On this day, April 13, 1955, this was the main headline on the New York Times:

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Announcement that Salk polio vaccine “works” and "is safe, effective, and potent” was today 1955:

Link to tweet

[pidge]

1. I was a young teacher then...my 1st graders all got vaccinated.

[niyad]

14. Welcome to our DU family.

[BobTheSubgenius]

22. Yes. welcome to DU!

[lunatica]

2. I was 7 years old.

I had many vaccinations at school when I was growing up. Probably all of them. I remember what a big deal they were.

[Arkansas Granny]

3. I was in the 3rd grade. The County Health Dept. set up a vaccination site at the largest

grade school in the county and all the students in the area were brought there and lined up for a shot. I don't recall anyone who didn't get vaccinated.

[Walleye]

4. I was in first grade. I think we lined up in the school auditorium

I remember that we were allowed to go swimming in the state park at Trap Pond again.

[2naSalit]

5. I was born a little later but...

Had to have the vaccine as a toddler, have the scars to prove it, one on each side. I had to have a second dose as the blister on my arm was smashed by my uncle who picked me up by my biceps when visiting right after the first dose.

[diane in sf]

15. That sounds more like a smallpox vaccination, which features blisters. No scarring from the Salk

polio shots.

[2naSalit]

36. I'm going to say you are correct...

I can't recall which were which, I had both.

[Rhiannon12866]

6. Twitter replies:

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[SleeplessinSoCal]

19. Had any other Republucan defeated the denier of truth, we'd be in far better shape today.

[jdadd]

20. I was a Polio Pioneer in 1954

I still have My Button and Certificate ... I figure I must have been in the Clinical Trials ... I need to Research this ...

[csziggy]

37. Here is an article about Polio Pioneers!

I Was a Polio Pioneer, and I Can’t Wait to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine

As a child during the polio epidemic, I never imagined my life might be saved twice by vaccines
Debbie Carlson
07 Jan 2021

As told to Alex Fulton

As people around the world wait eagerly for their turn to get vaccinated against COVID-19, I've been reflecting on my experience with a different, equally earth-shattering scientific breakthrough — the polio vaccine.

Starting in the spring of 1954, a group of children known as "Polio Pioneers" began to receive the polio vaccine invented by Jonas Salk. At the age of six, I was one of them as the first child in LaCrosse County, Wisconsin, to be inoculated with the Salk vaccine.

{SNIP}

I don't know exactly why I was chosen to be the first person in my county to get Salk's vaccine, but I can only guess that my parents jumped at the chance to make me a "Polio Pioneer." They were firm believers in science and had always been proactive about getting my siblings and me vaccinated on schedule.

{SNIP}

Maybe because my parents didn't seem worried about me getting the polio vaccine, I wasn't, either. I don't remember feeling scared when I walked into the room where the doctor waited — along with a reporter from the local newspaper who was sent to cover the occasion. According to the article he wrote, I didn't even flinch when I got my shot.

More: https://www.healthywomen.org/polio-pioneer-cant-wait-covid-19-vaccine/particle-2

[Norbert]

7. I was in the first grade and we got the Sabin sugar cube

And none of the kids bitched.

[dweller]

8. I was a bit over 1yr that day

but remember getting the shot later, had the scar for years ... but I also remember getting the sugar cube 🤔
Was it a 2 part vaccine ?
On edit: 1 may have been smallpox ... didn’t it leave a scar?
✌🏻

[murielm99]

9. I got that vaccination at school.

Smallpox did leave a scar. Mine is small. I have to look for it, it is so small.

[ShazzieB]

28. Yes, it's smallpox that left a scar.

I had that vaccination twice. Once as a small child, then it was required again before starting high school. If I still have any scars, I can't find them any more.

The Salk vaccine was just a regular shot, but if I remember correctly, multiple doses were necessary. I was 5 years old in 1955, and I have a very fuzzy memory of getting it.

[ShazzieB]

29. Yes, it was smallpox that left a scar.

Salk vaccine was just a regular shot and did not leave a mark.

[h2ebits]

10. I was vaccinated twice

First time was the Salk Polio Vaccine in first grade. Seems to me it was a couple of shots spread out but my recall may be in error. I do remember that it was done in school. We all lined up in the gym and were just done one at a time.

Second time was the sugar cube treatment several years later. I recall my parents taking me and there were, I think, three sugar cube treatments spread over a number of weeks.

[maddiemom]

21. I think most of us who got the Salk shots, got the sugar cube, as well, later.

I don't knw if it was to be "on the safe side," or what. I just remember that most kids that I knew of at that time got both.

[h2ebits]

24. Given what we know today about mutating and different variants

I think that the sugar cube treatment was seen as a booster "shot" but I remember the to be "on the safe side" comment as the reason for it and it was easy to administer since it was not a shot.

[murielm99]

39. I remember that.

We got the sugar cubes later. My dad took all of us to the high school to get them. We had to go twice for those.

On edit: I never had a single class without at least one kid who had survived polio. It did hit boomers hard. Our parents and our schools were right to protect their children from this terrible disease.

I wish the damn fools who are avoiding the vaccine for covid had memories of those times.

[burrowowl]

25. There are 3 types of polio that's why the 3 sugar cubes

[h2ebits]

35. Oh, thanks for this info

Also good to know that my memory of three trips for sugar cubes is accurate since I had to go deep into my memory banks for that one.

[calimary]

11. Wow! Good find! Amazing!

[Gaugamela]

12. "Could you patent the sun?"

EDWARD MURROW: Who owns the patent on this vaccine?

DR. JONAS SALK: Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. This is — could you patent the sun?

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/1/15/coronavirus_polio_vaccine_development_peter_salk

[StClone]

13. With the current "morans" Small Pox, too, would be around

I recall Small Pox vaccine was required from the '50's on for children. With the anti-Science push to control their voters today look at the damage the cons have done.

Thanks to the success of vaccination, the last natural outbreak of smallpox in the United States occurred in 1949. In 1980, the World Health Assembly declared smallpox eradicated (eliminated), and no cases of naturally occurring smallpox have happened since.

[George II]

16. I was in elementary school in NYC at that time. All students were required to get....

....the "polio shot" as it was called back then.

If people moved into the city with children, they had to show that their children had the shot. When parents enrolled their children in school, they had to agree to allow them to get the shot. I don't know how often, but every few years we had to get a "booster" shot. Later on the Sabin vaccine was developed - that was administered by putting a few drops on a sugar cube. That turned out to be more effective than the Salk vaccine, and was almost exclusively used after that.

[Fla Dem]

17. My Mom took all 4 of us kids to the local Armory....

The Mass national guard was coordinating the local vaccinations.

Unfortunately, my best friend from a family of 8 kids contracted Polio. She recovered, but ended up with an impaired leg which meant for the rest of her life she would have to wear a brace on her leg and walked with a limp.

But she was always a fun person and smart. She went on to graduate from nursing school. We stayed in touch for a number of years after high school. I was in her wedding, but we lost touch after she and her husband moved out of state. I still think of her and the struggle she went through and how much she achieved.

Couldn't go to public school then w/o a shot.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

18. What's not generally known about the Salk vaccine

is that they used Catholic schools to do the testing. Apparently they were considered better able to keep track of the kids, or some such. The Catholic school I attended was one of those, and my sister who was in 3rd grade at the time was in the test group. Only her class all got the placebo, so she still had to get the shots later.

And yes, it's smallpox vaccination that leaves a scar, NOT polio vaccine.

And the Sabin vaccine, the sugar cube one did not come out until 1960, I think.

[BobTheSubgenius]

23. And so began the scourge of autism.

I don't really need the "Sarcasm" thingie, do I?

[rurallib]

26. O what a feeling! I was 5 so remember little except

for the great relief my parents talked about for a long time not to have to worry about polio. I was the 3rd of 3 boys.

I do remember getting my head whacked trying to drink out of a drinking fountain one day. The real possibility that I would take that drink and get polio just scared my mother to death, so she did the first thing she could think of to stop me - WHACK!

[Mickju]

27. Our whole family got the Salk vaccine as soon as it was available.

Years later we all got the Sabin vaccine.

[Martin68]

30. Everybody was thrilled to get a chance to be vaccinated. People respected science. I have

an uncle who got polio and ended up with a limp in one leg. For some it was a lifetime inside an iron lung.

[aggiesal]

31. That was so yesterday ...

Who needs vaccines for Polio? It doesn't exist anymore.
I also have a right to refuse vaccines for Chicken Pox, Mumps & Measles, for the same reason.
And since I don't believe in wearing masks, I don't need the Covid vaccine just because you think it will save lives.
Come on, get with the program.

Do I need the sarcasm thingee?
Yea, I better include it.

[ananda]

32. I got my first polio vaccine that same year in second grade.

...

[Warpy]

33. I was one of Salk's guinea pigs in 1953 outside DC

I'd had the disease a couple of years earlier, but my mother was taking no chances.

When the Sabin vaccine came out, I got that too. I always say those sugar cubes set us up for the 60s.

I got stabbed again for nursing school, it was easier to get all the shots than chase paperwork, my parents moved a lot.

I can remember waking up with polio. It was horrifically painful.

[Hortensis]

38. Wow. A living historic progression, to now when wonderful

miracles saving lives are still happening. But vaccination is also -- far more than then! -- claimed to be the mark of the beast on stolen souls.

Who would ever have thought?

[Hekate]

34. I was 7, & can't tell if my memory of the sugar cube with the pink dot is mine or an overlay...

However, I vividly remember getting the shot, because a clinic was set up in a classroom at our elementary school. The organizers must have set the time for after adults got off work, because whole families came & it was dark when mine got there.

The line started at the classroom door, went down the sidewalk of the building, across the big playground, out the gates, and way down the sidewalk outside the school. My little sister was needle-phobic and pitched a fit that probably could be heard for a mile. After some soothing talk that didn’t work, Mom just held her tight until it got done. I can just hear the anti-vaxxers of this era clutching their pearls at the child-abuse and trauma. Fck that noise, you idiots. My baby sister had caught every damn thing my brother and I brought home from school before that, and it didn’t “strengthen her immune system,” it wrecked it.

The only people who didn’t bring their kids would have been considered fringe religious nuts back then. Every other adult in the country was righteously terrified of their children getting this deadly and crippling disease. Every single school had its share of children who survived but were crippled for life — and there were more that were not in school because they were not able to manage without a wheelchair or they were dead.

My grandchildren are unvaccinated. It breaks my heart. The most terrible diseases in the world were wrestled to the ground and almost vanquished in my parents’ generation and my generation — and look where we are now.

God bless Salk and Sabin. God bless the scientists.