Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Polio?

Remember Polio? It was worse than bad. Iron Lungs, I know people that suffered from the disease.

Back in the fifties, they closed public swimming pools. Not movies, bars, restaurants, and church's.

The anti-vaxers could create another outbreak. My dad had it in the '50's. He made a full recovery but he was in the hospital and rehab for 4 months. He was one of the lucky ones.

No.

I don't remember Polio but I remember being told that I would end up in an "Iron Lung" if I didn't take the polio vaccine twice. I never knew or heard of anybody that had polio.

Both of my younger brothers contracted it in June of 1955, the last year of a big polio epidemic. I'd been in 1st grade and, consequently, had received the Salk vaccine. With the limited supplies available, only kids in school, who were considered at greatest risk, got the vaccine. The older of my two younger brothers lost complete use of his left arm. He was the first one diagnosed. The whole family had to go to our family doctor to get gamma globulin shots which, apparently helped offset the damage to the youngest brother who lost only partial use of one leg. The girl next door to us didn't fare so well, and ended up in an iron lung.

That was 65 years ago. I remember clearly to this day my brother screaming when our family doctor did a spinal tap in our living room. Things were a little different in those days.

Both my brothers have lived full and successful lives and never asked for or received any special treatment.

my cousins husband lost the use of both legs. he is now bedridden because he walked with crutches so long that he destroyed his shoulders.

One of my uncles got it in childhood back then. It crippled him below the waist but he managed to live a full life on the farm and successfully work as a mailman, living until his mid-80s. That was something of a medical "Guinness Book" achievement.

His arms and chest became massively powerful as one result of his polio. He could (and I witnessed him doing it) grab a fence post with both hands and lift himself out of his wheelchair holding his entire upper body horizontal. He could clamber up onto his favorite tractor and roam the farm on it. Amazing man.

Remember several who wound up wearing leg braces due to contracting polio.

The point I was trying to make is, all they closed back then was swimming pools.

My grandma said white girls could get pregnant if black boys swam in the same pools. 😃😃

My wife and I talked about this the other day in reference to this COVID fraud. We grew up in times when polio, scarlet fever, measles, influenza, mumps, and several other diseases could - and did - kill lots of people. Yet today, people cower and whimper over a virus that infects very few outside of slum-like cities and kills less than a fraction of one percent of those who do manage to catch it.

We have become a nation of cowards and weaklings. (Deliberately, some would say.)

If they swam past within a foot of them then it was possible. LOL

Where the hell is that like button?

Not by any streach the importance of a dreaded, and deadly sickness, Polio.

I very clearly remember all of that, including some homes being quarantined. I was in grade school then, after every summer vacation, we would go back to school to find one or three of our little classmates gone forever. One classmate was horribly deformed from polio but went on to finish school and go on to college, he just died a few years ago.

We had family member horribly crippled by it,my grandmothers brother ,
Contracted it in 1930 and was literally twisted like a corkscrew from it,he suffered terribly in the hospitals as a child and would never go back to one.
He became a C.P.A. ,but noboy in those days was going to hire a 5'4" hunchbacked,
Accountant,so he started his own business from home,had his cars specially modified so he could drive,stick shift, of all things.
As he got older,his lungs constricted more and more,he had trouble breathing
Refused to go to the hospital,and died at home in his early 60's.he was an inspiration to us all,never felt sorry for himself,never had a hard on for the world,always joking,lots of friends,he made the best out of a bad situation.
My step dad had polio in the 50's,they called him spider because his torso grew but his legs stayed small,my father in law had it in 50's also,had lung trouble from it. It was really a bad thing.

Do you remember the truth about polio and the vaccines or just what history wants you to?

I believe in vaccines, we raise cattle.