Report: Anti-vaxers gain momentum in the US

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

38. I remember the early '50s, before the Salk vaccine,

and how we weren't allowed to go to crowded public swimming beaches and pools in the summer because you were more likely to get polio in places where there were lots of kids. And I remember seeing pictures of kids in iron lungs, which scared me silly. When the vaccine finally became available, my mother (a nurse who had actually worked with kids with polio, and so was particularly aware of how awful it was) couldn't get us vaccinated fast enough. Some years later, in the late '60s, a guy I met in college had polio as a kid and still had a pronounced limp and had to wear a brace on one leg. It was, indeed, a big fucking thing.