Vaccines are without a doubt one of the most impactful scientific advancements in human history. We have almost eliminated smallpox worldwide and saved many lives by providing protection against a variety of infectious diseases through vaccines. Despite this history, millions of Americans refuse to receive coronavirus vaccines. They also decry efforts to require proof of vaccination in order to participate in certain activities.
A Twitter post is serving as a timely reminder that vaccination isn’t new and neither are proof-of-immunization requirements. The poster shows a 1956 polio record card that was found at their local thrift store. COVID is much more dangerous than polio.
COVID-19 is responsible for nearly 670,000 deaths in the United States over the past year. We are just days away from surpassing the death toll from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. These numbers are incredible when compared to the polio pandemic, which killed 3000 Americans in a single year at its height in 1952. Many more people were paralyzed, but not near the hundreds of thousands that died in the space of one year.
I’m not trying to downplay polio—it’s a terrible disease. This was particularly frightening because it primarily affected children. However, by all other measures, the COVID pandemic was far more severe than the polio epidemic. There is no comparison in terms of deaths. Long-term effects are still unknown. COVID isn’t leaving people paralyzed as polio did, but “long COVID” is a thing and organ damage caused by COVID can lead to a host of ongoing health problems.
While COVID is often dismissed as a mild illness, most people who contract it don’t become very sick. The same holds true for polio. According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, around 70% of polio cases are totally asymptomatic, and another 25% have just mild symptoms. Only 1% of cases lead to paralysis and far fewer cause death.
And yet, we never hear people say, “We should just take our chances with polio since most people who get it are fine!” We still vaccinate for it, even though the chances of getting it in the U.S. is practically nil at this point because vaccination has eradicated it.
People don’t trust coronavirus vaccines, believing they were too fast approved. Do you know how long the time elapsed between the start of clinical trials and the approval? It was less than a year. The clinical trials for the Salk Polio vaccine were conducted on approximately 1.8 million children (600,000 of whom received the vaccine and 1.2 million receiving a placebo). They began on April 26, 1954. The vaccine was approved on April 12, 1956. It wasn’t without controversy, of course, but the success of the vaccine speaks for itself.
This was seven decades ago. Consider how far medical research has advanced since then, and how much better our knowledge of infectious disease and immunology is today. We already had enormous amounts of base knowledge about coronaviruses in general, decades of mRNA research under our belt, and more than a decade of mRNA vaccine development already underway, so the quickly developed and tested COVID vaccines are not terribly surprising.
As for proof of vaccination complaints, the polio card post also prompted a flood of other photos of immunization “passports,” from record books to reminders that people with smallpox inoculations had to literally show the scar on their arm to prove that they’d been vaccinated.
@0ilvla My parents’ cards. One missing. https://t.co/SpNdrPimLw
— TTK 🌊Get Vaxxed You Selfish Children🎃 (@TTK 🌊Get Vaxxed You Selfish Children🎃)1631884934.0
The military has been required to get vaccines for pretty much ever.
@interest_mild Major J A Cooper, a post-war soldier stationed in Asia Pacific. Spent many years in Army in PNG… https://t.co/ARJR6Sn6jw
— Mick – AZ Covax2 – all done (@Mick – AZ Covax2 – all done)1631844946.0
And yes, people with smallpox vaccinations used to have to lift their shirt sleeves to show that they’d been immunized before being allowed to enter some public places.
@DavidLewis61 I have one such scar on my left shoulder. It is a distinctive mark.
— 😷MamiSpeaks😷 (@😷MamiSpeaks😷)1631890021.0
Sometimes a “vaccine passport” is literally called a vaccine passport. They are required for many jobs.
Misinformation is one of the side effects of living in an information age. I remember disease experts predicting that COVID-19 would result in a loss of 100,000 to 200,000 Americans. People laughed off fearmongering. Now, 18 months later, 680,000 deaths later, we have to convince people COVID is real, that vaccination is good, and that requiring proof of immunization is not an authoritarian power-grab.
It should not be difficult to get a coronavirus vaccine if you are already immunized against polio. COVID is more likely because vaccines have been available for testing since the beginning of polio vaccination. Additionally, vaccines have been safe and effective as a result of the vast majority who have the ability to evaluate vaccines.
This stupid pandemic is making us all sick. Do your part, get vaccinated as soon as you can.