There is no vaccine for stupid - or malicious
Chuck Idelson for Common Dreams
Elvis Presley hardly seems a likely candidate for the
pantheon of public health heroes. But in October 1956 the ascending rock idol
lent his considerable stardom to helping save lives.
His little remembered role is a cautionary tale as incoming
President Trump advances a series of farright and unqualified appointees to
major public agencies. The most dangerous is likely to be conspiracy theorist
Robert Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, augmented by
like-minded, perilous public health heads of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS),
National Institutes of Health (NIH), Federal Drug Administration (FDA), and his
choice for Surgeon General.
For a century, polio epidemics made it one of the world’s most terrifying
diseases. A 1916 outbreak in New York City killed over 2,000 people;
another in the U.S. in 1952 claimed over 3,000. Children were especially
targeted, over 60,000 infected yearly, facing lifelong severe spinal injuries
requiring braces, crutches, and wheelchairs, and the dreaded iron lung, an
artificial respirator, or premature death.
Wealth and status proved no barrier, as evidenced by
President Franklin Roosevelt who was diagnosed at age 39 in 1921 with polio and endured
it the rest of his life. What was a safeguard was the first vaccine, developed
by virologist/medical researcher Jonas Salk. The announcement on
April 12, 1955 by University of Michigan School of Public Health scientist
Thomas Francis, Jr., who declared it “safe, effective, and potent,” was greeted
as a national celebration, spread rapidly over radio, television, and wire
services.
Parents lined up to vaccinate their young children, plenty
did not. Teen immunization levels stagnated at just 0.6 percent. Enter Elvis.
He agreed to go on the popular Ed Sullivan TV show, not to sing, but to get publicly vaccinated,
viewed by millions. Vaccination rates among American youth soared to 80 percent
in just six months. Overall annual cases of polio plummeted within a year from
58,000 to 5,600. By 1961, only 161 cases remained. After an oral vaccine
followed, polio disappeared in the U.S. completely.
Yet polio never vanished globally, especially in
underdeveloped nations, as in Africa, and in war zones, including in Gaza today—driven
by Israel’s decimation of public health protections during its catastrophic and
ongoing assault. In 2022, the first U.S. case in decades was reported by the New York State
Department of Health.
Defense against dangerous epidemic outbreaks requires
constant vigilance, and public support for full embrace of public health safety
measures, including vaccinations. The experience of Trump’s first tenure is far
from reassuring, especially his abominable failure in the face of Covid-19, the
worst global pandemic in a century which ultimately cost the lives of over 1.2
million Americans.
Initial skepticism over the polio vaccine has a long
antecedent in the U.S., described early in the Covid pandemic by what Los
Angeles Times writer Carolina Miranda aptly
termed “toxic individualism” and rugged individualism. It is traceable to a
virulent brew of misguided notions of individual
liberty that undermine and sabotage the public good, or a
commons of national and community interest.
Much of its roots are linked to
structural racism, as in the resistance to Civil Rights Movement measures, and
continuing today in white opposition to reforms such as expansion of health
care and other public programs, immigration rights, and other societal
benefits.
