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[valerief]

This message was self-deleted by its author (valerief) on Tue Feb 23, 2016, 11:32 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[SheilaT]

1. By 1962 polio

as essentially eradicated in this country. The Salk vaccine had been released in 1955, mass immunizations occurred (I recall them well) and polio all but disappeared.

Was this book self-published by someone who is so young that 1962 and 1955 are both a very long time ago and so who cares? Or was there an incompetent editor? Am I the only person who thinks having something off by nearly a decade, and well within living memory, is odd?


All I can say is that a book that has that basic fact wrong is one I wouldn't read.

[valerief]

2. Ha! Yes, and the oral vaccine was in 1961. I remember a neighborhood kid with polio

in the early 60s. I figure he didn't get the vaccine in time, since the vaccine prevents polio but doesn't cure it.

I see you went to the trouble of telling me in both Fiction and here that I'm clueless. Made me laugh in both spots!

BTW, the book doesn't contain anything about polio, just the blurb does.

Hmm, I wonder if Barry is still alive and still has polio. You know, that kid I knew in the 60s. Since you know it all, you tell me.

[valerief]

3. Also, here are some stats on U.S. polio.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/polio/dis-faqs.htm

How common was polio in the United States?

Polio was one of the most dreaded childhood diseases of the 20th century in the United States. Periodic epidemics occurred since the late 19th century and they increase in size and frequency in the late 1940s and early 1950s. An average of over 35,000 cases were reported during this time period. With the introduction of Salk inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) in 1955, the number of cases rapidly declined to under 2,500 cases in 1957. By 1965, only 61 cases of paralytic polio were reported.

Is polio still a disease seen in the United States?

The last cases of naturally occurring paralytic polio in the United States were in 1979, when an outbreak occurred among the Amish in several Midwestern states. From 1980 through 1999, there were 162 confirmed cases of paralytic polio cases reported. Of the 162 cases, eight cases were acquired outside the United States and imported. The last imported case caused by wild poliovirus into the United States was reported in 1993. The remaining 154 cases were vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP) caused by live oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV).

So between 1957 and 1965, there were still new cases being reported, although the numbers were much less than in the previous decade.

[SheilaT]

4. I know, I looked that up also,

but by 1962 polio was so incredibly rare that new cases were fairly newsworthy. More to the point, 1962 was NOT "that quaint time of polio. . . ." Really, it wasn't.

[valerief]

5. People who got it before the vaccine still had it. nt

[SheilaT]

6. Well, they didn't exactly still have polio, but they had the residual effects of it.

And still, by 1962 polio was moving rapidly from public consciousness. We all knew people who'd had polio and were still around (my father-in-law, now deceased, got it in an epidemic in about 1918), but it wasn't in the forefront of what very many people thought about by then. So I do find that way of trying to characterize that year to be distinctly odd. Off, even, because it doesn't relate to what most people were thinking about in any way, shape, or form. Better to have referenced JFK or the Bay of Pigs or something to the effect that the World Series was still being played in the daytime.

It suggests a carelessness with facts. One of my quirks is that I tend to be a stickler for facts and for details being accurate.

[valerief]

8. You're being careless. Introduction of the vaccine didn't eradicate polio from people who had polio.

[SheilaT]

9. I know that. But polio wasn't in the public consciousness very much by then.

It really wasn't. The Salk vaccine had been incredibly effective, if not 100%, and I think the problem with the rise in cases in the late 50's had to do with bad batches, but I might be wrong. In any event, the business about pools shutting down for fear of it had entirely disappeared by then.

I KNOW that people who'd had polio still had the withered muscles or whatever, that never went away. But the very rapid change from it being something that hung over everything to being essentially invisible had occurred by then.

[valerief]

10. It was in our consciousness in our neighborhood in 1962. Polio water, remember?

Here's a picture from 1962.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_poliomyelitis#/media/File: Polio_physical_therapy.jpg

This physical therapist is assisting two polio-stricken children holding on to a rail while they exercise their lower limbs. In the early 1950s there were more than 20,000 cases of polio each year. After the polio vaccination was introduced in 1955 that figure dropped to about 3,000 per year by 1960.
File: Polio physical therapy.jpg
Created: 31 December 1962

[SheilaT]

11. Do you know for sure that picture was taken in 1962?

And I'm not sure what you mean by polio water.

[valerief]

7. Here's something from the Chicago Tribune 1961 that might interest you.

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1961/03/05/page/62/article/the-truth-about-the-polio-vaccines

"There has been a rise during the last two years in the incidence rates of paralytic poliomyelitis in the United States," stressed Dr. Greenberg. "The rate in 1958 was about 50 per cent higher than that for 1957, and in 1959 about 80 per cent higher than that in 1958. If 1959 is compared with the low year of 1957, the increase is about 170 per cent.

"In the fall of 1955, Dr. Langmuir had predicted that by 1957 there would be less than 100 cases of paralytic polio in the United States," commented Dr. Ratner. "Four years and 300 million doses df Salk vaccine later, we had in 1959 approximately 6,000 cases of paralytic polio, 1,000 of which were in per- sons who had received three and more shots of Salk vaccine. Salk vaccine hasn't lived up to expectations."

Dr. Sabin says the number of cases in 1960 was less than in 1959, but that 23 per cent are now occurring in persons who have had three or more doses of Salk vaccine.