The Return Of Measles Is Bad. A Polio Comeback Would Be So, So Much Worse

We’ve talked a lot about the resurgence of measles in America over the past 14 or so months, and for good reason. It’s a horrible disease of historic significance. Equally historic was America achieving elimination status of the measles 26 years ago, only to see that almost certainly fall away thanks to the incompetence and inaction by Secretary of HHS, RFK Jr. This is all connected with a surge of anti-vaxxer nonsense that has proliferated across several decades, but which is now peaking thanks to the clowns this administration has put in charge of American health.

But as bad as the measles is, and it is really bad, it would be nothing to the visible horror show that any real return of polio in America would be. It was only weeks ago that the chair of ACIP, the CDC’s committee for recommendations on vaccine policies, wondered aloud if we should be vaccinating for polio any longer. Perhaps in part because of those comments, healthcare professionals throughout the country are ringing the alarm bells, warning that the country is in no way prepared for a return of polio.

Part of the problem, ironically enough, is that vaccines have done such a wonderful job of eliminating polio that healthcare professionals are no longer proficient in treating it.

“We don’t have a healthcare infrastructure to take care of a polio outbreak,” said Grace Rossow, an operating-room communications coordinator in Illinois, who has long-term health issues following a case of polio as an infant.

“They don’t know how to treat it. It is a massive problem if we have a resurgence of polio.”

Polio has no cure. Those who get it merely get their symptoms treated as best they can. Up to half of those who get the disease will suffer from long-term effects for the rest of their lives. Symptoms of post-polio syndrome include such fun things as increasing weakness in the muscles, fatigue, pain and muscle atrophy, problems breathing and swallowing, and an inability to be mobile without mechanical assistance. And that’s what you can deal with once you get past the acute symptoms, like paralysis in the lower extremities and the inability to breath without the help of an iron lung.

And if Polio does indeed return, it will be because selfish or misguided people, typically clinging to religious excuses that are simply unserious, have refused to be good members of their communities by getting them and their children vaccinated.

Art Caplan is a polio survivor, who has suffered from post-polio syndrome and now currently teaches medical ethics at NYU.

When Kirk Milhoan, the chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said the vaccine advisers were reconsidering routine childhood vaccines because the risks of illnesses such as polio had dropped, “that makes me furious”, Caplan said.

“If you could gather up the kids I saw die or become really severely disabled from 50 years ago, they would want you arrested … It’s horrifying, and the height of irresponsibility to leave the door open even a crack,” he continued.

As more families choose not to vaccinate, particularly after the US stopped fully recommending several key vaccines, Caplan said: “You are begging to have a recurrence of the disease.”

Betting on the return of a disease as infectious as polio while witnessing falling vaccination rates is an easy bet. That’s how these diseases work. And if the angry rash and a few dead children haven’t gotten through to the masses on the measles, I dare say that children with deformed and mangled joints, bones, and bodies, either stuffed into iron lungs or getting by with the help of dual walking canes, would likely clarify the minds of Americans on this matter.

But, and I cannot stress this enough, there is no reason we should have to sacrifice so many people, so many children, to re-convince ourselves to do the right thing.