Remember when no one had problems getting vaccinated?

The other day, I heard a report on CNN about the search of a workable, viable, safe vaccine for the coronavirus. Pfizer announced  they had one and that their early data showed a 90 percent effective rate. 

That’s good news. The stock market agreed with the Dow Jones soaring 1000 points. 

Other companies are doing research for a vaccine. According to some sources, as many as 179 vaccines are in some stage of development.

A vaccine can’t come soon enough. In the United States, the seven day rolling average is over 130000 new cases and 1045 deaths.

Something about the CNN report struck me. The reporter said, “This is the largest scientific research project in history.” I think that is a little overblown. Large, yes. Important and necessary, definitely. In history? I don’t think the guy ever heard of the March of Dimes and Jonas Salk’s development of the polio vaccine. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had polio. A popular entertainer of the time, Eddie Cantor, said Americans should start sending a dime to the White House. They did. Eventually, thousands of letters and envelopes started arriving at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Over two million dimes. 

I remember the March of Dimes collection cards. I filled one myself, completed with the Liberty silver coins with Roosevelt’s image on them.

Polio scared the shit out of people. If the President could get it, anybody could. I remember people boiling their sheets and doing whatever else the experts might recommend to prevent the spread of it.

When Jonas Salk developed the first vaccine in 1954, parents sent their kids off to school to get the shot. I remember the lines in the hall of the school I attended. In 1961, Albert Sabin developed an oral vaccine, and once again, parents sent their kids off to school, this time to get a small sugar cube.

Over time, hundreds of millions of children world wide received polio vaccine to the point where it is basically eradicated from the globe.

Interesting fact about Sabin’s vaccine is that he refused to patent his vaccine. He didn’t make any money off of it. He wanted it to be as widely available as possible for everyone who needed it, which was every damn child on the planet. Think Pfizer or any of the other developers will do anything close to that?

I read recently, too, that 50 percent of Americans won’t take the vaccine if one becomes available for coronavirus. Vaccines work. It’s why polio no longer is a threat. Neither are measles, smallpox, and a whole slew of other diseases.

People wholeheartedly got behind the March of Dimes and had their kids vaccinated. They did the same thing when vaccines for other childhood diseases were developed. I don’t know why people feel different about it now. There should be lines like this.