Polio starts out just like the flu. You may feel a little achy, a little feverish. Maybe you stay home for a few days, watch TV and slurp broth. If you’re unlucky, your flu might last a little longer than you expect.

And one day, when you try to stand up, you can’t. Move, you might tell your legs, but they don’t. They are frozen. You are frozen.

This is poliomyelitis, a disease that mostly – though not exclusively – strikes children and leads, in 1 in 200 infections, to irreversible paralysis after the virus attacks the brain and spinal cord.

Earlier this year, the chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opined that polio vaccines should be optional – in order, he said, to restore trust in public health. The announcement was buried by the news cycle.

Maybe this doesn’t sound so crazy to you. After all, it’s not like he suggested that we get rid of vaccines. Maybe you like the idea of making your own decisions about your children.

But making this vaccine optional is a bad idea. It’s also a dangerous one.

Making polio vaccine optional would undo generations of progress

I am an infectious disease doctor, but don’t just take my word for it. Ask older friends or relatives. Ask former Senate........

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