Marion resident recounts experience with experimental polio, COVID-19 vaccines - Chronicle-Tribune

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• Marion resident recounts experience with experimental polio, COVID-19 vaccines - Chronicle-Tribune
• Remembering a time when polio was the dominant life-threatening virus - WSLS 10
• Polio survivors reflect on pandemic as they receive COVID-19 vaccine - KPRC Click2Houston
• Living with a pandemic: Polio in the 1940s - The Daily Tar Heel
• Pandemic Parallels: Older adults remember polio vaccines - ABC10.com KXTV

Marion resident recounts experience with experimental polio, COVID-19 vaccines - Chronicle-Tribune Posted: 25 Feb 2021 07:14 AM PST Donna Bickel was in first grade when she was given a shot in the arm, literally. The year was 1955, and Bickel was in elementary school in Dayton, Ohio. It was there where she was brought into a classroom that was divided into two lines. Students at the end of each line were being given shots. In one line, students were getting a placebo. In the other line, students were becoming some of the very first to receive the experimental polio vaccine. According to the Centers for Disease Control, before vaccines for the poliovirus were developed, the disease led to more than 15,000 cases of paralysis in the U.S. per year. The disease had existed for years before Karl Landsteiner became the first to identify the poliovirus in 1909. In the U.S., the epidemic left many parents afraid to send their children outside. This disease spread through the U.S. during the summertime for more than four decades. In the early 1950s, virologist Jonas Salk began to develop the first polio vaccine. In 1954, he tested the vaccine on a group of more than 1 million children called polio pioneers. The vaccine was officially declared safe in 1955 at the end of the clinical trials. Bickel was one of those polio pioneers. "We just got shots in our arm," said Bickel. "Nobody knew if it was the polio vaccine or the placebo. I was lucky enough to be the polio vaccine, so I didn't have to go again." In 1962, Albert Sabin developed an oral polio vaccine which became the standard around the world for polio treatment. Bickel's mother, Rosella (Foust) Miller, was a nurse who had been trained by the U.S. government during World War II. In addition to signing her daughter up to receive the polio vaccine years prior, she also volunteered her time on Sundays to administer doses of the oral polio treatment in 1962. Bickel stayed polio free, as the vaccine was effective. After attending Manchester University, she became a Marion resident and has spent the last 50 years in Grant County. In 2021, she was part of another milestone moment in the medical field. On Jan. 20, Bickel became one of the first county residents to receive the COVID-19 vaccine when it became available for those 70 and older. Bickel admitted that she was nervous, mainly about having to potentially pay for the vaccine. Since receiving the vaccine, Bickel said she experienced a few days of having a sore arm as a side effect, but that was the extent of the complications. In the time between the polio and COVID-19 vaccines, Bickel said it is surprising how perception of vaccines has changed. "Back then, having somebody be a test guinea pig for polio was a big honor," said Bickel. "Because so many people were hurt so badly by polio, and disabled. I thought it was a big privilege. Now, people don't even want to do it." Bickel said in her experience the pneumococcal vaccine was more difficult for her physically, and she gave one piece of advice to those who get the COVID-19 vaccine. "Use your left arm," Bickel said. "Unless you're left handed, then use your right arm."

Remembering a time when polio was the dominant life-threatening virus - WSLS 10 Posted: 25 Feb 2021 03:14 PM PST ROANOKE, Va. – The government is currently amidst the biggest vaccine push in history. Before the coronavirus pandemic, back in the 1950s, polio was the life-threatening virus people were worried about. It's a moment several Roanoke County residents remember all too well. Watching people wait in long lines to receive their coronavirus vaccine, Carla Pickeral had a moment of nostalgia. Carla Pickeral talking with 10 News on Feb. 25, 2021. (WSLS 10) "Lined up, like you see pictures of soldiers," Pickeral said. "Get your shot, get your shot, get your shot." Despite being just 8 years old at the time, she remembers lining up to get her polio vaccine. It's a similar feeling for the Cunninghams, who inched closer and closer to get their coronavirus doses at the Berglund Center in late January. Judy and Jim Cunningham taking with 10 News on Feb. 25, 2021. (WSLS 10) They remembered boarding buses to get the polio vaccine and how excited they were to just get out of school. "A day to get out of school to go on a field trip," recalled Jim Cunningham. "I remember we got a little lollipop after and of course, that was a big treat for a child back then," said Judy Cunningham. She remembered her two friends wearing braces on their legs after getting diagnosed with polio. Jim could recall a similar scene as his neighbor "couldn't hold his head up" and needed a neck brace to hold his head. A fearful reality for Carla when people were being treated at the hospital. "They put them in those iron lungs that breathed for them," she said. "And it was a scary thing back then." Flash forward to now, with more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S from the coronavirus, the Ad Council is coming out in full force to encourage more people to get vaccinated. With more technology available, the Ad Council hopes the message will spread faster than in the 1950s. "In a much quicker way than probably a slower build back when there was polio," Ad Council Chief Campaign Development Officer Michelle Hillman said. While Carla waits to get her dose, the Cunninghams will continue to help register their friends and neighbors to end this pandemic for once and for all. "The more people that have the vaccine...hopefully it's gonna work," Judy said. "So anything we can do to help."

Polio survivors reflect on pandemic as they receive COVID-19 vaccine - KPRC Click2Houston Posted: 09 Feb 2021 12:00 AM PST HOUSTON – Memorial Hermann hospital has a special connection to polio survivors and wanted to ensure they were high on its list of patients to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The hospital first began treating polio survivors in the 1950′s and 1960′s, according to Dr. Gerard Francisco, chief medical officer at TIRR Memorial Hermann/ UTHealth. "A lot of people, unfortunately, did not get the polio vaccination in the 1950′s when it was first discovered and subsequently introduced," Francisco said. "Either because they got the polio before the vaccine was developed or when the vaccine was developed, they did not have access to it." The TIRR post-polio clinic now treats polio survivors, like Rhonda Young of Kingwood. The 69-year-old contracted polio in 1953. "I really don't have much memory of that because my parents always said I was like 18 to 22 months," said the polio survivor. What Young does remember is having minimal contact with her parents while in the polio ward. Full Screen 1 / 6 Historical photos of polio patients being treated in the 1950s at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston. "I wanted to be picked up," she said. "I'd be crying but then when they picked me up it hurt. They said I had a sore throat." The virus was highly contagious in the 1950s. A vaccine wasn't available to children until 1955. "If I had had the availability of the vaccine, I'm sure I would not have had polio," she said. Young said she recalled having to undergo surgeries in the first and second grade, growth stimulation to make her legs even and even therapy to walk again. Though Young survived polio she still lives with lasting effects, such as fatigue and weakening muscles. She was diagnosed with Post-Polio Syndrome in 2008 at TIRR Memorial Hermann. Now, during the pandemic, Dr. Francisco said Memorial Hermann is trying to avoid history repeating itself. "Many of these people missed the opportunity to get the vaccine more than 50 years ago and we do not want them to miss the opportunity to get the vaccine against Coronavirus," he said. Dr. Francisco said polio survivors were among some of the hospital's first patients vaccinated against COVID-19. So far 100 post-polio patients have been vaccinated, including Young. "I feel great. I feel great," Young said about receiving her vaccine. "Some side effects afterward, especially with the second one. I'd rather have that than have the COVID." Polio cases have been reduced by 99% since the vaccine decades ago, according to the World Health Organization. Dr. Francisco said his hope is that the current vaccines can do the same for COVID-19.

Living with a pandemic: Polio in the 1940s - The Daily Tar Heel Posted: 21 Feb 2021 04:27 PM PST "Roll up the windows — there's a case of polio at that house."  This warning from 9-year-old Dan Moury's sister wasn't an uncommon one in the summer of 1944, as polio was sweeping through North Carolina in one of its worst outbreaks yet. Moury's family was taking a trip to Carolina Beach from Greensboro, where about 20 of them would stay in a "big old house," as they did every summer. When they got to the beach for the week, Moury wasn't feeling well. He played outside with his cousins, but he was also spending more and more time in bed. When he got home and his mom took him to the pediatrician, a spinal tap diagnosed the disease so many families dreaded:  Polio.  Suddenly, there was a quarantine sign on the family's front door. His mom was going to try to nurse him back to health, but it was too much — polio required intense physical therapy and medical intervention, and there was a lot that doctors didn't know about the disease. She'd heard about a new hospital that opened up in North Carolina for children like Moury: the Hickory Emergency Infantile Paralysis Hospital, which would aptly be nicknamed the "Miracle of Hickory."  It was where Moury would spend almost a year of his life.  For polio survivors, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is not the first infectious disease to upend their lives. Now, decades after polio ripped through North Carolina and the world, medical experts and researchers at UNC are looking to this past disease outbreak to give context to a modern one.  *** The first U.S. polio epidemic was recorded 50 years before Moury's diagnosis. But the 1940s and '50s brought more cases than the country had ever seen. Parents kept their children inside for the summer to avoid contracting the paralyzing disease. Public areas like swimming pools were shuttered. Newspapers showed iron lungs lined up in hospitals with only children's heads poking out. A nationwide panic took hold.  June 1944 brought a quickly escalating polio outbreak to Catawba County in North Carolina. Three doctors conceived of a plan to form an emergency hospital in Hickory.  Although most hospital administrators preferred not to take polio cases, this one would cater specifically to them. Setting it up meant emptying out a summer camp that was built as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration.  As legend has it, Dr. H.C. Whims, a health official involved in setting up the hospital, called the woman who was running the camp and asked her to clear it out. She said the campers were picking blackberries and she'd promised them a cobbler — but once they got their cobbler, she'd send them home.  And when she did, the patients started pouring in.  What stands out about the hospital is how quickly it developed — the first patients were admitted to Hickory less than three days after the doctors decided to open a hospital. By 1945, it had treated hundreds of patients and Hickory proudly wore the title of "Polio City."  Life magazine featured the town's response, and writers would continue to chronicle the "Miracle of Hickory," given its name in a March of Dimes pamphlet, for decades to come.  Moury was one of the first patients of the nationally known medical marvel. When he got to Hickory in 1944, there was an army tent pitched out front served as the admissions office. The buildings sat up on a hill, away from the road, and in the grass a patient sat on an ambulance stretcher. The hasty planning and architecture set Hickory apart from other hospitals, like Charlotte Memorial, that also housed polio patients.  At the hospital, treatments included "hot packs," where boiled wool was placed on the skin, and extensive physical therapy. This contrasted with earlier treatments, which put serious patients in full body casts. When they got out, they often spent the rest of their lives unable to walk.  Thanks to his treatment at Hickory and a later series of operations, Moury has walked with a fairly normal gait his whole life.  Looking back, Dan remembers sleeping in a ward with about 15 or 20 boys about his age. They built model airplanes, played board games and, of course, went through physical therapy to get better.  "It was really a great year for me because I hated school — I was always in trouble," he said. "And there wasn't any school going on." ***  Researchers at UNC's Southern Oral History Program are beginning a project to observe polio outbreaks, in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Seth Kotch, the director of the program, said looking at polio is meant to provide "a different way of learning about what it's like to live with a pandemic."  The Hickory phenomenon is something researchers are interested in knowing more about, Kotch said. It involved a community rallying around medical professionals to fight a disease and treat children, most of whom weren't even from Hickory. Kotch said echoes of that exist now, too, as health care workers come together to fight this pandemic.  But Kotch also sees echoes of the opposite: people mobilizing to spread misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccine.  Dr. Myron Cohen, the director of UNC's Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, said people were far less hesitant to get the polio vaccine when it was developed and introduced in 1955.  "There were always people who were concerned about anything new," Cohen said. "But there was certainly a lot more faith in science and scientists in the communications that existed in the '50s."  Social media, the 24-hour news cycle, people seeking attention — these are all things Cohen suspects contribute to widespread hysteria about vaccines. Medical technology is remarkable, Cohen said, but the anthropological and sociological elements of society are suffering.  In other words, even the best vaccine isn't effective if people refuse to get it.  When Moury took his son to get his polio vaccine at a school in Winston-Salem in the 1960s, he cried because he was so relieved his son would never have to go through what he did.  He likely wasn't the only one. Parents everywhere lined up to get their children the long-awaited inoculation. More than 60 years since the first polio vaccine was developed, Cohen said the medical community still discusses polio vaccination programs as an example of global cooperation to wipe out a devastating disease.  To eradicate a disease, Cohen said, is "both amazing and romantic."  "And to try and do it nowadays, with the way the world's organized, would shockingly maybe be more difficult, not less difficult," he said.   ***  The local post-polio group now-85-year-old Moury belongs to used to have about 50 members. Just before COVID-19, it was down to four polio survivors who met for lunch once a month. Some died, while others moved away to be close to their children.  "We're a dying breed," he said.  As polio becomes medical history rather than a present threat, Moury has also noticed that fewer and fewer doctors know about Post-Polio Syndrome, a disorder that can show up in individuals who were once infected with polio.  And about 30 years ago, Moury went to an orthopedic surgeon for an elbow problem. Knowing that Moury had polio and had surgery as a child, the surgeon traced every incision on his foot and named the operation.  "We studied these, but I've never seen them before," he told him.  Moments like these are reminders that polio is a thing of the past in the U.S. — and can remain that way if widespread vaccination continues. Researchers hope looking back at the moments in history when polio was widespread can help them shine a light on the pandemic the world faces right now.  "We want to learn about what it's like for our country to live through, to endure, to suffer with a disease this serious," Kotch said. "And what are the long-term effects of that experience?"  As for the hospital where Moury was treated so many decades ago, a historical marker stands in downtown Hickory to remind passersby of the miracle that occurred there. Moury, of course, was there the day they unveiled it.  Story and graphics originally produced for UNC Media Hub.  @MaeveSheehey @DTHCityState | city@dailytarheel.com To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Pandemic Parallels: Older adults remember polio vaccines - ABC10.com KXTV Posted: 20 Feb 2021 09:11 AM PST "If you look back, polio and this thing is almost the same type of thing," Hartt said. HARRISONBURG, Va. — Like many kids his age, James Hartt as a teen in the '60s enjoyed passing the time with a bit of naive, reckless abandonment. One way Hartt found to amuse himself was leaping from a nearby bridge and sticking the landing on the other side, until one day, Hartt woke up unable to move his legs. Immediately, fear set in that it could be poliomyelitis — every parent's waking fear in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Fortunately, a doctor deduced Hartt's diagnosis was two sprained legs as a result of his airborne adventures, but many children around the world were not as fortunate. When it became available, Hartt got his vaccine. Nearly 70 years later, Hartt senses a stark parallel to the excitement he felt then as he prepares to receive his second COVID-19 vaccine this weekend. "If you look back, polio and this thing is almost the same type of thing," Hartt said. "Polio, they used iron lungs back then. Now they're using … those air things that they run out of all the time. The symptoms are very close. The way they treated it was very close." Poliomyelitis — better known as polio — is an infectious disease that most commonly affects children, causing paralysis. Summer of 1894, the U.S. experienced its first polio epidemic, but it wasn't until 1955 that Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was approved for nationwide inoculation. Shortly after, a second vaccine option was approved for manufacturing with easier admission at a cheaper cost by Dr. Albert Bruce Sabin in 1961. After cases peaked in 1952, with roughly 58,000 people diagnosed with polio in the U.S., the final case of wild-virus polio in the U.S. was reported in 1979. With a tight-fisted grip around the nation, polio impacted thousands of children annually into the late 1950s, mercilessly attacking the nervous system. It was typically identified by paralyzed limbs, most frequently the legs. By 1957, there were less than 6,000 cases, and it had dropped to 120 cases by 1964, thanks to vaccines. Today's pandemic of the novel coronavirus is harder to identify physically and largely plagues the lungs, which can lead to pneumonia, respiratory failure, septic shock or death, in severe cases. RELATED: More COVID-19 vaccine shots will be available in Virginia Now those same children who were most vulnerable to the polio epidemic are grown and at greater risk for severe illness from COVID-19, but the fastest vaccine ever created is steadily being distributed in phases following the authorization of Pfizer's vaccine on Dec. 12 and Moderna's version six days later. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two doses of Salk's polio vaccine are 90% effective or more and three doses boost the effectiveness to 99-100%. Both Pfizer and Moderna report their vaccines show approximately 95% efficacy at preventing both mild and severe symptoms of COVID-19. "I believe in these shots, and I believe they're doing the best thing they can," Hartt said. According to the March of Dimes, the leading global agency fighting polio, up to 95% of people infected with polio were asymptomatic and less than 1% of infected persons experienced the virus attacking their nervous systems within the spine to result in partial or complete paralysis. Salem-based Rotarian William "Bill" Long is locally known as a polio expert. His father-in-law contracted polio in his youth, which stunted the growth of one leg. The connection inspired Long, who owns three iron lungs — a clunking beast of machinery that contracted lungs for those who could not breathe on their own — to allow the machinery to travel between Rotary clubs for educational purposes. Long said the demand for hospital care was overwhelming, much like today's limitation of ventilators, and Memorial and Crippled Children's Hospital in Roanoke was the primary care facility for sick children in the southern Valley. RELATED: Extra vaccine doses sent to Chesapeake "A whole floor with nothing but iron lungs on it," he said. "Space between each iron lungs, just wide enough for people to get through to work." In the Jan. 25, 1946, edition of James Madison University's newspaper, The Breeze, W. L. Baldwin, state chairman for the polio fundraiser, is quoted as saying, "It is believed that over the last two-year period, Virginia has been hit harder by poliomyelitis than any other state in the nation." Following data reports Virginia's county and city goals that year were set more than 25% higher due to the cost of caring for over 1,100 polio victims over the span of 19 months. Infantile paralysis struck down children of every income bracket in 94 of the 100 counties of Virginia over the previous two years. According to the CDC, there are 27 million total cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and 486,466 total deaths, as of Wednesday. Belmont resident Nancy O'Hare is scheduled to receive her second vaccine by the end of February, and she vividly remembers the fear that haunted her days and nights mothering a 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter while polio raged on. "I remember when Salk developed the vaccine. I remember when my children, who are now in their 60s, got the vaccine. … It took them years to develop the one to defeat polio, so I'm thrilled we're able to do it so quickly now, develop this vaccine," O'Hare said. Back then, O'Hare remembers going to doctor's offices to receive the polio vaccine while children received sugar cubes topped with Sabin's oral vaccine from schools or pediatrician offices. "We did not go to hospital, we did not go to vaccination stations. … When it was released to be able to be consumed, it was fast. It was all over the country," she said. Verona native Donn Meyer said he can remember his parents taking him to Fort Defiance High School at a very young age to receive the polio vaccine on a sugar cube in the '60s. RELATED: Walgreens pharmacies in Virginia to receive COVID-19 vaccine doses Back then, images of iron lungs were plastered on every screen, and harrowing stories of sick children written in papers. A nationwide vaccine campaign even featured Elvis Presley publicly receiving his vaccination. "We'd seen the pictures, we'd heard TV reports, we'd seen movies about it. And it was scary and that's why I think the world was so happy, or at least the United States was so happy, when the polio vaccine came out," O'Hare said. An archived Associated Press article published in Daily News-Record on Aug. 13, 1955, reported that Southern states pioneered public programs to distribute the Salk vaccine shots to schoolchildren and tentative survey results showed a 46% drop in polio deaths compared to the previous year. By the time of publication, 191 deaths were recorded, compared to 355 within the same time the previous year. While polio seems a thing of the past within the U.S., there is no cure for the disease and two countries remain endemic. Rotary International remains a leading agency in funding the end of polio, and members have contributed more than $2.1 billion to eliminate the paralyzing disease since 1979. With polio a shadow of a memory for most Americans today, those who endured the polio epidemic remember the clear parallels of quarantines, school closures and the dread. "Same things happened," Hartt said. "I think they've come across something that's going to work, and I think everyone should get it."

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