned in secret to
| send people to the United States to learn how to fly
| airplanes so that they could hijack commercial airlines
| and commit suicide attacks.
| Fnoord wrote:
| > Joking aside
|
| Good thing you mention or I fell for it (that you meant
| it seriously, not that I believed in the conspiracy).
| Poe's law in effect.
|
| But that's the thing. People who believe in conspiracies
| are susceptible to them. For example, they could've lost
| their trust in society, or smoke a lot of pot, or have a
| friend or two who are into it. Very much like a cult.
|
| And I am saying that as person who was into conspiracies,
| who lost faith in society, who used drugs (psychedelics,
| mostly), and had a severe psychosis (not at all related
| to the previously mentioned though but stress from
| another factor).
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Not a neurology researcher, but always seems to be people
| with really good pattern recognition intell. They connect
| dots well, blessing and curse etc.
| pintxo wrote:
| I'd say they may connect dots quickly, but not
| necessarily well.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Indeed. As someone with experience of extreme manic
| psychosis, it is the pattern recognition/dot connection
| algorithm kicked into absolute overdrive. Spurious
| correlation abounds when afflicted with such a condition.
|
| Thankfully my experience was acute and triggered by
| drugs, so a few years of anti-psychotics and refraining
| from anything other than cannabis and alcohol in
| moderation have let me stop taking the anti-psychotics
| and at worst I experience cyclothymia, which I've decided
| to just live with and not medicate.
| bredren wrote:
| This sounds like ~the plot of the film Pi.
| overrun11 wrote:
| Was their argument rigorous or obviously irrational? On
| the spectrum of plausibility from lizard people to JFK,
| 9/11 doesn't strike me as especially delusional. I
| believe we sometimes don't differentiate well enough
| between abnormally suspicious people that act rationally
| from the clearly deranged. Non-consensus views could be a
| sign of either but a failure mode a different set of
| smart people have is to write off anything non-consensus
| merely because it's low status.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| steel beams don't melt jet fuel
| sangnoir wrote:
| > How does an engineer get like this?
|
| There's nothing special about engineers that makes them
| less prone to human weaknesses. I had a (software)
| engineer colleague who believed in overunity energy, and
| was so into it they traveled to paid conferences.
| fifafu wrote:
| Oh my.
|
| Stefan Lanka could keep his money due to a formality. The
| judges even said that it was clearly proven the measle
| virus exists.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Also no legitimate method of inquiry works by someone
| saying "I'll give you a reward if you prove me wrong!"
| and then having that promise of reward settled in court.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| > (I'm going to take a lot of karma damage for this, but i
| believe it has to be said)
|
| I don't think you have anything to worry about, HN is well-
| known to be highly tolerant of a variety and even
| dissenting opinions.
| Induane wrote:
| HN is generally okay with dissenting viewpoints.
|
| I didn't know scurvy was considered contagious; that's
| pretty cool. I did know people used to cure it by drinking
| tea made from Arborvitae trees - or at least its European
| counterpart (I think they have the same common name).
|
| I find the stance a little baffling though; if Measles
| isn't a virus, why can it's spread by halted by
| vaccination? Aside from the general usage and success
| thereof, sometimes it's easy to wonder just because the
| major outbreaks in the US happened a fairly long time ago.
| But a couple years back I had a coworker from Nigeria - I
| guess they still have outbreaks there?... anyway he
| scrambled to help get them money for MMR vaccines (I don't
| know if they're usually free via the WHO but supply wasn't
| abundant so - I guess bribes are a thing there moreso than
| here). And lo-and-behold none of his family got sick at
| all, but most of their smaller town did -- including their
| neighbors; a few had persistent physical problems (I don't
| recall what now) and a few people died. That's anecdotal,
| but goes very well with existing evidence and provides a
| nice microcosm for observation.
|
| The MMR vaccine isn't a nutrient cocktail and I find it
| quite hard to conjure a Occam's razor explanation that
| doesn't involve a known virus (or maybe I severely lack
| imagination or am too tainted by existing knowledge). To
| make the vaccines (at least ones like the MMR vaccine) they
| culture viruses - letting them replicate in cells - and
| then weakening or killing them. Do the vaccines just happen
| to have a weakened form of a virus that _doesn 't_ cause
| Measles and it's protective quality merely a startling
| coincidence?
|
| I mean, the virus can be viewed under a microscope
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC375751/ - if
| that isn't responsible for the preventative effects of the
| vaccine, then what actually is?
|
| Sometimes science gets used badly and misconceptions abound
| or bad routes are taken for a while until they prove
| untenable; sometimes prevailing wisdom lasts a thousand
| years and then a Copernican revolution happens. They tend
| to be most useful to question though when there is a better
| alternative explanation that better fits the observations
| than the current prevailing wisdom.
|
| Anyone can "question" anything - but what is the better
| fitting explanation exists for observations about Measles
| than the prevalent wisdom and evidence that it is a virus?
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I find the stance a little baffling though; if Measles
| isn't a virus, why can it's spread by halted by
| vaccination?
|
| I mean surely anyone making the first claim would also
| make the claim that the measles vaccine is bogus. That
| second claim is already infamously popular enough in
| areas of the U.S. that there have been measles outbreaks
| among unvaccinated children.
| twawaaay wrote:
| > HN is generally okay with dissenting viewpoints.
|
| No, it is not. HN is for more or less like-minded people
| and if you stay too far from the beaten path you risk the
| ire of moderators regardless of whether you are right or
| not.
|
| Apparently this is the price of keeping it civilised.
| mike_d wrote:
| The abundance of straight up looney anti-vaxx stuff that
| ends up in the HN comments proves this is not true.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Wow, that's quite a take. How do you explain the
| effectiveness of measles and polio vaccines if they were
| not viral illnesses?
| Jwarder wrote:
| I don't want to put works in cies's mouth, but it
| possible to read the comment in a reasonable way. It is
| not necessarily a claim that polio isn't real, but rather
| that patient's signs and symptoms can overlap with other
| medical issues. Stefan Lanka doesn't pass my sniff test,
| but reference to him and to test contamination can be
| read as examples that these sorts of tests are not always
| clear.
| colineartheta wrote:
| I just want to clarify for my own understanding - are you
| making an argument that this individual, that has been
| tested for and is known to have the polio virus in their
| body (one of the most widely understood viral infections we
| have), is actually not afflicted with polio because...the
| symptoms are comparable to other, potentially unknown,
| diseases or causes?
|
| Additionally, are you claiming that virologists, an area of
| study that has proven, repeatedly (through the very
| apparent efficacy of countless vaccines for diseases that
| ravaged humanity for millennia) to be one of the most
| remarkably successful scientific endeavors in human
| history, is somehow...not scientifically rigorous?
|
| (I'm going to take a lot of karma damage for this, but I
| believe it has to be said)
| scifibestfi wrote:
| I would have completely agreed with this until Covid,
| when many (not all) virologists completely threw
| scientific rigor out the window. It will take generations
| to rebuild the trust they burned.
| erulabs wrote:
| I would be cautious of making group generalizations like
| that. If a couple idiots who call themselves physicists
| publish a terrible paper -- that doesn't indict _all of
| psychics_. Covid made every amateur virologist and wanna-
| be-scientist come out of the woodwork. Don 't throw the
| baby out with the bathwater!
| jefftk wrote:
| Why would a terrible paper by physicists indict all of
| psychics?
| chihuahua wrote:
| because of autocorrect
| lurquer wrote:
| (Meanwhile, on other threads, there are discussions about
| the lamentable fraud that may have tainted
| Alzheimer/"brain plaque" research for the past 20 years,
| another thread about recent studies showing seratonin may
| have squat to do with depression, and you can always
| count on occasional thread regarding the Theranos debacle
| that deluded some very educated people. Greater harm, it
| seems, comes from lack of skepticism than too much of
| it.)
| [deleted]
| colineartheta wrote:
| I have followed that thread, and the Alzeimer "story"
| with great interest over the couple years I've been aware
| of it - in no way was my comment above meant to be a
| reflection on the possibility of a "taint" or lack-of
| scientific rigor (to bring in another example - the lack
| of repeatability in, oh, nearly every(?) social
| psychology experiment, etc. etc.) in the scientific and
| medical-science fields. The rise in administration at
| academic levels at the expense of science, the growing
| discontent in scientific funding being tied to results
| rather than curiousity, all very important - and very
| important to keep a skeptical mind about it all!
| Absolutely, that, to me, is the core of the scientific
| excercise.
|
| I only meant that, in this particular case of polio
| detection, the cause and origin of the case is fairly
| cut-and-dry (there are other articles that have been
| published about it that give additional information), and
| introducing skepticism of the manner I responded to
| initially is likely to do more harm than good.
| Disinformation often begins with a distortion of a grain
| of truth, and the effects of that public skepticism and,
| dare I say it, ignorance (ironically?) breeds the
| environment that causes the reemergence of, for example,
| polio, amongst a public that is just being "skeptical" of
| vaccines.
| lurquer wrote:
| I hear you.
|
| In regard to Polio vaccines, there is some head-
| scratching to be done if you go down that rabbit-hole.
| It's all ancient history now, but the numbers of polio
| cases was dropping even before the vaccine roll-out. I
| don't know enough about it to comment beyond that. But, I
| do know human nature: polio outbreaks were terrifying to
| parents, and there would be every reason not to be a bit
| skeptical when a solution to the problem was found...
| that is, it wasn't a time for clear thinking in the midst
| of the panic. It's precisely times like that when people
| are prone to overlook things.
|
| For instance, imagine the chaos that could ensue if a
| disease that was overwhelmingly trivial and asymptomatic
| was advertised as possibly being 10 or 20 percent lethal?
| Heck, I bet folks would be so scared that they'd shut
| down entire countries, weld people into their apartments,
| gulp down horse de-wormer, mandate experimental drugs,
| etc. Of course, I exaggerate. I doubt something like that
| could happen in modern times. But, if it did, the
| skeptics back when it was going on and even after the
| panic had died down, would most likely be pilloried and
| accused of being unthinking idiots. Just saying.
| nemothekid wrote:
| There's a super strange trend I've been seeing, since
| COVID, where science is no longer allowed to be wrong.
| Even though the very discipline is about making
| hypothesis and proving them wrong; I'm seeing a lot of
| arguments that kind of boil down to "Science is a liar
| sometimes"[1].
|
| Do you have the same opinion on particle physics?
| Scientists have spent the better part of 80 years on an
| obviously wrong standard model - has that caused you to
| doubt Maxwell's equations or how the circuits in your
| computer works?
|
| More seriously, "lack of skepticism" is bunk when the
| "skeptics" don't provide equal or greater research and
| reasoning. People have started to think of themselves as
| nobel laureates because they can say "no, I don't think
| so", and have 0 data to back them up.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ak-SmyHHQ
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Except unlike that Alzheimers research, vaccines work.
| They often work _astonishingly_ well. If you want to
| pretend viruses don 't exist, you need to provide
| alternative reasons for why these vaccines work so well,
| and especially now that we have shown mRNA vaccines work,
| this alternative explanation also has to work in cases
| where only a tiny subset of that virus exists in the
| vaccine.
|
| Quite simply, not understanding something, or not liking
| the consequences of it, is not skepticism, it's
| ignorance. Skepticism requires having good reasons to
| reject good models/research/outcomes etc. In the
| Alzheimers case, the reason for skepticism, which many
| people in the field had, was difficulty reproducing
| results, and lack of positive outcomes from therapies
| using that working hypothesis.
|
| Blind skepticism makes you beyond stupid, and eventually
| turns you into an idiot who watches Alex Jones and thinks
| your own son is a crisis actor
| [deleted]
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| surely they are testing sewage to see if there is more of the
| polio virus in the drainage. I thought the CDC had started
| using that a lot more often. On the left you have nuts who
| think vaccines are unnatural and therefore awful, and on the
| right you have nuts who say the government is injecting nanites
| for 5G mind control. It's a crazy world out there.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I'd like to see a strong new center.
| wesleywt wrote:
| It will be interesting to see what happens to the vaccine
| sceptics when this comes back. And it will come back.
| mmastrac wrote:
| The saddest anti-science movement in the 2000s is the mass anti-
| vaccine movement. So much progress lost by Wakefield's nutjob
| paper that spawned the mass movement we see today.
|
| I hope we'll look back at this period 100 years from now and just
| shake our heads, and hope that it's not an ongoing concern then.
| makomk wrote:
| The anti-vaccine movement is a problem but they're not really
| the big problem this time. Basically, the global effort to
| eradicate polio failed catastropically due to a major flaw in
| the strategy devised by the WHO and all the other groups
| involved in it, this directly caused a wave of new polio cases
| that is now starting to reach the western world, and no-one has
| figured out a way to fix it:
| https://www.science.org/content/article/polio-eradication-pr...
| (Notice also the date on that article: two and a half years
| ago. It took a while for this to spread out of Africa and I
| certainly didn't anticipate at the time how likely this was.)
| macintux wrote:
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| If there's anything the CIA is good at, it's fucking things
| up. These are the nutjobs that came up with operation
| Northwoods and actually implemented many other of their
| stupid ideas.
| js2 wrote:
| They absolutely should not have done that, but it has nothing
| to do with the anti-vaccine stance in the U.S., and even in
| Pakistan:
|
| > "'The CIA is not exclusively responsible for the problems
| we have in getting children vaccinated but it certainly
| didn't make it anything easier,' says Anthony Robbins, the
| co-editor of the Journal of Public Health Policy. Robbins
| wrote an editorial denouncing the CIA use of fake vaccination
| programs back in August of 2012. Even before bin Laden was
| killed in 2011, the Taliban had banned polio immunization in
| the parts of Pakistan it controls. The Taliban claimed the
| polio drops sterilize Pakistani children and vaccinators were
| American spies.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Clandestine activity in Pakistan has nothing to do with
| nutters in Rockland County.
| ars wrote:
| This is an infection with VDPV2 - VDPV2 is not used in
| Rockland County, but it is used Pakistan. This infection
| came from Pakistan or Afghanistan.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| VDPV2 has also been in W Africa, are you in possession of
| all Jews' travel history worldwide? (VDPV was also in
| London and China where I hear Jews even dare to dwell let
| alone travel) I suspect ADL or Mossad would like to speak
| to you if you are...
| macintux wrote:
| But it does have to do with our inability to wipe out polio
| forever.
| [deleted]
| cies wrote:
| If you are right, the problem will fix itself. So just relax
| (unless you still believe in herd immunity: i certainly do not
| after the crappy C19 vaccines)
| epakai wrote:
| Doesn't make sense. We already had non-herd immunity
| producing vaccines for flu. That covid vaccines produce the
| same outcome isn't a particularly special case. It's not even
| that complex to understand the WHY they don't produce herd
| immunity.
|
| I can understand being frustrated because herd immunity was
| touted as a possible benefit of mass covid vaccination, but
| that has nothing to do with whether it exists in general.
| Izkata wrote:
| The flu is a couple dozen different strains of influenza.
| The yearly shot is only for around 2-4 of those viruses
| that are expected to be most prevalent. "Bad flu years" are
| when they got it wrong.
| wrycoder wrote:
| The polio vaccine is a sterilizing vaccine that completely
| protects against infection
|
| The SARS2 mRNA vaccines don't even protect against infection,
| especially for Omicron variants.
|
| You may want to reconsider your opinion.
| okaram wrote:
| They _do_ protect against infection, even against Omicron
| variants.
|
| The protection goes down over time, and it is less for many
| of the variants, but it is way greater than 0.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Not for the recent variants.
|
| But, it is still claimed that they greatly reduce severe
| infection.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Not really, they take your chances down to dying from it by
| a factor of 10 fold. The vaccine is a success. Covid-19 is
| a much more unstable and mutable virus than polio so it
| changes so quickly we may always be just a couple steps
| behind, luckily the human immune system is also ready for
| such viruses for the most part after being primed by the
| vaccines. The antivax crowd turn their back on science and
| turn to mysticism and demagogues for their answers.
| wrycoder wrote:
| Yeah, I'm vaxxed.
|
| The point I'm trying to make is that there's a wide range
| of vaccine efficacy. Current vaccines against BA4/5, very
| poor.
|
| Now, my question is, since the current mRNA vaccine is
| causing our body to create old spike protein, and BA4/5
| almost completely evades the resulting antibodies, what's
| the mechanism that reduces severe disease from BA4/5?
| tlogan wrote:
| phailhaus wrote:
| Surgical masks do reduce the spread of COVID-19, and even
| cloth masks reduce symptoms of respiratory illness. [1]
| During an emergency, we have to act. It's absurd to expect
| that we should wait for a huge study to confirm what we we
| already know about respiratory viruses in general. In a low-
| info environment, the prior is clearly to favor mask
| mandates. And it turns out, it was the right call!
|
| [1] "Surgical masks reduce COVID-19 spread, large-scale study
| shows" https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-
| news/2021/09/surgical-mask...
| wrycoder wrote:
| I'd like to second timr's remarks on that study. I've read
| the whole thing twice, and I found it to be low quality and
| tendentious: they didn't even fairly present the results
| they did have.
|
| It may be that the "surgical" masks they used, while not
| N95, had an electret layer. That would make them a lot
| better than the "procedure" masks commonly worn in the US
| against COVID.
| timr wrote:
| Let's be clear on the limits of the study you're quoting --
| the _total effect size_ was a tiny, tiny fraction a percent
| for the surgical mask arm (.09%), and barely reached a
| reasonable level of statistical significance (p=0.043).
| There was no statistically significant effect size for
| cloth masks.
|
| No matter how you look at this study -- _if you actually
| read it [1], and don 't just read press releases_ -- it was
| not a strong result. Moreover, after the raw data for the
| study was released, there were a number of legitimate
| critiques that call into question the primary result. For
| example, this one [2]:
|
| > In this short note we re-analyze the data from this trial
| using standard non-parametric paired statistics tests on
| treatment/village pairs. With this approach, we find that
| behavioral outcomes like physical distancing are highly
| significant, while the primary outcome of the study is not.
| Importantly, we find that the behavior of unblinded staff
| when enrolling study participants is one of the most highly
| significant differences between treatment and control
| groups, contributing to a significant imbalance in
| denominators between treatment and control groups.
|
| Even if we accept the claims of the original paper at face
| value, the fact that you're citing this study as some kind
| of definitive rebuttal is, deeply ironically, a perfect
| example of the OP's critique: the highest quality evidence
| for mask mandates is simply and objectively weak, but most
| casual observers believe the opposite to be true.
|
| Public health has exaggerated (or outright lied about)
| evidence quality throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Is that
| the reason for this Polio event? Likely not, but if we're
| casting about for secondary or tertiary reasons, a drop in
| trust in public health due to their own trivially falsified
| propaganda wouldn't be the worst place to start.
|
| [1] https://www.poverty-
| action.org/sites/default/files/publicati...
|
| [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296
| surement wrote:
| Do you have evidence that asymptomatic people are even
| contagious? At the start of the pandemic there was a Pew
| survey that showed that 10% of people who _know_ they have
| covid would still go to work. I think stuff like that
| explains the spread a lot more than lack of masking by non-
| sick individuals. Not everyone can afford to quarantine.
| mcguire wrote:
| 18 Nov 2020 " _Research early in the pandemic suggested
| that the rate of asymptomatic infections could be as high
| as 81%. But a meta-analysis published last month1, which
| included 13 studies involving 21,708 people, calculated
| the rate of asymptomatic presentation to be 17%. ...
| Byambasuren's review also found that asymptomatic
| individuals were 42% less likely to transmit the virus
| than symptomatic people._ "
| (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03141-3)
|
| 7 Jan 2021 " _The baseline assumptions for the model were
| that peak infectiousness occurred at the median of
| symptom onset and that 30% of individuals with infection
| never develop symptoms and are 75% as infectious as those
| who do develop symptoms. Combined, these baseline
| assumptions imply that persons with infection who never
| develop symptoms may account for approximately 24% of all
| transmission._ " (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamane
| tworkopen/fullarticle...)
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > They still (to this day) did not acknowledge that vaccines
| and mask mandates do not limit spread of COVID.
|
| They don't "acknowledge" that because it is not a true
| statement. Masks _do_ limit spread of COVID-19. So do
| vaccines. Neither one prevents it completely, but that 's
| different from "do not limit spread", and at no point was
| there either scientific or public health consensus that
| either one would completely prevent spread.
|
| > Yes - at very beging the assumtion was that vaccines will
| limit COVID spread but that is not true any more for BA
| variants
|
| Vaccines still do limit COVID-19 spread, even for the latest
| variants. They do not prevent it entirely, and for the latest
| variants, they are more effective against preventing illness
| or serious illness than against infection (an important
| clinical distinction), but that's still a huge deal, and it
| limits spread by reducing duration of illness (infectiousness
| window) or virus particles produced (the degree of
| infectiousness).
|
| > In short, mandates should be imposed only if science is
| 100% clear.
|
| This is another way of saying that you categorically oppose
| all mandates. Science is never "100% clear", ever.
| sofixa wrote:
| How do masks not help curb the spread of a virus? Do you have
| any supporting literature on that matter?
| wrycoder wrote:
| Properly fitted N95s help a lot. Procedure masks, which are
| the type normally worn against COVID, do very little,
| especially since they are usually worn incorrectly. Other
| cloth masks do less than nothing, because they provide a
| false sense of security.
|
| As you know, virus particles are too small to be stopped by
| the openings in the mask (which allow you to breathe). They
| are airborne, like smoke.
|
| N95 masks have an electret layer which is made by blow
| molding fiber against a charged target. The result is
| charge embedded in the fibers. The charged fibers attract
| and hold the virus particles.
|
| It would be possible to add an electret layer to a surgical
| mask, but it seems that this isn't generally done, probably
| because they fit so poorly. Maybe someone here could speak
| to that.
|
| Look at N95 on Wikipedia. The EU has required N95 on
| transportation for some time.
|
| The Bangladeshi study mentioned in this thread might have
| used something like that (it isn't clear from the paper and
| the promised paper on what kind of surgical mask they used
| hasn't appeared yet).
|
| Bottom line: the masks commonly used in the US over the
| past two years do virtually nothing, unless someone is
| coughing. How many coughing people have you seen in panic
| lately?
| soco wrote:
| There's for sure some youtube account which is taken as
| definitive and sufficient proof by some.
| SnowProblem wrote:
| It's far from perfect, but I believe this to be the best
| RCT we have on masks out of Bangladesh:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069
|
| _We found clear evidence that surgical masks are effective
| in reducing symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2.
| Although cloth masks clearly reduce symptoms, we find less
| clear evidence of their impact on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2
| infections, with the statistical significance depending on
| whether we impute missing values for nonconsenting adults._
|
| I don't believe we have any good studies out of the US or
| Europe. There's a discussion about this and more on the
| Econ Talk podcast this week:
| https://www.econtalk.org/vinay-prasad-on-the-pandemic/
| wrycoder wrote:
| See my remarks:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32195416
| overrun11 wrote:
| I've seen this: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01296 but I'm
| not qualified to really interpret it
| bobbyasdfasdf7 wrote:
| dark-star wrote:
| Tangentially related: this doctoral thesis a friend of mine
| published 15 years ago:
|
| https://publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de/xmlui/handle/10900/45...
|
| (sadly it's only available in German)
|
| Eradicating polio is harder than it seems
| PenelopeHopkins wrote:
| Wow, the author really went out of their way to avoid saying why
| this is happening repeatedly in Rockland County.
|
| > The Orthodox Jewish community, the largest in the country, have
| some of the lowest vaccination rates in the state; Monsey's is
| the lowest in the state, at 17.8%, as of June 15, 2021
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockland_County,_New_York#Heal...
| lelandfe wrote:
| I lived in a Brooklyn neighborhood densely populated by Hasidim
| for years and this is unfortunately not the first time
| something like this has happened.[0] The highly insular
| community means misinformation is hard to combat. This quote is
| pertinent:
|
| > _"Being a religious Jew, you also get used to having a
| minority viewpoint," said Alexander Rapaport, the CEO of the
| Masbia Soup Kitchen Network in Brooklyn, and a public face of
| the Hasidic community. "So if something is not mainstream, it
| doesn't take you away from believing it."_
|
| [0] https://www.vox.com/science-and-
| health/2018/11/9/18068036/me...
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Why are you just focusing on a specific Jewish community and
| not all measles outbreaks?
|
| Like the many many many outbreaks in Portland.
|
| Washington and Oregon always get ignored and _certain people_
| only bring up Orthodox Jewish communities in New York.
| Asparagirl wrote:
| Oh, _certain people_ , like those of us who are sick of the
| _repeated_ behavior of our co-religionists from this exact
| same community? The minute I read this polio outbreak was
| in Rockland county, my heart sank. Everyone knew what that
| likely meant.
|
| A frum friend of mine told me today that the rumor is an
| Israeli kid, vaccinated with the live polio vaccine, had
| just moved into the community and was the likely carrier,
| and will likely be blamed, completely unfairly -- instead
| of the _fact_ that Hasids in Monsey have a ghastly problem
| with under-vaccination and non-vaccination.
|
| Yeah, there's a very good reason that people bring up this
| same community every time there's a _preventable_ disease
| outbreak.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Yes certain people like you and others on this forum.
|
| One case of polio hits the news and the _Orthodox_ Jews
| have to go.
|
| Nevermind the other cases or overall stats, the
| _Orthodox_ Jews are the problem.
| Asparagirl wrote:
| Guess what? Sometimes they are! The issue here isn't
| kashrut, niddah, or the eternal shidduch crisis. The
| issue isn't really about _Orthodoxy_ at all.
|
| The issue is that this exact group of people _don't
| vaccinate or else under-vaccinate_ , in ways that are
| unlike every other community around them, in ways that
| continually cause outbreaks of diseases that are
| completely preventable, in ways that absolutely show up
| in the national data.
|
| Sorry-not-sorry if that hurts your feelings, bubbeleh.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > One case of polio hits the news and the Orthodox Jews
| have to go.
|
| Who is suggesting anyone "has to go" anywhere? In your
| other comment you suggested that people here want to do
| round-ups.
|
| Is it not OK for people here to say that a community's
| refusal to vaccinate will lead to predictable results?
| lelandfe wrote:
| I'm bringing up a specific community because it's one that
| I lived in, know about, and is the subject of this post.
|
| I don't know anything about the problems faced by those
| communities you named.
| atwood22 wrote:
| Because the orthodox Jewish community is a constant source
| of outbreaks in the area. In 2019, there was a measles
| outbreak, in 2020, a number of COVID outbreaks, and now
| polio. No one is claiming that this community is the only
| to have a disease outbreak, but if there is an outbreak of
| a preventable disease in Rockland County, then it's most
| likely coming from Monsey.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| What would you like to be done about it? Round them up
| and force inject them?
|
| Would you like to do the same for the Oregon / Washington
| hippies that cause outbreaks?
|
| Do you know the overall stats? Because if you did you'd
| see that Orthodox Jews have caused a small minority of
| these outbreaks.
|
| - edit @natabHobowitz -
|
| How is that slander? It's a question. What _action_ would
| you like to take against this community?
|
| Also you didn't answer my other question or provide any
| stats to back up that Orthodox Jews are the main problem
| for overall outbreaks.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| You're the only one saying anything about taking action,
| so no, nobody's interested in your shitty bait.
|
| Here's one study:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23113481/
|
| > From June 28, 2009, through June 27, 2010, a total of
| 3502 outbreak-related cases of mumps were reported in New
| York City, two upstate New York counties, and one New
| Jersey county. Of the 1648 cases for which clinical
| specimens were available, 50% were laboratory-confirmed.
| Orthodox Jewish persons accounted for 97% of case
| patients.
| natabHobowitz wrote:
| natabHobowitz2 wrote:
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| Because they're not comparable. 75% of the measles cases in
| 2019 (which was the worst measles year since 1992) were
| associated with the Orthodox communities in NY[1]. Oregon
| and Washington do have higher prevalence due somewhat lower
| vaccination rates in specific counties but they lack the
| same clustering and congregating that is found in the
| Orthodox communities.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6840e2.htm
| Frost1x wrote:
| Whats the vaccination rate for polio outside of this area? I
| suspect it's quite low, it's not in the standard vaccine series
| for most in the US to my knowledge due to low risk now. Outside
| of some older people and immigrants, I think many aren't
| vaccinated for polio.
| LodeOfCode wrote:
| 92.6% of children by age 24 months
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/immunize.htm
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| All my kids got the vaccine and I even got a booster before I
| went to Israel.
| NoNotTheDuo wrote:
| It's in the standard schedule for kids:
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-
| adolesc...
|
| They get 3 doses before they turn 15 months old, in fact.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > it's not in the standard vaccine series for most in the US
|
| It absolutely is. It's low risk because everyone is
| vaccinated.
| kenny11 wrote:
| The inactivated virus variant of the polio vaccine is still
| in the standard childhood immunization schedule in the US:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-
| adolesc...
| henryfjordan wrote:
| You might be thinking of the smallpox vaccine.
| jefftk wrote:
| Or the oral (active) polio vaccine?
| Frost1x wrote:
| Bingo, whoops. Not sure why I mixed up polio and smallpox
| but you nailed it.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| When I saw the article I thought exactly the same thing.
| I had to check the Kaiser app, but apparently I have had
| 4 polio shots as a child.
|
| I don't have the smallpox vaccine though. I know my mom
| has a big scar on the inside of her arm from that one, so
| I am pretty sure they've phased that one out.
| evanmoran wrote:
| I just confirmed both my kids have the polio vaccines from
| the standard set given to kids. The polio vaccine is called
| IPV (inactivated poliovirus) and usually comes in a bundle
| branded as PENTACEL which is "a 5-in-1 combination vaccine
| that protects against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough,
| polio, and Haemophilus influenzae type B".
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Even in my country, where we generally despise religious
| conservatives, orthodox Jewish community is rarely criticized.
|
| I understand the historical reasons of course but it is not
| helpful. All must be uplifted from darkness.
| ars wrote:
| rco8786 wrote:
| This neighborhood was notorious for its measles outbreaks
| before covid also. It's not disgusting, it's just very
| obviously a concentrated group of people that generally
| refuse vaccinations.
| nkozyra wrote:
| It is a relatively common stance in the ultra-orthodox
| community and it was not unusual for me to see families
| bringing their kids to playgrounds in Brooklyn with active
| measles infections.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Pretty sure most the measles outbreaks I've heard of were
| in Oregon.
|
| But you've _personally seen_ Jews with measles in your
| anecdote so I guess it 's all the Jews fault...
| rjbwork wrote:
| How is it disgusting? Because they mentioned Jews? Because
| they mentioned they have low vaccination rates?
| khazhoux wrote:
| > Jews do not travel to countries where VDPV2 is used
|
| I would be interested to learn more about this statement.
| ars wrote:
| Pakistan and Afghanistan are very dangerous places for a
| Jew to go.
|
| Things are changing with the Abraham accords, but in
| general Jews do not travel to Muslim majority countries -
| they would be killed on sight.
| mminer237 wrote:
| OPV isn't just used in Muslim countries. Nigeria is the
| biggest source of cVDPV2 infections. Ghana, Chad, Niger,
| etc. have cases. Ukraine has cases. Even Israel has
| cases.
| ars wrote:
| Nigeria and Chad are Muslim majority country, not
| someplace a Jew can go. Niger is almost 100% Muslim.
|
| Israel is interesting: They use _both_ IPV and OPV - IPV
| to prevent vaccine drived Polio, and OPV to ensure Polio
| eradication which IPV can 't do.
| hasty wrote:
| The cited article on WP (
| https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/ultra-orthodox-zip-codes-
| have... ) notes that measles vaccination rates were around
| 70%, vs 99% for the rest of the state. Given the vaccine
| schedule, it's pretty likely that if you're a kid not
| vaccinated for measles, you're not vaccinated for polio
| either.
| makomk wrote:
| That's probably less of a smoking gun than it seems like. This
| case was only discovered because someone actually suffered from
| paralysis, which is somewhat uncommon even in the unvaccinated
| and extremely uncommon amongst the vaccinated. The thing is,
| although it gives very strong protection against paralysis and
| death the inactivated vaccine used in countries like the US
| probably isn't all that effective at preventing people catching
| and spreading polio - all of the polio elimination efforts
| globally have used the oral polio vaccine which contains live
| virus for this reason. It's not used in the developed world
| because the serious side effect rate is hard to justify in a
| country where polio no longer exists.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I'm in the US and I had an oral polio vaccine.
| mcguire wrote:
| When? According to the article, it hasn't been used here
| since 2000.
|
| Edit: I believe I did, too, but that would have been back
| in the 1970s.
| makomk wrote:
| Okay, I should probably have been a bit clearer about that.
| Polio eradication efforts everywhere in the world,
| including the US, were based around the oral polio vaccine
| due to its apparent benefits in stopping vaccinated people
| from spreading polio. This was discontinued in the
| developed world, including the USA, a couple of decades ago
| (edit: and replaced with the inactivated polio vaccine - I
| though this was clear enough from the context...) after
| polio was eliminated there and the risk of spread from
| other countries was considered low enough. Entire age
| groups have never been vaccinated using the OPV. And of
| course it doesn't matter how well protected the population
| as a whole is if there's a subcommunity of people who
| regularly interact with each other who aren;t...
| threatofrain wrote:
| > This was discontinued in the developed world, including
| the USA, a couple of decades ago after polio was
| eliminated there and the risk of spread from other
| countries was considered low enough.
|
| Where are you getting this information from?
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/immunize.htm
| makomk wrote:
| All those vaccinations will be the inactivated polio
| vaccine, since it's the only polio vaccine in use in the
| USA since 2000:
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/index.html
| cldwalker wrote:
| An epidemiologist's take -
| https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/polio-an-unfo...
| Fomite wrote:
| That essay is pretty much this epidemiologist's take too.
| bitwize wrote:
| Up next: smallpox.
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