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Magazine article entitled "Don't take immunity for granted!"
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When Good Housekeeping Meant Getting Vaccinated Against Polio

The pages of 1950s lifestyle magazines offer a glimpse of a time when childhood vaccines were anything but controversial.
by Katherine Churchill via HNN on February 19, 2025
Young boy receiving polio vaccine from doctor

Hesitancy Against Hope: Reactions to the First Polio Vaccine

Hesitancy and opposition to vaccines has existed in the past, and such awareness provides needed context to the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine within American history.
by Stephen E. Mawdsley via Process: A Blog for American History on January 9, 2024
Little girl preparing for a polio vaccine.

We Didn't Vanquish Polio. What Does That Mean for Covid-19?

The world is still reeling from the pandemic, but another scourge we thought we’d eliminated has reemerged.
by Patrick Cockburn via The Nation on September 19, 2022
Elvis receiving polio vaccine

Elvis Presley Gets the Polio Vaccine on The Ed Sullivan Show, Persuading Millions to Get Vaccinated

In 1956, Elvis Presley was vaccinated backstage at The Ed Sullivan Show in order to encourage teenagers to get the polio vaccination.
by Josh Jones via Open Culture on September 15, 2021
A comic overview of vaccine development production trials to deliveries.

The Last Time a Vaccine Saved America

Sixty-six years ago, people celebrated the polio vaccine by embracing in the streets. Our vaccine story is both more extraordinary and more complicated.
by Howard Markel via The New Yorker on April 12, 2021
African-American child with polio
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Racial Health Disparities Didn’t Start With Covid: The Overlooked History of Polio

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted racial disparities with roots in the past.
via Retro Report on March 16, 2021
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Polio on Trial

What if there is a vaccine, but not everyone gets it? Exploring the lessons of the polio vaccine's shortcomings as we address a new public health crisis today.
via Future Of America's Past on August 10, 2020

When Schools Closed in 1916, Some Students Never Returned

Research into the long-term consequences of a polio outbreak found that older students are at highest risk for harm.
by Stephen Mihm via Bloomberg on June 26, 2020

Candy Land Was Invented for Polio Wards

A schoolteacher created the popular board game, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, for quarantined children.
by Alexander B. Joy via The Atlantic on July 28, 2019

The Last of the Iron Lungs

A visit with three of the last polio survivors in the U.S. who still depend on iron lungs.
by Jennings Brown via Gizmodo on November 20, 2017
A child in an iron lung, used to treat polio patients, aided by a nurse, 1940s.

There is No Cure for Polio

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Melissa Jacobs via Digital Public Library of America on April 7, 2016
A family affair: Roosevelt was just 31 in 1913, when President Woodrow Wilson appointed him assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy — a post previously held by his cousin Teddy.

The Making of FDR

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s struggle against polio transformed him into the man who led the country through the Great Depression and World War II.
by Jonathan Darman via The Saturday Evening Post on April 5, 2024
Child in iron lung.

How the Iron Lung Transformed Polio Care

In 1928, two Americans invented a large metal breathing device that would become synonymous with polio treatment.
by Hannah Wunsch via UnDark on May 19, 2023
Two photos of children being vaccinated.

Vaccinating Kids Has Never Been Easy

Uptake of COVID vaccines for kids has been slow, but it has been slow for other vaccines too.
by Sarah Zhang via The Atlantic on March 10, 2022
Surgeon General Vivek Murphy, Texas Children's Hospital chief pathologist Jim Versalovic and first lady Jill Biden visit with kids before they receive their coronavirus vaccine shots on Nov. 14 in Houston.
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History Shows That Passing School Coronavirus Vaccine Mandates Could Require Exemptions

Enacting vaccination mandates demands political give and take.
by Elena Conis via Made By History on November 19, 2021
Moscow COVID-19 vaccination center
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The U.S. and Russia Could Join Forces to Get People Vaccinated. They Did Before.

The forgotten history of Soviet-American vaccine diplomacy.
by Yana Demeshko, Ruth Gabor, Ivan Grek, Kristen Ho via Made By History on September 1, 2021
Children receiving a vaccine.

Throughout History, Mass Vaccine Rollouts Have Been Beset by Problems

As the country scrambles to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, the process has been hindered by many of the same issues that impeded other mass vaccination rollouts.
by Dugan Arnett via Boston Globe on January 10, 2021
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Coronavirus: Lessons From Past Epidemics

Dr. Larry Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox, says past epidemics can teach us to fight coronavirus.
via Retro Report on March 20, 2020
Rahima Banu
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Coronavirus: Lessons From Past Epidemics

Dr. Larry Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox, says past epidemics can teach us to fight coronavirus.
via Retro Report on March 19, 2020
Anti-KKK demonstrators at the 1924 Democratic National Conventions.

The Craziest Convention in American History

Think this year’s Democratic convention is going to be nuts? One hundred years ago, Democrats took 103 ballots—and more than two weeks—to choose a candidate.
by Walter Shapiro via The New Republic on June 24, 2024
A milk maid shows her cowpoxed hand to a physician, while a farmer or surgeon offers to a young man inoculation with cowpox that he has taken from a cow.

Whack-a-Mole

Vaccine skepticism and misinformation have persisted since the smallpox epidemics. With the internet, it's only gotten worse.
by Rivka Galchen via London Review of Books on January 27, 2022
A protestor wearing syringes, protesting the vaccine mandate
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Doubters’ Push for Religious Exemptions from Coronavirus Vaccination May Not Work

With all organized religions supporting vaccination, states may question the sincerity of those claiming exemptions from getting vaccinated.
by Kira Ganga Kieffer via Made By History on September 20, 2021
Medical men wearing masks at a US Army hospital

Why Do We Forget Pandemics?

Until the Covid-19 pandemic, the catastrophe of the Spanish flu had been dropped from American memory.
by Nina Burleigh via The Nation on April 26, 2021

Paper Products. Powder Rooms. What Past Pandemics Left Behind Forever.

Disease reshapes our lives in surprising ways.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on March 23, 2021
A painted picture of someone receiving a vaccine

History Shows Americans Have Always Been Wary of Vaccines

Even so, many diseases have been tamed. Will Covid-19 be next?
by Alicia Ault via Smithsonian on January 26, 2021

Things as They Are

Dorothea Lange created a vast archive of the twentieth century’s crises in America. For years her work was censored, misused, impounded, or simply rejected.
by Valeria Luiselli via New York Review of Books on October 29, 2020

Signs and Wonders

Reading the literature of past plagues and suddenly seeing our present reflected in a mirror.
by Francine Prose via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 14, 2020

Picasso Meets Polio

The unusual union of a renowned artist and the discoverer of the Polio vaccine.
by Charlotte Decroes Jacobs via Nautilus on July 29, 2020
Person getting a vaccination.
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A Coronavirus Vaccine Can’t Come at the Expense of Fighting the Virus Now

Government investment into a cancer vaccine had drawbacks.
by Robin Wolfe Scheffler via Made By History on July 24, 2020
Illustration of body being loaded on to a cart

Pandemic Syllabus

Disease has never been merely a biological phenomenon. Instead, all illnesses—including COVID-19—are social problems for humans to solve.
by David S. Barnes, Merlin Chowkwanyun, Kavita Sivaramakrishnan via Public Books on July 13, 2020
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