fukuda

Been working on a small cargo port, now that I have a bit of free time

Very interesting stuff

Happy birthday ST! And yes, I also am interested in the mysterious rejected designs

Polio really is a unique disease. Back in the old days of your parent's generation polio was an unnoticed harmless viral infection that was suddenly turned into a devastating disease. This was unknown back then, but polio virus is just an acid-resistant version of the common cold virus, able to go through the stomach and infecting the bowels. No biggie. But it only does so during early childhood. And that was the real problem. Back then, children would play outside in the dirt, live in not so hygienic conditions and get infected with polio virus when they were still quite young. This way the virus would just attack their bowels and our great-grandparents were immunized against it afterwards. But that situation was going to change. Way stricter hygienic measures were upheld all around the developed world, greatly diminishing the incidence of most childhood diseases and limiting the children's early contact with the virus at the same time. The really problematic thing is, polio virus changes its cellular targets in older people! It no longer targets bowel cells, now it targets motor neurons instead... killing them and causing paralysis in the process. Older people being already immunized to it, the disease seemed to mostly affect children and was obviosuly regarded as a new disease. It sadly caused many deaths and lots of kids had to live their entire lives inside an iron lung... The last kids afflicted by the disease circa 50 years ago are still living inside their iron lungs today.... The rise of polio motor symptoms in muslim countries (and China) reflects a positive trend towards development and sadly it also reflects a lack of vaccination. Polio can only be managed effectively if the causing process is well taken into account... The virus is there in non-developed countries, it's just hidden because there is not enough hygiene. But authorities didn't take this into account and thought it was unnecessary... There was no visible disease after all.. And that's when they didn't directly oppose it as in some african countries. Yes, polio vaccines are still administered to little children as oral drops in most developed countries. But vaccination efforts have been hindered by some anti-vaccine groups in the past, and there's still some resistance.