Polio Stole His Legs: Man Aims To Counter COVID Vaccine Hesitancy

SOUTH DAKOTA — An epidemic that rocked the United States in the 1940s and 1950s and killed nearly 2,000 people a year was fully eradicated less than 30 years later, but the consequences of being unvaccinated live on in one South Dakota man.

And Mark Sternhagen has something to say about it now that millions of Americans are rolling down their sleeves and saying no to the coronavirus vaccine.

No new cases of polio have originated in the United States since 1979, thanks to efficient vaccination and herd immunity. But before vaccines knocked out community spread of the poliomyelitis virus, it paralyzed as many as 15,000 people a year in the early 1950s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At its peak, the disease disabled more than 35,000 people a year, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and between 1951 and 1954, it took the lives of over 1,879 people each year.

The first vaccine against the virus was approved in 1955 and was followed eight years later by an oral vaccine, according to the CDC. By the 1960s, fewer than 100 cases of polio were known to be active in the county.

Case counts dropped to fewer than 10 in the 1970s.

Although polio was never declared a pandemic, swift action and vaccine compliance helped save thousands of lives. That is especially clear for Mark Sternhagen of South Dakota.

Polio stole his ability to walk.

Sternhagen told KELO, a news station in Sioux Falls, that he fell ill with polio before he was a year old. He was the only member of his immediate family who had not been vaccinated against the virus. By no coincidence, he was the only one sickened by the disease.

“There isn’t any question in my mind that if I had been vaccinated, I wouldn’t have gotten polio,” Sternhagen told the news outlet. “The idea that people would choose not to vaccinate for COVID, as I said, it really bothers me.”

Morning Consult surveys some 30,000 people each week to track how willing people across the nation are to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

In the past week, it found that South Dakota residents are among the least willing to get the vaccine. Some 28 percent of respondents in South Dakota said they won’t get the shot.

The most hesitant states last week were Mississippi, Idaho, South Dakota, West Virginia and Oklahoma.

But even in states with the lowest rates of vaccine opposition, more than 10 percent of the population said they are hesitant to get vaccinated.

Nationwide, approximately 14 percent of Americans indicated they would not get vaccinated, and another 20 percent acknowledged they are uncertain whether they’ll get the shot, the study found.

Demographic factors including race, political alignment and education appear to play a role in vaccine hesitancy as well.

The study found Democrats are more likely to get vaccinated than Republicans or people who are politically independent. People who earn more than $100,000 a year are also more likely to get inoculated than people who earn less.

In addition, 27 percent of Black survey respondents indicated they are unwilling to be vaccinated, far outpacing white and Hispanic respondents, only 19 percent of whom indicated unwillingness to get a shot.

There is good news, however. Overall distrust in vaccines has decreased slightly in every demographic group studied by Morning Consult. Between mid-March and late April, skepticism slid in even the most staunchly opposed communities.

Respondents said the primary reason they distrust the vaccine is concern about side effects, which can range from a headache or injection site pain to flu-like symptoms and, in rare cases, anaphylaxis.

Another 23 percent of respondents said they are concerned the vaccine went through the approval process too quickly, and 16 percent said they do not trust the drug companies that developed the inoculations.