“German measles”
GERMAN?? Racists!!
I’m 1/2 German and I won’t stand for it!!
Population in 1950. 150 million
Population now. 330 Million
Amazing how little I knew about polio. I looked it up about a week ago, and found it was very much like the current thing going around. Most people who contracted it were mildly sick and recovered. People with compromised immunity were at greatest risk, and the percentage of people suffering bad effects like paralysis was quite low, with adults being more likely to suffer paralysis of the limbs.
The American Experience Documentary about Polio is very well done and worth watching.PBS
I used to work with a very successful business woman who walked with a limp from catching Polio when she was a child.
Polio injections for 3 years starting at age 5...
The same city, Pittsburgh, that gave the world the polio vacine could come through again with a vacine against coronavirus.
A sweet girl in my elementary school had leg braces due to polio.
We all took the Sabin sugar cubes (not the Salk shots).
Who the hell is Inga and what qualifies her to tell anyone anything?
She just ASSUMES that everyone is stupid and needs education?
She needs discipline. Sounds like a blogger.
“ I wish every parent who doesn’t vaccinate their child could travel back to a 1950’s polio ward full of kids in iron lungs, or watch children suffer horribly — and sometimes permanently — from now-avoidable afflictions.“
I wish every vaccine “know it all” had to spend a week caring for a vaccine injured child. People need to stop thinking that vaccines are all good and risk free. They aren’t.
Anti-vaxxers should take note.
I contracted polio in 1955 at age 5. The vaccine was not yet widely available then as I recall. I had a mild case that mainly affected my back muscles and had to go to therapy once a week for almost 10 years.
My back muscles still ache and I get a burning feeling to this day when doing simple tasks like washing dishes at the sink.
May have had something to do with my back surgery five years ago for a collapsed disc.
Amen!
Summers in the 1940s were really scary. People knew polio was transmitted by human contact and public swimming pools, particularly, were very dangerous places. My Mother kept me in virtual quarantine during the hot months when infections seemed to be at their peak.
People can do as they wish now about vaccinating their kids, but I thank my parents over and over for taking advantage of new vaccines as they emerged. Polio vaccine came just in time to protect my own children, for which I am ever thankful. One of my uncles was crippled for life with polio.
Nothing is as frightening than to see someone confined to an iron lung.
hello, i brought this up. the whole country did not lose its mind during polio.
My older sister caught polio when she was around five years old. She was a normal child who ran, jumped and played with me and the other kids. I remember when she was a March of Dimes poster child, cute little girl with a plaid dress and a smile that was always on her face showing her dimple. Her posters were in the windows of the local drug store, Cunningham’s. One late afternoon she was on tv in some clinic with a nurse walking on a ramp with bars on each side for her balance. The smile was there as she struggled to walk with her leg braces. Five years later they broke every bone in her back and inserted a stainless rod down her spine to overcome her scoliosis. She lived in our living room in a hospital bed with a full body cast for an entire year. Then she went to a 3/4 body cast for 1 1/2 years and then to a body brace. I got very good at scrabble and chess with my homebound sister. Kids are cruel, on Halloween “Look, a crippled ghost”. Or our koolaid stand “Don’t drink the lemonaid, you’ll get polio”. Her homeschooling had her graduate from public school at 16 years and a four degree from a state college at 20. She got married and had two children. She lacked the muscles for childbirth and had casaerian. She is now 71 years old and is dealing with post polio syndrome. She has a minivan with a small crane in the back for her battery operated Amigo. There were others with polio who gave up. I’m proud of my sister and all she has overcome and accomplished.
I can’t imagine the guilt and pain my parents went through blaming themselves for this disease my beautiful sister caught. The polio epidemic was raging and my mom did everything she could to keep everything clean and sterile. I remember going to the fountain at Lourde’s and my sister thinking she could drink the water and throw away her crutches. She walked away from the fountain on her crutches with her always there smile and dimple resigned to her affliction.
Some years ago I was working at an office and the head of my department became ill, very ill but kept coming to work until she was finally so ill that she finally took a day off, just one day off mind you. But then she came back to work the next day and she was still feverish and visibly sweating, flushed, her eyes red and swollen and coughing up a storm but claiming that her “doctor” had told her she was no longer contagious.
What did she have? Purtussis, i.e. Whopping Cough.
I along with a co-worker who had just had a baby 6 weeks earlier and several others were in a meeting with her, in her very small office watching her sweat and continually and deeply cough as she told us it was “just whooping cough” and nothing at all to be concerned about and then went on to go on a long rant and lecture to us about how vaccines are more dangerous than the disease and how her “doctor” (actually as she told us her chiropractor and not an MD), had prescribed herbal remedies which she told us was much better than any modern medicine.
The woman who had just had her baby was pretty upset and left the meeting. I myself was not as much concerned for myself as I’ve been vaccinated but wondered how many others weren’t.
A few days later this department head was off work again. At first I presumed because she was too ill, but it turned out she had transmitted her Pertussis to her infant granddaughter who was now in the hospital in intensive care, on a ventilator, seriously ill and not expected to live. Thankfully the baby did eventually recover but only after several weeks in the hospital.
Oh and three others in our office suite who were not vaccinated also became ill and missed at least a week of work.
But did this woman change her mind about vaccinations? No. Proving that you just can’t cure stupid.
I have clear memories of about 30% of my 3rd grade classmates disappearing to polio in 1941... Almost as bad in 1942... All our (us kids) favorite swimming ponds, streams, lakes, and reservoirs were closed down after being identified as the source of the contagion...
Polio, in those days, either killed you or crippled you for life... Strictly a binomial outcome...