Originally Posted by Birdwatcher
Miles... thanks for the update.

Browing around, I'm happy to read that polio is in full retreat most places. There was few things sadder than seeing a little kid on crutches, knowing the paralyzed leg would not grow and the sort of future faced by that kid.

Birdwatcher


I am old enough that I saw a lot of people with missing parts due to amputation to control infection. Polio hit my family in the fifties outbreak, but not me. I knew people with the scars of small pox. I had friends that were thalidomide babies. I have know people subjected to barbarism like lobotomy and electro-convulsive therapy. I had friends that we as a society just referred to as DPs. I had friends with numbers on their arms. I had family that were killed and maimed at work. I had friends whose fathers were killed at work. That's a lot of stuff that used to be common and now is quite rare

From that perspective, looking at people in near panic about minor stuff and blindly ignoring real threats without a clue about how we got to where we are often affects the way I respond.