Thread by @forrestmaready

Mystery polio? Thread.
1) If you’re wondering why children are coming down with polio-like illnesses all over the country, we know why this is happening. It's absolutely no mystery. Health authorities have to pretend like they don’t know what’s going on. They do this every year.

2) This event happens every fall. Sometimes worse than others. Children from around the country come down with numbness, sometimes tingling, then paralysis in their extremities. It spreads.

3) It usually starts in the legs, then moves up the spinal column, sometimes reaching the muscles that control the expansion and contraction of their lungs, causing artificial respiration to be needed. This is what we use now instead of iron lungs.

4) In the old days they called this “polio.” Back then, “polio” was caused by a couple of different viruses. It could even be caused by pesticide or metal poisoning. Whatever the cause, everyone called it the same thing: polio.
collections.nlm.nih.gov/ext/dw/1015021…

5) Nowadays, we call paralysis caused by a particular virus (the poliovirus) “polio.” If the paralysis seems to be caused by another virus, like Coxsackie, echo, or D68, they call it Acute Flaccid Myelitis, or #AFM

6) Either way, it’s all really just polio. The cause might be different, but the result is the same.

7) The pesticides could cause paralysis by ingestion (you ate food that was coated in pesticides) or they sprayed it directly on you (DDT). The metals were normally taken as medicine. But the viruses could not harm you unless they could reach your nervous system.

8) It is very hard for a virus to reach your nervous system. Just like tetanus or rabies, you have to create an artificial pathway into the neuronal pathways.

9) Outside the nervous system, tetanus, rabies, and any of the microbes that cause polio are mostly harmless. Inside your nervous system, very bad things happen.

10) How do these microbes get into your nervous system? They have to puncture your skin. Everyone thinks of rusty nails or other cuts when they think of tetanus. Everyone thinks of animal bites when they think of rabies.

11) Most people do not think of injections or vaccines when they think of what CAUSES polio, but this is how people sometimes get paralyzed. It's not the ingredients, but the injection itself.

12) In late summer or early fall, when various enteroviruses known to cause paralysis are flourishing, many kids get shots for school. If they have an enterovirus on their skin (common) that gets pushed into the nervous system, it may cause paralysis at the site of the injection.

13) The virus can spread along the nervous system towards the spinal cord, growing outward from there and causing crippling paralysis.

14) This is a long-known and recognized medical phenomenon called provocation polio. You can read about it in this Lancet article:
Polio provocation: solving a mystery with the help of history - The Lancet: thelancet.com/journals/lance…)

15) In the 1950s, when doctors really became aware of this, they stopped vaccinating children in the late summer/early fall because the chance of them getting paralysis from the injection itself (not the ingredients) was high.

16) This applies to any injection—not just vaccines. Back then, penicillin was administered via syringe. They wouldn’t administer penicillin if they could avoid it once they discovered the risk of polio from injection.

17) The scary thing is ANY cut or laceration can potentially cause polio during this time of the year. Vaccines are the most common reason for polio, but many other things can cause it.

18) I’ve been working with a family whose child was stricken, and it’s clear that a poison ivy rash on their ankle the child had been scratching vigorously for the previous week is how the enterovirus entered their nervous system.

19) How do we know this? Because that’s exactly where the paralysis started. It spread up their leg, into their spinal cord, then on to much of the rest of their body. Absolutely horrible.

20) Other people get “polio” directly after oral surgery. Tonsillectomies and adenoidectomies were known to be associated with polio. Don’t trust me. Read the studies (written by polio vaccine inventor Albert Sabin).
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap…

21) What used to be the most common entryway for polio? The intestines. Enteroviruses grow readily there & create what might feel like a common cold. If you have poor gut health, the virus can cross directly to the spinal cord that lies behind (especially in children).

22) If you are reading this, and your child has been stricken with mystery-polio like illness, one of three things has happened. They had a cut, laceration, or injection recently that allowed the microbe access to their nervous system.

23) This could have been oral surgery, vaccines, insulin or other injections, or even cuts or rashes. Could insect bites be enough of a laceration to allow an enterovirus into the nervous system? It would be very uncommon if so.

24) If you can confirm none of these things happened to them in the day or two directly before their paralysis, then they will likely have experienced a cold or other innocuous-seeming illness.

25) This was them coming down with an enterovirus in their intestines. Normally, this would be a trivial event. The only way that enterovirus gets into their spinal cord is if they have poor gut health—leaky gut, celiac disease, Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, etc.

26) Without a very unhealthy gut, there is no way that virus can make it past the intestines into their spinal cord.

27) This may not help with their recovery, but it should at least help you piece together the puzzle in understanding what might have happened to your child.

28) The true crime here is that public health officials, who are terrified of spooking parents on vaccines, cannot bring themselves to announce that vaccination is probably the reason many of these children became paralyzed.

29) As I mentioned, doctors used to know about this and avoid summer and fall vaccinations. Now, they have no idea and jab you regardless of whether you’re sick or not.

30) So, AFM, or “polio” is not really a mystery at all. It’s just something public health officials are not comfortable talking about. They have to play dumb every fall in order to maintain public confidence in vaccines.

31) If you're interested, I've written a gripping account of the rise and fall of polio called the Moth in the Iron Lung. It's a fascinating story that will likely change much about what you think of "polio." It's available on Amazon:a.co/d/i5bxuAQ