When Elvis saved America

Polio was the COVID of the 1940s and ‘50s. There were nightmare photos of kids with their heads sticking out of a coffin-like iron lung. Then a vaccine promised an end to the nightmares, but vaccines can only be effective with if people trust and receive them. The first vaccination programs met the usual resistance, especially among vulnerable teenagers and young adults who thought they were bulletproof. Someone at the March of Dimes had a brilliant idea. In 1956, three things were established in American culture: television, the Ed Sullivan Variety Show and Elvis Presley. On October 28, Presley was photographed being inoculated back stage on the Sullivan show and then went out to swivel his way thru “Hound Dog,” “Love Me Tender” and “Don’t be Cruel.” By the 1960s, polio was just a bad memory.

Polio is a typical virus in that it infects a person thru contact or exposure to coughs or sneezes like Covid. Probably 75% of people show no symptoms. About a quarter had typical flu symptoms for a few days and then recover. The nightmare came from the 0.5% where the virus invaded the spine or brain and caused paralysis, including of the breathing muscles.

Those people could not breathe on their own and the solution in the 1940s and 50s was the iron lung.

The iron lung worked by cycling air pressure up and down in a metal cylinder to make the lungs expand and contract. The person was put in the iron lung with their head sticking out and there they stayed until they either recovered or died. There are still people alive today who have lived decades in an iron lung. The thought for any kid of changing from playing with friends on the street to living in a metal cylinder that looked like a coffin was just too much.

Then salvation. Dr. Jonas Salk in 1953 announced he had developed a polio vaccine. The year before there had been 58,000 polio cases and 3,000 deaths (compared to normally 20-30,000 flu cases annually now with a much larger US population). The vaccine went thru clinical trials in 1955 and seemed ready for national distribution. It was a disaster. California’s Cutter Laboratories rolled out a defective vaccine which caused thousands of polio cases, 200 paralyzed children and 10 deaths. A revised vaccine began distribution in 1956 and the number of cases dropped to 6,000. Polio today is virtually non-existent. Most cases are from immigrants coming from countries without an innocultion program.