3,000 Americans died in worst year of polio epidemic, yet we all got vaccinated ASAP



Dave Helling
Thu, August 12, 2021

I got my first polio vaccine in the early 1960s. It came in a sugar cube. Like millions of baby boomers, I lined up for the dose at a local clinic, with my parents and hundreds of other kids.

We didn’t know what polio was. We knew polio was sometimes called “infantile paralysis,” which would have been scary if we’d known what “infantile” meant. We collected dimes in a special card at school, to help pay for research into the disease. That was about it.

But my dad knew. Polio was a terror, he told us. Pools and churches and schools closed in the hot weather, when the strange virus circulated. Pictures of kids in machines called “iron lungs,” or wearing leg braces, filled the newspapers.


A president got polio. If you weren’t careful, you could get it too.

The disease prompted an unprecedented search for a vaccine. Jonas Salk and associates found one in 1955; later, Albert Sabin’s group developed the oral dose that I got. Both discoveries brought headlines, and worldwide acclaim.

For my parents, the polio vaccine was a miracle. My dad was deeply conservative — he thought Barry Goldwater was too far left — but there was never any question we would take the Sabin vaccine, and escape the scourge of polio.

So let’s think about this: The nation saw about 58,000 polio cases in 1952, the worst year for the disease in American history. Around 21,000 people were paralyzed, some permanently. There were 3,145 deaths.

So far, 615,000 people have died from COVID-19.

It’s astonishing that the U.S. conducted a mass vaccination program for a disease that killed two or three thousand patients a year, yet struggles to get enough people to take shots for a disease that killed 21,000 people in one week.

It’s true that polio largely infected children, while COVID attacked mostly adults and the elderly. But the onslaught of this coronavirus hasn’t spared the young: As of this month, 4.3 million children have caught COVID-19, roughly 14% of all cases.

Kansas reports 43,000 kids have been infected with COVID; Missouri, 66,000.

More children are being hospitalized with COVID now; the delta variant seems to be more harmful to kids. As of now, children younger than 12 can’t get a vaccine, which could make things worse.

And death isn’t the only danger from COVID-19. Studies now show a disturbing number of children suffer from “long COVID,” a disastrous side effect that could affect learning and living for years, even decades.

The numbers of pediatric long COVID cases aren’t clear. Even if it’s just 1%, though, that would mean 43,000 kids could potentially face debilitating COVID symptoms and disability, including one thousand children in Kansas and Missouri.

The harm is real, and ongoing. By any measure, COVID-19 is far more dangerous than polio. Yet hundreds of thousands of Americans now fiercely resist any meaningful attempt to limit COVID exposure to kids. Some states have banned schools from requiring masks.

Hundreds of thousands of kids will face COVID at reopened schools without shots, without masks, without protection. They’re on their own. History will remember this tragedy, and a nation’s blindness to facts.

It might have been different.

Since 1979, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, not a single case of polio has originated in the U.S. The last time someone brought polio into the country was 1993. Vaccines have all but eradicated polio as a disease.

Yet most kids are still required to get polio shots. Four are recommended (interestingly, the live oral vaccine I got hasn’t been used for years). The reason is simple: Vaccines work. They protect kids, and everyone else.

The nation once understood this. We no longer do

Arnold Schwarzenegger asks if Americans are 'really this selfish and angry' after his rant against anti-maskers


Brendan Morrow, Staff Writer
Fri, August 13, 2021


Arnold Schwarzenegger NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images

Arnold Schwarzenegger is continuing to call out those "schmucks" refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The former Republican governor of California earlier this week blasted anyone who claims that wearing a mask infringes upon their freedom, telling them "screw your freedom" and that "you're a schmuck for not wearing a mask." He expanded on that in an essay for The Atlantic on Friday, saying he stands by his rant, while acknowledging it may have been "a little much."

Schwarzenegger goes on to write, though, that some responses he received to his rant "really worried me," as "many people told me that the Constitution gives them rights, but not responsibilities," and they apparently "feel no duty to protect their fellow citizens." In response to this sentiment, he calls on Americans to reflect on the fact that "our country began with a willingness to make personal sacrifices for the collective good."

"When I look at the response to this pandemic, I really worry about the future of our country," he continues. "We have lost more than 600,000 Americans to COVID-19. Are we really this selfish and angry? Are we this partisan?"

Schwarzenegger also writes that it "doesn't bother me" that some have accused him of being a RINO, or a Republican In Name Only, because of his stance.

"Honestly, rhinos are beautiful, powerful animals," he writes, "so I take that as a compliment." Read the full essay at The Atlantic.