Descent into madness
Two of my friends (barely a couple of years older) had polio as children. One still walks with a limp. The other told me just yesterday that she spent time in an iron lung as a kid. I was shocked.
Remember when medical ventilators were in super-high demand during the COVID-19 pandemic? Before ventilators there were iron lungs. Obsolete now (save for extremely rare cases), iron lungs fell out of use in the 1950s when positive pressure ventilators came along. Coincidentally, vaccines that ended the polio outbreaks of the 1940s and 1950s arrived about the same time. My parents put me in line at a Chicago park one night to get the Salk vaccine by injection gun. Getting vaccinated against polio back then was a community event.
You can imagine what my friends think of RFK Jr.’s proposal for having the FDA decertify the polio vaccine. The one with iron lung experience used spicier language yesterday than used by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, 82, himself a polio survivor (CBS News):
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell issued an apparent warning Friday to Robert F. Kennedy, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, after The New York Times reported that one of Kennedy’s top advisers had filed petitions to revoke the approval of a polio vaccine and several other shots.
“Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts,” McConnell said in a statement.
McConnell, a polio survivor, denounced efforts “to undermine public confidence in proven cures” like the polio vaccine.
“The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” McConnell said.
McConnell credited the “miraculous combination of modern medicine and a mother’s love” with saving him from paralysis when he contracted the disease at two years of age, and he praised the “miracle” of “the saving power of the polio vaccine” for the millions of children who came after him.
Do me a favor. Spread around the link to the 2015 WSJ page, “Battling Infectious Diseases in the 20th Century: The Impact of Vaccines.” It’s where I found that polio heat map above. Measles, hepatitis A, mumps, rubella and other diseases look like this after vaccines were approved. I don’t need to show you again what a case of smallpox look like.
RFK Jr. is out of his freaking, worm-eaten mind. And Trump is just as insane for entertaining his conspiracy-mongering. God help us.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!