Vaccines give us hope for brighter days
On April 12, 1955, the announcement from the University of Michigan that Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was successful set off a nationwide celebration.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Polio: An American Story,” David Oshinsky describes the reaction: “Church bells tolled, factory whistles blew. People ran into the streets weeping. President Eisenhower invited Jonas Salk to the White House, where he choked up while thanking Salk for saving the world’s children — an iconic moment, the height of America’s faith in research and science.”
The San Antonio Express declared: “Salk Vaccine Top Discovery in 166 years.”
When the first vaccine for COVID-19 was rolled out last week, church bells didn’t ring and people didn’t run into the streets. But it did unleash emotions of relief, happiness and optimism, especially among America’s health care workers, who were the first to be vaccinated.
Images of some of them crying or smiling are bittersweet signals of the suffering to which they’ve borne witness, and the hope and faith they have in the vaccine. On the same day of the first vaccinations, the U.S. hit the 300,000 COVID-19 death. The vaccines are cause for quiet celebration, heralding the eventual loosening of the coronavirus’s grip on our lives and the wonders and lifesaving discoveries yielded by America’s faith in research and science.
Salk’s vaccine was the culmination of decades of work to find a cure for polio. In just eight months, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is circulating, with the Moderna vaccine close behind. Some of the work on the vaccines preceded COVID-19, but the virus forced pharmaceutical companies to accelerate development, and here credit also goes to Project Warp Speed.
These vaccines have 90 to 95 percent efficacy rates and are endorsed by public health experts, including those front-line workers who eagerly and emotionally received the first doses.
More than 70 percent of Americans say they will take the vaccine when it becomes more widely available in the spring. Until that time arrives, all of us must continue to inoculate ourselves, as best we can, with the low-tech practices of wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding large gatherings. If we do, within a year church bells will be ringing and people will gather in the streets to celebrate a new day that looks like the old days we’ve missed.