The polio virus is due to be eradicated within a year, given sufficient funds. Two down (small pox, polio), a gazillion to go! And to all those silly coddled First Worlders who think vaccines have done nothing and are a scourge to children today: how many of your kids have died of smallpox lately? None? How many of your ancestors'? What about from scarlet fever, whooping cough, measles, need I go on? And if you're ignorant of your ancestors' death rates, check out the polio contraction rates outside of North America: zero North American children get to suffer the devastating effects of polio and post-polio syndrome today because of the vaccine, whereas more than 448 children in the Third World have that lovely fate. But that's the count for just one declining disease soon to be eradicated; that doesn't include all the other infectious diseases still rampant.
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