A vaccine reminder

My mother would have turned 86 this July. She told me that when she was in high school in the early 50s, she'd visit her friends in the hospital who had contracted polio. They were in iron lungs, only their heads sticking out of long metal cylinders that helped them breathe, a crude version of our modern respirators.

When the polio vaccine became available, people "waited in lines that stretched around the block" to get their children vaccinated. Thousands were dying every year and far too many of those who recovered were paralyzed for life.

Unfortunately far too few of us have this family memory of what an epidemic can do, and what our world looked like before vaccines. Stay home, stay safe, and get vaccinated.

Matthew Alschuler

Warren