Suzanne Humphries on polio: what the evidence says · JRE #2294
SUBJECT: POLIO
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
I read this crazy statistic, and I still can't believe it's real, that 95 to 99 percent of all polio is asymptomatic. That's exactly right. So polio virus is what we call a commensal,
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Public health references agree that most poliovirus infections do not cause obvious illness, but the standard figure is lower than 95 to 99 percent. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control states that about 70 percent of infected people develop no symptoms, about 25 percent have minor illness (fever, headache, sore throat), and fewer than 1 percent progress to paralysis. StatPearls (NCBI Bookshelf) similarly gives 75 to 90 percent asymptomatic. The frequently quoted 95 to 99 percent range conflates asymptomatic infection with the much broader category of infections that do not cause paralysis (roughly 1 in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis), so it overstates the asymptomatic share. The description of poliovirus as a commensal is incorrect: a commensal is an organism that lives with a host while causing neither harm nor benefit, whereas poliovirus is a pathogen that can invade the nervous system and cause permanent paralysis or death.