Posted on 04/23/2020 12:16:54 PM PDT by daniel1212
There had been epidemics in New York before cholera, typhoid and pneumonia all had swept the city but this was like nothing else. It mainly attacked children, with no apparent source or pattern, and its effects were dreadful. After the first mild symptoms headache, slight fever the little ones were suddenly unable to move. Doctors called it poliomyelitis, but most people knew it as infantile paralysis, and the popular term for it was "The Crippler." It was nothing new, but the world's first major epidemic of it occurred in New York City in the summer of 1916, and it struck down thousands.
The public was terrified. No one knew where polio came from, how it spread or what to do about it. Because it first appeared in an Italian neighborhood, the Department of Health initially blamed it on immigrants but Ellis Island reported no cases. Health Commissioner Haven Emerson accused the people of Brooklyn of leaving their garbage uncovered; the borough, he snapped, had not "developed sufficient pride to keep its own streets clean." The city became obsessed with sanitation. Any book returned to a public library from an infected home was routinely burned. Animals were thought to be carriers, and people were urged to destroy their pets; the city exterminated more than 70,000 cats. Screens, fly swatters and flytraps enjoyed record sales. Giant flytraps were installed in public places.
Quarantine was the only other means the Health Department knew to contain an epidemic. Mayor John Purroy Mitchel declared the city to be in a "state of peril" and greatly extended the powers of health officials to enforce quarantines...
Emerson urged the city to require everyone under 16 to stay home for two weeks. The proposal wasn't accepted, but trolleys refused to carry kids, theaters refused to admit them and schools, playgrounds and parks were closed.
None of these measures slowed the indiscriminate spread of the disease. Polio democratically crossed social and ethnic lines, appearing in the cleanest and most fashionable neighborhoods as frequently as in the slums... Ferry service from the Bronx was suspended, and railroad companies required a health certificate before they would sell a ticket to anyone under 16. Summer resorts in the Catskills and the Adirondacks closed their doors.
The panic mounted as the grim specter continued to stalk. More than 1,100 cases and 301 deaths were reported in a single week in early August. By October, when the epidemic had finally run its course, more than 9,000 polio cases had been tallied, 2,449 of them fatal. All but a few of the victims were less than 10 years old. Apparently nothing the Health Department did had any effect one way or the other....
since most of the Health Department's explanations were wrong as well as socially biased, the epidemic dealt a severe blow to public faith in scientific authority.
And since some will want to know (as I did) more about polio itself and its means of transmission, then:
Polio, short for poliomyelitis, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus.[1] In about 0.5 percent of cases, there is muscle weakness resulting in an inability to move.[1] This can occur over a few hours to a few days.[1][3] The weakness most often involves the legs, but may less commonly involve the muscles of the head, neck and diaphragm.[1] Many people fully recover...
About one to five in 1000 cases progress to paralytic disease, in which the muscles become weak, floppy and poorly controlled, and, finally, completely paralyzed; this condition is known as acute flaccid paralysis.[14]
In up to 70 percent of infections there are no symptoms. In those with muscle weakness, about 2 to 5 percent of children and 15 to 30 percent of adults die.[1] Another 25 percent of people have minor symptoms such as fever and a sore throat, and up to 5 percent have headache, neck stiffness and pains in the arms and legs.[1][3] These people are usually back to normal within one or two weeks.[1]..
Years after recovery, post-polio syndrome may occur, with a slow development of muscle weakness similar to that which the person had during the initial infection.
Poliomyelitis is highly contagious via the fecal-oral (intestinal source) and the oral-oral (oropharyngeal source) routes...It is seasonal in temperate climates, with peak transmission occurring in summer and autumn.[20] These seasonal differences are far less pronounced in tropical areas.[22] The time between first exposure and first symptoms, known as the incubation period, is usually 6 to 20 days, with a maximum range of 3 to 35 days.[23] Virus particles are excreted in the feces for several weeks following initial infection.[23] The disease is transmitted primarily via the fecal-oral route, by ingesting contaminated food or water. It is occasionally transmitted via the oral-oral route,[19] a mode especially visible in areas with good sanitation and hygiene.[20]
.The disease occurs naturally only in humans.[1]...
Poliovirus enters the body through the mouth, infecting the first cells with which it comes in contact – the pharynx and intestinal mucosa. It gains entry by binding to an immunoglobulin-like receptor, known as the poliovirus receptor or CD155, on the cell membrane.[31] The virus then hijacks the host cell's own machinery, and begins to replicate.
The disease is preventable with the polio vaccine; however, multiple doses are required for it to be effective.[3] The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends polio vaccination boosters for travelers and those who live in countries where the disease is occurring.[5] Once infected there is no specific treatment.[3] In 2018, there were 33 cases of wild polio and 104 cases of vaccine-derived polio.[4]
Poliomyelitis has existed for thousands of years, with depictions of the disease in ancient art.[1]..
On very rare occasions (about one case per 750,000 vaccine recipients), the attenuated virus in the oral polio vaccine reverts into a form that can paralyze.[23] In 2017, cases caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) outnumbered wild poliovirus cases for the first time, due to wild polio cases hitting record lows and relaxed vaccination levels.[59] Most industrialized countries have switched to inactivated polio vaccine, which cannot revert, either as the sole vaccine against poliomyelitis or in combination with oral polio vaccine.[60] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio
Polio is so contagious that a single case is considered a public health emergency. Ninety cases could mean some 90,000 people infected, each a carrier invisibly spreading the disease to others for weeks on end. - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/feb/20/syrias-polio-epidemic-suppressed-truth/?insrc=hpma
Yeah, but they’re “woke” now.
I suspect the water supply became contaminated.
And they would agree Trump failed to see this one coming.
Or, one could say that 1 case could mean 1000 people could be infected.
“Or, one could say that 1 case could mean 1000 people could be infected. “
Or one could say 1 case could mean one person infected.
In NZ I had a “polio injection” once a year for age 5, 6, 7...then we got a red syrup in a little plastic cup for 2-3 more years...
every child at school got them...no exceptions...no signed permission slip from our parents...they just marched us down to the high school and lined us up as though for ice cream...
and then tortured us...
:)
Swimming pools in the spring were my mother’s obsession. I don’t remember the date, but somehow, before that date, you would get polio if you went swimming.
It is a terrible disease and the vaccine was a miracle. People lined up for blocks to get one of the little sugar cubes when they first came out.
Yes, but there is more said about this than what I quoted:
For centuries, protection from polio was passed down through the generations. Mothers who had survived polio infection themselves passed on immunity to their babies in the womb and through breast milk.
There are two stages to the polio infection. In the first mild stage the infection stays in the digestive system and throat and doesn’t reach the central nervous system. Most babies with maternal immunity are able to fight off the disease at this stage with only mild flu-like symptoms. At the same time, exposure to the first stage gives them their own long-term immunity.
But the unforeseen consequence of better hygiene and sanitation at the end of the 1800s was that babies in clean surroundings stopped encountering the infection while they still had maternal immunity.
So they failed to develop their own long-term immunity and were not protected when they encountered the disease later in life. And exposure to polio in late childhood or as an adult, was more likely to develop to the second, more aggressive stage of the disease. - https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/medicine/polio-20th-century-epidemic
Polio is the disease I refer to whenever I talk to crazed anti-vaxers. Have you fitted your kid for an iron lung? There's a local chiropractor with a radio show who brags that his kids have never been vaccinated for anything.
Poor illegals.
“Polio is the disease I refer to whenever I talk to crazed anti-vaxers. Have you fitted your kid for an iron lung? There’s a local chiropractor with a radio show who brags that his kids have never been vaccinated for anything.”
Different generations. We were pre-polio vaccine and some of us died of measles, chicken pox, or whooping cough.
I think measles and COVID will turn out to have similar fatality rates (although measles kills children, which is ever so much worse). In my parent’s generation, they tied kid’s hands during chicken pox so they wouldn’t scratch themselves bloody. That practice was gone by the time I got it as far as I know.
COVID is the first really scary contagious disease for those under about 55. It will be a very, very popular vaccine, if they ever manage to develop one.
I remember the polio epidemic of 1954-1957. Bad stuff!
Which cult seems to use a "one-size-fits-all censure of all vaccinations, and maximizes the few problems in some cases (104 cases of vaccine-derived polio being one, as a result of misuse of the Sabin weakened form-live virus) to reject them all. But requiring all to be vaccinated is a valid issue.
I vaguely remember having mittens tied on my hands - but then that could just be me remembering my parents telling me about it. I have a few scars from chicken pox on my belly and back.
I have to amend one thing I said: “COVID is the first really scary contagious disease for those under about 55. It will be a very, very popular vaccine, if they ever manage to develop one.”
Obviously, AIDS is the exception to that. I lived in West Hollywood in the 1980’s and lost a number of friends to AIDS. It seems different than COVID, though, because it very quickly became apparent that refraining from certain types of sex would lend control over its infectiousness. So it didn’t seem so amorphous and everywhere like COVIDS does. But there was a period in the early 80’s when it first hit the gay community — they called it the “gay plague” (before it was AIDS) — and the gay community was rightly, terrified.
Politically, the gay community was much more effective at resisting government required changes to their lifestyle (everyone — gay and straight — knew the bathhouses were the center of the spread) than is the general populace today.
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