Twitter blasts Marjorie Taylor Greene for comparing Covid and polio vaccines

‘How many breakthrough cases of polio are there?’ Georgia Republican asks sarcastically

Twitter users are seething after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene used her Twitter account to once again cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines.

“How many breakthrough cases of polio are there?” the Republican congresswoman tweeted sarcastically. Below her question, she posted an image of Senator Cory Booker, who recently became one of the many Americans to contract a mild case of Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated.

Ms Greene appeared to be implying that the Covid shots are not as effective as the vaccine for poliomyelitis, a disease that was eradicated from the United States after decades of inoculations.

But as many readers pointed out, her question appeared to misrepresent both the history of polio and the function of the coronavirus vaccines.

“I dunno,” one answered, “but my anti vax friends’ kid got the mumps a few years ago.”

“Tell me you don’t understand science or epidemiology without saying you don’t understand it,” another commented.

All three of the Covid-19 vaccines available in the US have proven extremely effective at preventing severe cases of the disease after a person is infected. But as many experts have emphasised, that doesn’t mean they block every single recipient from catching the virus in the first place.

“Although the vaccine does not necessarily protect you completely from being infected, it certainly goes a long way to protect you from getting seriously ill, requiring hospitalisation,” Dr Anthony Fauci said last week.

Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, explained this with more frustration on Fox News.

“​​This is where I get upset, because people point to anecdotes of somebody who got sick even though they had been vaccinated and say, ‘There, you see, it doesn’t work,’” Dr Collins told the network on Sunday. “That’s way too simplistic.”

“If you’ve gotten sick after vaccination, the chances are you’re going to have a pretty mild case,” he went on. “You’ll have the sniffles, maybe, or be sick for a day or two with a fever, but you won’t be in the ICU. The vaccinations are really good at protecting against severe disease. We should all take advantage of them.”

As for polio, one of the key reasons that disease’s vaccine was so effective was because it was so widely accepted by the public. Once the vast majority of Americans had been vaccinated – even though the vaccine was not 100 per cent effective – the virus had trouble spreading through the US population, because there were so few unvaccinated Americans available to infect.

The Covid vaccines have not received the same embrace. So far, only 61 per cent of Americans have been fully vaccinated.

“In the beginning of the polio epidemic, there were multiple cases of polio breakthrough,” one Twitter user commented on Ms Greene’s post. “The only reason we’re even having these issues are the willfully unvaccinated.”

The Independent has reached out to Ms Greene’s office for comment.