And then there were three ...

Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are neighbors. Why Nigeria, which is far away?

One word puts them in a special group: Polio.

“We are closer than we have ever been before to wiping out this virus. The next few months will tell us if we may be able to finish the job this year as this is the time when the virus is circulating"

Many of us here in the US and elsewhere suffer from the craziness that trump and his minions have been.   We have a president who openly questions whether vaccines are good!  Bill Gates says that the idiot-in-chief asked him about it--"he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines."  And what was Gates' response?  Gates said he told Trump, “that’s a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don’t do that.”  Had trump been the president back in the day, the US government might not have done anything regarding polio, small pox, ...

Thankfully, trump has come about during the end stage of the fight against polio.  Pakistan is inching towards zero.  One of those instances in real life when we begin to appreciate the mathematical idea of "tends to zero" but not yet zero. Perhaps the country might have wiped out the virus if the US had not recruited a Pakistani doctor to help find Osama bin Laden by having him carry out a fake vaccination campaign.

As we get closer and closer to eradicating polio, we need to pause and think about one of the most remarkable aspects of the vaccine: Jonas Salk did not patent the polio vaccine that he created.  He chose not to patent it.

Actually is is only two--Pakistan and Afghanistan. Because, Nigeria has not recorded a case of polio for 20 months since 2016.

If the country can make it to three years, plus a few extra months as an epidemiological cushion, it will be certified polio-free, which will also mean that the entire continent of Africa is clear of the disease. 

Imagine that; the African continent could be officially polio free in a year.  The entire continent.

Against such a backdrop, we have our eyes set on the November elections.  But, 2018 will be far more historic than a Democratic takeover of Congress if there are no new polio cases in 2019.  A big fucking deal, as Joe Biden once remarked!