You may have heard that there have been new instances of polio outbreaks. There have been outbreaks in New York, in other parts of the U.S., and the world. If polio largely vanished thanks to vaccines, why is it now back? A good question, and one each of the pieces I’ve linked to tries to answer. The “TL; DR” answer is: it comes down to people being unvaccinated. We have had a rise in people rejecting vaccines for many reasons over the years, and this has lead to outbreaks of diseases that should be all but dead.
I remember getting vaccinated against polio and other diseases when I was young. The one disease I was terrified of was polio. There were lots of stories of people in iron lungs (shown above) that enabled people to live and breathe. The thought of being trapped in such a device made me easily get over any fears of needles and get the vaccine.
I really hope we don’t get a severe outbreak of that disease. No one should suffer with it, especially because there is no reason to.
If you are fearful of it, read those pieces for more information. And make sure whoever needs to gets their shots.
(Image: link to image in the S.A. above)
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