I wonder if it was this much of a problem getting people to take polio

[raccoon]

Vaccinations when they first came out.

[WhiteTara]

1. in school

we were all lined up in the cafeteria and there was no dissent or screaming or gnashing of the teeth. I read recently that lots of people screamed bloody murder but apparently they were screaming into the wind. Polio was eradicated.

[lagomorph777]

2. Yup - they announced it, they did it, and we all got the inoculation.

That was that.

[WhiteTara]

14. Small pox shot cames as we were leaving for

my dad's deployment and we were going with him.

[lindysalsagal]

3. Polio was so devastating, that they were too afraid of it to argue.

Plus, people had more confidence in the government back then. This is what putin cost us putting tfg in the white house.

[GoCubsGo]

17. This actually goes back to Brain-dead Ronnie.

Let's not forget about Reagan, who was the original fomenter of the mistrust of government, when he spewed, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." The idiots who bought into that shit not only gave us Trump, they gave us the most incompetent person to occupy the White House not named "Trump," George W. Bush. Had Reagan not been successful in diminishing confidence in the government, these boobs may not h ave been as susceptible to Putin's meddling.

[gratuitous]

23. Before that, too

In the 1960s, Americans really learned to mistrust their government. One of the main vectors of that mistrust was, of course, the Vietnam War. The ruling establishment sold it as a bulwark against the spread of communism, and that sending our nation's youth off to Southeast Asia was a necessary sacrifice. There were doubters, but they didn't have much to go on except anecdotal evidence that the fight in Vietnam wasn't quite as noble an undertaking as it was claimed to be.

As the war dragged on, more people voiced skepticism, including some influential folks like Walter Cronkite, the anchor for the CBS Evening News. Then the Pentagon Papers were published, and exposed the perfidy of the folks in high office, selling the war like any other shoddy consumer product. It was shattering for a lot of people to think that their government would be so cynical with young men's lives at stake. Then came Nixon to ratchet up the cynical manipulation to 11 or 12. He had a secret plan to end the war. But it could be implemented only if he was elected president. Then he ramped up the war, secretly expanding it to Laos and Cambodia, while denying any reports of American troops straying across the border. Body counts of the enemy dead were manipulated while peddling lies about the light at the end of the tunnel.

Nixon had made his bones early on in his political career as a law-and-order straight-laced crusader, ferreting out communists for the greater glory of the United States. In the midst of his re-election campaign, the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate Hotel was broken into, and four non-descript miscreants were apprehended. Watergate took a while to play out, but by the end, Nixon was exposed as a paranoid vengeful little man who left nothing to chance and who would use any means fair or foul (especially foul) to gain an advantage.

And I haven't even gotten to Hoover, the FBI, and the rest of the intelligence and spy apparatus of the federal government. Since the days of the polio vaccine, the U.S. government has done itself and the country incalculable damage through lying as public policy. Someone says he doesn't trust the government? There's a plethora of reason for that. How do you persuade someone to trust again when trust has been smashed to pieces?

[Calculating]

4. Thank god the current anti-vax losers weren't around or we'd still have smallpox killing us

If only facebook and other social media hadn't got so many people to lose all confidence in science.

[leftieNanner]

5. My Mother couldn't get us down to the school fast enough!

I had a kindergarten friend who had a mild case of Polio. I remember the black and white photographs of the rooms full of iron lungs.

All the mothers were terrified.

[grumpyduck]

6. AFAIK, polio wasn't a political issue back then.

And, I think people had more common sense.

[elleng]

11. right

[Ms. Toad]

21. COVID isn't a political issue either . . .

Despite the attempts to protray it as one. It's a heath issue.

[quaint]

7. In my experience, people were more trusting of medical professionals and authority in general.

My sis is still pissed about being in the control group 'cause she had to have six shots.
There was trepidation about the oral vaccine.
Even my grandkids, just 15 years ago, had a shot before taking the live vaccine.

[SoonerPride]

8. If COVID had been as deadly to children as it was to 80 year olds it would be a different story

But since children are the least affected group then it is not seen as dire of an emergency.

If kids were dying in droves there would be less vaccine resistance because parents of all stripes would vaccinate their kids. Maybe.

Then again, maybe they'd be just as dumb.

[snowybirdie]

9. Parents were thrilled

Lined us all up to get the shot as soon as possible. Famous sports figures and entertainment personalities all touted getting the shot. So different now.

[elleng]

10. It was NOT, there was no 'debate,'

because of the devastation of the disease, AND the 'issue' had not been politicized.

[HAB911]

12. absolutely not

we were glad to get either the shot or sugar cube

[Hekate]

13. The difference was that everyone could see the disease w their own eyes

Parents were terrified their children would die of it or survive as lifelong cripples. As children we could see it — every school had its damaged survivors.

AFAIK the only holdouts were religious nuts

[Polly Hennessey]

15. Absolutely no problem.

We also had to have a vaccination card before we could enroll in school. Perhaps our parents were much more pragmatic and they also respected science. One more thing, they did not have to suffer fools like tRump and his whacked out cult.

[stillcool]

16. I got all my vaccinations in Catholic school

no choice, as far as I know. I have a cousin that had polio, and new one other person with it. Not easy.

[planetc]

18. There was no discussion. We got in the car when Daddy told us to, and

off we drove to a doctor's office at about 7 pm. There, we lined up, got a shot, and were soon home to run wildly through the neighborhood, an activity we felt was necessary to proper school attendance. We had two recesses per day, and surprisingly calm classrooms. If my mother was terrified, she concealed that completely, but in later years, my brother and sister and I were allowed to go to camp in the summer, which we never had been before the polio vaccine. My parents had just finished helping the WWII effort, with victory garden, and I forget what else. When your country called, you answered. And then, we had the "police action" in Viet Nam, and things were never the same in this country.

[leftyladyfrommo]

19. We were just glad to get it. Polio was awful. nt

[Ms. Toad]

20. Nope. I wasn't at the very beginning

But no. When people came down with polio there was no mass media campaign to play it off as just a cold. People saw loved ones dying, being crippled, or confined to iron lungs - and the vaccine offered the hope of avoiding it.

I remember being in a long line of familes waiting to get our sugar cubes in the middle school gymnasium (I was around 4 at the time.)

A friend of mine made the point to me that even the conservative older crowd is largely vaccinated, a fact that might be tied to having lived through the polio era.

[Deuxcents]

22. No problem

With Polio or any other shots required to attend school. We weren’t robots..we just weren’t stupid with the facts