With the polio vaccine, the high-priority group was children. It began with 7 and 8 year olds in late spring 1955. Polio was seasonal, peaking in summer, and when vaccination began in spring 1955 there was uncertainty about whether it would be safe to keep putting it in kids' arms during the peak summer months. By June, the expert consensus was that the benefits outweighed the risks.

Polio history: After the successful field trial of Salk's vaccine was announced, the Eisenhower administration bowed to pressure from drug companies to let several firms mass-produce it at once, while failing to monitor their procedures closely to ensure safety. /1 One company screwed up and contaminated several lots of vaccine. As a result, dozens of kids got polio directly from that company's vaccines - and the crisis halted mass vaccination for over a year, so >25K more kids got polio from being unvaccinated for the 1955 polio season. /2

“Gaily Forward for the ERA”: I love this flyer aimed at gay men and lesbians promoting a 1980 rally for ERA ratification in Chicago’s Grant Park. Found it in a box of unprocessed ephemera at @GerberHart while researching Queer Clout. /1 What's striking is the detailed argument that the ERA matters for lesbians and gay men both separately and together. /2

Just did this online assignment and it worked well: "On the following pages are 12 covers of mainstream news magazines from the 1980s that are devoted to the HIV/AIDS crisis. (By mainstream, I mean that these are weekly, commercial newsmagazines aimed at a general audience.)" "Choose three of the covers and look at them closely, taking into account the date. For each of the three covers, write a paragraph analysis of 2-4 sentences.

Attacking the #1619Project, historian Peter Coclanis says that lately “in its domestic coverage [the NYT] reads at times more like a Midtown edition of the Amsterdam News than a national newspaper of record.” It’s a strange, revealing turn of phrase. /1
spectator.us/1619-project-2… The Amsterdam News, founded 1909, is one of the nation’s oldest Black-owned newspapers. Like its peers, it‘s declined in circulation and influence since the 1940s-60s—a time when Black journalists couldn’t get jobs at white-owned papers. /2

Did someone ask about the history of anti-LGBTQ discrimination in America? As @KevinMKruse would say, let's dig in.

https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1135927412280238082

@KevinMKruse In the early 1950s, the State Department began systematically rooting out and firing gay and lesbian employees, on the theory that they were "security risks."