View: How past vaccine races can help win against Covid
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Last Updated: Feb 28, 2021, 12:37 PM IST
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Synopsis
History tells us that the best vaccination efforts are built on collaboration and coordination. We know that the U.S. and Soviet Union working together at the height of the Cold War was instrumental in testing the oral polio vaccine. I
Reuters
Rebuilding confidence is tough, whether in politically polarized Western societies or regions like Pakistan and Afghanistan, where misinformation and threats have helped wild polio remain endemic.
“The vaccine works. It is safe, effective, and potent.”
In 1955, those were the words that told the world U.S. scientist Jonas Salk’s polio shot was a success. It was news greeted with popular jubilation, ringing church bells and boldface banner headlines. The sort of heartfelt relief that most of us can readily identify with, more than a year into a coronavirus pandemic that has now killed 2.5 million people.
A Berkeley lab s deadly mistake has been fodder for anti-vaxxers for 50 years
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A Berkeley lab s deadly mistake has been fodder for anti-vaxxers for 50 years
sfgate.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sfgate.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Baby boomers remember both the fear of poliomyelitis the viral infection that attacks the nervous system, leaving some who contract it paralyzed, or dead and the relief that they felt when the rollout of Jonas Salk’s vaccine put an end to repeated midcentury summer outbreaks of the disease. In 1954, the summer before this rollout, 1.8 million kids participated in a widely publicized trial of the new vaccine. From the vantage point of 2020, when vaccine skepticism floats right below the surface of public debate, the widespread embrace of the new vaccine feels surprising. Was the March of Dimes–financed rollout of Salk’s miracle jab, conducted in a hurry as polio threatened to strike again in the summer of 1955, really as smooth as history makes it seem?