First person testimony opinion supports vaccines safety and effectiveness

What is Polio? Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a paralyzing and potentially deadly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under the age of 5. The virus spreads from person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can then attack the nervous system.

Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. Our goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever.

As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, The Rotary International efforts with the Gates Foundation have reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent, since the first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines, in 1979.

This echo opinion letter by Valerie Plaine was published in the The Haverhill-Gazette, a Massachusetts newspaper:

I am a polio survivor. I think about that from time to time but have never dwelled on it during my lifetime.

I was lucky compared to many. When I was very young, I had to wear a brace on my left leg and I was seen regularly at Boston Children’s Hospital. In the 1950s, when I was in the second grade, I had a muscle transplant at Children’s Hospital, where I had the top three surgeons, Dr. Green, Dr. Grice, and Dr. Trott. 

People are often surprised to hear that muscle transplants were performed in the 1950s, but I believe that these physicians were pioneers, long since forgotten.

I missed 60 days of school that year as I wore a full-length cast on my leg for quite some time. By third grade, even though my leg was still somewhat weak, I no longer had to wear the brace. I was followed by Children’s Hospital until I was 16. My parents would take turns getting time off from work to take me in for my appointments to see doctors and physical therapists.

I remember fondly some of my trips to the hospital ended with excursions to Filene’s Basement with my mother, and to high school basketball tournaments at the Garden with my father. 

I played sports throughout school and was always quite active. I went to college and graduate school where I earned an MBA. I went on to become a licensed certified social worker and then a licensed nursing home administrator.

There are still millions of polio survivors in the United States and around the world. But I am not writing about us today. I am writing about the near eradication of polio, a virus that particularly struck infants and adolescents.

The polio virus was very contagious and was a crippling and a killing disease that attacked the central nervous system, sometimes causing paralysis, with the most serious cases requiring what was called the “iron lung” to breathe.

This was a feared disease, with parents guarding their children, and making efforts to keep them from areas where they thought they might “catch it”.

History tells us about Dr. Jonas Salk and the brave parents and children of the 1950s. Many of you not yet born in the 1950s, ‘60s or ‘70s may not even know Jonas Salk. He was a hero, a real-life hero. In the early 1950s he developed a polio vaccine from inactivated poliovirus. It was tested for more than two-and-a-half years and during that time, in 1953, he vaccinated his own children. In 1954, his vaccine was tested on more than 1.5 million children.

I believe that the parents of the 1950s courageously brought their children to be vaccinated against the dreaded polio virus. They knew they had to do it to protect them. I do not remember, nor ever heard of stories of any parents refusing to have their children vaccinated, and we, as children (yes, even those of us who had already had polio), dutifully lined up to be vaccinated.

I remember clearly a boy who fainted right in front of me after having just received his shot. That gave me pause for a second or two, and then I stepped right up with a little hesitation and took my turn.

I have been thinking about this more these days because polio has all but been eradicated from the world*. 

Do you know how many people’s lives have been saved, or how many children have been spared from the muscle wasting disease? I am sure some statistician has already figured it all out. Dr. Salk’s vaccine prevented not only the children of his time, but future generations from having to deal with that virus and its effects.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Salk and other physician researchers of his day, and the millions who bravely lined up for the vaccine, in the U.S. and throughout the world. Because there is no cure for polio. The polio vaccine is what put an end to polio.

Yes, let me repeat that: the vaccine put an end to polio, a crippling disease that was a virus.

I know it was a different time then, but there was no discussion about “my body, my choice”; “I know what’s best for me”; “they developed the vaccine too fast”; or other such statements that have been made in today’s world about the coronavirus.

Vaccines are safe and effective. Researchers have worked on vaccines for a few hundred years.

Receiving the COVID-19 vaccine has nothing to do with your own personal right not to take the vaccine. There really should be no question about taking it. Taking the vaccine is about protecting you, your children, your parents, your friends and neighbors.

But it is also more than that. Taking the vaccine is for the common good, for humanity. This really is a responsibility that we all share.

Since 1988, The World Health Organization has had a goal to eradicate polio and that goal continues today, with efforts to reach the most remote areas. The eradication of COVID-19 should be a goal for all of us. We have the means to do it. How fortunate we are!

The ongoing history of the near eradication of polio is inspiring. When history is written about our time, what will it say about us?

Valerie Splaine is a recently retired licensed nursing home administrator and a resident of Danvers.

Dr. Jonas Salk "The People's Scientist"

Jonas Edward Salk (1914-1995) was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine. 

Coronavirus outbreak illuminates the depth and incompetence of the Donald Trump administration

This echo opinion letter was published in the Massachusetts newspaper The Daily News, reporting in Amesbury and Newburyport.

"The distractions he’s created and ensuing turmoil could be considered a dereliction of duty, but it’s more..."

To the editor:  The coronavirus outbreak illuminates the depth and incompetence of the Trump administration and the importance of citizens looking beyond the charisma of a candidate and judge him or her for coherence of thought along with judgment of those who he/she chooses to make critical decisions regarding the health and welfare of our country.

We know the president loves to use chaos to distract from the incompetence which emerges each day, whether it be the disaster of his border policies, or his ongoing exposure to criminal activity ranging from his impeachment to the Mueller Report and his coverups of relationships with porn stars and associations with indicted/convicted felons.

The distractions he’s created and ensuing turmoil could be considered a dereliction of duty, but it’s more an assault on the American people and our allies. 

We know the administration refused the offer of sorely needed testing kits from the World Health Organization (WHO) back in January, and The New York Times recently reported that “for weeks thousands of flu samples sat in Seattle as researchers sought to test and flag them for the coronavirus. The CDC wouldn’t allow it.” Considering the coronavirus hotspot Seattle has become, well, we all know what is said about hindsight.

But when it comes to the safety and protection of our nation, hindsight shouldn’t be the norm. This administration has made excuse after excuse along with the constant finger pointing to anyone but those they see in the mirror. Our safety has been ceded to the chaos wrought in the very departments that are responsible for the dire situation we’re in as part of Trump’s anarchic leadership style. To wit:

Since 1942, 16 directors of the CDC have served the country. In Trump’s first three years, he’s had four directors or 25% of the total over 78 years of past administrations.

Under Trump’s first three years there have been five secretaries of Health and Human Services. That’s the same number under the previous 24 years of both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Last, the FDA, which falls under HHS and is responsible for approving the desperately needed coronavirus tests, has had five commissioners over Trump’s three years compared to eight for the previous 24 years of Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

Leadership matters at all levels and Trump’s individual lack of it has produced chaos at the upper organizational levels of the three most critical federal government departments that state and local governments rely on most in these types of crises. It’s no wonder the most serious health threat to our country in generations is being addressed so incoherently. We can only hope the voices of reason and science that have grown louder the past few days continue.

Gary Tirone  Newburyport

Coronavirus denial - Donald Trump creates dangerous conspiracy theories

Ignorance and coronavirus- echo opinion editorial published by The Dallas Morning News editorial board:

World Health Organization warns against conspiracy theories  and trolls- a report published in the BBCNews

DALLAS Texas- We have often said that skepticism is a good policy when dealing with unsourced spewing on the Internet. After all, we can’t begin to count the mindless conspiracy theories on any number of subjects that get passed around social media as truth.

As many have said with slightly different versions of the quote, “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth puts on its boots.” And that was said before the Internet and the cottage industry of fake news struck an unholy alliance.

Truth often takes a backseat to rumor, and while sophisticated bias can be hard to detect, some rumors are so outlandish as to make us wonder who these folks who’ve lost the ability to discern are. Yet, while most of us are learning about the coronavirus as concerned citizens, conspiracy theories are making the rounds faster than medical assessments.

No, coronavirus is not a bioweapon gone awry in China. No, it wasn’t patented in the U.K. in 2015. Nor is it a plot hatched somewhere — pick one, say, China or the CIA — to exterminate a portion of China’s population. And no, no, no: Spraying alcohol or chlorine all over your body will not stop the coronavirus. (Using alcohol-based hand sanitizer will help contain the spread, but you can’t make hand sanitizer out of Tito’s Vodka!)

The internet is constantly serving up the rumor du jour, prompting the World Health Organization to put together a mythbuster website.

Public health experts are still learning about the virus that is now spreading around the world. The difference is that public health officials search for data, cause and effect, as well as ways to contain or reverse infections.

In the wave of natural fear around an epidemic, conspiracies and half-baked medical advice take on lives of their own. And sometimes conspiracies can be downright xenophobic.

At moments like these we draw wisdom from Seinfeld’s George Costanza, who said: “Jerry, just remember. It’s not a lie ... if you believe it.”

And that is the problem. Coronavirus conspiracies are lies, and sadly, too many of us believe them.

(P.S. Where are the Coronavirus tests?)

Florence Nightingale and the Year of the Nurse

The Economist 2020- The Year of the Nurse

Science and Technology

"At the same time, as diagnostic systems and surgical robots advance, nursing may be the only aspect of the health-care profession in which machines will not replace human beings." 

Nursing Summit in Augusta Maine - Nightingale exhibit 

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION has designated 2020 as the “Year of the Nurse”, marking 200 years since the birth of Florence Nightingale, who established the principles of modern nursing and hospital sanitation. If she were to drop in on a hospital today, Nightingale would be pleased to see the progress in nursing since her day—and how it is poised to change in the years to come.

Nightingale founded the first nursing school, at a hospital in London in 1860, and wrote some 200 books and papers. She was the first woman admitted to the Royal Statistical Society, for her pioneering work in statistical infographics. While tending to British soldiers in the Crimean war, she made the case for hospital sanitation using a variation of the pie chart, entitled “Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East”, to show that more soldiers died from infections than from injuries. She drew up the chart to “affect through the Eyes what we may fail to convey to the brains of the public through their word-proof ears”. In what became known as a Coxcomb diagram, each slice of the pie has the same angular width and an area representing the amount in a given category (such as number of dead men).

Many, if not most, people today think of nursing as a narrow set of skills learned on the ward, much like it was back in Nightingale’s time. In fact, nurses have university degrees and there are doctorate-level studies in nursing. Like doctors, nurses specialise in myriad clinical disciplines, such as neonatology, cardiology and Accident & Emergency. There are even forensic nurses. Such is the pace of innovation in nursing that some issues of American Nurse Today, a monthly journal, run north of 70 pages.

In 2020 and beyond nurses will be doing a growing number of tasks conventionally reserved for doctors, both in acute and chronic care. Already, nearly two-thirds of anaesthetics given to patients in America are administered by certified nurse anaesthetists. In Britain specialised nurses now perform some types of abdominal, orthopaedic and cardiac surgery. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa nurses are being trained to do emergency caesarean sections, with results comparable to those achieved by doctors.

The changing face of nursing

Nurses will be increasingly tapped to replace general practitioners in treating patients with diabetes and other chronic conditions that require lifestyle changes. Nurses are particularly well placed to provide this kind of holistic care, which takes into account each person’s life circumstances, because they have long been patients’ confidants. In the words of Brian Dolan, an academic, “people look up to a doctor, but they look a nurse in the eye.” In surveys about trust in people from various professions, nurses invariably come top.

What would disappoint Nightingale in her time-travel to the present is that the transformation of nursing has been uneven. In countries as varied as India, Germany and Portugal nurses are still largely treated as doctors’ minions and may not even diagnose common ailments or prescribe medication. And although nurses make up nearly half of the world’s health-care workforce—and 90% of patients’ contacts with health workers—they are often not at the table when health-policy decisions are made. Even the World Health Organisation did not have a chief nursing officer until 2018.

The other trend that would make Nightingale furrow her brow is that nursing has lost its lustre, so most posts are hard to fill. In many countries no profession has a higher number of vacancies. In the next decade the shortage of nurses will remain the biggest problem that national health systems all over the world will face. By 2030 the world will be short of 7.6m nurses, which is a third of their number today.

To turn this tide, efforts to draw more people into nursing and keep trained nurses from leaving the profession will accelerate. Countries will focus more on recruiting nurses locally, rather than luring them from abroad—often from poor places where health care is already crippled by nurse shortages. National media campaigns will aim to raise the profile of nursing by dispelling outdated views about what the job entails. Some may borrow ideas from Singapore’s highly effective campaign, which has commissioned nursing dramas, documentaries and even a “nursing anthem” (in the form of a catchy pop-music video). The campaign’s Instagram account has something for everyone, including love stories of couples who met in nursing school.

Prodded by a global campaign which began in 2018, more hospitals and other employers will set up professional-development and leadership programmes for nurses. There will be more talk—and, it is hoped, action too—about how to enable nurses to work at the top of their licence and abilities. Technology will be roped in to make their work more manageable and reduce burnout. Algorithms, for example, will be used to map the optimal routes for ward shifts.

At the same time, as diagnostic systems and surgical robots advance, nursing may be the only aspect of the health-care profession in which machines will not replace human beings. 

Even though nursing is shaped by medical science and technology, as it has been since Nightingale’s time, its healing powers remain rooted in empathy and a human touch.

This article appeared in the Science and Technology section of the print edition under the headline "Florence and the machine".

Slavea Chankova: health-care correspondent, The Economist