Looking back through the annals of my life, seldom have I met a year filled with as much trepidation as the upcoming 2025. This sense of dread doesn’t solely stem from the spite-driven president-elect, but it has also been fueled by his choices of inexperienced individuals for key federal positions. Counting on the notion of ‘let’s just wait and see’ offers little to no solace. One appointment that particularly worries me is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and his audacious critique of polio vaccines.
The early chapters of my life were spent with my four brothers in the heart of the Midwest. Each year, when the summer months arrived — those idyllic three months of break — we rejoiced, while our parents faced it with a feeling akin to a looming cloud. This was not merely due to them having to juggle their five sons at home; the primary concern was the prevalence of polio, especially during the 1940s when it reached its terrifying zenith.
Summer then was synonymous with a heightened risk of polio. It was a time when outdoor swimming pools, usually the centerpiece of a child’s summer, became a perilous source of potential infection. The fear of the disease was so intense that it swamped the joy of learning how to swim.
During that era, it was compulsory for households to display large yellow signs in their windows, indicating the infectious diseases lingering within each home. Each morning, before setting off for work, my father would canvas the neighborhood. He observed these signs, making mental notes to caution us about the proximity of these virulent menaces.
Drawing closer to the archetypal summer afternoons, my siblings and I were sent off to isolate in our rooms. We were imposed with a mandatory two-hour regimen of rest or solitary quiet time, to our chagrin. This was, in our parents’ understanding, an effective way to ward off any possible infection. Their approach was, by comparison to today’s standards, rudimentary, placing faith in wholesome nutrition and rest.
The specter of lethal diseases that now almost seem like a tale from another era had claimed the lives of a child each from both sides of my grandparents. These diseases stir no fear in the hearts of most today, thanks to the strides made in medical science.
Given the fact that Kennedy’s age doesn’t vastly differ from mine, it’s perplexing, and a spill-over from my memory lane like the one above makes his position on vaccines even more difficult to comprehend. Possibly, it’s a result of our divergent socio-geographic experiences or perhaps he had a vastly different childhood.
Creating a talisman of sorts, I keep a memento from the past, my Sabin oral polio vaccine card, in my purse all the time. It serves as a reminder of an era where the fear of contracting the disease was real, and getting vaccinated was a significant and memorable event.