This week, Katie is bewitched with the polio epidemic and vaccines.

As the U.S. takes its first tentative steps toward post-COVID life with the massive roll-out of vaccines, Katie takes time to reflect on another virus that changed our world: polio. For decades, parents lived in fear of summer- time polio outbreaks. Children went from happy and healthy to iron lungs in a matter of days. As a result, public pools closed. Adolescents were banned from movie theaters, and parents everywhere hoped and prayed for a vaccine that would keep their children safe. The Polio vaccines continue to provide relief from this debilitating virus all over the world. Will we allow the COVID vaccines to do their work, too?

Recommended books (all can be found in our bookshop):

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

Growing Things by Paul Tremblay

The Royal We series by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky

The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis by Paul A. Offit

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life in an Iron Lung by Paul R. Alexander

Nemesis by Philip Roth

The Stolen Marriage by Diane Chamberlain

Severance by Ling Ma

Links: 

History Does Repeat Itself: Lessons from the Polio Vaccine

Parents PACK Personal Stories-Polio

Why 'New' COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects Are Totally Expected

The Cutter Incident: How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to a Growing Vaccine Crisis

History of Polio

Polio Timeline

How We Know the COVID Vaccine Won't Have Long Term Side Effects

Our Progress Against Polio

Polio Survivor Stories

Polio Survivor Stories II

Polio through History

The Man in the Iron Lung

Race and the Politics of Polio: Warm Springs, Tuskegee, and the March of Dimes

Vaccine Types

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