The other time America desperately sought miracle cure for a devastating disease (opinion)

Editor’s Note: Charles McNair is a writer and narrative consultant based in Bogotá, Colombia. “Y’all are never gonna get polio.” The illness got Aunt Rose Nell As I grew up in my part of the world, the word polio came with a thunderclap of fear. In the McNair household, the words “polio” and “Aunt Rose Nell” and “iron lung” and “crippled” clustered together in conversations. The vaccine officially arrived for many kids in my part of the world on March 31, 1965, with this headline in our hometown newspaper, The Dothan Eagle: “Timetable Given For Polio Program” Vaccines would be administered on a schedule to hundreds of thousands of first and second grade Alabama children in a broad effort to eradicate the disease. Waiting for another miracle As we’ve endured the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve begun to see a headline nearly every day – usually discreet, speculative – that mentions some potential vaccine or remedy for the virus.