, Columnist
How Past Vaccine Races Can Help Win This One
Like the coronavirus, polio came with fear, misinformation, and a long tail of damage. History has lessons for today’s crusade.
An eight-year-old girl receives the polio vaccine. On the television, Jonas Salk inoculates a boy in a training telecast for physicians and scientists April 12, 1955.
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“The vaccine works. It is safe, effective, and potent.”
In 1955, those were the words that told the world U.S. scientist Jonas Salk’s polio shot was a success. It was news greeted with popular jubilation, ringing church bells and boldface banner headlines. The sort of heartfelt relief that most of us can readily identify with, more than a year into a coronavirus pandemic that has now killed 2.5 million people.