An anniversary worth celebrating: Smallpox vaccination

[neverforget]

Read the article and check out the picture of what smallpox does to people, it's very disturbing.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/10/26/an-anniversary-worth-celebrating/
<snip>
In the 20th century, smallpox is estimated to have killed hundreds of millions of people. Hundreds of millions. Imagine the United States — the entire country, from the Pacific to the Atlantic — empty, devoid of people, dead. Smallpox wiped out that many people with room to spare.

And yet, today, it’s gone.

Why do you think that is? Homeopathy? Detoxification? Thinking good thoughts?

Nope. Vaccinations. A global campaign was undertaken in 1950, and within 30 years smallpox was struck from the face of the Earth.
<snip>

[depakid]

1. Next up for eradication: Polio

[neverforget]

2. I hope so!

[depakid]

3. Here's the organization working on it:

Global Polio Eradication Initiative

http://www.polioeradication.org/

[neverforget]

6. Thanks for the link!

[Posteritatis]

7. Well, when the antivaxxers stop fighting it tooth and nail

We were within a few months from having it wiped out when a big surge of "it's all a plot by evil big pharma western people to give everyone aids!" paranoia allowed it to surge back into a dozen or so countries.

[trotsky]

24. A tougher beast for sure.

It can survive in the soil for quite some time, can't it?

[depakid]

28. It is- and it's harder to identify the afflicted

[liberal_at_heart]

4. I completey agree

Vaccines have helped to keep our mass populations much safer.

[Greybnk48]

5. I have two small pox vacs

one from when I was about 5 y/o and one when I was in high school. Thank goodness. And I might add, we were glad, grateful, thrilled to get our polio vacs, especially after the kid across the street got polio and had to wear huge clunky braces on his legs.

[Hekate]

10. Same here. And when polio vax became available people lined up around the block with their kids...

... to get them protected from this dread disease. An evening clinic was held at my elementary school and I doubt there was a parent in town that skipped the event, except for religious reasons.

Smallpox was eliminated in the US thanks to rigorous public health measures, of which vaccination was a component. I didn't even know there were places in the world where it was still endemic and never saw a survivor until university in the late '60s, when one of my friends mentioned that a terribly scarred young man that we knew from Afghanistan had had smallpox.

Hekate

[BolivarianHero]

17. "except for religious reasons."

Hopefully whatever the fuck they believe in threw them into the fire as retribution for sacrificing the health and safety on their own children on the altar of fear and irrationality.

[Hekate]

19. What happened, from a public health perspective, is that their kids were protected by herd immunity

What's happening today is that the herd immunity is dropping for a number of "almost-eradicated" diseases because so many parents -- not having a personal memory of childhood epidemics that killed and maimed -- are finding other reasons not to vaccinate instead. Whooping cough has made a comeback, and adults who were vaccinated as kids are discovering that they may not be immune-for-life after all when exposed to a sick child after decades and decades of no exposure to remind their immune system.

Parents who can't witness the results of things like polio can actually see the numbers of autistic children soaring, which is terrifying, and since no one cause has been discovered they are left vulnerable to suggestions it might be from the vaccines. (Others simply are wishful and ignorant, imo.) Babies' and toddlers' immune systems are challenged by the sheer number of vaccinations that are pumped into them these days.

My sibs and I got the DPT (diptheria-pertussis-tetanus) and later on the smallpox vax. We were in grade school before we got the polio shot. When I had my kids I was thrilled to add MMR and a bit spooked when they didn't get the smallpox vax.

The current recommended schedule for babies is HepB, HiB, Polio, DTaP, Pneumonococcal, Rotavirus, HepA, Influenza, MMR, and Varicella. Maybe it should be spread out a little more. Maybe if we had a national health plan where doctors were assured they could actually get to see the kids regularly it could be. http://www.medicinenet.com/childhood_vaccination_schedule/article.htm

Hekate

[BolivarianHero]

21. Man, I'm a 26-year-old Canadian and it's gotten more intense since the 80s by the looks of it...

I had DTP, MMR, and polio vacs when I was a baby. Got either HiB or Pneumococcal when I was a pre-teen and there was a meningitis epidemic in my region. Got Hep B in gr. 7 when Ontario was having a campaign. I've gotten flu shots on occasion, but I don't believe I've ever had the flu, though I admit that there is a fine line between the flu, a bad cold, and viral pneumonia among people with healthy immune system. Aside from a few boosters and a Hep A shot before a trip to Cancun a few years ago, that's it. What the fuck is rotavirus?

I find it ludicrous that we spent money on researching a chicken pox vaccine when there's still tons of work to do on cancer, AIDS, autism, learning disabilities, and mental health ... Guess we need to protect children from parents who are stupid enough to use aspirin to treat children in light of the Reye's Syndrome thing.

[trotsky]

25. This is not a true statement:

Babies' and toddlers' immune systems are challenged by the sheer number of vaccinations that are pumped into them these days.

Infant/toddler immune systems aren't challenged at all by vaccines. They are bombarded by thousands of antigens daily, a couple of vaccines every few months is literally nothing in comparison.

[Hekate]

26. It's my sense of part of the concerns that new parents have, the part I can fully understand...

The vax schedule for infants today is rigorous, to say the least, and I say this as someone who has been pro-vaccination her entire life. Regardless, much more public health education is needed, given the level of ignorance in this country.

Hekate

[trotsky]

31. I'm not saying that it isn't a concern some parents may have.

But that still doesn't make it a true statement. Vaccines do not in any way "overwhelm" the immune system. Certainly more public health education is needed, as it's getting harder and harder to counter the anti-vax insanity.

[neverforget]

27. I got poked when I joined the Army. I don't remember if I got one before

then though.

[struggle4progress]

8. Thank you, United Nations! Thank you!

I still have my scar

[Greybnk48]

9. Did you have a booster 10 years later?

I had one in 1954 and again in 1965.

[struggle4progress]

12. Yeah. I got stuck twice. Second stick produced only immune-reaction inflammation.

I still had the antibodies. So only one scar

[Javaman]

16. It was actually the World Health Organization. nt

[Posteritatis]

22. Which is a UN body. (nt)

[Javaman]

23. duh, you are right. I went and checked, I had thought they were independant.

:blush:

[struggle4progress]

30. WHO is an arm of the UN

[Maru Kitteh]

11. How soon we forget what a BLESSING vaccinations have been to humanity.

K and R

[BzaDem]

13. You stupid big-pharma cheerleader. Smallpox was eradicated due to an increase in sanitation.

I of course do not agree with that topic, and I commend you for the OP. But I figured I might as well have that there to represent the large percentage of DU (and Bill Maher) who think that.

[JoeyT]

14. Well that didn't take long.

It never does take long for anti-vaxxers to crawl out and start shrieking.
You know your hero Maher has also claimed the germ theory of disease was a lie at one point, right?

Sanitation doesn't really change the spread of smallpox. You've gotten smallpox mixed up with the blatant falsehood about stopping polio. You're welcome to try again, though.
Course, those are facts. We can't let those get in the way of not understanding what the word "skeptic" means.

[BzaDem]

15. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Did you even read my post?

Do I need to put the

:sarcasm:

:sarcasm:

:sarcasm:

:sarcasm:

:sarcasm:

:sarcasm:

:sarcasm:

:sarcasm:

over and over when I specifically say that in my post? The post was specifically to point out how ridiculous the anti-vaxers sound.

[Javaman]

18. Some people miss the obvious.

I too am waiting for the anti-vaxers to surface.

As a mental exercise, I wonder how the anti-vaxers would feel today, if small pox was still a threat?

I read a book a few years ago on the elimination of small pox. It was fascinating. It was termed the worst disease in the world. It is truly horrible. I had a great aunt that got it in Italy at the turn of the last century. She had a huge pox scar on her cheek. She was lucky.

[neverforget]

20. I know you're using sarcasm but I posted this in another thread on DU

and this is the response I got. Here's the link http://www.archetypeltd.co.nz/Smallpox.htm to the "increased sanitation" eradicated smallpox. It was in this thread.

[pinto]

29. A great anniversary in the history of public health. My mom was a nurse during the polio pandemic,

the iron lung days. Said it was horrible. When we came along, she left the ward. Wouldn't take the risk and had a hard time avoiding thoughts of us in the iron lungs. A good move on her part. We were vaccinated at the first availability.

That said, it's unfortunate that this blogger 'celebrates' the anniversary by including snarky slams on people who's opinions he ought to be able to discredit on the facts alone. Tacky move, imho.

[Hekate]

32. LIFE magazine ran pix of iron lung wards; I was just a little kid and I remember that issue well...

Every school had its small share of kids who clumped along in heavy leg braces and crutches; if they needed more assistance, they weren't in regular school at all. I have a friend who was two years old when her mother died of polio.

You just don't forget.

What's SAD is how there is no cultural memory in this country. I have a feeling that high school and college history books give virtually no information about great matters of public health. Oh sure, "smallpox vax was invented; polio vax was invented; photo of great research scientist receiving award". But nothing that would really give young people a flavor of *what that meant* to the average person just going about their lives. It made a huge difference.

And most people today just don't get it.

Hekate