COVID-19 is reshaping Michigan. It’s not the first epidemic to do so. Updated Mar 07, 2021; Posted Mar 07, 2021 Looking Back Flint Journal file photo from 1955 when Genesee County got its first allotment of the Salk polio vaccine. Pictured with the shipment are Clinton C. Cole, then director of the city health deparment laboratory; Mrs. Robert Miles, executive secretary of the Genesee Chapter of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which paid for the vaccine; and True Montney, technical aid in the lab. The results of a study proclaiming the Salk vaccine safe and effective was announced April 12, 1955; Flint's first shipment arrived April 17.