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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| How America Brought the 1957 Influenza Pandemic to a Halt |
| 2020-05-17 |
| [Jstor.org] Microbiologist Maurice Hilleman saw it coming, so the country made 40 million doses of the vaccine within months. Key paragraph: Hilleman knew the strain would be introduced to America by travelers returning from epidemic areas in the Far East. It was a matter of when, not if. At the time, people couldn’t yet cross the globe in a matter of 24 hours, so unlike today, American doctors, microbiologists and epidemiologists had a little more time to prepare. Hilleman concluded that the new flu would hit the US in the fall of 1957. At the time he was able to work directly with vaccine manufacturers—bypassing “the bureaucratic red tape” as he called it—so he asked them to start making the vaccines. The Public Health Service released the first cultures of the Asian influenza virus to manufacturers on May 12, 1957 |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #5 Today's FDA would put a halt to that. |
| Posted by: Spike Grineng8188 2020-05-17 13:38 |
| #4 ...power grab. I think Thalidomide opened the door for that. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-05-17 11:24 |
| #3 the country made 40 million doses of the vaccine within months. Pre-FDA? |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2020-05-17 09:52 |
| #2 And yet, the CDC estimates 116,000 Americans died from the 1957 flu. Another 100,000 from the 1968 Hong Kong flu. So, roughly double those numbers to compare to the 2020 population... |
| Posted by: Bobby 2020-05-17 08:04 |
| #1 At the time, people couldn’t yet cross the globe in a matter of 24 hours... Again, the prior administration violated the principle why we had an Ellis Island, so old diseases returned to America. Too many light flickers - people who have zero understanding of why the light goes on when you flick the switch. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-05-17 05:55 |