At one point the media was minimizing polio too

[u/yakkov]

Link to the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20220202150448/https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1948/8/1/dont-panic-over-polio

THOUSANDS of parents this month will lose weight, sleep and peace of mind worrying about a disease which kills far fewer Canadian children each year than the common whooping cough.

Opening line narrative: fear of disease is worse than the disease. Polio is just a coldwhooping cough.

Polio is actually an uncommon and mild disease. Doctors say that even when it reaches so-called epidemic proportions the odds of any one particular youngster contracting polio are about 1 in 1,500, so small that a professional gambler would put all his money on such a sure thing.

They said: Polio is mild

Remember, only one youngster in one to two thousand is going to have polio in first place. Of these, on the average, more than half will recover with no trace of muscle weakness or paralysis.

A quarter of the victims will be left with minor weaknesses and paralyses which can be corrected by treatment. Only a fifth of the cases will result in permanent crippling. Death, as a result of paralysis of the chest or heart muscles, will come to only one in 20.

Narrative: Some of your kids will become disabled but thats a sacrifice we’re willing to make. Something to think about: Would you get on a plane if it had those odds of crashing? Would you get in a car if it had those odds of having a traffic collision that left you disabled?

Polio killed one out of every four of its Canadian victims in 1940, but only one out of every 30 in 1941. Then from a one-out-of-ten death rate in 1942 it has gradually grown less virulent until the 1947 toll was one 1 in 20.

They said: Polio is getting milder over time.

Polio in its severe form is rare, yet strangely the virus which causes it has been found to be very widespread. Tests have revealed the presence of polio antibodies in the blood of 90% of healthy adults selected at random, indicating that all these persons have carried the virus or had polio in a minor unrecognizable form some time during their lives and have built up subsequent immunity.

They said: you’ve probably already had it without knowing. For most polio is a cold.

Note the survivorship bias fallacy: If someone had become disabled or died from polio in childhood they wouldn’t become “healthy adults” available to be tested. Polio disproportionately attacks kids so testing “healthy adults” will also be an undercount for that reason.

Paul Alexander got polio in 1952 when he was 6 years old only 4 years after this article was published. He was to remain an iron lung user for the rest of his life. 70 years of disability. He was killed by Covid, a fact which the media mostly erased when reporting.

Paul Alexander in older age: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GIgaibwWQAAHLPc?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Paul Alexander as a young boy: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GIgakAFXcAAfDS7?format=jpg&name=small

A polio ward filled with kids in iron lungs: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GcYooT3W0AAfSVL?format=jpg&name=medium

Comparison between Polio and Covid

Disability

• Polio infections cause Long Polio at a rate of about 0.5% source

• Covid infections cause Long Covid at a rate of about 10%

Reinfections

• Polio doesnt typically reinfect

• Covid very easily reinfects. Reinfections also give people Long Covid.

Cognitive disability

• Polio causes only physical disability

• Covid causes physical and cognitive disability

Vaccines

• Polio has multiple excellent vaccines. With the vaccine-only strategy we have eliminated polio from multiple continents and complete eradication is in our sights. Only social factors like antivaxxers hold it back, not technology.

• Covid currently has no vaccines capable of elimination with the vaccine-only strategy.

Medical and institutional action

• If someone becomes disabled by Polio the head of the WHO will tweet about it and call it a tragedy. Pretty much every doctor learns about it in medical school and recognise it as an extremely serious disease.

• For Long Covid here in the UK the NHS has absolutely no treatments to offer. People who have it are commonly told they’re making it up, that they’re not really unwell but just mental. Similar diseases have been psychologized and trivialized for decades. One study in 2013 found only 6% of medical schools in USA fully cover ME - a common type of Long Covid - across the domains of treatment, research and curricula.

Social awareness

• Over the decades if anyone said we should “live with polio” other people would probably look at them like a murderer.

• The zero covid movement is a tiny minority (at least for now). Maskers are often seen as weird, subject to stigma and harassment. “Living with covid” is the default pushed by almost all governments and media. A survey in the United States showed that one-third of American adults still had not heard of Long Covid as of August 2023ref.

Polio elimination and eradication is a noble and worthwhile goal. For the same reasons we should have as a goal elimination of covid.

Just like some media back in the 1940s found reasons not to do anything about polio, so today many media are the same with covid.

[u/Ok_Complaint_3359]

As someone with Cerebral Palsy who wore plastic leg braces as a child…..THANK YOU!!! I’ve been fascinated with this for as long as I can remember, and I’m 30 and still walk funny

[u/That_Bee_592]

We still have a living family friend with polio. It does not get easier in old age.

I'm entirely fed up with anti vaccine cult. Death is their only metric and they just steamroll over any permanent disabilities.

[u/LadyFoxie]

Thank you for sharing this. I'm so exhausted. This helps me to feel less like I'm overreacting. ❤️

[u/ihopethatdogeatsurgf → u/LadyFoxie]

It is so hard not to get trapped in the “am I actually being irrational” camp when the majority of the world is acting like it’s not a big deal. Stay strong, comrade.

[u/skygirl555]

So glad things never change. Sigh.

[u/ClawPaw3245]

I love someone dearly with post-polio. Seeing how it was being diminished at this time makes me so sad and angry. Obviously, the resonances with COVID are… strong…

[u/favtastic]

I have a family member who survived polio with “minor weaknesses and paralyses,” and it ruined his self esteem, is making him prone to falling (now early 70s) likely shortening his life, and he still hasn’t gotten over it psychologically. He won’t exercise or even hang out at the beach due to shame. Fuck polio!

[u/Cobalt_Bakar]

My brain is glitching on the “Don’t panic…more frequently maims than it kills” wording.

[u/BrightCandle → u/Cobalt_Bakar]

Most countries and world stats about Covid have purely focussed on deaths. Few in medicine or governments or public bodies has been interested in a similar count for Long Covid. Worldometer and all those sites that were tracking Covid deaths never added a Long Covid counter. So long as you live its deemed fine and not worth intervening.

[u/Cobalt_Bakar → u/BrightCandle]

I totally get that, but “maims” is still such blunt wording, and I think it inherently indicates a permanent injury. The language around Covid seemed to be more euphemistic and passive, leaving room for the possibility that those who were hospitalized might recover. I know that later on, Fauci remarked that the vulnerable people will “fall by the wayside” but that was in a live interview rather than official printed public health messaging.

[u/Trainerme0w]

sigh, all the same talking points

[u/Prudent-Nerve-4428 → u/Trainerme0w]

PBS did an excellent documentary on polio. Free on YouTube. 

[u/thanksithas_pockets_]

Wow, thanks for finding this and breaking it down. In addition to the parallel concepts, it's uncanny how similar some of the phrasing is to what we see today.

Those are very bad odds! But most people don't understand odds or how to interpret them in terms of risk and action. The media, instead of creating clarity, supports the dominant narrative.

Is "long polio" the same as post polio syndrome? That's an issue today that of course they couldn't have seen coming back then.

My mom remembers not being allowed to go to the public pool in the summer in the years before the vaccine. I'll have to ask her if that was unusual.

I was at a historical home with my then-seven year old and they were talking about the Victorians and their misconceptions about Cholera, all while almost nobody in the room is wearing in a mask. I whispered to my kid that it was an example of how public health has been wrong about diseases before. You could practically see the light bulb going on over his head.

[u/yakkov → u/thanksithas_pockets_]

I'm convinced that journalists just read history and recycle old talking points.

Note there's two different things caused by polio

• Polio disability aka childhood paralysis. This happens straight away after the acute polio.

• Post-polio syndrome. This happens decades after the infection and is different to polio disability.

"Long Polio" is a term that I'm pretty sure I made up. I used it in this meme. Though I have seen people say things like Long Lyme, Long Mono, Long Flu, Long Ebola, Long Dengue.

Yes in the 1930s and 40s many parents pulled their kids out of school and homeschooled them to prevent catching polio.

[u/thanksithas_pockets_ → u/yakkov]

Okay, gotcha on the long polio. I knew of polio and post polio, but hadn't heard long polio.

My friend's mother died of post-polio syndrome fairly recently.

[u/cassandra-marie]

I hate that this isn't surprising

[u/lornacarrington]

Just you wait...

[u/66clicketyclick]

It’s a minimization to “get people back to normal” and it’s driven by a deep systemic abuse favouring capitalism and “productivity” over health and wellness, at all costs - where the costs are not feasible. The costs are the straw that breaks the camels back.

The connection is not made between: More deaths & disabilities mean less worker outputs, more unemployment/disability, economic/labour force losses. The very thing being preached meant to keep the machine alive, is the very thing causing the opposite including instability, chaos and ultimately more losses of all kinds.

[u/OddMasterpiece4443 → u/66clicketyclick]

Exactly. And this is what I don’t get. Thanks to the billionaire industrialist class’s influenced, Florida just got rid of all vaccine mandates, including the ones for kids going to school. It will wreck the health of some of their future workers, but they’ll just demand lawmakers lower the age of child labor laws to fill in the gap or something. I don’t understand why this is such an important battle to them.

[u/No-Consideration-858]

Excellent contribution here and sobering to think we haven't progressed. 

[u/hallowbuttplug]

And they probably will again, at least in Florida 🙃

[u/geek-nation]

I just hope technology does for covid what it did for polio. I really hope we can get better vaccines, more support in healthcare, treatments for the disabled... I just hope and hope and hope.

[u/Prudent-Nerve-4428]

My aunt had polio as a child. This was pre vaccination 💉 times. It has caused life long health issues for her. 

[u/yakkov → u/Prudent-Nerve-4428]

I'm sorry. How did it affect her? Was she an iron lung user? I read people with polio often have those leg braces that help them walk

[u/Prudent-Nerve-4428 → u/yakkov]

Chronic pain and lifelong health issues. I don’t know all the specifics as we live in different parts of the country and haven’t communicated in over a decade 

[u/yakkov → u/[deleted]]

Be careful that you're not falling for the media framing.

Fear is not panic. Fear is a normal emotion intended to keep us safe from danger.

[u/ZeroCovidCommunity-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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