This week, Katie is bewitched with the polio epidemic and vaccines.
As the U.S. takes its first tentative steps toward post-COVID life with the massive roll-out of vaccines, Katie takes time to reflect on another virus that changed our world: polio. For decades, parents lived in fear of summer- time polio outbreaks. Children went from happy and healthy to iron lungs in a matter of days. As a result, public pools closed. Adolescents were banned from movie theaters, and parents everywhere hoped and prayed for a vaccine that would keep their children safe. The Polio vaccines continue to provide relief from this debilitating virus all over the world. Will we allow the COVID vaccines to do their work, too?
Recommended books (all can be found in our bookshop):
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Growing Things by Paul Tremblay
The Royal We series by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky
The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis by Paul A. Offit
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung by Paul R. Alexander
Nemesis by Philip Roth
The Stolen Marriage by Diane Chamberlain
Severance by Ling Ma
Links:
History Does Repeat Itself: Lessons from the Polio Vaccine
Parents PACK Personal Stories-Polio
Why 'New' COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects Are Totally Expected
The Cutter Incident: How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to a Growing Vaccine Crisis
How We Know the COVID Vaccine Won't Have Long Term Side Effects
Race and the Politics of Polio: Warm Springs, Tuskegee, and the March of Dimes
