After the rollout of the polio vaccine in 1955, the policy quietly shifted.
— Dr. Simone Gold (@drsimonegold) July 2, 2025
Cases of polio within 10 days of vaccination were classified as “unvaccinated,” and the definition of polio itself was rewritten to make the vaccine look more effective.
Same playbook, different decade. pic.twitter.com/1ApCG6kvH5
Polio was I think the most interesting vaccine because as an infectious disease it doesn't have the same kind of history. Polio kind of appeared out of nowhere in the early 20th century, and there's a very good book by Forrest Maready [and more], The Moth in the Iron Lung: A Biography of Polio, 2018, but he talks about the pesticides that were used and the potential implications that had on children and the development of poliomyelitis. And then Suzanne Humphries touches on the fact that they changed the definition of polio when the vaccine came out so that definition on its own would have reduced the amount of cases that we diagnosed as being polio with or without the vaccine. In 1955, we imported Eli Lily into Switzerland and we started vaccinating in the schools, but I found out by accident as well that the biggest polio epidemic that we had here in Switzerland was in the year that we mandated smallpox vaccine on kids. So polio is a very interesting one to look at also for the definition of being "inoculated." Sorry not Meadow Bailey my name is sometimes escapes me. He mentions that people who got polio within 10 days of being vaccinated were considered unvaccinated so we see how history repeats itself and if we continue to repeat history then it's just going to go on.
