Can you ever imagine yourself living with iron lungs for a lifetime? Well... Paul Alexander, an American lawyer has been paralyzed from his neck down due to the polio virus that left him unable to breathe by himself. Upon that, he spent more than seven decades inside a 600-pound iron lung after being struck down by polio at the age of six. This bizarre case got the attention of many, and it made us wonder to what crazy extant this virus can drive the human race, so here is a brief history...
A brief history:
Polio disease is primarily caused by the infectious, fatal, and life-threatening polio virus which targets the lungs. It all started back in 1909 where it was discovered by Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper. And then, in the early 1950s, it spread on a fast rate paralyzing and killing over half a million people worldwide every year.
Some of the figures who got polio was the Actress and activist Mia Farrow at the age of 9. Her experience with this disease inspired her to work on polio vaccination campaigns around the world. Farrow was one of some 500 people sickened in a polio outbreak in Los Angeles in the summer of 1954.
Symptoms: Most people who get infected with poliovirus will not have any visible symptoms. But about 1 out of 4 people with this infection will have flu-like symptoms that can include:
Sore throat
Fever
Tiredness
Nausea
Headache
Stomach pain
These symptoms usually last 2 to 5 days, then go away on their own. A smaller proportion of people with polio virus infection will develop other, more serious symptoms that affect the brain and spinal cord. It is worth noting that: Thomas Weller and Frederick Robbins successfully cultivated live polio virus in live cells. Six years later, they received the Nobel Prize or their work that helped discover that polio has the ability to grow in different cultures in various types of tissues. Some may compare polio to covid-19 since they are both extremely dangerous and contagious. However, we can say that polio is way riskier than covid since it mainly targets the lungs which are counted to be the main organ that assist you to breathe, and it leaves people paralyzed and dead.
Sometimes nature can go mad on human beings that it makes us live with iron lungs. But what is more important is that we should never put these restraints to stop us from being what we want to be. We can still build a life and continue our education like Paul did, or take it as an inspiration to spread awareness and push people to protect themselves by taking the vaccine. And no matter how hard things turn out, we will always fight and live through it.
Written by: Roua Kanj
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