When I was 5 years old one of my playmates and I were “cooking stuff” in the back yard. I dug up a root to add to our stew, but Carol warned, “If you eat that you will die!”

Two weeks later Carol was dead, killed by polio. I wasn’t sure what it meant to die but I knew the adults around me were very scared.

Later that summer another playmate showed up in church with an odd back brace. Our family doctor said that Bobby’s life was saved from polio by an iron lung, a machine that helped him breathe. You can still see an iron lung in the historical medical display in Central Maine Medical Center’s upper lobby.

You who think you are giving up something by being required to have a vaccination should have lived during my childhood, when all parents were terrified that at any moment their child could be struck down by polio. Thanks to science and research into vaccines, polio is no longer a danger in our country.  Neither would COVID-19 if we had all been vaccinated months ago.

David Haines, Auburn