What kind of virus is polio and what impact does it have on humans?

Recently, polio virus (commonly known as polio) appeared in the city wastewater in New York, USA. The health department warned that the virus may have begun to spread locally. This is another wave of viruses that have a serious impact on humans after the new coronavirus and monkeypox. It's really one wave after another!

Today I’m going to talk to you about polio virus.

01. What is poliomyelitis?

When it comes to polio, many people may be unfamiliar with it, but the disease it causes has a more common name: poliomyelitis. This disease is very serious and can cause muscle paralysis and muscle paralysis. A considerable number of limb disabilities we see today are caused by infection with this virus.

As the name suggests, the polio virus affects the spinal cord. Once it enters the human body, it spreads along nerve fibers, destroying the spinal cord, brain stem, and motor neurons, which are responsible for muscle movement. As animals, we move mainly by nerves pulling muscles. If the motor nerves are damaged, what can we do? As a result, the muscles that have lost their ability to move cannot receive movement signals from the brain and spinal cord, so the muscles begin to atrophy, gradually weaken and relax, and finally become powerless and paralyzed.

Since this viral infection causes disability, often among children, affecting the fate of many people, it can be said to be one of the most serious infectious diseases affecting humans.

02. Human research on poliomyelitis

Therefore, humans have been studying and preventing this disease for a long time. For example, the Nobel Prize in 1954 was awarded to three scientists who studied polio.

But for us Chinese, there is a name that must be remembered, and that is Gu Fangzuo.

This great scientist isolated the polio virus for the first time in China and used it to produce China's first polio vaccine. Gu Fangzuo's greater contribution was that, considering my country's actual situation, he decided to improve the practicality of the polio vaccine, which is what many people have eaten: sugar pills. With the help of sugar pills, polio completely disappeared in China in 1994.

In fact, the global response to polio has been ongoing. In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched. By 2018, there were only 33 cases of polio in the world. Thirty years ago, the number was 350,000 cases per year, and only a single-digit number of countries in the world had the virus.

As for the United States, let alone the United States, the polio virus was completely eradicated in the entire Americas in 1994. The last case in the entire American continent was in Peru in 1991. Since then, there has been no polio.

The CDC still has this certificate record.

So, it is really surprising that the polio virus has appeared in New York, the most developed city in the United States. Where did this virus come from?

03. The virus in New York

The polio virus appeared in the United States this time, actually in July 2022. At that time, a case of polio was reported in New York State. This case was a young man who had not been vaccinated against polio, so unfortunately, he was paralyzed a month after being infected with polio, and everyone thought that this matter was over.

Now that polio virus has been detected in New York's urban wastewater, it means that the virus has spread. You know, the main way polio is transmitted is through fecal-oral transmission. The feces of infected people contain viruses, which enter the water cycle, infect food and water sources, and eventually further infect other people.

I have never seen such a thing before.

The outbreak of polio in the United States is inseparable from the country's anti-vaccine campaign. Sometimes I really feel that when people have nothing to do, something bad will happen.