The current vaccination program in the US does not include the use of the oral vaccine, which is the one that can cause actual cases of polio. Cases that are found in the US tend to be because someone has come into the country with a polio infection, perhaps because of the oral polio vaccine received outside the country. It is still recommended that people vaccinate against polio, because the spread of the disease can be quick, and the consequences of contracting the disease of often very very high. Further, polio is not eliminated in a global sense, as there are other nations that do not have an effective vaccination program in place. Since polio is a disease that can be contagious without noticeable symptoms, it is possible to arrive in the country, looking perfectly healthy, and then spread the disease to someone who is unvaccinated.
US in recent years have actually been caused by the vaccine... and yet we keep giving it to kids In short, that is an incorrect conclusion - we are not giving kids a vaccine that can cause polio.
The US vaccination program recommends a vaccine that has basically no side effects in the vast majority of people. The likelihood of a serious side effect is vanishingly small, and these tend to be an allergic reaction. By choosing not to vaccinate your kids against polio after 1990, you did not help the public good. They would not have been able to contract polio from the recommended inactivated vaccine, but they are currently in a position to pass polio from someone with the infection to someone else (or to die from the disease themselves.)
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Date: 2009-11-02 08:38 pm (UTC)US in recent years have actually been caused by the vaccine... and yet we keep giving it to kids In short, that is an incorrect conclusion - we are not giving kids a vaccine that can cause polio.
The US vaccination program recommends a vaccine that has basically no side effects in the vast majority of people. The likelihood of a serious side effect is vanishingly small, and these tend to be an allergic reaction.
By choosing not to vaccinate your kids against polio after 1990, you did not help the public good. They would not have been able to contract polio from the recommended inactivated vaccine, but they are currently in a position to pass polio from someone with the infection to someone else (or to die from the disease themselves.)