The Race For A Polio Vaccine Differed From The Quest To Prevent Coronavirus
In the 1950s, as Dr. Jonas Salk and virologist Albert Sabin worked to create a vaccine to prevent infantile paralysis, the threat from polio was already long familiar to Americans.
COVID-19 isn't the first health crisis the United States has faced that experts say a vaccine will be needed to resolve: In the 1950s, people lived in fear their children might be stricken with infantile paralysis, better known as polio â and they were eager for scientists to find a solution.
"There was a lot of anxiety," says New York University medical historian David Oshinsky, author of
