When will it end?

For the past two years this has been the question. Will this covid thing ever end? We can look back to the 1940s and 50s for guidance. Back then another viral infection was terrorizing the world. In a one-week period (1947) during the polio epidemic two children died in Stonewall. I knew them both and it certainly got my attention. One was a boy, my age who, healthy and riding his bike around Stonewall one day, died in his sleep that next night. Chocked to death by a paralyzing virus called polio. The next Sunday, a pretty teen girl went to Sunday School at the First Baptist Church with a sore throat.

Jackie Harrell, a pretty 14-year-old who sang solos in church, was well known in Stonewall. Her dad was the high school principal and her mom was an English teacher at the school. Her mom was also the organist at our church so when the girl got up and left church during the song service, I saw her mom leave the organ and follow her out. But it was after church we learned that the girl had been rushed to the hospital. Polio smothered the girl to death that afternoon about 2PM. The two deaths shocked us.

The Ada News showed pictures of children in “Iron Lungs” the next weeks. Monte Bell, a popular radio star of the day gave his daily tip on how to avoid catching this dread disease and had a new tip each day on what to do to combat the virus. But we knew it would take a vaccine to save us. Since this was mostly affecting children and teens, all the kids in my family were terrorized by it. My mom was obsessed with keeping our bathroom bowl clean and scrubbed. Copious amounts of Listerine gargled our throats and we started really being worried about public events.

Not many years later, a doctor names Jonas Salk perfected a vaccine and when it went public there was near panic by people fighting to get the shot. Years later, an oral polio vaccine was offered to the public. The Daily Oklahoman featured long lines of people lined up trying to get this vaccine. In Oklahoma City, police patrolled the long lines maintaining order. Everyone wanted this shot. It worked. The fear of Polio vanished overnight. Thanks to this vaccine.

Now here we are, swamped as a nation by another virus. Covid-19. We have divided ourselves up into pro-vax and antivax people. In these groups there enters the issue of race, political parties, and general suspicion of authority. And ignorance. As a health care professional, I can say this: People of the 50s who had been to high school probably had a greater understand of something called “General Science” than we find in the general population of today. I can remember as a high school student over at Stonewall taking a course called just that: “General Science.” We learned the things that the school thought we ought to know. A little bit about electric power and the simple laws governing it, how cites provided water and sewer services and things about germs and hygiene.

Today, suspicion and worry define us. We seem to look and seek ways into which we can divide ourselves and post hateful ideas on face book about why we are right, and others are wrong. As a direct result of these pollical notions, we have a nation that has a percent of its people unsure of this current endemic Covid-19. It has paralyzed our ability to effectively use a proven vaccine to end this emergency.

And it’s not just us. Last week 50,000 people rioted in Brussels, Belgian against the government. Why? Their government wanted to require its population to take this vaccine. Similar protests are taking place around the world and here in the USA we are forced into admitting that the virus will just have to run its course. Because we wouldn’t take the shots earlier, the virus is now just a part of us. It is believed that one million or more will or will have paid for this idea with their lives. How sad indeed to think that this Covid will just be another hazard and as common as a cold.

Hope you have a good week. Be sure and go to your church this Sunday.

Wayne Bullard, DPh

cwaynebullard@gmail.com