Polio

In my post yesterday, I alerted people that the CDC’s Advisory Committee chair – Dr. Milhoan – broadcasted that polio vaccines are likely going to be on the cutting room floor and very soon potentially.

I have listened to a lot of vaccine nonsense from a small number of doctors over the past six years that don’t know what they are talking about or don’t care so long as it benefits them. However, I have never heard anything that so alarmed me as this.

The Virus

Poliovirus is an enterovirus in the family of viruses called picornaviridae. It is an RNA virus. The virus peaks in the summer and fall in the U.S. It is highly contagious with infection rates among susceptible (unvaccinated) household members of infected children of nearly 100 percent and 90 percent for infected adults.  

The Disease

Polio infections peaked in the U.S. in 1952 with more than 21,000 paralytic cases prior to the introduction of a safe and effective vaccine in 1955. Since then, polio cases precipitously and drastically declined such that our last case of wild-type virus infection was in 1979.

The virus enters through the mouth and multiplies in the gastrointestinal tract. The virus is present in infected individuals in their nasal secretions and saliva for 1 – 2 weeks and can be shed in their stools for several weeks following infection, even when they do not have symptoms or only have mild symptoms. During replication of the virus in the gastrointestinal tract, the virus can enter the lymph node-type tissue associated with the gut and then enter the blood stream to travel to the central nervous system. From there, the poliovirus gets into the part of the brain stem and spinal cord that controls motor (movement) neurons (as opposed to sensory ones that affect our sensation) and then the patient develops distinctive paralysis, which we call poliomyelitis (polio infection causing inflammation of the spinal cord).

The risk of severe disease and death increases with increasing age. Approximately 70 percent of all polio infections in children are asymptomatic, however, we cannot predict which children will develop paralysis from infection and which will not other than based upon vaccine status. Those with mild symptoms or no symptoms still shed the virus and are infectious to others for several days to weeks.

Nonparalytic aseptic meningitis (an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord without paralysis) occurs in 1 – 5 percent of children infected by the virus. This is characterized by stiff neck and back and leg pain. These symptoms generally last 2 – 10 days and then spontaneously resolve.

Less than 1 percent of children infected with polio will develop flaccid paralysis (inability to move their arms and legs). Adolescents and adults generally experience more severe pain and paralysis.

Paralysis is often permanent, although some children will have partial or total recovery, often due to unaffected muscles accommodating to the loss of the diseased muscles. If weakness or paralysis persists for 12 months (this is the case for two thirds of those with paralysis), then the weakness or paralysis is usually permanent.

There are three paralytic polio types:

1. Spinal polio (most common) – from 1969 – 1979, this form accounted for 79 percent of paralytic cases.
2. Bulbar polio – this includes weakness of the facial, swallowing and breathing muscles and accounted for about 2 percent of cases during that time period.
3. Bulbospinal polio is a combination of the above two types of paralysis and accounted for 19 percent of cases.

The case fatality rate (the number of people who died with the disease divided by the total number of cases of polio expressed as a percent) for paralytic polio is 2 – 5 percent among children and 15 – 30 percent among adolescents and adults. For those who have paralytic bulbar or bulbospinal polio  mentioned above, the case fatality rate increases to 25- 75 percent.

After an interval of 15 – 40 years, 25 – 40 percent of persons who contracted any form of paralytic poliomyelitis in childhood will experience new muscle pain and exacerbation of existing weakness or develop new weakness or paralysis. This is referred to as post-polio syndrome.

Dr. Milhoan knows about polio. He is a pediatrician. Even if he didn’t know much about it, he has a responsibility as the chair of the CDC’s committee to get educated. We have plenty of polio experts who can educate him. Of course, if he really doesn’t understand this disease, which I find very hard to believe, it was irresponsible for him to be talking about it publicly and spreading this absolutely dangerous idea of stopping polio vaccination of children to study it to see if children are still at the same degree of risk as in the fifties, sixties and seventies. However, all he needs to do is look at the case of a 20-year-old man in New York who was unvaccinated and infected while on international travel in 2022. That man is now paralyzed.

We have been using the polio vaccine for 70 years. It is safe and effective. There are no new safety concerns. It can only be described as sick and evil to consider stopping vaccinating American children when the risk is that they will be paralyzed for life, die early, and develop post-polio syndrome at the peak of their adulthood even if they only have a mild illness as a child.

We would be one of only three countries in the entire world with wild polio virus circulating and infecting our citizens and travelers to our country. Those two other countries – Afghanistan and Pakistan. America would now be a dangerous place for people from around the world to travel to. It would hurt our travel industry. It would hurt our economy. It would stress our health system, and health care costs would increase for everyone.

Children will pay the price for parents’ decisions who were misinformed, deceived and manipulated by government officials who don’t care about these people’s children (their own are vaccinated), but only about ways to increase their social media following, their power within the current administration, their appearances on cable networks or podcasts, speaking at conferences, or selling all kinds of supplements, remedies, and now, a popular antivaccine doctor who is selling skin creams. It is sickening, disgusting and an absolute betrayal of the values and principles which the overwhelming majority of doctors went into medicine adhere to.

May God have mercy on Dr. Milhoan’s soul; if he has one.