‘Knock Out Polio’ vaccine campaigns in 1950s, 1960s Sonoma County helped eradicate the virus

The speed of development of the coronavirus vaccine — under a year — would have astounded people in the first half of the 20th century who waited decades for a polio vaccine.

Unlike coronavirus, polio — or poliomyelitis — wasn’t declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, but rather, an epidemic that peaked in communities during summer months beginning in the U.S. on the East Coast in the 1890s.

In Sonoma County, updates on polio cases, research efforts and the “Knock Out Polio” vaccination campaigns regularly made the front page in local newspapers through the 1950s and 1960s, similar to coronavirus news today.

There were frequent local fundraising efforts for the March of Dimes, an organization founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to combat polio, a virus that spreads through contaminated food or water in the mouth and can cause flu-like symptoms, paralysis, infection and death.

Six hundred Santa Rosa women “armed with Mason jars, empty milk bottles, bags, sacks, cartons” went door-to-door in January 1951 to collect funds to fight polio. Most were mothers “who understand the threat this dread disease holds for their young,” according to a 1951 Press Democrat article.

In 1953 Dr. Jonas Salk announced the first polio vaccine in the United States, which required three injections. By 1961, an oral vaccine developed by Dr. Albert Sabin was approved in the U.S.

“Salk vaccine held polio in check, but did not completely eliminate the dreaded crippling disease. Sabin oral vaccine is so much more effective that mankind can look forward to complete elimination of polio,” Press Democrat writer William H. Russell wrote on Sept. 9, 1962.

The “Knock Out Polio” campaign that year aimed to vaccinate 157,000 in Sonoma County, 52,000 in Mendocino County, and 16,000 in Lake County. There were 26 clinics in Sonoma County in 1962 that distributed the Sabin polio vaccine, according to Russell’s report.

Due to the success of vaccination programs in the North Bay and across the county, the U.S. hasn’t seen a polio case since 1979, although the virus is still a threat in some countries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.