Before the coronavirus, hereâs how Tampa Bay fought polio with vaccines
Thousands of children received polio vaccines in schools, while one Florida man was arrested for spreading anti-science propaganda.
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Dixie Lee Heckel, then 3, receives her polio shot at the Leon County Health Unit in Tallahassee, Florida, on June 23, 1957. [ State Library and Archives of Florida ]
Updated Dec. 16, 2020
As we wait we can learn from Tampa Bayâs vaccine past, starting with the polio vaccine. These lifesaving vaccinations emerged in the 1950s as researchers crusaded to stop a virus that attacked the nervous system.
While the populations most vulnerable to the coronavirus skew older, poliomyelitis was largely identified as a childrenâs disease, said Naomi Rogers, a professor of the history of medicine at Yale University. Younger children were most likely to experience paralysis and other severe symptoms later.