[thornygreb]

So tell me this, polio and smallpox were eradicated, but I am 45 years old and never had a smallpox or polio vaccine, so that makes me an anti-vaxxer regarding those two, yet here we are and I don't see those diseases making big comebacks?

[manarth]

  that makes me an anti-vaxxer regarding those two

An anti-vaxxer is someone refusing appropriate vaccinations (as defined by the medical authorities for that country).

Conforming to the recommended vaccination regime for your area, whilst avoiding unnecessary vaccinations that are not recommended by medical authorities, sounds quite the opposite of an anti-vaxxer.

[chimeracoder]

> Conforming to the recommended vaccination regime for your area, whilst avoiding unnecessary vaccinations that are not recommended by medical authorities

In the US, the CDC recommends 4 lifetime doses of IPV (usually administered as three doses between the ages of 2 and 18 months, with a booster shot when the child begins preschool or kindergarten (4-6 years old)). The schedule in other countries in which polio has been eliminated is similar. Some countries will even require evidence of the vaccination schedule in order to grant entry to travelers.

The only countries in which this is not the recommendation are countries in which polio is either endemic or circulating through vaccine-derived cases, in which case OPV is used instead of IPV.

[manarth]

I wasn't aware that the USA still vaccinated against polio, that's interesting to know.

In that case I agree, going against the CDC advice is an anti-vaxxer stance.

  yet here we are and I don't see those diseases making big comebacks

Smallpox has been recognised as eradicated globally, so without the intervention of bio-warfare or a lab accident, I think that one's safe to ignore.

Polio has had flare-ups where vaccination levels have dropped (many of these because it's hard to deliver vaccines in a warzone), so if an imported case of polio coincided with an area of low herd immunity thanks to anti-vaxxers, I can see how a flare-up could easily occur in the USA.

[chimeracoder]

> Polio has had flare-ups where vaccination levels have dropped (many of these because it's hard to deliver vaccines in a warzone)

To clarify that, the current problem is not that it's hard to deliver vaccines in a warzone (we've been doing that in various countries for 2+ decades, which is how we've gotten to current infection levels).

The problem is that the CIA decided to use polio vaccination as a front for gathering intelligence for bin Laden's assasination, and now people in Afghanistan and Pakistan don't trust actual vaccination efforts[0].

And unfortunately, this is not just limited to Afghanistan and Pakistan:

> The blowback from the raid may well have extended beyond Pakistan. Health specialists say the suspicion, anger, and violence that some Pakistanis and Taliban militants directed at health care workers after news leaked about the CIA-orchestrated vaccination campaign may have contributed to the spread of polio in Pakistan and war-torn parts of Syria and Iraq

[0] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/02/150227-polio-paki...

[chimeracoder]

> polio and smallpox were eradicated

FYI, polio has not been eradicated. It's been eliminated from all but eight countries, and is endemic on only two of those. But it has not yet been eradicated.

> I am 45 years old and never had a smallpox or polio vaccine, so that makes me an anti-vaxxer regarding those two, yet here we are and I don't see those diseases making big comebacks?

Well, don't travel to Afghanistan or Pakistan.

More seriously: you can't contract polio without being exposed to it[1]. There is no poliovirus in the US (outside laboratory settings), so you wouldn't have had the chance to contract it.

That state (the situation in which there is no poliovirus in the US) would not have been achieved without the vaccine, though, so you are still benefiting from the vaccine's use.

[1] whether in the wild or in vaccine-derived cases

[dalke]

How did you not get the polio vaccine?

It should have been something you got as a kid, as an oral vaccine, back in the 1970s.

Polio vaccination for an adult living in a developed country is neither necessary nor recommended.

"Routine vaccination against smallpox ended in the United States in the early 1970s as its incidence lessened." http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-sm... . You are too young to have warranted receiving a smallpox vaccine.

[splawn]

comebacks from what? Oh yeah thats right... eradication thanks to vaccines. Back in the heyday of the polio and smallpox vaccine programs the anti-vax movement was a tiny fringe group of religious nuts... it then exploded in the late 90's because of a combination of science fraud, and celebrity endorsement.

[thornygreb]

downvoted for asking a question, kills me it does.