Getting a flu shot was once considered to be patriotic, but times have changed
yorkdispatch.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yorkdispatch.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A tale of two vaccines: The battles to fight polio and COVID-19
sandiegouniontribune.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sandiegouniontribune.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Advertisement
Baby boomers remember both the fear of poliomyelitis the viral infection that attacks the nervous system, leaving some who contract it paralyzed, or dead and the relief that they felt when the rollout of Jonas Salk’s vaccine put an end to repeated midcentury summer outbreaks of the disease. In 1954, the summer before this rollout, 1.8 million kids participated in a widely publicized trial of the new vaccine. From the vantage point of 2020, when vaccine skepticism floats right below the surface of public debate, the widespread embrace of the new vaccine feels surprising. Was the March of Dimes–financed rollout of Salk’s miracle jab, conducted in a hurry as polio threatened to strike again in the summer of 1955, really as smooth as history makes it seem?
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.
Â
Â
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.