Dr. Lucky Tran Sep 4, 2025
The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.
Show threadEdelruth, PBS Passport Holder

@luckytran

And, they could resolve this by just walking through an old cemetery.

Or ask someone my age: my parents shipping us children out of Dublin for the summer(s) when polio threatened.

Most of us (I have a lot of siblings) had a classmate who wore calipers.

Sep 4, 2025 at 11:40pmWeb
Show threadGarth CummingsSep 4, 2025
@Edelruth @luckytran Itzhak Perlman, who just turned 80.
Show threadMx VerdaSep 5, 2025
@Edelruth ... what's a caliper? / will look up later @luckytran
Show threadEdelruth, PBS Passport HolderSep 5, 2025

@MxVerda

Did you see the movie Forrest Gump? The character playing child Gump is in polio calipers at the start of the movie. They were a rehabilitation tool that looked like an metal splint, held to the legs with leather straps (polio epidemics predate velcro). The leg muscles of a portion of polio victims were too weak for them to walk without assistance for quite a while during recovery. Years, for some.

@luckytran