It’s hardly news, or even worth the effort, to point out times are changing.
Change is the one constant, as the country and beyond look to find a “new normal” in the COVID-19 era, where an invisible invader — a virus — has spread misery to all, (even to those who haven’t contracted the disease.)
Turn the clock back more than half a century, when a sense of dreaded fear accompanied another mysterious virus.
Back then parents were chilled at the thought of poliomyelitis — polio.
There are similarities, and some obvious differences between the two.
Both have lengthy incubation periods. COVID-19 sufferers may be asymptomatic for two weeks; for polio, the typical incubation period for polio lasts anywhere from six to 20 days.
Conversely, most (but not all) of the patients most at risk for COVID-19 are the elderly, or those with underlying health issues.
Polio, as most already know, was particularly devastating for children.
A perfectly healthy child could go to sleep fit as a fiddle one night, and awaken the next morning in the grips of the cursed disease.
Betty Daniels was one such example.
She was 12 years old, just two weeks into school, when she awakened on a Friday morning “with a horrific headache on top of my head,” she recalled. “I’d never had a headache before.”
By the next morning, Daniels couldn’t walk, her legs too weak to support her petite body.
She was taken to the hospital, then shipped via ambulance to KU Med Center.
“I tried to turn over,” Daniels said in a recent telephone interview, “but I couldn’t.”
She was admitted to KU, and wheeled into the hospital’s solarium, where several other youths were held.
