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Boon or Boondoggle?

John Conway - Sullivan County Historian
Posted 10/2/20

As the month of October began in 1976, public health officials and the medical profession in Sullivan County were gearing up for what was anticipated to be the largest immunization drive ever …

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Boon or Boondoggle?

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As the month of October began in 1976, public health officials and the medical profession in Sullivan County were gearing up for what was anticipated to be the largest immunization drive ever launched in this country.

It was an attempt to ward off a swine flu epidemic by, in the words of President Gerald Ford, inoculating “every man, woman and child in the United States.”

To put that into perspective, at the peak of the fight against polio in the 1950s and ‘60s, approximately 100 million Americans were vaccinated against the disease over a year-and-a-half period. President Ford's swine flu vaccination program was intended to vaccinate more than 200 million over three to four months.

Still, as the country entered the fall flu season, many health officials were still not convinced that the disease was that dangerous or that the vaccine was that effective. The Times Herald-Record newspaper, for example, ran a lengthy story in its Sunday, September 19, 1976 edition under the headline. “Swine Flu Shots: Boon or Boondoggle?”

According to a sidebar article penned by Tom Weir, a staff reporter who later became Sullivan County Bureau Chief for the paper, local health officials seemed split over whether or not to administer the vaccine.

Weir quoted Dr. Bernard Bloom of Kiamesha Lake, president of the Sullivan County Medical Society, that the group “hasn't yet taken a position on the vaccine.” Nonetheless, the county's supervising public health nurse, Gladys Olmstead, said that 30,000 - 35,000 doses of the vaccine had been ordered, and the county had developed “a nice, sound program” that would follow federal guidelines.

The swine flu had first been identified in February of 1976 after several soldiers had been infected at Fort Dix in New Jersey. One of the soldiers died, as had several other people in the state, their deaths baffling authorities until the Centers for Disease Control had identified the virus—incorrectly as it later turned out-- as a descendant of the infamous “Spanish Flu” virus that had killed perhaps 100 million worldwide, including at least 500,000 Americans in 1918 and 1919. Almost immediately, fear of another pandemic thrust public health officials into action.

The country had weathered other flu epidemics in more recent years—the so-called Asian Flu epidemic of 1957 had infected 45 million Americans and resulted in some 70,000 deaths, while the Hong Kong Flu of 1968-69 had infected 50 million in this country, causing 28,000 deaths. Officials hoped the aggressive vaccination program would prevent a repeat.

Locally, “doctors are generally mixed in their reactions to the immunization program,” the Record reported. “Most said they did not have enough information about the vaccine, but that they would give it to patients who requested it.”

Dr. Bloom told the Record he “was not convinced” that he would give his patients the vaccine yet. “He said some doubt still exists whether the flu outbreak, which public health officials have predicted, will be the same as the one which reached epidemic proportions in 1918,” the paper reported.

Dr. Alan Fried of Livingston Manor told the paper he doubted there would be an epidemic, but felt that at-risk patents had to be protected.

“If it's like the rest of the flu vaccines, I'm sure most of the doctors will be using it,” Dr. Fried said. He also told the Record that publicity about the vaccine had been “kind of frightening.”

Dr. Joseph Krivda of New Paltz was quoted as saying that he “certainly wouldn't recommend” the vaccine, but would administer it to patents who requested it. He said he doubted there would be an epidemic.

As it turned out, 45 million Americans were inoculated against the swine flu that year, but the program was largely viewed as politically motivated in an attempt to boost President Ford's re-election campaign. The New York Times later dubbed the vaccination program “a fiasco,” while many medical historians now refer to the 1976 swine flu outbreak as “the pandemic that never was.”

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian. Email him at jconway52@hotmail.com.

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