Agree.
For the viruses that are endemic, the mutations just don’t matter that much to me. Like- varicella mutations were probably all over the place when I was a kid, but they all acted about the same, we all got chicken pox. Now the vaccine still handles any outbreaks or mutations just fine, and the spread is so low that there are few breakthrough infections that the vaccine doesn’t help. So I just don’t worry much about the mutations. But the people who make the vaccines continue to watch this stuff.
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ohhh that makes sense. Thanks @zygote and @anon51297825
Still wanna know how the heck we managed to pull off the polio vaccination campaign globally in the 1950s and 1960s and it’s so much more of a struggle now despite more money, infrastructure, and supply and delivery chain capacity.
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Because a) things were more caz. And b) people were all yes please! C) it was actually really hard also and I think that the covid vax campaigns have been wildly fast and successful.
Oh also d) Informed consent wasn’t a thing
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Yeah. My understanding from a friend getting her PhD in public health, who has worked a lot on infectious disease, is that a lot of the polio vaccinations worldwide were very, very casual. Like going up to kids in train stations and being like “here’s your sugar cube with vaccine!” type casual.
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As much of a cluster as it feels right now, the covid vaccine rollout has actually been faster and smoother. The polio vaccine was developed in the 1950s and 1960s, but we didn’t eradicate until decades later and we did it by continent. It wasn’t eradicated in North America until 1994, and in Europe until 2002. Distribution of anything globally is just a really hard problem.
Timeline here: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/timeline/polio
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So essentially, we should assume that covid is gonna be a problem for 30-70 more years in poor countries?
Or should I be optimistic and pretend that isn’t true because we’re faster now?
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I sure hope we’re faster now…
It does look like we didn’t set the eradication goal until 1988, so we wasted a few decades there. At least we are nominally trying to start now with covid. I also assume (hope?) there was still a significant reduction in polio during that time, and it just took a big push to get to 100% eradicated.
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I’ve been operating with that assumption from the get go based on other healthcare things, but I hope it’s incorrect. Even with polio there were people who optionally didn’t vaccinate and went on to develop polio when it was avoidable. I think some of it is the blur of history. It makes it sound like we wiped out polio in one fell swoop when that wasn’t the case. I doubt there’s ever been rapid consensus in response to a disaster.
Even during the last pandemic in 1918 there were anti-mask coalitions, people who poked holes in their masks so they could smoke (my fave), and people who believed it to be a hoax. There were also businesses who were illegally operating because they didn’t think the government had a right to tell them what to do. A politician who was very pro-mask publicly was seen at a wrestling match without a mask and a photographer got a shot of him and it was in the newspaper, people were outraged and chased him down the street but he still got re-elected.
I think it just sounds like things were more seamless than they were.
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Also, harsh propaganda was much more socially acceptable and there probably was greater trust in authority than now. That might be part of it. I think now everything has to be very caveated and couched and sandwiched and all that. Back then the government could put out an ad like, “you’re not a real man if you don’t get vaccinated” or “if you don’t get vaccinated you must want your kids to die”. That shit doesn’t fly anymore and I think some of the urgency gets lost when it’s like, “While we know everyone has different resources and relationships with the healthcare system we strongly encourage you to get vaccinated at your earliest convenience because all early indications show that the vaccine is safe for most people and effective at eliminating most of the worst reactions to covid-19 however you should continue to wear a mask even if you are vaccinated unless you are in a private home with other vaccinated adults and you have all consented to exposure…” Lacks a bit of punch, I think.
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I think parents in the 1950’s and 60’s still had memories or direct experience of children dying from diseases like measles, whooping cough, etc. I think almost all parents were willing to accept the risk of a vaccine over the known risk of high child mortality.
Parents today are unlikely to know anyone who has died or lost a child to these diseases. Due to high vaccination rates, a certain number of the population can be unvaccinated and their risk of dying is low. This has led many parents into a false sense of security regarding childhood illnesses.
I think autism was relatively unknown or diagnosed in the 50’s and 60’s, and not associated with vaccines - that came later. Today few people know someone who has died of MMR but almost everyone knows someone with autism or on the spectrum.
I think these two things - loss of urgency to vaccinate, and increased perceived risk of a child developing autism due to vaccines - have led to a lot of vaccine resistance. Science can show that vaccines don’t cause autism, but I don’t think science has shown what DOES cause autism. And parents with autistic children don’t have an easy time getting the support they need. To many of today’s parents, the relative risk profile has changed many view the chances of a bad vaccination reaction as more likely than a childhood disease.
I don’t think it is going to be as straightforward as rich and poor, at least not initially. What makes people more or less willing to get vaccinated in the US? I don’t think it’s wealth; I think it is more likely to be education or at the very least, not being swayed by all the false information out there. Any country where people are more willing to follow Covid precautions (which is A LOT of them) are going to be better protected against Covid than the US.
I think the continued prevalence of Covid, as well as other problems in our health care system, could start changing which countries are rich and poor, with the US moving from richer to poorer as more and more of GDP is spent on healthcare and not other investments. Especially if large portions of the population become or remain less educated, more easily swayed by misinformation, etc. I think the world order could change, maybe not in my lifetime but quite possibly in the lifetime of the younger folks on this forum.
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Hmm, I feel like it totally is already rich and poor countries? US, regardless of pockets of unvaccinated people, already has reached 65% vaccinated adults. Meanwhile, the entire African Union is at less that .2% adults vaccinated. Maybe COVAX will finally be able to get vaccines out from India to the African Union, but distribution is still a much greater issue in poor countries that do not have a cold chain supply like rich countries do.
Like it’s the global south that doesn’t have nearly any vaccine supply right now, and that has greatest barriers to controlling mutations, correct? We’ll keep seeing mutations of covid as long as poor countries don’t have access to vaccines. And poor countries that have managed to control covid spread have largely been able to do so by utilizing border restrictions, which are not long-term sustainable for trade - especially since many of them rely on tourism.
I think in the long-term, it will come down to those reluctant hold outs. But in the short-term, covid vaccines is largely about whether or not you rely on COVAX.
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That is a really good point and something I’ve never thought about.
re: Autism and vaccines
For anyone interested in where the bs vaccines cause autism thing came from, check out Autism Speaks. That’s right, an autism advocacy group. Most advocacy groups for disabled people are run by able people, with all able people on the boards. Usually it is primarily parents, many of whom are themselves completely ableist and refer to their children in derogatory terms. They were instrumental in distributing information about how vaccines are what “damaged” their kids. It’s super fucked up.
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** That organization’s name gives me the deepest, most angry feelings in the world. Their advertisements are vile.
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I mean, comparing individual wealth in the US is irrelevant on a global scale. the poorest american 1% has more wealth than the average wage in the poorest countries in the world. Country’s wealth is more relevant to vaccine supply than individual wealth.
That being said, Russia, as a middle-income country, has a HUGE amount of vaccine skepticism largely because people do not trust their government. When Russian government says that the Russian-created covid vaccine is safe and effective, Russians are skeptical it is true.
When other countries are not approving the Russian made vaccine as equivalent, it makes Russians even more skeptical of the vaccine… Some russians believe it’s due to Western bias the vaccine isn’t getting EU approved, but quite a few are saying “umm, I don’t trust my government to make a shot”
So corruption index plays a part in vaccine misinformation/skepticism.
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Covid is going to be endemic. Whether or not it’s a problem depends on if we can distribute vaccines. The biggest issue with covid is lack of resources to treat so many people all at once. In all the areas that have had to ration care, they probably won’t have to do that in 20 years. Just a few people will be in the ICU on a ventilator at a time, so their chance of survival will be much higher.
And in that way, I think it will be much like the flu. People will still die from it, but not at the rate we are seeing.
My guess is poor countries will have better access to vaccines in a few years. Which is still potentially devestating.
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TB is a really slow progressing disease. Polio couldn’t even be started to be eradiated until there was an oral vaccine that was stable at high temps and didn’t need any sort of cold chain, and plenty of kids got >5 doses of it in an effort to get 100% coverage. But also:
It used to be that no one had to ask before vaccinating high risk populations (incarcerated people, poor people accessing services, immigrants, anyone in an institutional setting for physical or mental disabilities) and no one bothered asking or even notifying parents in places like Pakistan.
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Yep, my coworker that I mentioned growing up in Mexico was one of those because her family wanted amusement park tickets! Maybe we just haven’t found the right bribe for the covid vaccine yet!
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Marmalade and his mom (in India) both had TB. He had it when he was in grad school here, and had to go to a prison to take his antibiotics, I guess so that they could make sure he did the treatment. He said he had an enormous lymph node sticking out of his neck. I was so shocked when I found out. His mom had symptoms in her hand and had to take antibiotics for two years 
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I don’t think Covid will be eradicated - I agree that it will be around every winter as a more serious flu like illness. I think eventually everyone will either get vaccinated or get Covid, though. It will take some s years to settle into the stage where there’s an outbreak every few years. That’s a typical pattern for a novel disease.
Polio wasn’t identified as a disease until the end of the 19th century, I think. There’s still some debate as to whether is was in circulation before that, or not.
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One of my elementary school classmates had polio. I’d forgotten that. He survived for a while, but his lungs were compromised and he died during the next flu season.
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