Shot Heard Round the World

Drugmaker Pfizer announced today it has developed an effective vaccine against Covid-19.

Despite the good news, public health officials are insisting that anti-vaxxers, by refusing the new vaccine, are likely to weaken its role as a safeguard.

In only 10 months, Covid-19 has infected 50.5 million people, and killed over 1.25 million. 

The new vaccine could cut the number of infections by 90%, according to Pfizer.

But not if anti-vaxxers—estimated at 7% of the world's population—get in the way.

Anti-vaxxers have tried to sabotage vaccines before.

In 1956, the influential newspaper, television and radio columnist Walter Winchell told audiences—inaccurately—that Dr. Jonas Salk's new polio vaccine was a "killer" because it contained a live strain of the disease.

To rescue the truth, Elvis Presley agreed to be inoculated in public.

On Sunday, October 28, backstage before his second appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," Elvis posed for the cameras while two New York City health care officials gave him a shot of Salk's new vaccine.

Americans witnessed, close up, that the King was no anti-vaxxer, and agreed, right then and there, they wouldn't be, either. 

Thanks to Elvis' stunt, vaccine adoption rates surged, polio contraction rates plummeted, and polio outbreaks—once the scourge of every American summer—soon faded from memory.