Polio detected in New York City sewage, suggesting its circulating

Originally published at: Polio detected in New York City sewage, suggesting its circulating | Boing Boing

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inb4 conservatives ban teaching about vaccines and infectious diseases to avoid parents feeling shame/guilt.

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More like fear of kids learning about vaccines in school and thinking antivax parents are morons.

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Nice going, anti-vaxxers. Polio, measles…I’m sure whooping cough and typhus will be coming down the road as they confront the tyranny of the bad ol’ medical experts.

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How TF are they detecting a couple of viruses amidst the millions of gallons of water that pass through them hourly? That’s like finding the needle at a haystack convention.

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Short answer: SCIENCE!

Long answer:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720344399

Infographic answer:

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Also under discussion recently in this thread:

Some anti-vax fuckwittery may be involved, but do read the link above and the articles linked within it. Live vaccines vs inactivated - shedding of virus from live vaccines is speculated about.

ETA Post edited to swap previous thread link for one starting at an earlier comment - makes more sense.

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@Brainspore posted a nice graphic but it still boggles my mind how it works. This is from the article below.

Thirty-five years later, the sensitivity of wastewater surveillance to monitor polio virus vaccination programs was confirmed in an elegant study that came to be known as the [Helsinki polio virus experiment.

Scientists flushed a polio vaccine down a toilet 20 kilometres away from a wastewater treatment plant. The researchers then collected wastewater samples from the facility over four days, and showed they could still detect the vaccine after 800 million litres of wastewater had passed through the system. They concluded that one infected person shedding the polio virus could be detected in a community of 10,000 residents.

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Whooping cough never left. Before we started boosting kids at 6th grade, we saw outbreaks every year. I have had 2 babies die in my practice of pertussis in my career, and it sucks. Figure to start seeing it again, as we have an increasing number of “health freedom” warriors in this area. Retirement cannot get here soon enough. I have way too many google scholars telling me how to do my job, or that I don’t know how to do my job.

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Are they just there because they don’t buy prescription drugs from mystery pill mills, so prescribing powers count; or are they the truly puzzling ones who have mastered the doublethink required to still bring problems to relevant specialists, as one would expect; but then spend the time ignoring the answer they’ve sought out in favor of complaining that it’s not in line with the answer they already believed enough to be loud about it but not enough to just skip the appointment since they already have an answer?

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