Not to diminish this flu scare, but does anyone remember polio????

[monmouth]

No 24/7 coverage in those days. You waited by the radio, read the paper and waited for the evening news to tell you how bad it was getting. Believe me, it was bad, I was one of those kids. For the most part the bad epidemic of polio hit during the summer and school was out and that helped. The swimming pools, movie theaters closed down. Crowd gatherings for baseball games and other municipal activities shut down. A couple of churches and their Sunday school classes did not meet for a few weeks until the worse was over. This recent flu hype is a little unnerving to me.

My TV was on for about five minutes this morning. The constant talk about it was ridiculous. We got the message, we know what we're supposed to do. The constant harping about it but with little or no content except to announce numbers is useless. It's the flu, we've all experienced this illness at one time or another and know what to do.

Thank you Senator Specter, at least the media saw another shiny thingy to obsess over.

[Eric J in MN]

1. The radio didn't have 24/7 coverage? NT

NT

[DemBones DemBones]

3. Nope. And national news got half an hour per night.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. Most radio stations weren't on 24/7

The AM stations would sign out at sundown. I remember how happy they would be when summer came and they would be on longer. Only the big 50K watt stations were on late at night. It was an adventure to turn on the dial and get Boston, New York, or Winnepeg from Illinois.

[RamboLiberal]

19. Right and there really wasn't talk radio

Back in that time - most AM stations were music. I think not all network news was even a half hour at that time on the TV. I seem to remember reading some were 15 minutes.

Heck the first talk radio in my area was called "Party Line" and wasn't political or news oriented. And they didn't do calls on air but personalities (Ed & Wendy King-Pittsburgh KDKA) related what the callers said to them off-air.

I was born in 52 so I don't remember much about the polio scare except remembering the shots and then later the oral vaccine and having to go 3 times. They held these at the local public schools in my area.

I remember one girl in our neighborhood had polio and had to walk with heavy braces & crutches. And I remember seeing other kids with same.

My parents never said anything but I bet they were scared at the time about the threat to their kid.

On edit - Network news was 15 minutes until about 1963 - WOW!

Network news had a humble beginning. Launched in February 1948 by NBC, Camel Newsreel Theatre was a 10-minute program anchored by John Cameron Swayze, and featured Movietone News. CBS soon followed suit in May 1948 with a 15-minute program, CBS-TV News, anchored by Douglas Edwards and subsequently renamed Douglas Edwards with the News.

Camel Newsreel Theatre was later expanded to 15 minutes and renamed Camel News Caravan. The show was succeeded by the Huntley-Brinkley Report in 1956, featuring a duo-anchor format with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. On September 9, 1963, the Huntley-Brinkley Report expanded to 30 minutes, following a similar move by CBS. It was renamed NBC Nightly News in 1970, after Huntley's retirement. Initially, NBC Nightly News was presented by two anchors from a rotating group of three: Brinkley, John Chancellor, and Frank McGee. A year later, Chancellor became sole anchor, and Brinkley provided commentaries. (McGee became host of Today.) In 1976, Brinkley rejoined the program as co-anchor. He continued in that role until 1979, when Chancellor resumed anchoring the program solo. Chancellor moved to the role of commentator in 1982 and was succeeded by a team of Tom Brokaw in New York and Roger Mudd in Washington. Brokaw became sole anchor in 1983.

CBS launched CBS-TV News in May 1948 to compete against Camel News Caravan. Hosted by Douglas Edwards, it was renamed Douglas Edwards with the News in 1950. In 1962, Walter Cronkite landed the anchor seat, which he would hold until 1981, and the program's name was changed to CBS Evening News. On September 2, 1963, the show expanded from 15 to 30 minutes. In the 1970s, CBS Evening News was the dominant newscast on American television, and Cronkite was often cited as the "most trusted man in America." After Cronkite's retirement in 1981, Dan Rather became the anchor of CBS Evening News. He was joined by co-anchor Connie Chung from 1993 to 1995.

ABC Evening News began airing in 1953, hosted by John Charles Daly. Daly had been a well-known CBS radio correspondent, though today he is best remembered as the emcee of CBS's long-running game show, What's My Line?, which he hosted while serving as ABC's anchorman. Daly left ABC in 1960 and was succeeded by a frequently expanding list of successors that included John Cameron Swayze, Bill Laurence, Bill Sheehan, Ron Cochran, a young Peter Jennings, and Bob Young. In 1968, Frank Reynolds became anchor of the program, and it soon expanded from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. A year later, Howard K. Smith joined as co-anchor, reporting from Washington. In early 1971, Harry Reasoner left CBS News and replaced Reynolds as the New York anchor. Reasoner became the sole anchor in 1975, and Smith provided commentaries. In 1976, Barbara Walters joined the program as Reasoner's co-anchor in New York, thus becoming the first woman to serve as a network news anchor (though Marlene Sanders had previously filled in on the program). Reasoner was very unhappy with the move, and the two did not work well together. In 1978, a year after Roone Arledge became President of ABC News, the ABC Evening News was succeeded by ABC World News Tonight with a trio of anchors: Frank Reynolds, Peter Jennings and Max Robinson. Jennings assumed solo anchor responsibility in 1983 following Reynolds's death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_television_news

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

20. I've got one year on you

and I still remember Chet Huntley announcing the change from 15 minutes to half an hour, to bring us the news "in more depth"--funny how you remember a snippet of conversation from so long ago. Huntley would be spinning in his grave if he knew the "depths" to which TV News have fallen, don't you think?

The local AM station still has "Party Line", but it's a show where you can tell folks you are selling things, or what you want to buy, or church suppers, etc. Oddly enough, there are no talk radio stations with Limpaws, etc, on them in the immediate area--and this is most conservative area of Arkansas.

[Glorfindel]

2. Sure do...I also remember a smallpox scare in (I think) 1953

and everyone rushing to get inoculated in the small north Georgia county where I was born and raised. Some of the older mountain folks wore a little bag of asafoetidia around their necks to keep from contracting the disease. That was a year or two before my family bought a TV, so we got our news from "The Atlanta Constitution" and radio station WSB.

[Warpy]

4. Remember it? I had it.

I can still remember panics about closing city swimming pools and forbidding kids from going to creeks and swimming holes in the hottest part of the summer when polio was going around.

I was in the first wave of Salk guinea pigs even though I'd had the disease.

By the way, the flu hype here is nothing like it is overseas. I've been cruising front pages at the Newseum. One French language paper in Morocco had the headline "Don't Panic!"

It's a bigger deal in Europe even than it is here.

Mexico, of course, is getting used to being on edge and a sense of fatalism seems to be taking over.

[kestrel91316]

5. I just remember in kindergarten getting the oral vaccine on a sugar cube.

1962, IIRC.

[ChickMagic]

6. I even remember watching an episode of Twilight Zone

or something like that about a woman in an iron lung. Scared me to death as a kid. Mom was convinced that if you went swimming you would get polio. I also remember both vaccines. The fear seemed palpable.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

9. Mom had a friend in an iron lung

and we would visit her from time to time. I felt so sorry for her, because she was so helpless and so lonely.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. Yes, I do

Having to stay inside during the summer when the outbreaks were at their worst. My neighbors had a daughter who had it and had to wear heavy braces on her feet. And no, the radio didn't cover it 24/7--the radio stations around where I lived (in a city of 100,000 in Illinois) shut down at night for the most part. It was a big deal when I was a little older and they started having news on the hour on the AM stations.

I was one of the first to get a polio shot (my grandfather was a retired MD and pulled strings, I think). I remember the needle looking to be about 4 feet long and I ran around the office until I was poked, and then I cried. My mother was mad at me for making such a fuss and asked if I'd rather wear braces all my life or live in an iron lung like a friend of hers did.

[monmouth]

10. I was lucky too, our Dr. had been a "MASH" doctor during the Korean

war and somehow had a stash of oriomiacin. I know that spelling is wrong but that's how it sounded. Anyway, my mother and I had been shopping in Atlantic City, and as we were crossing Atlantic Avenue to go to the parking lot, all of a sudden I felt faint, kinda drooped down and got a terrible headache. We went right to the doctor and by the time we got there I had a temp. of about 102. The drug knocked whatever out of me, I was very stiff, sore and sick for about a week but paralysis did not set in, just the stiffness. That was a damn long hot summer, I think around '48 or '49..

[lamp_shade]

8. Yes indeed. Several of my school-mates were stricken.

[laylah]

12. Got the "sugar cube" when I was 5...nt

[Chulanowa]

13. They have to fill air

24/7 news hour is just pretending to have content scattered between ten-minute commercial breaks. Basically you're watching something with as much depth and purpose as a Thighmaster infomercial.

[monmouth]

14. That is a great comparison. Thighmaster infomercial...I love it...n/t

[Philosoraptor]

15. It almost killed me in 1953 when I was 2

And it has affected my life profoundly, as I am now in a motor chair, unable to walk, suffering post polio syndrome, but, I was one of the lucky ones, believe me, I saw many, many sad kids in Shriner's Hospital for Crippled Children.

I have a deep respect for Dr. Salk and his contemporaries, because his work ended a horrible epidemic, and prevented millions from going through what I am now going through, and saved uncountable millions of lives.

[Canuckistanian]

21. Post polio syndrome? I've never heard of that.

Is it basically a re-infection of the same polio virus?

[Philosoraptor]

22. No, the actual virus is like a flu virus, it's there and it's gone

And as with the flu, the polio virus killed millions, and crippled millions of others. Post polio syndrome is the after effects that come with aging and nerve and muscle damage, a general degradation of mobility in my case.

[Canuckistanian]

23. Ah, thanks

Sorry to hear you've been affected.

[HarveyDarkey]

28. My father got it in '54, when I was 5

He was on crutches for most of my life. Advancing age and the Post-Polio syndrome have confined him to a wheelchair or an electric cart, thank Bob he still has his mind.

[dflprincess]

29. And Salk refused to patent the vaccine because he wanted as much of it made as

soon and as cheaply as possible. I was two when the vaccine came out but I've known serveral people who had the disease.

A few years ago one of my coworkers (about my age) and I were talking about Salk not getting a patent and the 20-something we worked with was just shocked (and not in a good way). She couldn't believe he'd been so "dumb" and passed up all that money he could have made (this person also belonged to the Young Republicans). Of course, she was too young to remember polio and apparently had never known anyone who had had it.

[Two Americas]

16. that explains things

I never listen to the MSM. I couldn't understand why people here were bitterly complaining about the "panic." I didn't see anyone here panicking, and when anyone tried to post anything on the subject they were accused of spreading panic. So, the MSM is beating on this drum. That explains the weird behavior going on here. We have people agreeing with the MSM ideas, and those opposing those ideas. But of course agreeing with or opposing the nonsense they spew are both deranged positions. That is what the right wingers are trying to achieve - total confusion and insanity on every issue. They script and control both sides of every issue.

I think that people who watch the MSM project ideas they get from that onto members of the community here. That almost always causes feuding, and before some of us even know what is going on or have even heard the story yet, the argument is so far down the road that there is no going back.

I think almost all of the arguments here are not about issues or ideas, but rather are between those who watch the MSM and take the right wing propaganda seriously and think it needs to be countered or something, and those who do not. Two world views are at war, and one of those world views is being created by the MSM. People think that because they are "against" the right wing propaganda in the media, that watching it is not affecting them. But I think it is distorting their world view, in part by defining for them what the correct "opposition" positions to the right wing are supposed to be.

I would bet that we could predict every argument here, and who was going to take which side, by looking at how much cable TV political coverage people watch.


...

[Control-Z]

24. OMG, you've put it into words.

Thank you. I've been grasping at this exact thought for the past few days. (actually longer) People who show up to argue and demean, for what appears to be the sake of it, may be seriously confused over how a good progressive "should" think, feel and act. Since republicans are THE fear mongers, having any fear or concern at all, even if warranted, is not progressive.

'People think that because they are "against" the right wing propaganda in the media, that watching it is not affecting them. But I think it is distorting their world view, in part by defining for them what the correct "opposition" positions to the right wing are supposed to be.'

[Two Americas]

25. thanks

Glad I am not the only one who sees this.

[conscious evolution]

27. Its called branding

What happens to people who watch MSM,that is.
Even if you do not like what is being pushed it still gets into your head.And to the programmers that is all that matters.When they get in your head like that they control you.

[madrchsod]

17. yes i do....and so did my parents

thank god for jonas salk...i could rest easy knowing my children will never know about polio...

yes three channels, local radio,and newspapers...

[aikoaiko]

18. I have a cousin who is all crumpled up in a wheelchair from polio.

Nevertheless he is a happy guy who has lived a full life.

[mrs_p]

26. interesting perspective