What to know about polio vaccines, in 4 charts
CNN
Here is what we know about polio as a disease, its vaccines and the likely number of lives saved through inoculation.
While Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services, has backpedaled on his anti-vaccine rhetoric during his Senate confirmation hearings, he has a long history of vaccine skepticism. As he is poised for a full Senate vote in the days to come, CNN looked at the origins and prevention effectiveness for just one of the vaccines that Kennedy has repeatedly questioned in the past: the polio vaccine. Kennedy, the son of former US attorney general, senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, has written multiple anti-vaccine books, lobbied Congress to give parents exemptions from vaccinating their children and made widely reported, unsubstantiated claims over the past 20 years that vaccines are inadequately tested, including suggesting that polio vaccines increase susceptibility to future polio cases. He has, however, recently told a crowd of reporters that he was “all for” the polio vaccine and downplayed his anti-vaccine record to senators this week. Here is what we know about polio as a disease, its vaccines and the likely number of lives saved through inoculation. In its early stages, poliomyelitis — known as polio — causes fatigue, headaches, stiffness and limb pain after exposure to the poliovirus, according to the World Health Organization, or WHO. One in 200 infections leads to paralysis, and around 5% to 10% of paralyzed patients die when their breathing muscles become immobilized. The disease mainly affects children under 5 years old, but anyone who is unvaccinated is susceptible if exposed. In the 19th and 20th centuries, frequent polio outbreaks made it one of the most feared diseases in the US, with the biggest outbreak killing more than 3,000 people in 1952, according to US public health data. “So long as polio is still present in the world, the benefits of protecting children against paralysis far exceed any risks of this highly effective vaccine, particularly for the inactivated polio vaccine used in the US,” said Dr. Jesse L. Goodman, professor of infectious diseases at Georgetown University, in an email to CNN last month. Unvaccinated children are “at potential risk of exposure and the potential for paralytic polio,” he continued.