As if the ongoing pandemics of COVID-19 and monkeypox weren’t enough, they’re now urging people to get vaccinated against this contagious disease, as the virus has been found in wastewater samples. Yet, here’s what they’re not telling you about the real cause.
As if the ongoing pandemics of COVID-19 and monkeypox aren’t enough, the New York health department is now urging residents to get vaccinated against polio, as the virus has been found in wastewater samples from two different counties.Just two weeks prior to this, a 20-year-old in Rockland County was also diagnosed with polio.1 The case is reportedly the first in nearly a decade. The patient, identified as a “healthy young adult,” had not been vaccinated against polio as a child, and according to the New York health department, the positive water samples were genetically linked to this case. As reported by CBS News, August 5, 2022:2
“‘Based on earlier polio outbreaks, New Yorkers should know that for every one case of paralytic polio observed, there may be hundreds of other people infected,’ State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett said.
‘Coupled with the latest wastewater findings, the Department is treating the single case of polio as just the tip of the iceberg of much greater potential spread. As we learn more, what we do know is clear: the danger of polio is present in New York today’ ...
Unvaccinated New Yorkers are encouraged to get immunized right away, the health department said. Unvaccinated people who live, work or spend time in Rockland County, Orange County and the greater New York metropolitan area are at the greatest risk ...
According to the CDC’s most recent childhood vaccination data, about 93% of 2-year-olds in the U.S. had received at least three doses of polio vaccine. Meanwhile, adults who are not vaccinated would receive a three-dose immunization, and those who are vaccinated but at high risk can receive a lifetime booster shot, according to the health department.”Orange County Health Commissioner Dr. Irina Gelman added:
“It is concerning that polio, a disease that has been largely eradicated through vaccination, is now circulating in our community, especially given the low rates of vaccination for this debilitating disease in certain areas of our County. I urge all unvaccinated Orange County residents to get vaccinated as soon as medically feasible.”
What They’re Not Telling You
In the U.S., polio was officially declared “eradicated” in 1979, and its eradication was attributed to a successful mass vaccination campaign. What the New York health department is not telling you, though, is that when polio strikes these days, it’s almost always caused by a vaccine strain. In contrast to CBS, the CNBC actually mentions this in its report:3“The polio strain the adult in Rockland County caught suggests the chain of transmission did not begin in the United States. The strain the individual contracted is used in the oral polio vaccine, which contains a mild version of the virus that can still replicate. This means people who receive the oral vaccine can spread the virus to others.
But the U.S. hasn’t used the oral polio vaccine in more than 20 years. The U.S. uses an inactivated polio vaccine that is administered as [a] shot in the leg or arm ...
The polio case in New York is genetically linked to the Rockland County wastewater sample as well as samples from the greater Jerusalem area in Israel and London in the United Kingdom.”This is what’s called a delayed lede. Hard-news ledes give you the what, where, when, why and how in the first sentence or two. Here, the key point of the article — the fact that reemergence of polio is caused by the oral polio vaccine — is hidden further down the article than most people bother to read.
Wild Polio Has Been Replaced by Vaccine-Induced Polio
The fact that an oral vaccine strain is responsible for the New York polio case is an important detail. As explained by Vox:4“Genetic sequencing shows that the recent case was a vaccine-derived poliovirus strain. This means the circulating virus isn’t from one of the few remaining pockets of endemic wild poliovirus, but rather from one of the many more countries with polio outbreaks that mutated from an oral, live-attenuated vaccine ...
Although the live-attenuated poliovirus vaccine almost never causes polio itself ... the fact that it contains a live virus inevitably carries some risk, unlike inactivated vaccines.
When live-attenuated polio vaccines are given in a community that contains a high fraction of unvaccinated people, the modified virus can infect others, and with enough generations of spread, it can ... mutate back into a new virulent strain.”The fact is, vaccine-derived polio has been the main circulating polio in most developing countries for years. And always, the response to vaccine-induced polio is — more polio vaccine.
