“If this resembles anything, it’s the 1957 Asian flu.”
I remember that. I was in grade school. But back then the big scare (at least for us kids) was polio, as we could directly relate to it as some of our classmates had suffered its terrible consequences. We all hated getting our polio shots (and how happy we were when the shot was replaced by the sugar cube dosed with serum!).
Thanks for replying to my post.
Much as what I noted about the Asian flu, when I was a kid, I certainly heard a lot about what a scourge polio had been. Unlike you, I never was fortunate enough to get the Sabin vaccine — a lot of my earliest childhood memories involved getting stuck like a pin cushion on what seemed to be a regular basis.
There’s a fine book about those times titled: “Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine” by Jane S. Smith (1990, Morrow). I read it not long after it was published, and it’s had an honored place on my shelf ever since, in the anticipation of reading it again someday. I should note that while it covers Jonas Salk and his work in great detail, it doesn’t devote many pages to the Sabin vaccine.
‘I remember that. I was in grade school’
I was in third grade...