Source: wechat official account: Daily Yijian has been authorized
On July 9, Wuhan University suspected a cholera case, and the students in the whole building immediately carried out a unified anal swab test.
On July 10, Wuchang District Health Commission responded that the test results had not been released and was paying close attention.
On July 11, the official informed Wuhan University that there was a cholera epidemic. After testing, the patient’s serological agglutination test was positive for O139, which was diagnosed as cholera, and the virulence gene was negative.
Cholera, the terrible killer, is really coming!
Wuhan, cholera, class A infectious diseases… These keywords are combined, which can not help but remind people of 2020.
Now the COVID-19 is not over, is there another super virus coming? For a time, the whole network was a sensation, and people were panicked and panicked.
Many people let me talk about what’s going on. Well, today I’ll give you a detailed science popularization. What is cholera? Are we afraid of it?
First of all, correct a misunderstanding of many people. Cholera is not a virus. The pathogen causing cholera is Vibrio cholerae. Therefore, to be precise, cholera is a bacterial infection.
Secondly, cholera is highly contagious and has a high mortality rate, which can usually reach 25% – 60%.
Cholera is mainly transmitted through contaminated water and food.
If someone comes into contact with food or water with Vibrio cholerae, the bacteria will naturally enter the body and reach the intestines. Then, Vibrio cholerae will multiply in large numbers, secrete cholera toxin, act on the villi and crypt cells of the small intestine, and lose a lot of water and electrolytes, resulting in amazing acute diarrhea in the human body.
Hearing this, don’t think diarrhea is a big deal. Don’t you just run to the toilet a few more times and spend more toilet paper?
If there is such an idea, it would be a big mistake. Pay attention to the word, it is “amazing acute diarrhea”.
What do you mean?
I have to go to the toilet dozens of times in a few hours, and what I pull out is not normal feces at all, but something similar to rice washing water
That sounds disgusting, doesn’t it?
Don’t worry about nausea. If you are unfortunately infected with cholera, do you know how much “rice washing water” you pull out in an hour?
Up to one kilogram!
Yes, you heard right. A whole kilogram of water is lost from your body every hour, with a large amount of sodium ions and electrolytes.
Not only diarrhea, you will also feel severe vomiting. Because of excessive dehydration, the whole person will soon have limb cramps and severe pain.
Then, the whole person can only lie on the bed in anger, unable to move, like a dried body, allowing cholera to rage, and finally take away his life bit by bit.
Generally speaking, cholera patients will die within 12 to 24 hours after onset.
When you die, your body fluid will almost be drained, your face will be haggard, and your skin will be loose and dry. You can go to Baidu to search what the mummy just dug out of the ancient tomb looks like. After reading the pictures, you will understand.
In addition, patients who die of cholera will have dark skin color, and they can’t even see the human form at all. The death is very miserable.
The picture is too scary. Just imagine it for yourself.
It is precisely because of the strong transmission of cholera, the high mortality rate, and the terrible appearance after the death of the patient, so as long as you have contacted a cholera patient, it will become a shadow of your life. Even a dead mouse is afraid of you, and that kind of psychological fear is indescribable.
Therefore, cholera and pestis have become the only two class A infectious diseases of mankind.
Even novel coronavirus, seeing that both of them had to give in, was relegated to the ranks of class B infectious diseases.
In the documents of ministries of health around the world, pestis is the No. 1 disease and cholera is the No. 2 disease. These two are the gods of death that make all disease control experts in the world pale!
Pestis, the black death of the middle ages, has been raging in Europe for thousands of years, killing 25million people.
Cholera is even worse. In India alone, according to incomplete statistics, 38million people have died.
Of course, I don’t want to scare you by saying so much. I just want to let you understand the horror of this severe infectious disease from a scientific point of view.
However, fortunately, we live in the 21st century. In modern civilized society, cholera is not worth mentioning at all.
Because from the impact of cholera on human body, the most direct is to cause amazing acute diarrhea in a short time, losing a lot of water and electrolytes, right?
In that case, wouldn’t it be better for us to have an infusion?
Yes, infusion is called intravenous injection in medicine, which is commonly known as intravenous drip. It is the best weapon against cholera.
If the patient can be sent to the hospital in time and supplemented with water and electrolyte through infusion, the mortality rate of cholera can be reduced to 1%.
You can recover yourself in 3-7 days.
As long as the medical system is not paralyzed and can be diagnosed and treated normally, to put it bluntly, this cholera is a large diarrhea, which is not terrible at all.
In that case, why does cholera kill so many people?
It’s very simple, because people in the past didn’t know that intravenous infusion could also be used. Although they knew that cholera would lead to serious dehydration, what they could do was to drink water and replenish a lot of water.
But it’s too late to do so.
First of all, cholera patients will feel severe nausea and vomiting, and can’t drink water at all. Even if they can’t bear to drink water, they have to absorb water through the stomach and intestines. The speed is too slow.
Until 1832, a Scottish doctor found that there was a loss of water and salt in the blood of cholera patients. By injecting boiled salt water into the patients’ veins to supplement the body fluid lost due to cholera vomiting and diarrhea, he saved the lives of many patients and successfully established the intravenous infusion treatment mode.
This also makes intravenous infusion therapy a landmark invention.
In the following hundred years, human beings continued to develop. In 1945, due to the problem of extravasation, people developed a plastic sleeve. Later, two doctors invented Rochester needle and reformed the venous catheter. Now this needle is still in use and is now used as a disposable instrument in the process of short-term use.
Since then, infusion has entered thousands of households.
With the infusion, cholera has never been cured, but has become a treatable diarrhea.
Therefore, cholera is not difficult to treat. We don’t have to worry at all. We should eat and drink, and rest assured that we can work and sleep.
Of course, seeing here, you must be very curious: where did the confirmed cholera case in Wuhan come from? How did you get infected? Is it possible that someone deliberately poisoned you or something?
I can deny this point directly. For the specific reasons, I will put a few pictures behind to add explanations.
To understand how the cholera in Wuhan came about, we must first understand the origin of cholera and where it came from?
Cholera first appeared in the Ganges River Basin in India.
It’s really not that I’m a black Indian. I have a factual basis.
There is a Portuguese historian named gaspacorea. He wrote a book called legend of India, which has the earliest and most detailed record of the epidemic of cholera.
He wrote in his book: in the spring of 1543, a disease broke out in Bangladesh in the Ganges River Delta in South Asia. The locals call this disease “polyhydramnia”, which can cause death within 8 hours after symptoms appear; The death rate is so high that local people have no time to bury the dead.
The record in this book is also a widely accepted statement in the academic circles: cholera first appeared in India 500 years ago.
After all, Indians have a tradition of drinking the Ganges River and throwing excrement and dead bodies into the Ganges River since ancient times. Until now, this tradition is still very common in India.
According to the analysis of scholars, if a patient is accidentally infected with cholera bacteria, his dead body and feces with Vibrio cholerae will pollute the nearby water source. When healthy people around touch it, they will naturally be infected.
However, because India was relatively closed and backward at that time, this disease was only spread among several local villages, and the local people did not take it seriously, thinking it was heaven’s punishment.
Until the arrival of the British colonists, it completely changed all this.
In 1817, cholera became the first global pandemic.
At first, it broke out in jesol area of Ganges Delta, and then spread all the way through the trade route established by British colonists, quickly reaching most parts of India, now Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
Later, it spread to Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Cholera first entered China in 1820 and reached Japan in 1822.
In 1821, the British Army stationed in India brought cholera to the Persian Gulf and finally entered Europe. Even cholera once reached what is now Turkey, Syria and southern Russia.
At the time of the first outbreak, more than 60000 people died in Britain alone.
But people at that time didn’t take it seriously, because this pandemic miraculously disappeared six years later. People thought it was the extremely cold winter of 1823 – 1824, which killed Vibrio cholerae living in the water.
Until 1829, the second global outbreak of cholera.
This time, it lasted for 20 years. As soon as it was about to subside, the epidemic suddenly came out and attacked, repeatedly killing hundreds of thousands of people.
People finally began to pay attention. At that time, the mainstream scientific community believed that cholera was transmitted through the air.
Only a British doctor named John snow, who put forward the “water source theory”, believed that cholera was transmitted through polluted water sources.
However, this statement was sneered at at at that time, and no one believed him at all.
Until the outbreak of the third cholera pandemic, in 1854 alone, 23000 British people were killed.
The mainstream scientific community was helpless, because they really used everything, but there was no way to stop this terrible plague. They even began to believe that this would be heaven’s punishment for their colonial aggression?
But at this time, our doctor John snow did not lie flat. He carefully drew the epidemic map of cholera cases in Soho, London, which enabled him to determine the source of the disease in the area: public well water pump.
After persuading officials to remove the pump handle, a magical thing happened. After the pump handle was removed, cholera cases in the region immediately decreased.
Soon, this method was extended to all over London, and the epidemic was soon brought under control.
It is precisely because, in order to thank Dr. snow for his contribution to saving lives in the great plague, now, if you travel to London, you must go to broad street, and the water pump of that year can be preserved for commemoration.
Moreover, later generations also respected Dr. snow as one of the fathers of modern epidemiology.
Although Dr. snow found the transmission law of cholera, at that time, the conditions were limited, and the human health environment was worrying.
Therefore, there were four pandemics of cholera later.
Today, there are seven times.
The last one was in 1961, which originated in Indonesia and has not subsided until now. At present, there are still 1.3 million to 4 million new cholera patients worldwide every year, of which 21000 to 143000 died.
But these places are relatively poor and underdeveloped countries.
For example, the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe in 2008-2009 affected about 97000 people (about 4200 deaths), and the outbreak in Haiti in 2010-2011. In 2017, cholera outbreaks broke out in Somalia and Yemen. By August 2017, the outbreak in Yemen had affected 500000 people and caused 2000 deaths
In China, there has been no cholera for many years. Even if there are, there are sporadic cases that can’t be sporadic anymore, so that if one is found, it will be widely reported by the media and hyped up in the news.
This is mainly due to our modern water supply system and advanced urban sewage system.
The water we drink is clean chlorinated tap water disinfected by the waterworks, and we don’t drink it directly. Chinese people have the habit of drinking hot water. Boiling water before drinking it is enough to kill all bacteria.
When we go to the toilet for excretion, in the city, almost all families have flush toilets, while in the countryside, now the country has vigorously developed the toilet revolution to ensure that there are toilets in every household and every village, which directly cuts off the source of pollution.
Therefore, in a modern civilized country, cholera is not terrible at all.
Having said so much, now the problem comes. In that case, why is there a rare cholera epidemic in Wuhan, a new first tier city, while still in college?
Come on, let’s show you some pictures taken by students of Wuhan University in their dormitory.
First, the ceiling is moldy and damp.
Then, mops and rags have been dried in the shade, and there is a smell every time they pass by.
The toilet is a ditch, not an independent toilet.
The water will be flushed every ten minutes.
The washing table has also become damp and moldy, and the walls have turned yellow and fallen off.
Finally, the situation of the dormitory aisle.
Sundries are piled up, and clothes are dried at will.
Can bacteria not breed in such an environment?
After reading my previous introduction to the origin of cholera, let’s take a look at the environment of this dormitory. If there is no accident, there will be ghosts.
Is this Wuhan University, the beautiful campus where cherry blossoms are enjoyed every year? Is the dormitory environment so messy and horrible?
I can smell the stink of urine across the screen!
I can’t say anything else, but what I know is that such a big thing has happened, and now the dormitory environment has been exposed. The vice president in charge of logistics of Wuhan University is sure to be unlucky.
I don’t know. Does the child led by your logistics department also live in this environment and use this toilet?
Now, I just hope that other students can be healthy and don’t be infected. Although cholera can be cured and can definitely recover with the medical conditions of our country, it’s really uncomfortable after being infected.
Finally, I’d like to send you a picture of our country in its early years to teach you how to prevent cholera.
Wash hands frequently, drink boiled water, eat cooked food, and separate raw and cooked food.
For cholera, we don’t need to be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Not only can we not die, but also we can make you recover healthily.
It’s just that when doing anal swabs, there may be a little… Pain.