Polio is on the rise again. New wild variants as well as vaccine derived strands are contributing to it.
When vaccination rate and access to healthcare are good, this does not cause an issue, but if it lowers, or if the health system is deliberately destroyed like in Gaza, it creates the ground for a new outbreak.
Yes, there are a few isolated areas of the world where polio is still a threat and vaccine efforts are very important including for anyone visiting that area, and yes, it could get bad enough that anti-vaccine morons could reintroduce polio to a developed nation and that would be disastrous. However, for the time being there is no minimum herd immunity threshold for polio in the developed world, it is eradicated there and vaccines for it have not been recommended for the general populace for quite some time.
Polio is on the rise again. New wild variants as well as vaccine derived strands are contributing to it.
When vaccination rate and access to healthcare are good, this does not cause an issue, but if it lowers, or if the health system is deliberately destroyed like in Gaza, it creates the ground for a new outbreak.
https://www.who.int/news/item/28-07-2025-statement-of-the-forty-second-meeting-of-the-polio-ihr-emergency-committee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Gaza_Strip_polio_epidemic
Yes, there are a few isolated areas of the world where polio is still a threat and vaccine efforts are very important including for anyone visiting that area, and yes, it could get bad enough that anti-vaccine morons could reintroduce polio to a developed nation and that would be disastrous. However, for the time being there is no minimum herd immunity threshold for polio in the developed world, it is eradicated there and vaccines for it have not been recommended for the general populace for quite some time.