We all were worried at the time because for the longest time no one knew what was causing it. Back then they weren’t lying or contradicting themselves so we trusted what was being said.
I don’t recall when I got my polio shot or swallowed it but I do know when I was younger in school the kids would all line up along the hallway and the school nurse would give the shots that were needed at that time. It says mass inoculations started in 1954 so I was 15 at the time and it is likely it was done in the school.
“In the late 1940s, the March of Dimes, a grassroots organization founded with President Roosevelt’s help to find a way to defend against polio, enlisted Dr. Jonas Salk, head of the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. Salk found that polio had as many as 125 strains of three basic types, and that an effective vaccine needed to combat all three. By growing samples of the polio virus and then deactivating, or “killing” them by adding a chemical called formalin, Salk developed his vaccine, which was able to immunize without infecting the patient.”
After mass inoculations began in 1954, everyone marveled at the high success rate—some 60-70 percent—until the vaccine caused a sudden outbreak of some 200 cases. After it was determined that the cases were all caused by one faulty batch of the vaccine, production standards were improved, and by August 1955 some 4 million shots had been given. Cases of polio in the U.S. dropped from 14,647 in 1955 to 5,894 in 1956, and by 1959 some 90 other countries were using Salk’s vaccine.”
“A later version of the polio vaccine, developed by Albert Sabin, used a weakened form of the live virus and was swallowed instead of injected. It was licensed in 1962 and soon became more popular than Salk’s vaccine, as it was cheaper to make and easier for people to take. There is still no cure for polio once it has been contracted, but the use of vaccines has virtually eliminated polio in the United States and around the world. According to the World Health Organization, polio cases have been reduced by 99 percent and survives only among the world’s poorest and most marginalized communities”
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/children-receive-first-polio-vaccine
Thank you for the info and especially the first hand info. I remember getting a vaccine that was on a sugar cube. Was that polio?
For polio to be completely eradicated in the u.s. is amazing. Same with smallpox.
I am a little younger than you and that is how I remember getting shots too, lining up in the hallway at school.
Thanks for all the info on the history of the Polio vaccine.
I still have my Sabin oral vaccine card. Says August, 1964.
It was a sugar cube in a small paper cup. I recall we had to go to the local school three different times, weeks on Sundays.