Salk’s son talks about COVID
Do the necessary clinical work and don’t rush a vaccine for COVID-19.
That’s what Peter Salk, son of polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk, told the Morgantown Rotary Club Thursday.
“Waiting is a reasonable thing to do,” said Salk during his Zoom presentation from California.
Salk, president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation in La Jolla, Calif., spoke to club members ahead of World Polio Day on Saturday, Oct. 24. Rotary and its various partners started its Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, when there were more than 350,000 cases of polio in 125 countries. Now only Pakistan and Afghanistan have reported cases of the wild polio virus, which only affects humans.
“Polio was gone from this country by 1977,” he said, “Rotary has played a major role in eradicating it.”
“There have only been a 129 cases so far this year.”
Salk, 76, who is also a part-time professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, said both Russia and China have developed COVID-19 vaccines. But, he said, no evidence has been shown to prove the vaccines’ effectiveness.
“You can’t have an infectious disease in one city without it going worldwide,” said Salk, who earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University. “Over one million people have died from it globally.”
There are currently 213 ongoing COVID-19 research projects and more than 300 treatments being investigated, many of which are still in the pre-clinical phase.
“This definitely did not happen during polio days.”
In the 1940s and 1950s, the polio virus terrified much of the nation. It caused paralysis, breathing problems, and in many cases, death. Almost 58,000 Americans contracted polio during the last major epidemic in the United States in 1952.
Jonas Salk was recruited to the University of Pittsburgh in 1947 to develop a virus program. Eight years later, Salk and his team successfully developed the polio vaccine.
“He became interested in vaccines while he was in medical school,” said Peter Salk of his father who died in 1995.
When a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, it’s important to know its impact on the immune system. In some cases, Salk said, some vaccines have been the effects of the illness more severe, which can be significant given some peoples’ distrust of vaccines.
“It would be great to get back to a natural, normal life again,” he said. “There is too much fear about things that are not problems.”
“Things will never be the same.”
