Gateway Chronicle 2022

There was also a lesson broadcast on the
radio every few days that we were made to
listen to. Older children were sent lessons
in green envelopes, once returned they
were marked by teachers sitting all alone in
empty classrooms. The New Zealand
government reported that at the beginning
of the Polio lockdown there were 40 radio
correspondence lessons a month but by
the end there were 40 lessons broadcast
every week. The New Zealand
Government proclaimed that houses were
to become ‘miniature schools’, most of the
pressure to school the children fell on
mums. Back in 1948 most women were
housewives with the dads going off to
work.
Whilst there were major differences, it is
interesting to see that there were also
significant similarities in the strategies used
for containing the epidemic. The priority
was limiting the spread of the disease,
children were banned from crowded
spaces, public transport and anywhere with
crowds. I would be interested to find out if
any of these same strategies were
employed at other times too, during the
plague for example? What also seems true
is that both lockdowns caused
considerable stress, anxiety and
depression. I suppose this can only be
expected when there is real risk of harm to
you and the people that you love. My
Grandma thinks people were more resilient
in 1948 than they are today, “we had
survived the war and knew we could get
through anything.”
In 1953 a man called Jonas Valk
announced that he had successfully
developed a vaccine for Polio after testing
it on monkeys and then on his own family.
By 1956 the vaccine reached New
Zealand. The polio vaccine took many
years to develop because scientists had to
start from scratch and did not have the
technologies available to them that we
have today. When a vaccine did finally
become available it was the only one and
because of the devastating effects of the
disease it was seen as a miracle cure and
was rolled out very quickly. Children were
rushed to the doctors, anxious to get
vaccinated as quickly as possible.
Thankfully, the near universal uptake of the
vaccine meant that the dreaded Polio
epidemics were eradicated in New Zealand
by the early 1960s.
The Covid vaccine in contrast was
developed in less than one year. This
amazing effort by the world's scientists,
building on what they had learned, meant
that there were three vaccines quickly
available for us to choose from. However, it
seems that there is much more resistance
by some people to the Covid vaccine than
there was to the Polio vaccine, I am not
sure why, perhaps it is because Corona
virus does not have such a terrible effect
on children?
The great news is that mass immunisation
of Polio has eradicated the disease from
many regions of the world. Smallpox, the
very first disease for which a vaccine was
developed by Edward Jenner in 1796 was,
in 1979, declared to have been completely
eradicated from the globe. What an
inspiring achievement. Hopefully as
scientist continually try to develop and
produce Covid vaccines maybe one day
Covid will also be eradicated.
So, my Grandma is right, we do need to
stop whining and realise that we are very
lucky. Whilst COVID is scary, us kids have
got off comparatively lightly. My grandma
has had to face two separate diseases that
affected her generation very directly. We
should be so thankful that the experiences
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