Covid-19 vaccine: first US doses given to frontline workers

The headlines are matter-of-fact, understating the historic importance of the event. Making more of an impact was the TV shot of the couple at the airport in Michigan near the vaccine distribution center who came out to watch the first plane carrying the vaccine take off. The woman said she had to come out in person to witness the event. She described the significance of it as like watching the moon landing.

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A relative of mine whose family contracted COVID-19 and are all now recovered said 2020 will be a year his kids will never forget and will leave them with stories to tell their own kids years from now. It reminded me of the summer in the 1950s when kids were confined to their yards because of a polio scare. I remember playing "catch" at a distance with a neighbor kid. We couldn't get together for games, but we could throw a baseball back and forth across the yard of the house in between our own houses. I remember telethons raising money for "iron lungs" for polio victims. And I vividly remember getting the oral polio vaccine that ended the polio scourge forever. I sometimes wonder if some of the people today who say they won't get the COVID-19 vaccine fully understand why we don't worry about polio anymore.

Kids today will have similar memories about this year of face masks, social distancing, and online learning, and the superhero efforts of the world's medical community to defeat this generation's health scourge.