polio revives itself

the lessons of Pakistan

We both had our Covid boosters this past week, plus I had the privilege of getting a tetanus booster. We both had the privilege of associated chills, minor temperatures, and strong desire to cling to our pillows under the down comforter for fully 48 hours.

I stress privilege in both sentences because we are so lucky these options are available and that we could take them. I want to avoid repeating Covid and I certainly am clumsy enough that I am perfectly capable of cutting myself which could lead to tetanus which is no fun, either.

I also know some people are willing to do the risk calculation that if they catch Covid, it will not be so bad or that they won’t get it at all. They have a higher risk tolerance than I do but I am well aware of why some people feel that is better than the effects I noted above as they felt them following prior boosters. That is a cost-benefit risk calculation an individual makes for her or himself. Both my husband and I decided we would rather not risk our aging immune systems exposed to another bout of Covid (even though I still detest needles).

This all comes to mind after reading that Pakistan, near to defeating polio completely earlier this decade, is witnessing rising rates of this paralyzing illness. The highly contagious Inness is rearing its head in other parts of the world as well.

The problem, of course, is that with decreasing levels of innoculation and proven health care steps—as opposed to pseudo health care found on the ubiquitous-but-often-so-wrong web—in this country, polio is bound to reassert itself here. Pakistani authorities in 2021 reported they were tantalizingly close to no cases to report to the world community, a major feat in a geographically challenged country with several ethnic groups, major distrust of anything smacking of foreign intervention in any form, and overall restlessness. In short, the Pakistani health community managed to get close to a situation that would have ended polio’s debilitating illness which was so common before the vaccine arrived in 1955. As I saw someone say recently, consider when a child was born in the 1950s. Prior to 1955, she or he had a good chance of contracting the illness that most famoulsy left Franklin Roosevelt in a wheelchair and lugging iron legs with him for most of his life; after 1955, with the nearly complete vaccination of children in this country, polio gradually disappeared.

But, it took a conscious effort to achieve that outcome. Polio did not disappear but the innoculation defeated it.

The government in Islamabad is launching a vaccination drive as rates have climbed in the country. Pakistan is a place with lots of problems, to be sure. As true in major portions of the United States today, doubts, misinformation, and ignorance are gaining faster than the success in defeating the danger. Too many people find reasons to assume that health care advances are a trojan horse for something else. While those of us in the United States are not yet to the point where those who administering vaccines are menaced in their jobs, Pakistan’s health volunteers are finding the task far harder than one might expect.

We know that any virus can circumvent border patrols, walls, or oceans. We experienced that with Covid as it spread rapidly early in 2020 and World Health Organization personnel fear the burgeoning health crisis of mpox in Africa could provide similarly elusive. Measles too is spreading around the world, a wretched virus which not only makes children uncomfortable but can be deadly. Whooping cough is similarly spreading as it appears in more places but fewer folks are vaccinated against it.

The ever evolving Covid strains similarly continue spreading rapidly despite several years’ efforts because it’s people who spread these viruses rather than some abstract something out there. The virus is determined to survive so it seeks hosts where that happens. Our own actions contribute to the illness continuing to morph as we move around the globe whether on business, relocation in our lives, or holiday, often bringing along a virus seeking to outsmart us so it can survive. Many people around the globe longer fear Covid yet for those with impaired immune systems it remains dangerous, if not debilitating or worse. But the major childhood illnesses can prove life changing in the worst of ways.

What is so interesting to me is the pervasiveness in institutional distrust on health care professional advice. I don’t mean to overstate it as of course people take innoculations. But the aspirtions cast on the motives of health care workers and scientists seeking to find vaccines are remarkable. Perhaps that has always been true in more remote, religious areas of Pakistan or uninformed areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo but those same reactions appear in U.S. cities where seemingly educated parents refuse to have their children immunized for measles, whooping cough, mumps, or other traditional childhood diseases. Some of those illnesses kill children. Just because parents still cite a long-debunked article about autism and innoculations or heard on TikTok (oy vey) that Bill Gates is implanting microchips through these innoculations doesn’t make that belief any truer than it does for mullahs who believe the west seeks to eradicate Muslims through shots. I doubt sufficient anti-vaxxers realise the company they keep.

All of us will suffer as these obstacles to basic health care mount. Perhaps we should not be the least surprised that eradicating polio is proving so challenging or that the renewed problem of tuberculosis for Americans is also driving up health costs as the illnesses spread and days at work are lost. But the effect of corroding trust in the medical communities is extremely worrisome, with immediate possible ramifications for our (and other nations’) children and grandchildren.

What happens with the next pandemic? Will anyone be listening or caring because we could see millions of people crippled or worse? Actions create consequences, some of which accumulate slowly but become crucial when a critical mass. History indicates we don’t usually have any idea when that mass is arriving until it hits us far harder than had we taken steps to lower the effects as much as we possibly could. We are actors in our own world, regardless of whether we tend to look back to blame lack of foresight.

Just to be clear: I am discussing tested, blind peer reviewed, government approved steps. Yes, I am well aware that there are stupid, dangerous, and ill-founded claims of medical solutions circulating every single day. But, the polio vaccine is not one of them.

Thank you for reading Actions today or any other day. Thank you, too, for subscribing if you do as I appreciate your support a great deal. Please drop me a line any time.

I had the chance to photograph a welcome bee at my speedwell yesterday afternoon. Persistent one.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Zia ur-Rehman and Christina Goldbaum, “Pakistan Seemed Close to Beating Polio. Now It’s Spreading Quickly”, NewYorkTimes, 13 Septeber 2024, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/world/asia/pakistan-polio.html