" the polio epidimic became more prevaliant as sewer systems and cleanliness became more a regular thing. "

Partly true.  Before we got obsessively clean polio was transmitted thru fecal material so well most kids caught it by age two.  At that age they had a very rudimentary immune system that did not over react to the virus and so seldom got into the paralysis problems.  It pretty much just remained as a GI tract infection.  After we got clean kids did not get it until much older when they had enough immune system function to over react and cause disastrous consequences to the nerves.  At a very young age they might well have also been partly protected by antibodies in mom's milk.  It was always a disease that lots of kids got.  In fact before we got clean most kids got it while after we got clean only a small % got it.

Polio is like flu and a number of other viruses in that when you get really, really sick it is as much or more a matter of your immune system being too good and as a result over responding and your own immune system doing great damage to your body.

It is worth noting also that humans have three distinctly different immune systems that attack illnesses by three different routes.  Bees only have one immune system, the innate immunity they are born with.  If it is hard for humans to evolve solid defenses with three systems consider how tough it is for bees with only one system.

Dick

HL Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. "

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