The younger Salk said he rarely makes money from his name – but he thought it would make a positive difference, as he now gets the Covid-19 vaccine.
“I came forward in public so I could be vaccinated in public and have the chance to say something because I was hoping it would make a difference,” Salk told CNN. “I was hoping that if I stepped into the shadows from behind where I usually live, it might help some people to plan. If so, I would be very grateful.”
Salk, who has been feeling well since receiving the vaccination, said he was “delighted” to receive his first dose. Part of that is because he has several underlying conditions and is a high-risk patient, he said.
The other part is that he regards it as an achievement of modern science. Salk studied for years as a vaccine specialist after the creation of vaccines, as well as how to manufacture and transport them.
For him, the decision to get a vaccine was self-evident for his health and those around him.
“The chance that you will be infected with Covid-19 is so much higher than the risk associated with the vaccine,” he said. “It seems to me an easy choice. I do not want to risk my life, or the life of someone I love.”
Salk has a message for them.
“The takeaway is that these vaccines are safe, that they are effective and that they will help us bring this pandemic under control,” he said. “You need to take the opportunity to be vaccinated and be part of the solution.”
Polio and Covid-19 both seized the US
The polio epidemic gripped the news in the US, as children were mostly affected by the crippling disease. It caught the country’s attention and the emotion of it all is something that people who went through it in the first half of the 20th century vividly remember.
The Covid-19 pandemic has the same emotion, Salk said, but the trajectory of both diseases differs markedly.
“Polio developed gradually. It was a chronic disease or an endemic disease, and then became epidemic as the susceptible population increased,” Salk said. “The Covid-19 virus, on the other hand, appeared, everyone was susceptible and had no experience with it yet. It basically spreads like wildfire … very quickly around the world.”
The view of Covid-19 vaccines made Salk think of his father and how “happy and excited he would have been to see it,” he said.
“It impressed me with the importance of the work my father did, as well as stopping the epidemic with the vaccine itself, and as proof that you can use non-infectious drugs to immunize,” Salk said. His father used a killed poliovirus to create the vaccine.
Living through the Covid-19 pandemic had a duality for Salk, who is both intrigued and afraid of it.
“I pushed myself like that, reacted,” he said. “I was scared of it, but then I was fascinated to be a part of it, to see it and to live through it.”
The US response to the pandemic ‘shames’ him
Simple actions such as washing your hands, wearing a mask and avoiding crowds could control the spread of Covid-19. How the US responded to the pandemic openly embarrasses Salk.
“It’s really a shame that the reaction in this country, presumably the epitome of advanced countries, was, I’m sorry, so badly bounced,” he said.
“We’re swimming upstream now,” he said. “It’s an embarrassment to me that the United States is number one in the problems with the Covid-19 virus, more cases than anywhere else. It spreads faster than anywhere else. It’s an embarrassment to me that this country did not respond properly because it did not by science. ‘
The way to get the virus under control is because enough people are getting the vaccine and Salk hopes Americans prefer it.
“Vaccines are safe and effective, and they need to be used a lot,” he said. “We will get out of this, but it will take individuals to do the right behavior to get rid of it.”