Mercedes Schneider read a story last spring about a man who contracted polio in 1952 when he was six years, survived it, but spent the next 72 years dependent on an iron lung. Despite his limited ability to survive outside the machine, Paul Alexander finished college and law school, then practiced law. Before his death, he became a TikTok star.
When she read the story, it was interesting– but now it’s timely. After all, Trump has appointed a vaccine critic to run the Department of Health and Human services. Trump himself said in a national interview that he is skeptical about mandating vaccines for school children.
So Mercedes decided it was time to do some research about polio. Her post is engaging and brings back memories for those of us who were in school before the first vaccine was discovered and made available. We lived in terror of getting polio.
Alexander said:
In one video, Mr. Alexander detailed the emotional and mental challenges of living inside an iron lung.
“It’s lonely,” he said as the machine can be heard humming in the background. “Sometimes it’s desperate because I can’t touch someone, my hands don’t move, and no one touches me except in rare occasions, which I cherish.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Soon Trump will be sworn in to office. Kennedy will become the vaccine czar and will do his best to stop all vaccinations.
Every week our Rotary Club meets. A member of the Club is a polio survivor. She always has a smile and a pleasant greeting for everyone. She has a hard time walking but like Mr. Alexander she has been successful in her chosen profession as a banker. My wife and I lived during the time when the polio vaccine was given to everyone. It saved so many, many lives.
Mr. Alexander’s story and so many others need to be told so that maybe people will listen and do all they can to stop Trump’s reversal of the vaccine programs in this country. Without people speaking out nothing will change. This country will become worse than any third world nation when it comes to vaccinations.
I am proud to be a member of Rotary International. This organization has dedicated millions upon millions of dollars and supported volunteers around the world to help get rid of polio. We are almost there but now Trump and Kennedy want to reverse all that has been accomplished.
Trump and Kennedy with their efforts to reverse all vaccination programs are adding another layer of shame on the very country that used to be a leader in promoting vaccinations. Shame on us.
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This a big problem, and very real. My first wife contracted polio a few months after we were married. She managed to raise two children and carry out important work for the State of Ohio, as she lived to be 85. She was an advocate for the legislation requiring Public Accommodations.
How she got polio remains a mystery. She worked at the Ohio State University Research Center, where she met people from all over the world, some vaccinated, some not. But she herself got only the first dose of the oral, Sabin, vaccination–but I had gotten the shot–or Salk vaccine.
I heard later that getting just one dose of Sabin was worse than nothing. I wondered. Years later, when I was remarried and had two young children, we asked a local doctor if it was true about getting only part of the dosage could be worse. He said, not only was that true, but that there was a 1 chance in a million of folks taking the oral and getting polio from it. So we opted for the Salk shot for our kids.
So, when I know that there is a “cover-up” of the one-in-a-million factor, I wonder if this is part of the fear or rejection of polio inoculation–or other inoculations. Are there other oversites or coverups? I don’t know, but it would not be unusual for misinformation–or under-information to follow any medical or other story.
To be clear, though: I lived with a beautiful young person whose life was dramatically changed by a preventable disease. Get vaccinated! But–government–media–tell the whole story about vaccination.
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Consider Cipolla’s Third Basic Law of Human Stupidity: A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
Consider, too, the Second Basic Law: The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
So, “Shame on us?” No. Rather, shame on the foolishly stupid half of the country that voted to put Trump back in office.
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My neighbor and childhood friend had polio. He was a smart, curious young man, but he was unable to walk or even hold a pencil due to multiple spasms. His mother was a single mother that worked a a matron at a public school for handicapped students. When Jerry aged out of services, he was confined to his home where he watched TV while his mother worked. He was six years older than I. When I got home from school, I brought him out to enjoy the warm weather days. I also brought him back inside if the weather changed. He jokingly called me “the warden.” His mother bought him a CB radio that helped open up the world to him. I wish Jerry had been born later because he would have enjoyed exploring the internet, although he had some problems reading. My neighbor, Jerry, passed away in his 50s from a lung infection. His condition impaired his breathing. His mother did her best to meet her son’s needs during his life, but he lived a very restricted life. If he had been born when I was, he would have been able to get the polio vaccine, and he could have had a very different life.
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As far as I’m concerned, RFK Jr, with his stupid and lethal anti-vaccine stance, amounts to a mass murderer and a purveyor of human misery. The only job he should have for the White House is as Sanitation Chief of the toilets. Give him the scrub brush and some Comet cleanser and go to it you certified fool.
From WHO: Polio does still exist, although polio cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988, from an estimated more than 350 000 cases to 22 reported cases in 2017. This reduction is the result of the global effort to eradicate the disease. Today, only 2 countries in the world have never stopped transmission of polio (Pakistan and Afghanistan).I only remember taking a sugar cube about 70 years ago.
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Reach out today to someone who needs love and affection. Touch might not be as necessary to human sustenance as food and drink, but it’s close.
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The father of a friend of mine contracted polio at age 17, one year before the vaccine came out. He was confined to a wheelchair, and worked as the clerk for the small town we lived in. His wife taught special education at the local school, where I was eventually a teacher. He died of post polio syndrome about 15 years ago. He died very young and lost a lot of mobility as the post polio syndrome got worse. Polio will get you at the time and then decades later. It’s NOT a disease to mess with.
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