I am not all that old, only in my early 50's, but I am one generation removed

[dsc]

from kids being genuinely vulnerable to polio. Both my dad (born 35) and my mom (born 40) grew up with the real possibility of getting polio. My dad was a full adult, while my mom was a teen when Salk announced his vaccine. By the time my brother and I came along (64 and 67 respectively) polio was becoming rare as lightning strikes. From tens of thousands of cases per year in the 40's and 50's to hundreds of cases per year in the 60's to 10's per year in the 70's to disappearing by the time my sister came along in late 78. It was a miracle. But it wasn't always easy sledding. In 1955 one bad batch of the vaccine caused several polio cases but people pressed on. We didn't have the deeply cynical Tucker Carlson and his ilk roiling up the masses. Carlson clearly got the vaccine, his boss not only got the vaccine but got it before any member of the public got it here, and was one of the first in the world not in a study to do so. The deeply cynical right wing is literally killing people and delaying the day when COVID will be as much in the rear view mirror as polio.

I also, thanks to my age, can remember when HIV was a death sentence. I was 13 when the first reports of HIV were written. I came to full adulthood as HIV was at its height. For years we only had condoms to avoid, then some drugs that turned it into a chronic but treatable disease, and now a pill that makes it much harder to get. While we did have people who felt it wasn't worth fighting HIV due to who was getting it, we didn't have deeply cynical people taking prep themselves while telling others it was poison.

Turns out you can be worse than useless. Tucker Carlson shows us how.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. A trenchant analysis indeed dsc

My first REAL love, a young lady I met when I was 24 (which unfortunately for me was too young to settle down) ... her father suffered with effects from polio he had as a youth. He just passed away a bit more than a year ago, in his 80's. Great guy, whip-smart, and a very successful lawyer ... he had a leg brace and walked with a cane from the time he was a teen.

IOW, plenty of people still around who remember the fear of polio, and even still living with its effects.

The fact-free right-wing news bubble that's feeding these cult members is just incredibly destructive, as you describe.

[JustAnotherGen]

4. My dad's o!der brother

Is in his 80's - had polio as a kid. The past few years he's suffered impacts to vision and his right leg due to polio.

He emailed a blast out to the family to get the damn vaccine.

[csziggy]

2. I was right on hte cusp - one of my classmates in school had polio

And the vaccine was pushed hard at school. I also was in one of the last generations to have so many of the "common" childhood diseases such as whooping cough (had it) chicken pox (had it), measles, and German measles (as we called it). The vaccines for those were in development when I was a kid but not common enough to stop them while I was still in school.

I wil never understand those who tell people to not protect themselves, while the naysayers are themselves protected. Trump and his family got their vaccines, but they are fine with their cultists not being protected. It's as if they want them to die.

[wnylib]

20. Trump is a new twist on Jimmy Jones and his cult.

Trump and his Acolytes pass out the Kool Aid to others, but don't drink it themselves.

[csziggy]

22. Yes

Thinking back, the girl in my class that had polio was from a very religious family. She was not allowed to do many things and I bet getting vaccinations was one of them.

[leftieNanner]

51. A friend of mine was raised in a Christian Scientist family

As soon as she turned 18, she got herself fully vaccinated. She was lucky that she never contracted any of those childhood diseases.

[csziggy]

52. She was fortunate to live when those childhood diseases were less common

Because most children are vaccinated. I'm glad she was smart enough to protect herself once she legally could.

[Scrivener7]

3. This is all true, but on the other side of that coin, apparently there were the EXACT same

moronic arguments and hysteria against wearing masks in the 1918 pandemic as there have been in this one.

It's kind of stunning how closely the responses to 1918 repeated themselves in this 2021.

The fatally stupid have always been with us.

[Ocelot II]

5. I'm old enough to remember when there was no vaccine

and people, mostly kids, were getting polio and some wound up in iron lungs. We were not allowed to swim in public areas in the summer because there was so much fear of contagion. Once the Salk vaccine became available Mom hauled my whiny little ass to the doctor to get the shot right now. I don't recall any controversy (though I probably wouldn't have known if there had been any, since I was a little kid), and my parents and my friends' parents certainly didn't hesitate for a nanosecond.

[sarge43]

49. Same here

When the Salk vacc became available, I think my feet hit the ground twice between home and the doctor's office. My mother had to live with dreading every summer between 1930 (my brother's birth year) and me (1943) until the mid 50's. It was commonplace to know someone who suffered polio infection - family, friends, school mate

[SharonAnn]

56. Polio ran through the officers housing at Fort Des Moines when I was young. My playmate ended up

with paralyzed legs. His mother ended up with partial leg paralysis and had leg braces and crutches for the rest of her life, too. I was thought to have polio for a while but recovered pretty well. One classmate in elementary school died from polio and another was in an iron lung for a while but fortunately seemed to eventually recover.

When the Salk vaccine came out, we all got shots as soon as they were available. Then the Sabin (oral) vaccine came out and the younger kids got that.

Polio was real and didn't cause nearly as many deaths as Covid-19 has.

[H2O Man]

6. Recommended.

Powerful. Thank you.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. In the 1950's Ike was President and we had overcome the Depression and Hitler/Tojo...

We were on a roll and actually liked and trusted our government back then. (McCarthy and J. Edgar being outliers).

There were naysayers when the Salk vaccine showed up, but vaccines were the thing back then, and our parents dragged us to all of them.

In 6th grade we had a wonderful girl who was permanently crippled from polio, but she made the best of it and showed the rest of us what could happen. And why Salk was a hero.

As I get older, the less I understand why we do not learn from our past.

[MuseRider]

8. Hi dsc!

Well written.

I often wonder why there is not a vaccine for HIV already. I know they have sure come a long way. If my brother had not waited so long he might have lived but it would have been through tons of awful drugs and a huge expense he could not pay.

You make all the points.

I have been pretty stunned that nobody has mentioned the Swine flu vaccines and the Guillain Barre Syndrome that followed. It was nothing like this however and nothing at all as big and bad as HIV.

Great post with the best ending ever!

[Rhiannon12866]

11. I also remember the swine flu vaccine.

I got the first vaccine, and was of the age where we were supposed to get a second one - but it was canceled. I don't remember anyone protesting about those back then, then-President Ford said to get it and so we listened. But maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

[MuseRider]

13. I was working for the city.

I remember we all had to go downtown in shifts to stand in lines with hundreds of other people. Like those induction videos where the new guys stand in line and get their shots. It was one of those gun things. It was creepy. The worry then became Guillain Barre Syndrome, something nobody would EVER want.

[Rhiannon12866]

19. I'd just come home from school and I don't remember getting it, just that I did, we all did

So it must not have been at all traumatic. And I knew that, because of my age, I was in line to get a second dose, but it was abruptly canceled. Thanks for the reminder about the gun-thing. Knowing me, I didn't watch, I never do.

I found this article to remind myself and it says that some of the vaccine hesitancy we're seeing now can he traced back to the swine flu vaccine "fiasco." But I don't remember any controversy except for the fact that dose #2 for younger people was canceled - but then I knew that everyone got vaccines, I remember getting them a couple of times in school - so I didn't question it and neither did my parents.

The Long Shadow of the 1976 Swine Flu Vaccine ‘Fiasco’
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-shadow-1976-swine-flu-vaccine-fiasco-180961994/

[Raine]

15. There was problems with that vaccine

that led to all kinds of doubts about vaccine in general. I googled it and that's what happened.

[Rhiannon12866]

23. I googled it too, just posted this article above

All I remember was that I was of the age that required a second dose which was abruptly canceled. I don't remember any controversy except for that, and how many people remember that now? I remembered that I got it, everybody did, and since kids get all manner of vaccines growing up, I even remember getting a couple when I was in school, it never dawned on me to question it - and neither did my parents.

The Long Shadow of the 1976 Swine Flu Vaccine ‘Fiasco’
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-shadow-1976-swine-flu-vaccine-fiasco-180961994/

[appalachiablue]

50. My chirpy college roommate suggested

'why don't we get the swine flu vaccine?' so I did.

Never will forget it, I was out flat on the sofa for 3 days and it was my birthday.

I didn't know the 2nd part was cancelled, or that the vaccine was a big issue until 5-10 years ago. That's when I read that young, healthy soldiers at military bases around the country were wiped out sick from having the shot.

Years later at work I met a man who had Guillain- Barre and I believe it was from the shot. Such a nice man but a serious illness.
---------
(SI Mag.).. The real victims of this pandemic were likely the 450-odd people who came down with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, after getting the 1976 flu shot. On its website, the CDC notes that people who got the vaccination did have an increased risk of “approximately one additional case of GBS for every 100,000 people who got the swine flu vaccine.”

[summer_in_TX]

37. I had heard the reports about potential problems with the swine flu vaccine.

But as a teacher I decided I'd better go get it. I was in my car on the way to the health center when the vaccine recall was announced.

I have never had another flu shot since. (I'd had one in college that may have had some attenuated live virus in it because I was sick 1-2 days after getting it.) The swine flu vaccine would have been my second flu shot.

Turns out that first one must have been amazing because after more than forty years I never had the flu again, in spite of being exposed to elementary kids and their illnesses.

I hadn't made the connection before. And my husband's brother got Guillain Barré Syndrome, a horrific disease, almost died, hospitalized for months, and disabled ever since.

And I've been mystified why both my sons and their wives are anti-vaxxers. Oh wow.

[dsc]

14. I read that the same tech that got us the COVID vaccine might get us an HIV vaccine in a few years

I am not enough of a scientist to know if that is true or not. And thanks for the high praise.

[wnylib]

29. A vaccine for HIV has been especially difficult

because, unlike most other viruses, HIV attacks and seizes control of the immune system itself.

[UpInArms]

10. My former brother-in-law had polio as a child

He was born in 1950

[ShazzieB]

33. I was in the first cohort of kids to get the Salk vaccine when it came out.

I was too young to know much about polio, but I understood that it was bad and I was lucky to be one of those who would not have grow up in fear of it.

People flocked to get their kids vaccinated. There was no hesitancy at all...the atmosphere was one of celebration.

The Sabin oral vaccine came out when I was about 12, and I remember going with my mother and younger sister to a local high school that was being used as a mass vaccination site. I didn't understand why we needed another vaccine when we'd already had the shots, but I was happy to comply. (What kid is going to object to eating a sugar cube? )

Both of those events were exciting, happy experiences. I'm not sure when people started to get mistrustful of vaccines, but they sure weren't back then.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

12. I'm about the same age as you, and my uncle...

... had polio as a child.

I mostly remember him struggling to walk without a cane.

My parents were in their 40's when I was born, and he was a much older brother of my mother, so it obviously happened long before the vaccine was available.

[GulfCoast66]

16. I'm a year older than you.

My dad was from a very small town in Louisiana and was selected for Boys State in the early 50’s. It was canceled that year due to a polio outbreak.

I know he always wondered how the contacts he missed making changed his life. He went to LSU and if he had showed up there fresh out of Boys State his prospects would have risen.

[jpak]

17. When the polio vaccine became available

Teachers lined us up to drink a mini Dixie Cup of vaccine sugar water.

Zero antivaccers back then.

[paleotn]

24. Same here with rubella vaccination in the early 70's

One day at school, they lined us all up for a shot.

?itok=3SgMMGUu

[dflprincess]

25. The sugar water or sugar cube was probably the Sabin vaccine that became available in 1962

Sabin used a live virus and gave us permanent immunity. Salk got it's final approval in 1955. It used a dead virus, was given as a shot and we had to get boosters every couple years or so (not sure how far apart the boosters were spaced.)

My cousin and I were discussing this when we were in line for our first Covid shots. We were both terrible children when it came to getting shots. Cousin could remember her mother & the nurse having to hold her down so the doctor could give her one. I recalled hiding under my bed when it was time for a polio booster. My mother tried dragging me out but finally gave up. As it happened our neighbor had had polio and all Mom said was "All right, if you want to spend your life in a wheel chair like Mrs. Neighbor, that's up to you." Fortunately I was a smart enough child to figure out I didn't want to do that and crawled out from under the bed.

As we waited for our Covid shots cousin and are were practically giddy with excitement. We agreed that if our 5 year old selves could have seen our today selves they would think we had turned out really weird.

[wnylib]

34. I got the Sabin sugar cube.

I was in junior high by then, but it was distributed at the grade school that I had attended. It was not during school hours, so it was either a Saturday or during the summer. I remember groups of us kids from the neighborhood walking together to the schoolgrounds to get our sugar cube.

I have a vague memory of getting vaccinated for school before starting kindergarten. I was afraid of getting the vaccine shot, mostly because my older brothers had teased me with tales of a gigantic needle and great pain. They got in trouble for it and my mother took a no-nonsense attitude about my reluctance. Told me I couldn't go to school without it. My aunt was more patient and sang a song of the time period to me about the consequences of not going to school. I can only remember one line of it now, "Or would you rather be a pig? A pig is an animal that ...."

She also told me how the shot would protect me from smallpox and how lucky we were to have a vaccine for a disease that had killed or disfigured so many people in earlier generations. By the time she was done, I was eager for the shot and showed off my scab to everyone afterward.

There was no MMR vaccine yet, so I had all of those "childhood diseases" early on, when parents deliberately exposed young children to them in order to gain immunity from a worse case when older.

[dflprincess]

42. I remember getting the sugar cube in 6th grade at school

The only childhood illness my mom deliberately exposed me to was German measles (no MMR then for me either) and that was done more to make sure I didn't get them later when I was pregnant. Ruebella was more dangerous to a fetus than to the person who has them.


AND I remember that "Or would you rather be a pig?" song. For some reason I was thinking Perry Como sang it so I just had to Google it. Turns out it was Bing Crosby: (I suppose Perrry might have recorded it, but it didn't turn up)

[wnylib]

43. Thank you. That is the song.

The parents that I knew, including my own, wanted daughters to get immunity in childhood from Rubella (German measles) to prevent harm to a fetus later during pregnancy as adults. They also believed, rightly or wrongly, that getting chicken pox or mumps in adolescence or later could cause sterility for boys and girls. I even had a teacher in junior high who told us that.

I still have a barely visible pock mark on the tip of my nose.

[dflprincess]

18. I was not quite 2 when it was announced the Salk vaccine was safe & effective

and all kids should all get it.

The announcement was made in April 1955 after the final 2 year human trial was successfully completed. I missed the epidemics but knew people who had had polio including someone who has problems with post-polio syndrome.

I am of the opinion that that is the problem with anti-vaxxers. Most of them had parents who got them vaccinated and they never had any peers who became desperately ill from any of the "childhood illness", much less even knowing anyone who had polio. They have no idea what they missed and what they're putting their kids at risk for.

[paleotn]

21. Same here. We're old enough to remember the legacy of polio.....

Close friend of mom and dad suffered life long debilitation from it. Polio took the life of one of my maternal aunts when she was 5. My mom was just a baby in 1926.

I really don't understand these reich wingers. I don't. Are they evil, stupid or both?

[ShazzieB]

35. Mostly stupid, I think,

Really, really, really stupid.

[nolabear]

26. My late father in law actually had polio.

He survived and went on to become a doctor himself. But he knew a horrible time and never forgot.

[Xipe Totec]

27. Tucker Carlson is the White Elephant of the Republican Party.

That's a bit of a thinker, but whatever.

[Warpy]

28. I had polio when I was little

and I was a Salk guinea pig outside DC in 1953. I don't remember permission slips to parents or anything, they just lined up every kid in the school and stuck us. My mother was pleased, she didn't want any chance of my getting polio twice.

I went into nursing just as GRID became AIDS but they hadn't isolated the virus yet.

The world has changed and people no longer remember how deadly the usual childhood diseases could be. They also think those diseases aren't around any more, so why get their precious darlings stuck with needles?

I really don't get the resistance to the Covid vaccines. This disease isn't that big a killer, all things considered, smallpox was around 30%, but people out there are getting maimed as well as killed and full recovery is slower than they thought it was, even when the illness is mild.

I guess ornery jerks are just going to have to learn the hard way that TFG was a lying sack of crap and Republican blowhards are not their friends.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

30. I remember my 5 year old sister having a spinal tap to see of she had polio.

I recall being in the hospital waiting. Fortunately she didn't. I also remember the day we got the vaccine. I was 8 and she 6. We waited on the same line outside in our catholic school yard. (Funny what we remember).

[thenelm1]

31. Both my parents were born in 32. They grew up with the fear.

Heck. the president for most of their early lives (FDR) was a polio victim. Even the well to do were not immune.

I was born in 55. When I entered school and hit 1st grade in 61, my recollection was that every kid in the school was administered the vaccine. Obviously I was too young to remember any push back. Undoubtedly there was some, but I do remember standing in line with the majority of my classmates for the shot. How soon we forget.

[Solly Mack]

32. K&R

[spanone]

36. When I was a kid it wasn't rare at all to to see the ravages of polio.

My parents couldn't wait to get their five kids vaccinated.

[Peppertoo]

38. I'm the same age. My parents were the same age as yours. Well said

Thankfully there was no one like Tucker during the 50s.

[OnlinePoker]

39. Last year, there were 140 cases of wild polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan. So far this year, 2.

Both of those were early in the year. Also, last year, there were 1035 cases of type 1 and type 2 vaccine derived cases in multiple outbreaks (mostly in Africa and Afghanistan/Pakistan). So far this year, that has been pared down to 138. Sadly, a number of workers in Afghanistan were murdered by the (suspected) Taliban a couple of weeks ago. If the bad side of humanity would just get out of the way, we could be done with this disease once and for all.

https://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/this-week/

[dsc]

40. well using the vaccination program to find Osama may have been a bad idea.

[world wide wally]

41. I have never seen people acting on behalf of a deadly virus before

NEVER

[genxlib]

44. I would add

Vaccines back then could hurt like hell. Some of the shots we got came in needles that looked like howitzers.

The needles for this vaccine are so small, I could barely feel it.

[CrispyQ]

45. My grandfather had polio & walked with a cane his entire adult life.

As a senior he spent most of his time in a wheelchair. You can bet my grandmother made sure her kids & grandkids were vaccinated against this horrible disease. The fact that it was administered via a sugar cube & not a shot made it memorable for an entire generation of kids.

[Texaswitchy]

46. I was to young to remember when polio was a scare.

I remember the sugar cube.

Most likely got the shot before that.

I do remember getting the small pox vaccine.

[demigoddess]

47. I remember the sugar cube vaccine. Got it in 1954, I believe.

But I grew up as a military brat and we got shot when we went overseas. I went to France in the 50s and 60s. and Spain. Got shots everytime. Before we went over and before we came back. None of us military brats were ever magnetic or anything else they claim.

[rurallib]

48. Until I was @ 7 polio was a real fear for my parents

I was born in 49. Can't remember exactly when we got the Salk vaccine but I sure remember my mother being so relieved.

I also remember getting my head whacked as I went to get a drink out of a public drinking fountain. That was forbidden in our family until the vaccine came out.

My wife's uncle had polio as a kid and then had rebound pain in his 50s. The pain was so bad he committed suicide.

[Poiuyt]

53. My mother, who contracted polio in the 1920s, met Jonas Salk once

She went up to thank him for creating the vaccine, but as soon as she opened her mouth, she started crying. She was so thankful for what he had done. He understood what was going on so he was able to comfort her. They talked for a while about the epidemic that struck her area back then.

BTW, you can be sure that we kids received all of our polio shots. And they were really painful!

[NNadir]

54. My Mother-in-Law whose ashes we got around to interring just yesterday, was one of the last polio...

victims in the United States.

It was a devastating disease, and as her life came to an end, she was in extreme pain as a result of childhood polio, the so called "Post polio syndrome."

Vaccination was a triumph of public health, and the anti-vax "mob" are simply that, ignorant mobsters.

[Stuart G]

55. Stupid is still.."STUPID" TUCKER F**KER CARLSON, like Trump is STUPID..& Vicious..

...The network should fire him today. He like Trump causes incredible pain..

If advertisers boycotted him, Tucker would be gone quicker than you could say...F**ker......
Perhaps that is what needs to be done? I hate him..

[Sgent]

57. I live in a very deep red area

and Trumpers who are old enough to remember Polio mostly got their Covid vaccines ASAP. Its their children who are assholes.