The dream of polio eradication might need a rethink - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35519473 - April 2023 (50 comments)
Iron lung: 'negative pressure' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_lung Ventilator: 'positive pressure' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventilator
Humans breathe using 'negative pressure', expanding muscles within the rib cage (principally on the back) and draw in air. Until computers and quality sensors could be given control over the breathing process, positive pressure breathing was too dangerous to even consider. While Iron Lungs were a nightmare of complexity and patient care was difficult with all or part of the body in a pressure chamber with seals around the neck... Iron Lungs were a safer alternative, especially if there is fluid in the lungs that needs to be coughed out.
I am not 100% convinced that the switch to using positive pressure exclusively was a good move, with vent damage being prevalent especially on comatose patients... and patients who would not even be in a coma but for the fact they were put on a vent.
We have to keep telling these family stories to our kids otherwise we forget why vaccination has changed our world
Polio is a horrible, horrible disease, and entirely preventable by a simple vaccine, and anti-vaxxers opposing vaccines are some of the most ignorant people on earth.
Polio is also special in that you can't just do muscle training. The remaining nerves are overworked, so if you exercise too much (and that isn't very much) more nerves start dying on you. It's a difficult balance, and these days there are very few doctors around who actually understand polio and can advice correctly on what to do for the few new cases worldwide today, and the same for those (like my father) who get post-polio effects later in life.
Bad forecasts: it seems to me that the 24-36 hour weather forecasts have been shifting more dramatically than I remember in the past.
That video of Paul Alexander upset me terribly as for me polio is rather close to home. I never caught polio but two kids in my primary school class caught the horrid disease, one died and the other ended up with calipers permanently strapped to his legs. Several other kids who were not in my class also caught the disease. Later, after I left school one of my workmates had to get about in calipers and a walking stick. When I was young it was not uncommon to see people in calipers.
After the kids in my class caught polio we had to wait about three years for the Salk vaccine. By then, we were in highschool. On one morning we were all lined up class after class in the forecourt of our assembly hall. We were formed into two lines—one for boys and one for girls. The lines led into the hall and we were vaccinated army-style—quick and no mucking about. Between morning recess and lunchtime the whole school had been vaccinated, about 1,100 or so kids. It's possible but I cannot recall any kid not being vaccinated (if we'd known any such kid then he/she would have been the talk of the school).
I doubt if anyone who went through that polio epidemic would have any time for anti-vaxxers. They were essentially unheard of back then (even then, the tiny few who weren't vaccinated was because of their religious beliefs). Even the terrible tragedy of the badly manufactured batch of vaccine that still had live viruses in it and killed kids only slowed vaccinations down until the public was reassured the batches were OK. We were just so thankful to get the vaccine, everyone knew who Jonas Salk was, he was a true hero.
Unless one actually went though that horrible time one cannot envisage how truly bad it was. We kids were scared enough but our parents were terrified. If anti-vaxxers had had a presence back then as they did during COVID then it's possible they could have been lynched.
Truly horribe newsreel footage of rows and rows of kids in iron lungs horrified people in ways that never happened with COVID, the situation was so grave people wouldn't have tolerated that nonsense as they did during COVID. Tragically, the polio epidemic reached its peak in the early to mid 1950s so now there are few around to remind people how bad epidemics can be. As a society we've very short memories (it's not only epidemics, we're just as forgetful when it comes to wars).
What happened with COVID—anti-vaxxers carrying on and those who refused to wear masks out of sheer bloody mindedness, or because they didn't want government to tell them what to do actually shook my view of human nature. I still have difficulty in comprehending what actually happened, it's as if a large section of society had suddenly turned into lemmings and started marching towards the ocean. For most of my life I thought the human species was smarter than that.
How wrong I was.
They lack empathy, or even the basic understanding that helping the lowest in society almost always pays dividends.