Posted on May 3, 2021
Can't Help Falling In Love With A Vaccine: How Polio Campaign Beat Vaccine Hesitancy
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The mass inoculation of millions of American children against polio in 1955, like the vaccinations of millions of American adults against COVID-19 in 2021, was a triumph of science.
But the polio vaccine had overwhelming public acceptance, while stubborn pockets of vaccine hesitancy persist across the U.S. for the COVID-19 vaccine. Why the difference? One reason, historians say, is that in 1955, many Americans had an especially deep respect for science.
"If you had to pick a moment as the high point of respect for scientific discovery, it would have been then," says David M. Oshinsky, a medical historian at New York University and the author of Polio: An American Story. "After World War II, you had antibiotics rolling off the production line for the first time. People believed infectious disease was [being] conquered. And then this amazing vaccine is announced. People couldn't get it fast enough."
But the polio vaccine had overwhelming public acceptance, while stubborn pockets of vaccine hesitancy persist across the U.S. for the COVID-19 vaccine. Why the difference? One reason, historians say, is that in 1955, many Americans had an especially deep respect for science.
"If you had to pick a moment as the high point of respect for scientific discovery, it would have been then," says David M. Oshinsky, a medical historian at New York University and the author of Polio: An American Story. "After World War II, you had antibiotics rolling off the production line for the first time. People believed infectious disease was [being] conquered. And then this amazing vaccine is announced. People couldn't get it fast enough."
Can't Help Falling In Love With A Vaccine: How Polio Campaign Beat Vaccine Hesitancy
Posted from npr.org
Health
American History
Pharmaceuticals
Science
Posted >1 y ago
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And we've been abused by social media...and scientists who lie about data and results.
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SPC Terry Page
...and that's tragic Lt Col Charlie Brown! I realize in a free-enterprise economy profit is powerful component but the institutions we rightly respected demonstrated integrity back in the post WWII era. There were journalistic ethics practiced by it's practitioners. The eye-candy of television news has disintegrated into a pit of spin and desire for more eyeballs/ratings and revenue. We have been left to fend for ourselves; facts and balanced news are a thing-of-the-past until we demand change. The last real journalist I saw on TV was Walter Cronkite and although he was an extremely liberal soul, he kept it in check and practiced real "Journalism".
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It really did happen like that. We were ready to get our polio shots, but the first batch was recalled. Even so our parents had us all lined up at the elementary school to get our shots from the second batch. Many of them had grown up living through years of polio fear. Some had survive polio. My Mom had polio around about 1937 and had to learn to walk again - was out of school for a year. No one else in the family got it. It must not have been easily communicable, but the damage it could do was devastating. The mother of a high school classmate was bed ridden, and in a wheelchair when she went out. She had needed an iron lung, initially. Don't know if there were various strains at the time or if some people had worse side effects than others. In later years some of those folks who had it in their youth ended up with something called "post-polio syndrome".
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