Health

Polio Outbreak Caused Because People Are Literally Ingesting Human Feces In NYC and London

(NOAH SEELAM/AFP via Getty Images)

Dylan Housman Deputy News Editor
Font Size:

Polio outbreaks in New York and London are spreading, in part, through human feces and bad sanitation habits.

One New York man was found to have been infected with polio earlier this summer, the first American case in years and he ended up temporarily paralyzed, according to ABC News. Authorities then discovered the virus spreading throughout the wastewater systems both in London and in various parts of New York, indicating that more cases are going undetected.

The New York man suffered from vaccine-derived poliovirus. There are two types of polio vaccines in common use today: an injection which uses a dead version of the virus, and an oral vaccine that uses a live, but weakened, version of the virus, according to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative.

Both vaccines offer substantial protection from catching polio or suffering from serious symptoms. There are now only a few dozen wild poliovirus cases in a typical year worldwide, with the virus having been nearly eradicated from the United States and Europe. There are slightly more cases, typically numbering in the hundreds per year, that occur from use of the oral vaccine due to the live virus inside, according to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative.

The oral vaccine, in somewhere around one in two to three million recipients, can cause paralysis from the virus, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. That risk isn’t present in the inactivated injected vaccine, which is why the U.S. and Europe discontinued use of the oral vaccine in favor of the shot years ago. However, in much of the developing world, the cheaper, easier to produce and administer oral vaccine is still the predominantly used option.

After receiving the oral vaccine, the virus sheds in the feces of an individual, sometimes for months or even years. It’s incredibly rare that that shedding leads to active cases of the virus, but there is a drawback. According to medical professionals, if the virus continues to spread amongst unvaccinated people as a result of this shedding, it can lead to the virus evolving into a strengthened version which can cause paralysis, according to The Economist. That process typically takes about one year.

That’s why health officials are now surveilling wastewater in New York, London and elsewhere for the virus. The detection of polio in the wastewater means that people are shedding the virus in their stool. It’s believed the New York case that resulted in paralysis was the result of transmission that initiated overseas where the oral vaccine is in use, according to the outlet.

While polio can spread through close contact and respiratory droplets, it can also spread through contact with feces. That’s why it’s more common to see polio outbreaks in countries with inferior sanitation systems. (RELATED: CNN Reporter Appears To Mock McConnell’s Polio Struggles [VIDEO])

“It spreads through contact with the stool (poop) of an infected person or droplets from a sneeze or cough. If you get stool or droplets from an infected person on your hands and you touch your mouth, you can get infected,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Also, if your child puts objects, like toys, that have stool or droplets on them into their mouth, they can get infected.”

“The polio virus enters the body through the mouth, usually from hands contaminated with the stool of an infected person,” according to the New York Department of Health.

The inactivated polio vaccine used in the U.S. has a virtual 100% success rate at preventing paralysis from polio. But just under 94% of kindergarten-aged kids nationwide are vaccinated against the virus and the coronavirus pandemic has led to a resurgence in vaccine skepticism, according to the CDC.

The inactivated vaccine doesn’t necessarily prevent transmission of the virus, so it’s possible that vaccinated individuals who don’t experience symptoms are now passing it on to the unvaccinated, creating risk of more paralysis cases. New York wastewater samples show higher rates of shedding in feces in areas with lower vaccination rates, and the man who became infected in New York was unvaccinated.

“We probably could never have gotten on top of polio in the developing world without the (oral polio vaccine), but this is the price we’re now paying,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told CBS News. “The only way we are going to eliminate polio is to eliminate the use of the oral vaccine.”

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel