The great polio vaccine mess and the lessons it holds about federal coordination for today's COVID

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The great polio vaccine mess and the lessons it holds about federal coordination for today’s COVID-19 vaccination effort

by Bert Spector
Associate Professor of International Business and Strategy at the D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University


I nervously fell into a long line of fellow first graders in the gymnasium of St. Louis’ Hamilton Elementary School in the spring of 1955. We were waiting for our first injection of the new polio vaccine.

The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis – with money raised through its annual March of Dimes campaign – had sponsored field tests for a vaccine developed by Jonas Salk. The not-for-profit had acquired sufficient doses to inoculate all the nation’s first and second graders through simultaneous rollouts administered at their elementary schools. The goal was to give 30 million shots over three months.

Now, more than six decades later, attention focuses on the rollout of two COVID-19 vaccines, following their emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. States have begun to administer them in a rocky and frustratingly slow delivery process – while hundreds of thousands of new cases continue to be diagnosed daily in the U.S.

While not necessarily comforting, it is useful to recognize that the early days and weeks of mass distribution of a new medication, particularly one that is intended to address a fearful epidemic, are bound to be frustrating. Only after examining the complex polio vaccine distribution process as documented in papers collected in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library did I come to understand how partial my childhood memories actually were.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/the-great-polio-vaccine-mess-and-the-lessons-it-holds-about-federal-coordination-for-todays-covid-19-vaccination-effort-152806