If the polio vaccine was banned in the US starting tomorrow, would you expect the next cohort of newborns to experience higher levels of polio, similar levels of polio, or lower levels of polio over the next 10 years?
Do you know that even vaccinated individuals can travel to regions with polio, pick it up asymptomatically, and bring it back and give it to an unvaccinated person who may then show more of the paralytic polio symptoms?
Under the current vaccination policy that is possible. However, if travel restrictions were in place they should require recent live immunity, which would be extremely unlikely to result in a transmissible infection.
Yes, the live vaccine would prevent people from going abroad and coming home as a silent carrier, but the live vaccine leaves open the possibility of VAPP, meaning of the tens of millions of Americans who would need the live vaccine, some of them would develop VAPP and perhaps spread it to their community, which now generally has no immunity to polio if we aren't getting any polio vaccinations.
