16 Celebs Who Have Been Very Vocal About The Importance Of Vaccinations

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Pro-vaccine celebrities aren’t a new thing. Some of the biggest stars in the world were part of the Polio Crusade.

pro-vaccine celebrities

Image: Instagram/@vintagehollywoodstars

In the early 1950’s, the polio epidemic was in full swing. In 1950 alone, the virus claimed a whopping 33,000 victims, most of them under the age of 10. It was a devastating and scary time. In 1954, human trials of the Salk vaccine began, but hesitancy over the vaccine’s efficacy and possible side effects made compliance tricky. So some of the world’s biggest movie and television stars took part in campaigns to encourage parents to vaccinate their kids against polio. A few months after the start of the human trials, two million school-aged children had been vaccinated. The trials ended in 1955, and within a few years of Jonas Salk’s vaccine being licensed, the number of polio cases decreased by 50%. By the 60’s, it feel to just a few thousand cases a year. Nowadays, polio is considered completely eradicated in the US.
