Blogger Dave Pell describes what happened in Protection, Kansas, in 1957, and compares it to what is happening now. What has happened to us? Why are there so many people who don’t trust science? How can we end the pandemic if significant numbers of people refuse to be vaccinated?
| WE’RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE |
| “Sixty-four years ago, residents of this tiny town in southwestern Kansas set a public health example by making it the first in the nation to be fully inoculated against polio … Protection’s Polio Protection Day took place on April 2, 1957. Families, many dressed in their Sunday best, lined up in the high school gym to get shots from nurses dressed in starched white uniforms. That event, sponsored by what was then known as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now the March of Dimes), received widespread media coverage.” The success and leadership back then makes Protection an interesting place to revisit during the rollout of another vital vaccine. Times have changed. NPR: In Tiny Kansas Town, Pandemic Skeptics Abound Amid False Information And Politics. “‘A lot of people still believe it [COVID-19] is made up and that it’s not as bad as the media is saying,’ says Steve Herd, a 72-year-old farmer who was in the third grade on the day that virtually every resident of Protection under age 40 got a polio shot.Today, some in the town of about 400 people insist that the federal government ‘invented’ the coronavirus so that it could force people to take a vaccine containing a microchip that could track their movements … In 1957, Herd says, ‘We didn’t have people who believed such crazy stuff.'” |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NO!!! Kansas is not Kansas anymore. I am 77 years of age. My wife and I were raised in Kansas. It was a good place to be raised. People cared about each other. Took care of each other. Education was important. Work ethic was important.
All that is gone now. Republicans have taken the state down the path of destruction of the ethics and morals that were demonstrated yeas ago. The town of Protection is not the only place in the state has swallowed the koolaide put out by the conspiracy people. The disease has spread out over all across the state. We still have relatives that live in Kansas and believe as many in Protection do. We can no longer have reasonable discussions about education, politics or religion. It is a sin to be a non-conservative in Kansas.
We no longer live in Kansas. We are very happy that we did not raise our children in Kansas.
The book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” by Thomas Frank is a very good and worth the read.
“Humans display a wide range of behavior that seems counter-intuitive to the survival of the fittest mentality until you consider that we are an inherently social species, and that keeping our group fit is a wise investment of our time and energy.”
https://fs.blog/2017/02/survival-of-the-fittest/
If you believe in science, get the shot. If you don’t, that’s okay, too. Most of those that get the vaccine will be safer from COVID than those that don’t.
Isn’t this what survival of the fittest means?
Excellent question, Diane: how do we combat such insane ideas?
Over the long term, full education for all, including critical thinking skills and learning how to source information, I imagine should solve the problem.
But how do we get to a point where we as a society are willing to allocate the resources for such long-term solutions?
-Shira
Shira, none of us has figured out how to deal with the misinformation and lies on the Internet.
Good point, Diane, but I hope that we can start a long-term strategy, all together, at least to head off this sort of thing in the long term, via a public push for critical thinking and source questioning. I also wonder whether bringing back chess as a major ‘sport’ would help?