“Which doesn’t answer my question about the polio vaccine rollout in the 1950’s.
Did it undergo the same extensive ‘testing and studies’ before it was used to stop an epidemic?
Can you imagine the housewife protest marches if they’d been told ‘we have a vaccine, you can have it for your kids in another year or two...’.”
Actually it did take years. Polio cases started to really spike in 1942. They peaked in 1952 the same year Jonas Salk first tested his vaccine. Studies were done in 1952, 1953, 1954 and starting in 1955. It was over three years of studies before it was released, and thirteen years after the major spike in cases started to occur. In spite of those three years of studies still people were killed and paralyzed from the vaccine. Surely many more were helped than hurt but.....
But there weren’t any double blind controlled studies.
And I know 2 people who actually GOT polio (and not mild cases either) from the vaccine (live virus one). One spent time in an iron lung and the other had to relearn how to walk.