Polio is an infectious disease that primarily impacts children, and can cause paralysis and even death. In the first half of the twentieth century, thousands to tens of thousands of people suffered from paralysis from this terrible disease every year.
The first injectable vaccine against polio was introduced in the United States in 1955. Six years later, a second vaccine was introduced, which could be taken orally.
As a result, the last wild polio outbreak in the US occurred in 1979, and the disease was officially eliminated from North, Central, and South America in 1994. This means it was not spreading within this region, and any new cases were only seen among individuals infected elsewhere.
There is a mutant strain of belief that says since the rates were declining anyway before the vaccine came into being, that this is just natural decline and the vaccine did nothing. Just ask RFKjr
How are they defining “vaccine derived infections”?
“This looks bad, how do we make the graph go up like it should?” – the current administration, probably
Pretty much the entire idea of “sending your kids away to summer camp” was to get your vulnerable kids out of the city during summer polio-spreadin’ season.
But why has the curve already started to fall significantly before the first vaccine?
Why does this graph make it look like the vaccine had zero effect?
The slope before and after the first vaccine look identical
I contracted polio in 1956, the year after the vaccine came out. I was only 6 months and hadn’t been vaccinated yet :/
Wasn’t polio already dropping significantly by the time the vax was administered?
I remember being vaccinated in school in I think was 1961. My mother was so happy that it happened.
I saw a thing recently that said back in the day you’d go to the doctor with symptoms that could be lots of different things and they would just slap polio diagnosis on it. But as time went on and we generally got cleaner and more sanitary as a society a lot of these sicknesses that were called polio back in the day went away and therefore the rate of “polio” declined sharply. This doctor was implying that we never really had a polio epidemic, we simply had a dirty, reckless society with people who were getting sick with polio-like symptoms.
Anyone who hasn’t been red or blue pilled here that can shed some light on this?
> In 1955 the first polio vaccine was administered in the United States
where [more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective.](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1383764/) Causing 40 000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be using vaccines, they can be life saving and absolutely necessary, what this means is we need to be really careful when tampering with our health.
I wish I was joking, but I have conservative acquaintances on social media (people from high school) who swear that it’s better to these things (including measles) just run rampant so “we can all get natural immunity.”
Yes, the irony of what vaccines are is totally lost on them.
![[OC] Vaccination eliminated polio from the United States](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/oulm7i2dvete1-1620x1024.png)
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Compiled from multiple sources:
* 1910-1949:Â [US Public Health Reports](https://www.jstor.org/journal/publhealrepo1896)
* 1941:Â [United States Census Bureau](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1945/compendia/statab/66ed.html)
* 1950-2022:Â [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention](https://wonder.cdc.gov/nndss-annual-summary.html)
Tools:Â [Our World in Data Grapher](https://github.com/owid/owid-grapher)Â for initial plotting, followed by finishing in Figma
(I’m [a data scientist](https://ourworldindata.org/team/fiona-spooner) at Our World in Data.)
Further context from the data insight post:
Polio is an infectious disease that primarily impacts children, and can cause paralysis and even death. In the first half of the twentieth century, thousands to tens of thousands of people suffered from paralysis from this terrible disease every year.
The first injectable vaccine against polio was introduced in the United States in 1955. Six years later, a second vaccine was introduced, which could be taken orally.
By 1961, [over 85%](https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/74158/cdc_74158_DS1.pdf?) of US children under ten had received at least one vaccination against polio.
As a result, the last wild polio outbreak in the US occurred in 1979, and the disease was officially eliminated from North, Central, and South America in 1994. This means it was not spreading within this region, and any new cases were only seen among individuals infected elsewhere.
[https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/vaccination-eliminated-polio-from-the-united-states](https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/vaccination-eliminated-polio-from-the-united-states)
I wonder what this graph will look like in 2028
There is a mutant strain of belief that says since the rates were declining anyway before the vaccine came into being, that this is just natural decline and the vaccine did nothing. Just ask RFKjr
How are they defining “vaccine derived infections”?
“This looks bad, how do we make the graph go up like it should?” – the current administration, probably
Pretty much the entire idea of “sending your kids away to summer camp” was to get your vulnerable kids out of the city during summer polio-spreadin’ season.
But why has the curve already started to fall significantly before the first vaccine?
Why does this graph make it look like the vaccine had zero effect?
The slope before and after the first vaccine look identical
I contracted polio in 1956, the year after the vaccine came out. I was only 6 months and hadn’t been vaccinated yet :/
Wasn’t polio already dropping significantly by the time the vax was administered?
I remember being vaccinated in school in I think was 1961. My mother was so happy that it happened.
I saw a thing recently that said back in the day you’d go to the doctor with symptoms that could be lots of different things and they would just slap polio diagnosis on it. But as time went on and we generally got cleaner and more sanitary as a society a lot of these sicknesses that were called polio back in the day went away and therefore the rate of “polio” declined sharply. This doctor was implying that we never really had a polio epidemic, we simply had a dirty, reckless society with people who were getting sick with polio-like symptoms.
Anyone who hasn’t been red or blue pilled here that can shed some light on this?
> In 1955 the first polio vaccine was administered in the United States
where [more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective.](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1383764/) Causing 40 000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be using vaccines, they can be life saving and absolutely necessary, what this means is we need to be really careful when tampering with our health.
I wish I was joking, but I have conservative acquaintances on social media (people from high school) who swear that it’s better to these things (including measles) just run rampant so “we can all get natural immunity.”
Yes, the irony of what vaccines are is totally lost on them.
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