Why Haven't We Eradicated Polio?
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- Опубліковано 5 жов 2024
- If we’ve had vaccines for the polio virus for almost 70 years, why haven’t we been able to fully eradicate it from the globe?
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My husband's aunt got polio at 9. It was one of, if not the last outbreak in Australia. She never quite fully recovered, and now is dealing with post polio syndrome. According to her, the most painful thing she ever experienced is learning to walk again after polio.
I hope we see the end to polio in my lifetime, if not hers.
Same. I would love to see polio eradicated. I remember the braces amd crutches and iron lungs and don't want anyone to suffer with it. My neighbour had polio when younger and I remember how she had to walk with a crutch. My godson used to get her groceries or whatever she needed so that she wouldn't potentially be a target for a mugger or whatever(I lived on the edge of the Tenderlion in SF).
Oh lord... Can you imagine being 9 and having to relearn how to walk? First of all, the pain, secondly learning that while all your peers are learning basic math and spelling.
My uncle had polio as a kid. It left his legs crooked. He can still walk but with effort and pain. Today that he's on his 60's, it's getting more painful.
@@StonedtotheBones13 may aunt contracted it and was confined to a wheelchair as a triplegic for the next 75 years. Was a wonderful woman that help raise me and many of my cousins.
@@justmenotyou3151 triplegic is a new one for me. That's... interesting, tho I'm sorry to hear
In 1916, there were 27,000 polio cases in the Unites States alone. In 2022, there were 30 cases in the entire world. Vaccines work.
Please note; Covid shots are not vaccines. They are gene therapy.
and thats with the population growth the world experience in the timespan too
vaccines REALLY works
Gene Therapies seems like the contrary...
@@RebellionBloodshed I'm not aware of gene therapies ever being mentioned.
Yer its vaccines this is why you must have a health visitor to ensure its all done a disease like polio makes it a waste of time having any baby in thr first place which thrn becomes a burden to everyone do you believe in infantacide where thers a hopeless deformaty or disease if not to far six mnths old maybe yes but this opinion dsnt include abortion in thr womb which is just extremely illigal like ivf
I was born in 1954, and got one of the first rounds of vaccine on sugar cubes. My mom was always afraid in the spring when mosquitoes started appearing, as that was when polio appeared. She had us in line for the vaccine as soon as it was available. I had a girl I went to school with who was in a wheelchair because of polio; I remember how terrible it is. Never doubt it is something you never want to see...
I got the sugar cube, too, when little. I remember kids in school who had to use braces and crutches, or cane. It's not something that you want anybody to suffer with.
I'm too young to have experienced the polio epidemics, but I'm still grateful to have grown up with a mom who had us in line for new vaccines as soon as they were available. My sister's high school friend died from a meningitis infection, and when the vaccine came out the following year, we all got it right away. Stood in line for at least 45 minutes, and we had to hold down my tantruming toddler brother so the nurse could get him too, but my mom was not going to be deterred by any inconvenience, minor or major. I feel bad for kids with parents who refuse to vaccinate.
I was born in 1950. I remember the talk about polio epidemics and being afraid. I got the Salk shot, and then a few years later, the Sabine sugar cube, since the shot wears off. I got both at my local elementary school. As an adult, I was going to work in a hospital but couldn't prove I had been immunized, so I had to get it again. Because I'd be working around patients who might be immunocompromized, I couldn't have the oral, as I would be shedding the virus for some time after taking it, so I had the shot again.
I’m far too young to remember polio as it happened and I’ve never come in to contact with a survivor. In elementary school however, I read a book about polio and was terrified of getting it.
I also have a severe fear of needles and was a total brat about the fact I couldn’t get my flu shots in sugar cubes. I’m very fortunate to have parents who encouraged me to get all standard vaccines.
I remember the big white vans they used to distribute the vaccine. Every mom -- mine included -- took the kids to meet the van and get the sugar cube. The measles vaccine took a little longer, that was one I caught, but I got better -- I knew kids who needed hearing aids due to measles.
As I was born in 1956, I grew up seeing people who survived polio. People forget how dilibating polio can be.
I too was born in 1956, my grandfather's hand was paralyzed by polio.
You just explained why we have anti-vaxxers. Though these people didn't forget, they are too dumb to simply learn. They have never seen it so they don't believe it. Then they tell people at church the same thing.
Worst part is the modern strain is even more dangerous than the old strains
@@kenhayes3448 that's rough!
I was born in 1957 and I contracted polio in 1960. My right leg is almost completely paralyzed and so are certain parts of my left arm, back and neck... and I'm one of the lucky ones. I was able to walk with the aid if a KAFO orthotic (leg brace) for many years. Today I get around in a wheelchair because of a condition known as post-polio syndrome, the onset of which began about 4 or 5 years ago... and I'm still one of the lucky ones.
Every person who contracted the disease in my city the year before I did, died.
I still remember the massive polio vaccination drive in India in the late 90s and early 2000s. Every major celebrity (many of them volunteering without the need for any compensation) was endorsing the vaccination drive on every TV channel continuously to encourage people to get their children vaccinated. Due that massive effort India has not reported any wild type Polio cases in several years now.
That's great to hear!
Damn yall got domesticated polio?
Yes as a 20s kid i remember getting the polio drops on sundays
@@ravencg7709 lmao
🤣🤣
@@ravencg7709 Yes he says wild polio because the vaccine is now the leading cause of polio in the world
My grandfather worked hard to try to eradicate polio through charities done by the Rotary club. I remember when we stopped It was because the countries polio was in were too unstable politically to travel to.
I joined a Rotary club for a while about two years ago (left because I didn't feel like I was able to contribute much around other commitments).
Stopping Polio was an ongoing focus while I was there, so there's still efforts for Rotary to get on top of it despite the political issues happening.
Thought you might be happy to know that :)
@@XDeserak I am!
I am currently a Rotarian and eradicating polio is still very much a major goal of Rotary International. We just had to pause due to Covid, but it is ramping back up to try to get it out of the last two countries it is still considered endemic in.
@@XDeserak That's wonderful!
399th
"Despite not having brains, viruses are pretty freaking smart."
All our problems in one sentence lol.
Please note; Covid shots are not vaccines. They are gene therapy.
It's just chance. They reproduce so massively that there's bound to be a strong version come up from time to time
One of my school friends had polio. I remember taking sugar cubes laced with the vaccine, and the Iron Lung Ads.
Evolution never stops, never will, and these things always change faster than their host can. Isn't that the reasoning behind the Red Queen Hypothesis?
You can flip that sentence around and make it about anti-vaxxers:
"Despite having brains, anti-vaxxers are pretty freaking stupid."
@@robertgotschall1246 Not always. We were able to eradicate Smallpox, after all. We just need to be faster than whatever illness. Kill it before it can mutate. Unfortunately, as this pandemic showed us, it's surprisingly hard to get the whole world on board with one plan.
As a survivor myself of childhood polio, I remember my hospital stay, suffering alot, many screaming in pain. Those in the iron lungs were scary. My aunt who also had had it, was in a wheel chair by the time I can remember her. This was in 1954, and thanks to cannabis, I can still walk. Truly.
Cannabis didnt do it
Good to hear your story.
Hopefully, you live where it's fully legal. I love hearing cannabis success stories.
@@Richard_Nickerson except it didnt cure him
@@jchapman1994
I don't recall claiming or even implying that it did 🤔
When I was in middle school in a K-8th grade school, a boy who had been adopted from Russia entered kindergarten. He had polio as a baby and walked with a permanent limp. He also LOVED hugs because of the lack of affection he received in the orphanage. He's doing great now!
I'm under 30 and fully vaccinated, but when I was a small child my mother would regularly check that I could still wiggle my toes when I got sick. She knew, logically, that the chance of me having polio was virtually zero, but the sheer terror of the disease in her mind was such that she had to check anyway. Medical science in general has certainly come a long way, but I feel like we could all do with a healthy dose of the fear for vaccine-preventable illnesses that was still prevalent in the 90s
Sounds like a neurotic mother.
@@elimgarak1127 what an idiot, caring for her child. Your mom doesn’t care about you, and YOU turned out just fine, didn’t you?
So that’s why my Mom played with my toes when I was young, 60 years ago.
We are all far too unaware of our own mortality and covid has shown us this. People begging for the vaccine on their deathbed. I don't weep for them. Darwin is resting peacefully.
@@raybod1775 as a Mom now I find my kids' toes are the best indicator of their overall health & nutrition, especially their mental health, oddly enough.
My brother had polio at the time that my mother was carrying me, and shortly after my birth. He was very lucky, because physical therapy usually started after the "flu-like" symptoms were gone, but they started his p.t. immediately, and as a result, he was able to almost fully recover. He ended up with a case of scoliosis, and one leg was slightly shorter than the other, but that was about it. It also made him 4-F, and he didn't go to Viet Nam.
A sideways blessing.
Can probably thank Elizabeth Kenny a little bit for that
My grandparents both had polio- they met as alumni for a disabled school. My grandad failed the physical for conscription during WWII because of the damage done to his legs. He lived, but his brother, who was healthy, died at Dunkirk.
Excuse me, do you mind explaining 4-F to me?
@@Luna-ej4mi Basically since everyone had to register for the military draft, 4-F is just a classification that means the person registering (in this case Caroljo's brother) isn't qualified for military service, in this case because polio made one leg shorter than the other. So he was exempt from being drafted into the military and sent to fight in the Vietnam War.
I'm asthmatic, I have been since I was a very little child and nothing scares me more than being unable to breathe on my own. Once I watched a documentary about polio as a kid, I don't remember where or why, I started having nightmares about being locked up in an iron lung. I don't think I can ever recover from it. To me personally it sounds like an eternal torture. I have insane respect to those who had to live in one.
Paul Alexander is 76 and is one of the last people living in an iron lung. He's been in it for 70 years, and he managed to become a lawyer and writer.
Martha Lillard is also one of the last iron lung users, though she mostly uses it to sleep in while Paul can't breathe without it. They've both said other types of ventilators just aren't as comfortable or don't work as well as the full body ones, though it's been harder and harder to find parts for the machines as they're not manufactured anymore.
Take up swimming.
@@redtobertshateshandles I swim very well. I was a swimming athlete in my school ages 6-14, had to eventually stop due to other health issues that don't allow me to get in water so often. Still love swimming occasionally tho.
When I was younger, I knew a man who had survived Polio. He had suffered paralysis when he was a kid but had learned how to walk again. He was reaching a time in his life when his ability to walk was failing as a result of the childhood paralysis.
I am over 70, and I recall seeing children with leg braces when I was young here in NZ. IIRC, I had the Salk injection around 7 or 8yo & the pink Sabin oral around 10yo. Everyone was treated and there was no controversy as I recall. It has been a giant success in medical science.
😲 I work at a Polio vaccine production plant, love the video.
That's actually kind of cool.
Where
Woah! Which type is manufactured there? The inactivated vaccine or the live attenuated one?
We salute you! I know this sounds weird but I hope you work yourself out of a job and then go get another awesome one somewhere else!
My mother's little brother died very abruptly from polio when he was around 10 years old. Seeing him go through that and die so suddenly has haunted her her whole life. She always tells the story and I always feel sad about the fact that I was never able to meet this uncle of mine since he tragically died 3 decades before I was even born. That's why she made sure that she, my father and all of us siblings always got vaccinated with everything available. Polio was already preventable at the time but her little brother died because my grandmother was sceptical of vaccines. Please, get vaccinated people. It's literally a matter of life and death. You can see your adorable and healthy little brother get sick and die within days otherwise.
I heard about vaccine-derived polio from a Healthcare Triage episode but I remember there being some confusion about what exactly that meant in the comments of that video. I'm happy that this video was really clear about what exactly vaccine-derived polio means
I got my sugar cubes back when polio cases was still very strongly present and great relief about having an effective vaccine.
Great explanation of a complex topic. I first heard about the problem of vaccine derived polio in an in-depth article from (I think) Scientific American many years ago. I love that you cover these sorts of topics.
Only doing it cuz of covid craze
You can tell how awesome a doctor is by how they handle vax requests. A few years ago I made an appointment to get caught up. My doc was puzzled, asking if I was planning international travel. Nope, just wanted the full benefit of this wondrous technology. She prescribed a full array of shots based on what we knew of my history and even advised me about which clinics were best.
Mmmm bot.
@@elimgarak1127 no u
Stop believing facebook soccer moms
@@tiqsoo what?
@@ShiratoriIsOffline I think they were responding to elim garak
My dad had polio in 1950. He was in an iron lung for 1 year. He learned to walk by using and growing the muscles on hips. He made certain that we had shots and them the drops.
My grandmother was disabled by polio (one leg ended up 4 inches shorter than the other). I got drops, sugar cubes, and shots for the vaccine. I was blessed to avoid the infection. Bless the minds of the researchers who developed the medications and treatments.
My aunt contracted polio back in 1910 or so. Was confined to a wheelchair for 75 years as a triplegic. A fantastic person who helped raise me and several of my cousins.
Vaccines are one of the greatest discoveries ever made by humankind. They have saved countless lives.
generally yes, but 'rushed out' /not fully tested ones 'may' be found to have nasty issues.. ...
@@andygozzo72 If you're talking about covid vaccines, they were not rushed at all. They came out so quickly due to high demand due to a pandemic, causing governments to toss a lot of their money into funding to get the vaccines out sooner. Generally vaccines take a lot of time waiting between steps for funding, but covid mrna vaccines skipped the waiting, and went through all the phases
@@andygozzo72 not rushed. And were are those vaccine covid zombies? Where are massive post vaccine deaths? Ill tell you where. No where to be seen.
@@donaldbaird7849 which is something the commenter would have been aware of if they did any research on the topic at all
@@donaldbaird7849 there no way they could know all possible issues, (these mrna ones are a fairly new technology and the first released 'on mass' to the public), especially some time after having the vaccine, plus of any interactions with existing medications some may have been taking ,
My aunt, who's 83, had polio when she was around 4 years old. She got pretty sick and had to learn how to walk again, but she eventually recovered fully. Then, in her 70s she started having trouble with her balance and her leg joints. She was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, which has made it progressively harder for her to get around. Apparently lots of people who had polio as a child developed mobility problems as older adults that were caused by the polio, not just by ageing. My aunt had to start using a cane and now uses a walker. She's determined to stay active in her community, travel, and keep up with her hobbies, but it's very difficult for her to get around. It's so frustrating to see, and it makes me so mad when people shrug off things like Covid, with all that we're learning about the lasting effects it can have.
- What’s that mark on your arm, Mama?
- It is my polio vaccine scar
- Why don’t I have one?
- Because it worked
Except polio vaccines don't leave scars on arms. You may be referring to the smallpox vaccination 🤷🏻♀
My first drama teacher survived polio as a child, only to have it resurface in his 40s.
My grandfather was a microbiologist who did a lot of work in the development of one of the first polio vaccines. He died when I was seven, but really hope that we can eradicate polio like we did with smallpox so that the mission he worked towards can finally be complete, even if he's not alive to see it happen
Thanks for this.
In recent years, we've seen a decrease in available information on vaccines that has any negative information in it, due to abuse of said info by a small section of the community, but that does the rest of us a disservice, so it's great to see you continuing to provide good, scientific information, based on all available facts, not being influenced by politics in terms of what facts you include & omit. The more educated the masses can be, the less people get pulled into propaganda, so great video!
The issue is less about the decrese of available information and more about the increase of false information/propaganda
I'm 55, I had a boy in my first grade class (circa 1973) that had a breakthrough case of polio. He was lucky he had been vaccinated or he may have died. He had a limp and had other health issues nevertheless. I don't pray but if I did, I would pray this horrible disease disappear... along with many others.
My sister got vaccine, but contracted it nevertheless, although mild. It caused a lot of health issues and she was never healthy.
@@iramsavir5631 that's very upsetting to hear. It's stories like this that make me so angry when people tell me that they are too privileged or stupid to get vaccinated. I have met many people over the years that have told me their various nonmedical reasons for not getting vaccinated and it always boils down to privilege and miseducation.
I worked alongside a children's vaccination team for many, many years and they seemed to spend more time correcting miseducated parents about conspiracy theories and lies the parents had heard, to convince them that they should get their children vaccinated, than actually vaccinating the children. These parents had never seen the horrible effects of these diseases, but if they had, they'd be begging the nurses I worked with to vaccinate their children ASAP. The team vaccinated thousands of children each week and none of the conspiracy theories ever happened. Despite what antivaxers will tell everyone, there is little to no evidence of their claims. Millions of people get vaccinated every day, most of them are babies, and nothing bad happens to them, not even a bad reaction to the injection. I wish more people knew that.
I wish more people would get vaccinated against everything, if only for the sake of people like your sister and those that can't get vaccinated.
@@idontwanttopickone I think their sister did get the vaccine, but it didn't stop her from contracting a mild version and still caused harm. Of course there is no way of telling if she would've suffered a worse case if she hadn't been vaccinated. But it's a shame it happened nonetheless.
I agree with you though, vaccines do a lot of good, and are safe to use. I wish there was an easy way to treat antivaxxers though, they have no idea about the damage cause with their ill-founded theories on the harmful effects of vaccines.
You should try praying. You have nothing to lose.
@@b22chris Which god?
When I lived in Spain abroad one of my classmates suddenly got weaker and weaker on his legs, and after few weeks he could no longer walk.
He was isolated when the first weakness showed because it was alarming.
He was sent to a Hospital in Madrid where they diagnosed him with Polio.
So you can imagine how terrifying it was at the dorms knowing the virus was around.
Few days after the diagnosis we got visited by a Sanitation team that took samples and interviewed all.
Turned out a few of us had antibodies meaning we got the virus but fought it off successfully. Everybody else got the vaccine (if they didn't get it as children or didn't had the documentation of it) and were ordered to remain at the dorms for 10 days.
Fortunately no one else got the bad outcome and there was no breakout in the city.
Turned out our classmate had gone to Africa recently. And sadly we all know Africa is like the natural reservoir for many of these viruses.
I remember lining up with my family, when I was quite young, to get the vaccine on sugar cubes. It was around 1961 or 62 and administered at the local grade school. One of my friends who'd had the disease walked with full leg braces connected to her shoes and cuff type crutches.
I remember doing exactly that, at my elementary school in Southern California. Right around the same time. My aunt was in a wheelchair because of polio.
Yes, thanks VERY MUCH to the team for this one, because this is some important stuff and I had no idea about all this - will definitely be keeping my eye out to ensure my very young niece and nephews get all their vaccinations and stay safe!
The Japanese, will not give their children baby shots, until they are over a year old. It's said, the blood barrier in the infant's brain isn't fully closed and this is what causes autism and other problems.
www.aha.org/news/headline/2022-09-14-cdc-confirms-vaccine-derived-poliovirus-circulating-us
These presentations are brilliantly researched written, narrated and hosted here by the amazing Hank Green and the SciShow crew!
My grandma's sister had polio. She remembers when that sister got married, she and her husband set up their house so that she could hold onto some kind of surface to help her walk everywhere she went because she never fully was able to overcome the leg paralysis. (She still went on to have like 9 kids though, which is kickass on her part)
My grandma also was one of the kids who got the sugarcube vaccine! I didn't believe her until I saw this video lol. It's crazy how far we've come since then with vaccines. I hope someday we're able to knock polio out for good, but I doubt it with the attitudes people have these days towards controlling diseases. :(
It's so effective, people forgot how debilitating polio is, and because of the bogus research claiming vaccination causes autism, it olny made people distrust vaccines even more
My mom was born in 1961 and was given a sugar cube with that second vaccine dripped on it as a kindergarten student. The school nurse passing out the sugar cubes didn't want to discourage the kids from eating it so they weren't told what it was. Mom thought it tasted funny and quietly spit it into the garbage. Nobody knew she wasn't actually vaccinated for weeks until someone asked her if sugar cube day had happened at school yet and she complained about it 🤣 She swears up and down if she'd been told it was important she would have eaten it.
so she did not take the so called sugar cube vaccine! and she never ever get the polio! so this is for me now, a manmade virus again! and they are saying no cure for polio only treatment of symptoms! and who is transmitting the virus now? such a strange story, about a non existing virus!
@@BilianaBiBiShiBiBiShaN1111 She didn't get the virus because she was lucky that enough people around her DID take the vaccine and they achieved herd immunity. She was also raised by parents in medical-adjacent careers so the family's hygiene was likely better than average.
@@JennaGetsCreative Yes, she was lucky! THank you for your answer! Take care of you Jenna!
Well the other major problem is politics. The major reservoir of wild-type poliovirus is in roughly in the region of afghanistan/pakistan also know as "an area that looks upon Western doctors and those who work with them with suspicion" and also "a place with a heckuva a lot of isolated villages that are hard to get to." There was also a delay in Nigeria for awhile in the 00s as the government decided that kicking up antivax sentiment and essentially holding the program hostage to get concessions from Western powers was a swell idea.
Still, there is a lot of money and effort being put into polio eradication which gives me the warm fuzzies. I think it's a tossup between of whether polio or guinea worm will be the first to be eliminated in the next decade or so.
Guinea worm, definitely.
I've got an idea. What if we send the CIA into those regions of Pakistan/Afghanistan to "give" vaccinations? Then since they are already there, we can have them harvest DNA of people to try and hunt down some of America's suspected enemies? That way it's doubly efficient.
@@Praisethesunson for some reason I think that strategy might backfire but I can't put my finger on why. Hmm...
@@bemusedbandersnatch2069 Alright fine. I have another idea. What if we have a bunch of separate nation states each try to develop their own cures for polio? Then if/when a state comes up with one, we immediately give monopoly control for production of those vaccines to multinational corporate conglomerates. To be sold for a profit of course. Also don't share any of the info in how those vaccines are developed. You Gotta Lock that up behind intellectual property laws.
Also if a nation state we don't like(Cuba), comes up with a vaccine. We deliberately and perniciously restrict their access to things like syringe needles. That way said nation state doesn't try to give polio vaccines to nations who don't want to pay corporate conglomerates for access.
@@Praisethesunson well that's actually funny you say that about polio because the polio vaccines were crowd funded (it's a really interesting history involving FDR and lots of mothers marching for dimes) so it's kind of an excellent example of how not to do that.
My dad believed he had a bout of polio as an adult. He was normally a professor-ish type, but worked at a "filling station" (as he called it), doing physical activity like stacking tires, etc., and thinks that's what helped him get through it. I think this would've been the late 40s or early 50s.
I'm surprised you didn't mention how Pakistan and Afghanistan are two of the main hold-outs to the polio vaccine. If I understand it right, they don't want to use it because it's "Western" derived. So sadly, their children continue to suffer from the disease.
There is a Pakistani kids show called "The Burka Avenger" that talks about this. The bad guy stole the supply of vaccine, and she had to get it back along with her kidnapped student. She's a teacher when not superheroing. I hope this helped the parents of the young kids it was aimed at (it's like a Disney Jr. type show) to get the vaccine.
@@PhantomQueenOne i love burka avenger... yes, more and morw people are getting it but its not enough. Around a decade ago there was no medical schools in pakistani kashmir but now there are a few. Its changing, but really really slowly
Also the fact that the CIA used polio vaccinations as a cover to DNA test people in Pakistan to try and catch Bin Laden and that made people skeptical of vaccination efforts in Pakistan. Profoundly unethical IMO.
Good grievance, what back-in-the-ally conspiracy theory websites do these repliers get their junk ideas from?
@@sidbid1590 the Bin Laden story is fact.
Vaccines are one of the very few advances in medicine that we basically got right from the beginning. I’m incredibly lucky that the only childhood virus I got was chicken pox (literally right before the vaccine was released, and my younger sister got vaccinated so never had it). Best believe I’m going to protect my kids from everything that I can. The point is to make our kids suffer less than we did.
These deep dives are SciShow at its finest. Kudos to the whole team!
I got the polio vaccine on a sugar cube, twice, and it wasn't in 1961 more 1954 or 1955. we had it twice because the doctors said the first one wasn't effective
This might have been one of the precursors to the later
Unknowingly a test subject, maybe.
@@yt.personal.identification maybe. IDK
I was born in 1992 and received the oral vaccine. Reason I know this is that my grandpa (who suffered from histoplasmosis complications and wasn't vaccinated) wasn't allowed to be around me for a few weeks and it broke his heart.
Fantastic explanation of such an interesting topic. Your epidemiology videos are my favorite!
The statistics about polio infections-most asymptomatic, most of the rest have a temporary illness that they recover fully from, and only a small percentage end up disabled in the way polio is notorious for-are eerily similar to COVID. I wonder if, decades from now, COVID will be known primarily for the debilitating fatigue, impaired breathing and neurological symptoms that characterize Long COVID.
Covid is already notorious among cardiologists for the permanent heart damage it causes. It is also known to cause male sterility in severe cases…
Bht people back then did take the polio vaccine
Very interesting! As someone pursuing a BSc in cell and molecular biology, this was the perfect level of familiarity plus new information I wasn't aware of :)
You might also be interested in the fact that poliovirus has also been used to create oncolytic - cancer targeting - virus strains. PVSRIPO is a modified strain of poliovirus that was granted breakthrough therapy designation for glioblastoma multiforme, one of *the* most aggressive cancers (and a brain cancer just to make it worse), a couple years back.
Born in 56, and remember some of my schoolmates disappeared from school and never came back. Heard the teachers whispering about polio.
Thank you again for another Great video!
Being born in West Berlin with the wall still standing, I remember seeing people who suffered from long-term polio symptoms. There had been a horrible epidemic in West Germany in the early 1960's while in East Germany, there were only four cases in 1961. There was a modified version of Sabin's vaccine, but since it had been developed in the UdSSR, people in West Germany were highly sceptical. So when I was a kid, you could frequently see people with deformed or very weak legs on crutches and I remember my dad saying: That was polio. It left such an impression on me and it scared me, but I'm glad I understood early in life what a privilege vaccines are. Polio, of course, was the best vaccine to me because it didn't require a scary needle.
Solid discussion! Fair presentation. Connection to evidence.
Wish that a lot more scientific journalism was that solid.
its been years since ive seen a scishow video.. i forgot the channel existed until i saw this. i remember coming home from school and watching these videos because they fueled my curiosity. now i am a bummed out young adult watching these because it still scratches my brain in ways few other things can. thank you for all youve done for these past ~11 years since making the channel, and thank you for scratching my brain.
hank ur the man for the job don't let us down
I remember meeting a person that got polio as a kid and they were disabled because of it. This was in the mid 2000s and they weren't that old. Kinda crazy.
Before I was allowed to enter kindergarten in 1962. I had to go to my elementary school and sit in the cafeteria and get a small paper cup with a sugar cube with some purple stuff in it.
YUM !
That's my polio experience.
My aunt grew up in Thailand without any easy access to the polio vaccine, and they didn't catch her symptoms until it was too late... I guess she got off somewhat lucky because she can still walk around, she just needs an ankle brace and a cane. Still, knowing a family member whose life was permanently affected like that from such a young age really puts it into perspective:
1. How fortunate those of us are who have access to these vaccines.
2. How incredibly dumb it is for people who have access to these vaccines and have a healthy immune system to not get them.
Protect yourself and protect the people who do not have healthy immune systems like you!
How many other persons in your family were polio infected by your Aunt?
@@BilianaBiBiShiBiBiShaN1111 None, while it is certainly an infectious disease, the main routes of transmission aren't exactly something you'd commonly come across. Furthermore, the incubation period is rather short, so they were able to get my aunt to the main hospital in Bangkok soon after symptoms appeared which also prevented the spread.
@@AlexSchendel Good for her, she was lucky! THank you so much for your answer and take care !
My mother was a student nurse in the mid-Fifties and remembers working the iron lung wards, rooms full of people in iron lungs, 24-7. Check out the Mutter Museum channel if you'd like to see what one looks like.
Mexico, which is not considered a 1st World Country, will not allow a child to go to school (from kindergarden) without having the full vaccination card. There are buses and caravans that go out to the remote ranches and vax all kids. When the SARS COV2 vaccine got to my city (Mexico) and there weren't enough, the students blocked the main highway to Mexico City and did not move until a new shipment arrived and they all got their shot 😂 .
All of my Mexican now American friends think US antivax sentiment is entirely stupid. They are on their babies' vaccine schedules like clockwork.
@@lh3540 not from the US and you need zero vaccines here to do anything.
All you need is a refusal on record which you can start giving personally as a teenager.
They want the refusal so that they know to have you stay home to protect you during an outbreak and that's it.
There's only one place here that has ever required it and that was a single university.
No place that either a) gets tax money or b) gets tax breaks (which are essentially the equivalent of getting tax money since you didn't pay what anyone else would) should be able to legally require you to perform medical procedures against your will to make use of it's services. It is just that simple.
Most of the places where people catch polio are, to put it kindly, "partially developed". Doctors are scarce, and people don't like to go to them. If we could apply the kind of social pressure regarding polio vaccine, it would be as extinct as smallpox. I got two injections of the Salk vaccine, and two sugar cubes of the Sabin vaccine, when I was in primary school.
Small pox isn't extinct. It still commonly infects people in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where there is no government oversight. The only reason it doesn't spread outside of there is because those people want as little to do with our world as our world wants to do with them.
Yeah, I got two Salk 💉😨 and two Sabin drinks, which I didn't run through rows of school desks to avoid. Glad we're both still alive and kicking‼
My grandpa got polio as a kid, and it paralyzed his voicebox. His voice sounds a bit like he has a sore throat, but overall he was incredibly lucky.
Hank -
Thanks for taking this topic on.
It was one of the more complex videos to follow though.
You might want to do a simpler version too.
That's a serious amount of research that went into this one! Thanks SciShow Team!
Damn virus is hard to eradicate, smallpox we destroyed on few decades and there is only a few samples frozen on labs, polio however still resists, antivaxxers are not helping though.
Thanks for this! I am a huge vaccine advocate, but I was under the misunderstanding that oral polio vaccine could infect some people with polio. Now I know better!
Please note; Covid shots are not vaccines. They are gene therapy.
I can remember many of the school age shots and oral vaccines. I was brought to the city hall mid 1950s for my smallpox vaccination, probably before I started school. Once in grammar school I received maybe 2 polio shots. In high school we had the oral vaccines. Everyone got these unless allergic to chicken or eggs. I always wondered what they did for those allergic or if they were just left without protection.
Usually people that are allergic have to rely on herd immunity. Allergy to vaccines is pretty rare and if a high enough percentage of a population is vaccinated that's enough to stop the disease from spreading and protect those who can't have vaccines.
Which is why anti-vaxers are even more idiotic. Not only do they endanger their own life and that of their children, but they also endanger other people who want to get vaccinated but can't.
I have a cousin who has polio and she's gonna turn 60 soon, although she can rarely do anything like normal, but now probably she's one of the oldest polio survivor in Thailand right now
Paralleling this to the Covid pandemic is astounding. I remember my grandmother absolutely baffled by these young people who wouldnt get the vaccine. She recalled how vaccinations were thought of in terms of Polio and was aware of how a virus like that worked. (Even if only a small percentage had serious effects.)
The difference is that the polio vaccine worked.
@@simoncaron6424 quad jabbed here, infected twice and never had anything more than a cough and food tasting weird. Maybe I would have had that anyway but I’m still grateful. My mums friend died of covid very early on and maybe with the vaccine wouldn’t have.
@@simoncaron6424
So does the Covid vaccine.
The difference is that polio is slow mutating, AND enough people have the vaccine, that so far, we haven't needed to make another.
Covid is faster mutating than the flu, which requires a vaccine every year.
Which means we would need a LOT more people to be vaccinated.
And stupid people don't get vaccinated.
@@wilko9346 How many polio boasters have you had?
@@simoncaron6424 oh no I meant covid. But I’ve been jabbed for loads lol. Been to Brazil and South Africa but when about 6-7 years ago I can’t remeberb
Thank you for tackling the bafflingly controversial subject of vaccines and attempting to elucidate the topic for those who might need to be shown the light. It should not be as difficult as it is, but you are all appreciated for doing your part.
I have a severely compromised immune system, so I thank the heavens that I was lucky enough to be born in the U.S. and that my parents made sure that I got all of my required and suggested vaccinations!
With an immune system like yours how have you handled the lack of masks again in public?
@@Praisethesunson I am also immunocompromised, and I wear a mask in public all the time.
I caught C a week before Christmas because I was playing in a concert, so I wasn't wearing a mask.
Thankfully I was fully vaccinated, and I was given antivirals, so while I went to the ER one night as a precaution, I wasn't hospitalised.
Masks work, and so do vaccines.
Hope you don't have children so your defective immune system DNA doesn't survive.
My step father’s dad died from polio and it changed everything about who my step dad grew up to be, in a sad way.
My grandma got polio during the epidemic when she was a child. She was luckily not paralyzed but she does not have full movement of her left leg even into her old age.
I remember sometime ago about polio infections being reported. So I checked if I had gotten the polio vaccine, and I did. I was relieved.
I also remember reading about a father whose child had gotten the oral vaccine for polio, who later got polio from it. He pushed to have it banned because he found other kids who had gotten it then got polio. He was fine with the polio vaccine that was injected I will point out. And this is why it's banned in the US.
Completely off-topic, but that's an effectively cruel icon for your picture. 😂
The polio Cutter incident, was a rocky beginning. "Subsequent investigations revealed that the vaccine, manufactured by the California-based family firm of Cutter Laboratories, had caused 40 000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10." Many vaccine adverse adventures happen in the beginning. I would say, a vaccine that began by giving 40 000 people the disease polio, should be remembered.
My nephews wife died from polio, 2 years ago. It took her pretty fast. Everyone was floored as to how in the world she contracted it, I thought it was extremely contagious.
Yes, how did she get the poliovirus? no one knows? did other members of your nephew got poliovirus?
@@BilianaBiBiShiBiBiShaN1111 no one knows where she contracted it and the doctors took forever to diagnose it, perhaps that delay caused her quick death? When they finally figured it out, they were floored. Her first symptoms were severe leg & back pain pain. The first visit they said she had the flu & sent her home. She quickly got worse to the point where she couldn’t walk & had trouble breathing, then they admitted her & wasted 3 more days trying to figured it out. They intubated her, then got the diagnosis. They took the tube out & she said she couldn’t take It anymore & wanted to die,she said goodby to her husband & kids & died that night. I know polio is highly contagious but no one could figure out where this came from. I don’t know if she was inoculated against polio when she was a child or not. It was incredibly sad that in this day & age diseases are still lurking out there.
@@deverene8 I am sorry to hear that. I undestand. thank you and take care !
Well done to the Rotary International and their End Polio Now initiative! Hopefully we will eradicate this awful disease soon
Won't happen. The tribal areas of Pakistan are still non-vaccinated regions with no government oversight to enable vaccination campaign workers to actually enter the region. Polio is pretty endemic there, but the WHO doesn't record the cases because, again, no government oversight.
Rotary International is still aiming for that! The last statistic I saw was 3 cases in two countries, but that was 2 years ago.
Please note; Covid shots are not vaccines. They are gene therapy.
@@nobodyspecial4702 The Taliban are actively antivax.
They have been killing nurses who administer vaccines.
Rotary. Aren't they that private club of business ghouls that use a bit of their ill gotten wealth to ease the guilt they have over how they get their money?
I think one of the major problem is the name and the fact vaccacines were so effective in stopping "childhood ilnisses" from being so common for such a long time. People have forgotten just how bad and ravaging these dieseases are. Like what do people know measles does? Probably not a lot. But depending on the strain it can kill one in 1000 infected (and more), will cause serious complications in many more and gives about a quarter of the infected some form of lasting nerve damage. It´s not a cutsy cold like sikness children just get. It´s a killer that likes to torment and cripple it´s vicims. The worst is probably one of the late consequences of measles, where the virus activates years later and basically slowly mealts the brain of its vicim.
My parents both have childhood memories of lining up to get a polio vaccine and getting rewarded with a sugar cube if they held still for their shot.
Eradicating a disease is so difficult and requires so much coordination and work, I'm not asking why we haven't eradicated polio, I'm just surprised we managed to eradicate small pox!
At 00:11 in the video you seem to say that the name of the virus is "poliomyelitis". That is the disease name, often shortened to "polio". The virus is poliovirus.
My cousin got Polio a few years after he returned from the war (Marines, Pacific theater) and it left him wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life. I feel much better having been vaccinated!
Why was he not vaccinated?
@@CJ-up7pn this was in 1948, the vaccine was not yet invented. I should have clarified that “the war” means WWII, sorry for the confusion
@@jpe1 i see, my deepest condolences. I hope he still lived a happy life
@@CJ-up7pn thanks for the kind words! He did have a happy life despite being wheelchair bound, he was an economics professor at Lehigh University, fathered 4 kids, and had many grandchildren whom he enjoyed. He was always jovial, happy to engage in intellectual debate, or just chat about current events; very relaxed and easygoing person.
0:12 Pedantic correction: "poliomyelitis" is not the name of the virus that causes polio. That is simply the full name of the disease itself. The virus itself is called "poliovirus", as you rightly say in the rest of the video! Thank you for the interesting history! I learned a lot!
This was very informative. Thank you.
Wow, that explains a lot about the news around the case in New York. Here I just thought it was something different we did here which is only partly true.
For a modern perspective, what we're really afraid of from polio is what we might call "long-polio" if it'd emerged more recently. And what's really scary about the latest round of vaccine skepticism with covid is that polio was, in most respects, a milder disease: fewer cases were symptomatic in general, and the death rate from covid during the waves before omicron was about the same as the *combined* paralysis and death rates from polio, and long covid upends almost 10x that many lives per capita.
+
Polio like Covid kills about 1% of those infected.
Polio causes permanent disability in 10%. COVID’s permanent disability rate is at least 10% (mostly heart damage but autoimmune disease is very common with occasional type 1 diabetes).
90% of Polio patients never knew they were infected (which is why stamping it out is so hard - asymptomatic carriers).
You can also catch Polio three times because there are three immunologically unique variants.
We recently lost Paul Alexander, who was the last living person in an iron lung. He contacted polio at age 6. He somehow managed to get a bachelor's degree and lived to the ripe old age of 78.
Thanks Hank, great video as always.
I noticed when my children were young (approximately 20 years ago or so), there was already a move away from the oral vaccine and back to the injected type.
The first rule of science: IT'S NEVER THAT SIMPLE.
Capitalism: Shut up science and get back to making me money!
This was a very informative one.
Let me add that there are "islands" of resistance to vaccination (apart from our own loonies, some of which will doubtlessly be found in the comment), mainly in Nigeria and around Pakistan/Afghanistan border. The latter was helped by American special forces searching for Bin Laden using vaccination crews as cover (which is, technically, a war crime.)
They skipped over that one eh. It would be gone if not for the CIA.
@@timebert9467 In all fairness, it probably still wouldn't (at least Nigerian hotspot - relatively speaking - would have persisted), but that doesn't absolve them.
Even if it's not technically a war crime, using public health initiatives to conduct military operations is profoundly unethical.
Don't forget to blame Bill Gates for vaccine resistance.
@@DUDEBroHey Huh ?!?
Fantastic summary! Thank you so much, SciShow!
Amazing video. It takes alot of effort and research to put such complicated topics into a simpler explanation, just like this one. Thanks!
A doctor here
Thank you for the video. It was very well done. During my life (I'm almost 70 now) I've often wondered what happened to polio as it was a disease we were VERY afraid of while growing up. We had many thoughts (adults and children both) of what polio was and how it was contracted. Laughably most of what we though it was and how it was contracted were wrong.
It was a nasty disease and I'm happy we have almost eradicated it. Vaccines are precious and valuable in more ways than just to whomever develops them.
I disagree. It's very important to take into consideration... where the vaccine's are coming from!
"Yo, its 2023 and we had to make a show to remind people that letting kids die is bad."
Back when people weren't anti-vax and we eradicated a disease.
We eradicated small pox and almost did the same to polio. The comfort they've lived in not knowing how deadly those are has led to them becoming complacent and taking safety for granted.
@@OtakuUnitedStudio Exactly; people seem to have forgotten that along with antibiotics and hygiene measures, vaccines are one of the primary reasons most people in the developed world aren't dropping dead from infectious diseases at age 30.
My thoughts exactly. Anti-vaxxers forget that it's largely thanks to vaccines that we have managed to overcome many diseases that used to be fatal.
Those were the days, we trusted big pharma... not anymore..
@@paulao7022 While there have been issues and problems, in the big picture the vast majority of the lack of trust is really more due to a lack of education. Drugs in general, are extremely extremely safe and effective,
In 1973 in Columbus Ohio US. I contracted Polio. I was 6 years old. I lost the use of my legs, spent 19 days in Children's Hospital there. 3 days in an iron lunge. Took about 6 months to learn to walk again. As I remember my roommate died of it and a 18 year old cousin of mine was also infected. I am often called a liar or looked at like I am a liar. I remember the spinal tap and how painful it was. How scared I was. That my mother came and visited me every day. I had 3 brothers and sisters. It wasn't like today. Where she could have been with me 24/7 and that they could visit. I remember crying because she had to leave everyday, to take care of them. I would cry. Weekends my father would also visit. His work wouldn't permit him to visit. As once he was off work visiting hours were over. But he never liked Hospitals. As 18 years earlier he spent a year in hospital with TB... At the same time I contract Chicken Pox while I was in hospital.
Australian here, in the 1960s we got the vaccines in school.
My grandmother described some of the fear with her simple description of "long prams". For people who got polio and were severely disabled, so adults unable to walk and unable to use a wheelchair.
As a nurse in the 1980s we were taken on a day-trip to the hospital that had the iron lungs. With adults unable to breathe on their own. As a nurse in the I 2000s looked after people with post polio syndrome. Their fear was so hard, their symptoms so painful.
The families and friends of these people also suffered greatly, and just desperately wanted it to stop.
Stressing the virus is not a good description of attenuation, which can actually be done in a human cell culture. The key is to repeatedly infect something that is not a human body with a functioning immune system. This allows the virus to evolve and to drop traits and proteins that would help it evade our T cells but aren't needed in its new environment. For example, the attenuated measles virus actually replicates faster in human cells than the wild virus, but it strongly activates the immune system in doing so. That's maladaptive in the body, where the infection gets crushed before enough measles is produced to spread, but it's great for the virus in the petri dish.
With polio, the mutations that cause attenuation are in the noncoding region at the start of its RNA, and they do make the RNA less likely to be translated in human ribosomes in nerve cells, although weirdly the virus still replicates fine in human intestinal and epithelial cells. So unlike with measles, it could be said to be weakened, because it is less infectious to cells. But I still wouldn't say the virus is damaged or stressed in any way. It's a perfectly functional virus that is just not adapted to infect the cells we don't want it to infect. The vaccine virus does just fine in the artificial habitat we created for it.
Also: last year at least (when i wrote about this) most vaccine derived polio virus (VDPV) cases were caused by the type 2 strain. So that was another reason to switch to bivalent oral polio vaccine (OPV). In adittion to switching to bivalent OPV, there is a new type 2 OPV developed recently (more resistent to reverting back to paralytic virus) to be used in areas with a type 2 VDPV outbreak. This work is ongoimg, and was greatly impcted by the covid-19 pandemic do to travel restrictions and limited access for health care personnel. But I believe it is back on track by now!
It's fascinating that us human can eradicate so many species without even trying, but when we get serious it became a different story.
Can we all take a moment and just aprecaite the face on the little boy at 4:23 .
Kid getting a shot and he's like, "Ayy what you think you doin?"
Two words never fail to make me tremble: “iron lung”.
Summary: We have the tools, to permanently eradicate the disease but requires cooperation on a global scale. Challenging but not improbable...
Do you remember how much whining and crying occurred just for the covid vaccine
who needs cooperation when you can just control ? Cooperation is for free people. Duress and threats are used on those you enslave. Im pretty sure you havent been living under a rock the last 3 years.
@@jhoughjr1 paranoid much? Polio needs to go.
@Borttor Bbq still calling that a vaccine, huh?
@@babecat2000 polio is gone. Enough people are vaccinated against it that it will never threaten the world again. I simply do not care what happens to rual pakis or afghans living in their mud huts
After all these years, unlike its victims, polio is still standing
I got the oral vaccine as a kid and I remember thinking why can't they all be like this?