As Trumplicans flirt with revoking approval for the polio vaccine (which in the U.S. is the inactivated, therefore 100% safe, vaccine), consider:

“Confounding,” “very unorthodox,” and “very concerning.” That’s how Shahin Huseynov, polio lead for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) European region, describes the slew of detections over the past 3 months of poliovirus in wastewater in Spain, Poland, and Germany. On 10 December, the U.K. government reported more positive wastewater samples, as did Finland."

"All the newly spotted isolates are vaccine-derived strains, known as circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2, which are spawned by the live, attenuated virus used in the oral polio vaccine (OPV). They are descended from the Zamfara strain, which emerged in Nigeria several years ago and has spread widely across Africa. The closest match is to the strain now circulating in Algeria, Guinea, and Mali, says Robb Butler, director of communicable diseases for the WHO European region."

The expanding footprint of this virus into Europe may be caused by importation by travelers. Luckily, European countries are well vaccinated.

Ideally, there would be global adoption of the inactivated vaccine but it would be expensive and impractical in some countries due to technical requirements. Those countries continue to use the weakened polio vaccine which can rarely revert to wild type. Bear in mind that type 2 was declared eradicated several years ago and the weakened vaccine then manufactured without that strain. Within a year, many countries saw a rebound of vaccine-derived type 2. Surprise!

And now Trump's disease cheerleaders want to stop vaccination in the U.S. Welcome back, polio!
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