The "A Shot In The Arm Prevented Polio; Why Not COVID-19 Also?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just got off the phone with my friend Jere who lives in State College, Pennsylvania.  Called to ask him if he remembers when we got our Polio shots in school.  It was in July of 1951 that the U.S. Public Health Service created the Epidemic Intelligence Service to identify, track and squash infectious disease outbreaks.  The service was supposed to  find and stamp out communicable diseases such as polio, influenza and typhoid before they became epidemics.  The EIS is still working, currently to track and understand COVID-19.  Since 1951 more than 3,000 officers of the EIS have been involved in domestic and international response efforts, including the anthrax, hantavirus and West Nile virus in the United States and the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.  EIS officers begin their assignment with a one-month training program at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.  Their term will last two years with 95% of their term consisting of experiential rather than classroom training.  For the remainder of their service they are assigned to operational branches within the CDC or at state and local health departments around the country. Some of the eradication cases they have been involved with and in are:

     1950s: Polio, lead poisoning and Asian influenza.
     1960s: Cancer clusters and smallpox.
     1970s: Legionnaires' disease, Ebola, and Reye syndrome.
     1980s: Toxic shock syndrome, birth defects, and HIV/AIDS.
     1990s: Tobacco, West Nile virus, and contaminated water.
     2000s: E. coli O157:H7, SARS, H1N1, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
     2010s: The aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, obesity, fungal, meningitis, and Ebola.
     2020s: The solution to the COVID-19.

Jere and I talked a bit and he couldn't remember the same scenerio as I did in reference to getting the new polio injections that were developed by Dr. Jonas Salk.  Polio wasn't as devastating as the plague or influenza, but poliomyelitis was a highly contagious disease that emerged in terrifying outbreaks and seemed impossible to stop.  Polio caused muscle deterioration, paralysis and even death.  

Newspaper story from Saturday,
December 12,1953.  Click to enlarge.

The most famous victim of the 1921 polio outbreak in America was future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  His disease spread quickly, leaving his legs permanently paralyzed.  Then in the 1940s, The March of Dimes was founded with President Roosevelt's help to find a way to defend against polio.  Dr. Jonas Salk, head of the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburg, was asked to help find a cure for polio.  Dr. Salk found that polio had as many as 125 strains of three basic types, and that an effective vaccine was needed to combat all three.  By growing samples of the polio virus and then deactivating, or killing them by adding a chemical called formalin, he developed his vaccine which was able to immunize without infecting the patient.  Mass inoculations began in 1954 and it was found to be a hugh success.  By August of 1955 some 4 million shots had been administered, some of those going to my class at Brecht Elementary School.  And, that is what I remember when we were in 3rd grade.  I remember lining up in the first-floor hallway, next to the Principal Dr. Bucher's office and across from Miss Hoover's room.  The school nurse went down the line giving a shot to everyone in the 3rd grade.  I'm not sure about other grades in the school, but I do remember all 3rd graders got a shot in the arm.  I really don't remember anyone screaming or crying, since it went so fast that kids didn't have time to think too much.  In High School we did have a student in the class ahead of us who had suffered from polio and was confined to a wheel chair.  Dr. Salk was a hero!  A later version of the vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin which used a weakened form of the live virus and was swallowed instead of being injected.  It was licensed in 1962 and became very popular.   My oldest son was born in 1972 and never needed the polio vaccine, since by they it had been eradicated.  Today in Pennsylvania, children in ALL grades (K-12) need doses of tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis; doses of polio vaccine, doses for measles, mumps and rubella; and doses of hepatitis B; doses of varicella (chickenpox).  Students must have these doses to enter public school.  Exemptions can be given for medical reasons, religious beliefs and philosophical/strong moral or ethical conviction.  The exemptions were changed somewhat this year since too many parents were opting out of the vaccines and school officials feared the schools could have a problem if one or more of the diseases broke out.  I am hoping that a vaccine can be found quickly to combat the COVID-19.  Maybe mass vaccination stations can be set up all over the world and we can eradicate this disease as quickly as it has surfaced.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.