Take virus seriously

Starting school in 1954, we children knew about polio. It was the girl in class who wore iron leg braces, the house we passed that contained an “iron lung” and someone lying helpless and immobile inside, and it was my friend with throat scars, a present from polio surgery.

In the first grade we collected dimes for the March Of Dimes to finance research. Polio fear thankfully ended with three sugar cubes saturated with a polio vaccine developed by the lionized Doctor Salk. So strange Dr. Salk was considered a medical hero, not as a witch doctor like Dr. Fauci.

Two years later fear returned. One of our classmates with a raging headache was sent home. She died of meningitis. The school sent home a sheet warning parents with written instructions where and how to get children vaccinated. I don’t remember any protests against governmental overreach, but these were different times.

In high school dread resurfaced when equine encephalitis, a disease transmitted to humans from horses, began to be spread by hungry mosquitoes (via their saliva). It was years before my aunt could raise her hands over her head.

Whispers started about a miserable, fatal disease spread by blood contact, AIDS. No vaccine arrived in the nick of time, but after years, treatments to mitigate the effects and reduce the spread were found (thank you, Dr. Fauci). No problem, no sweat, we have plenty of time to continue our foolish infighting. Let’s make this about morality and divine punishment.

Now we can add our current contender, covid, to the list of early warnings we’ve received, and this is just one generation of observations.

We could take these serial scourges seriously and get the message: Medical issues are not political opportunities.

Or, we could save our dimes and join the GoFundMe for Sen. Ted Cruz’s project. His apparent plan: Surround Texas with a chicken-wire wall to keep out Big Bird and his politically incorrect messages.

DANNY HANCOCK

Lonoke