The Claim:
In an interview with Joe Rogan, “Ecomodernist” writer Michael Shellenberg passively agrees that vaccines did not eliminate polio in almost every country on Earth, allowing him to credit sanitation and hygiene.
The Facts:
In order to buy that the advent of sanitation was a huge factor in reducing polio cases in the U.S., you also need to believe the claim that most people in the inner cities were using outdoor outhouses until 1955, when the polio vaccine came out. We do not believe this.
In fact, sanitation hurt. Before the 1900s, most kids were exposed to polio as babies, which helped them build natural immunity. Better sanitation from the Industrial Revolution improved health but also reduced exposure to the virus, leading to polio outbreaks.
To get his Shellenberg to agree, Rogan showed him some graphs and suggested they showed polio rates going down before the vaccine was introduced.
But he completely misunderstood the graph.
The graphs, found here, show that deaths had already drastically fallen before vaccines. Cases, on the other hand, didn’t fall until vaccines were introduced.
Disclaimer: Science is always evolving and our understanding of these topics may have evolved too since this was originally posted. Be sure to check out our most recent posts and browse the latest Just the Facts Topics for the latest.
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