Thread: Corona Virus

Poor vaccination rates in PNG see a resurgence in Polio

Polio was eliminated in the Asia-Pacific. Then it suddenly came back - ABC News

Originally Posted by JDNSW

A few years back I visited the small cemetery at Cadia, where my father's first memories were. Closed in 1929, there were about 33 burials there. Only two were adults, most were under five.

My father's family only lost one, the next youngest from him (diphtheria - a vaccine actually existed then, 1908, but not for ordinary families in a small NSW mining town). Most families lost more - my mother's family lost nearly half the kids.

No, anti-vaxers are either ignorant or sadistic. Or both.

Ditto - my understanding is that in my grandmother's family only half the kids made it to adulthood. That would've been around 1900.

There were a variety of causes (they were farmers in the Mallee) but infectious disease would've been a big factor.

Originally Posted by SBD4

First shot today. Hopefully I'll fare better than my wife did!

You actually missed her? With that new sooper dooper telescopic sight as well?

Read recently about the first pandemic in modern Australian history, the 1789 smallpox outbreak in Sydney, which is believed to have killed at least half the indigenous residents, with bodies littering the beaches and hills, and kept spreading inland.
The surgeon on the First Fleet had a smallpox store which he used to stimulate the immune systems of fleeters, as smallpox was widespread among them. Somehow, either accidentally or deliberately, it infected indigenous residents, who had no resistance, and wiped them out.
So it seems vaccination has been used since the start of the colony.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

You obviously did not grow up when I did - with kids at school wearing leg braces and pictures of them in iron lungs a regular news picture. These were only the visible face of an Australia without vaccinations, as most of the deaths from vaccine preventable diseases were young children. And going back further, smallpox ceased to be an issue in Australia early in the twentieth century, if not earlier. And while it prevented few deaths, rubella vaccination prevented hundreds of thousands of children growing up blind and deaf.

A main reason that the child mortality rate in Australia dropped by a factor of ten since 1950 is the widespread, near universal, adoption of vaccination. If you feel that vaccination is "playing God", but other medication is not, you either want to return to an Australia where parents were terrified of polio in particular, but also of diseases that you have forgotten about such as scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, mumps, TB, tetanus, etc, and every school had a few chilkdren crippled by polio, and there were special schools for the large numbers of deaf and blind children, or you are very poorly informed.

There is a good reason why nearly everyone who is antivax is under sixty - they are too young to remember what it was like before widespread vaccination. The ones over sixty either have poor memories or are particularly sadistic.

your correct, im not old enough to have seen that.
there are many uncomfortable things we see in life. i dont see billions of dollars going into homeless or starvation? why must be cure disease, but where is big push to cure homelessness?

the other problem is, unlike the vaccination for polio, the vaccination for covid will not lead to eradication.

A baby has COVID in Melbourne. Two more men from the Housing complex have tested positive, but will be added to Wednesday's figures. Six people in the Southbank Townhouses have tested positive so far.

Victoria confirms two surprise community virus cases (thenewdaily.com.au)

Originally Posted by Eevo

and certainly spread it.

JEEEZUZ! Can they what, you name it the little buggers will spread it. GGC don't call around when they are crook or the buggers could be responsible for our deaths. Always from School.

Originally Posted by Eevo

your correct, im not old enough to have seen that.
there are many uncomfortable things we see in life. i dont see billions of dollars going into homeless or starvation? why must be cure disease, but where is big push to cure homelessness?

the other problem is, unlike the vaccination for polio, the vaccination for covid will not lead to eradication.

Trust me, all the above was "normal" in their day. Kids in Iron Lungs lined up like used cars, leg irons (calipers) etc just as JD described.