LaVO: Central Bucks school nurse nurse Gladys Nelson and the conquest of polio - Bucks County Courier Times

LaVO: Central Bucks school nurse nurse Gladys Nelson and the conquest of polio - Bucks County Courier Times
Over 1 Million Children Tested Positive For Coronavirus In The United States - NPR
Overlooked Telling Details Invite Virus Policy Rethink - CT Examiner

Posted: 16 Nov 2020 12:00 AM PST

Carl LaVO | Correspondent

I remember the other pandemic-like scare. The one in the 1950s paralyzing and killing kids. Mom and Dad sternly warned me and my sisters not to play in puddled water. Nor ride a bicycle through it. Parents believed the water contained the deadly polio virus that caused infantile paralysis. If you got it and were lucky to survive, you might spend the rest of your short life in an "iron lung," a nightmarish mechanical monster that kept you breathing.

To fight the epidemic when much was unknown, towns where I lived in California spread chemicals on stagnant water. Social distancing took effect as well. Theaters, swimming pools, churches, schools and public meeting places closed whenever there was a substantial outbreak. Parents lived in fear, desperate to protect their children. Rumors spread relentlessly: Italian immigrants brought the virus. Car exhaust caused the disease. Cats spread it. None of it true.

Like the COVID-19 outbreak, most people infected showed no symptoms at all. In those that did, most believed it was typical flu. Sore throat, fever, tiredness, headache, a stiff neck, stomach pain. With polio, the ingested virus traveled from the spinal cord up into the brainstem, causing damage. One out of every 200 patients ended up paralyzed. Of them, one in 10 died.

Eventually the truth about the virus became known. It came primarily though contact with feces and untreated sewage. Airborne droplets from an infected individual also were suspect. Symptoms showed up 6-to-20 days after infection making it hard to track. Sound familiar? Those infected remained contagious for two weeks.

It took eiyears of arduous scientific research funded by the March of Dimes before Dr. Jonas Salk and his medical team in Pittsburgh developed a promising vaccine. In February 1954, students in the city's Arsenal Public School received the first doses of a "killed virus" proven to be effective. Over the next year, more than 1.8 million grade schoolers got the vaccine and became "Polio Pioneers." The trial series of three shots were a resounding success by April 1955. The announcement drew headlines across the country with Salk achieving historic stature. Mass inoculations began in August. To administer 4 million shots, the federal government mobilized 220,000 volunteers, 20,000 doctors, 64,000 school employees and many more volunteer citizens to staff clinics.

That effort began in Doylestown.

Gladys Nickleby Nelson took the lead. She was the first African-American RN hired by the Doylestown School District to be school nurse. She opened and managed the very first U.S. clinic to inoculate citizens. "The polio clinic was the idea of Dr. Salk who was a friend of Dr. James Work, president of The Farm School (now Delaware Valley University)," according to Nancy Nelson, Gladys' daughter. "Dr. Work contacted the school board who in turn contacted Mrs. Marian Francofiera (principal of the school at Broad and Court Streets). My mother spearheaded the setup of the clinic, coordinating nurses, doctors and community volunteers to help."

"The clinic may have been opened for as long as two weeks. The shots were given to the youth of the community and then anyone else who wanted to receive it. All were invited."

Dr. Salk was so pleased with Nurse Nelson's efficiency he asked her to establish other clinics. The national campaign radiated from her. Between 1955 and 1962, medics administered 400 million doses of the Salk vaccine at thousands of clinics patterned after the Doylestown facility. Cases of polio began a steep decline — dipping from 14,647 in 1955 to less than 100 per year in the 1960s.

By the 1970s, only 10 cases a year were reported. Since 1979, not a single case of polio originating in the U.S. has been reported, according to polioeradication.org. But active poliovirus can still be found in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Without vaccination, less-developed areas of the world are at risk. Rotary International's PolioPlus program is leading efforts to combat the disease.

In Bucks, the county health department today recommends four doses of polio vaccine at 2 months, 4 months, 6-18 months and 4-6 years of age to be fully inoculated. Adults who received the vaccine as children are immune to the disease.

As for Gladys Nelson, she continued caring for students and staff in Doylestown in a 32- year career. "My mother was involved in Easter Seals and the Red Cross," said her daughter. "Plus, her school nursing job where over the years she gained five more schools in the Central Bucks School District by her retirement. My mother was a busy lady but always had time for her family. She loved working with the youth and helping where needed."

Having devoted herself to her community, she retired in 1983 and passed away in 2003. She is buried alongside her husband Randall in Doylestown Historic Cemetery.

***

Sources include "Gladys Nickleby Nelson: An Unsung Hero of Polio Eradication Having Opened the First Polio Immunization Clinic in the United States" by Pamela Sergey with Nancy Nelson; "When Polio Triggered Fear and Panic Among Parents in the 1950s" posted on the web at www.history.com/news/polio-fear-post-wwii-era, and "Polio Global Eradication Effort: Every Last Child" on the web at polioeradication.org. Thanks also to polio survivor Carol Ferguson who tipped me off to the story of Nurse Nelson. Carol contracted the disease in 1954 with minimal symptoms until the late 1990s. She subsequently founded the PA Polio Survivors Network (PPSN).

Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo@msn.com.

Over 1 Million Children Tested Positive For Coronavirus In The United States - NPR

Posted: 16 Nov 2020 12:00 AM PST

A child wears a protective mask while playing in April in Prospect Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Stephanie Keith/Getty Images hide caption

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Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

A child wears a protective mask while playing in April in Prospect Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Children now make up at least 1 in 11 of all reported U.S. coronavirus cases.

That's according to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association. On Monday, the AAP said more than 1 million children have tested positive for the coronavirus in the United States.

"As a pediatrician who has practiced medicine for over three decades, I find this number staggering and tragic. We haven't seen a virus flash through our communities in this way since before we had vaccines for measles and polio," AAP President Sally Goza said in a statement.

The data are compiled from state reports and show 1,039,464 children have tested positive for the coronavirus as of Nov. 12. In the one-week period ending that day, there were nearly 112,000 new cases in children, the largest one-week increase.

The virus has had a disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic children, the AAP said. They have suffered a higher number of infections and are more likely to be affected by economic harms and lack of access to education and other critical services.

The number of children with the coronavirus is thought to be widely underestimated. Because most have no or few symptoms, and it is rare for them to experience severe symptoms, many children are never tested, the AAP noted.

Babies under 1 year old and children with certain underlying conditions may be more likely to have severe illness from the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some children can experience a rare complication associated with COVID-19 that can cause organ inflammation.

Children's mental health is also being affected by the pandemic. According to a recent CDC report, children ages 5 to 11 made emergency room visits related to mental health about 24% more than last year. Visits from children ages 12 to 17 increased about 31%.

As winter approaches and people stay indoors more, the AAP's Goza emphasized the need to get a coronavirus vaccine approved. She also highlighted other immediate control measures.

"We urgently need a new, nationwide strategy to control the pandemic, and that should include implementing proven public health measures like mask-wearing and physical distancing," Goza said. "This pandemic is taking a heavy toll on children, families and communities as well as on physicians and other front-line medical teams."

Reese Oxner is an intern on NPR's News Desk.

Overlooked Telling Details Invite Virus Policy Rethink - CT Examiner

Posted: 24 Nov 2020 06:36 PM PST

Amid the growing panic fanned by news organizations about the rebound in the virus epidemic, last week's telling details were largely overlooked.

First, most of the recent "virus-associated" deaths in Connecticut again have been those of frail elderly people in nursing homes.

Second, while dozens of students at the University of Connecticut at Storrs recently were been found infected, most showed no symptoms and none died or was even hospitalized. Instead all were waiting it out or recovering in their rooms or apartments.

And third, the serious case rate — new virus deaths and hospitalizations as a percentage of new cases — was running at about 2%, a mere third of the recent typical "positivity" rate of new virus tests, the almost meaningless detail that still gets most publicity.

Recognizing that deaths, hospitalizations, and hospital capacity should be the greatest concerns, Governor Lamont last week recalled that at the outset of the epidemic he had the Connecticut National Guard erect field hospitals around the state and that 1,700 additional beds quickly became available but were never used. This option remains available.

The governor's insight should compel reflection about state government's policy on hospitals — policy that for nearly 50 years has been, like the policy of most other states, to prevent their increase and expansion.

The premise has been the fear that, as was said in the old movie, "if you build it, they will come" — more patients, that is. The demand for medical services, the policy presumes, is infinite, and since government pays most medical costs directly or indirectly, services must be discreetly rationed — that is, without public understanding — even if this prevents economic competition among medical providers.

So in Connecticut and most other states you can't just build and open a hospital; state government must approve and confer a "certificate of need." Who determines need? State government, not people seeking care.

Of course this policy was not adopted with epidemics in mind. Indeed, in adopting this policy government seems to have thought that epidemics were vanquished forever by the polio vaccines in the 1960s.

Now it may be realized that, while epidemics can be exaggerated, as the current one is, they have not been vanquished and the current epidemic — or, rather, government's response to it — has crippled the economy, probably in the amount of billions of dollars in Connecticut alone.

That cost should be weighed against the cost of hospitals that were never built. Maybe they could have been built and maintained only for emergency use, and an auxiliary medical staff maintained too, just as the National Guard is an all-purpose auxiliary.

Also worth questioning is the growing clamor for virus testing. The heightened desire for testing in advance of holiday travel is natural, but testing is not so reliable, full of false positives and negatives. Someone can test negative on Monday and on Tuesday can start manifesting the virus or contract it and be without symptoms.

Testing may be of limited use for alerting people that they might well isolate themselves for a time even if they are without symptoms. But people without symptoms are far less likely to spread the virus than infected people who don't feel well.

Only daily testing of everyone might be reliable enough to be very effective, but government and medicine are not equipped for that and it would be impractical anyway. Weekly testing of all students and teachers in school might be practical and worthwhile but terribly expensive, and only a few wealthy private schools are attempting it.

Contact tracing policy needs revision. Nothing has been more damaging and ridiculous than the closing of whole schools for a week or more because one student or teacher got sick or tested positive. As the governor notes, because of their low susceptibility to the virus, children may be safer in school than anywhere else.

Risk for teachers is higher but they also are more likely to become infected outside of school. They might accept the risk in school out of duty to their students, whose interrupted education is the catastrophe of the epidemic.

Meanwhile the country needs two vaccines — one against the virus itself and one against virus hysteria.

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