Lesson of the Day: ‘A Look at Past Vaccine Drives: Smallpox, Polio and the Swine Flu’

Students in U.S. high schools can get free digital access to The New York Times until Sept. 1, 2021.

Lesson Overview

Featured Article: “A Look at Past Vaccine Drives: Smallpox, Polio and the Swine Flu” by Jenny Gross

Scientists developed vaccines less than a year after Covid-19 was identified, a reflection of remarkable progress in vaccine technology. But progress in vaccine distribution is another story.

On Jan. 26, The Times wrote in its daily coronavirus update:

More than a million people a day, on average, have received a shot to help protect them against Covid-19 in the U.S. over the last week, and the national vaccination effort has been gathering speed.

Yet even at that pace, the vaccine has reached only a small proportion of Americans — far too few yet to significantly slow the spread of the virus.

So far, only 6 percent of the U.S. population has gotten the first of the two required doses of vaccine; only 1 percent have gotten both doses and are fully immunized.

The article continues:

All kinds of things went wrong when the vaccine rollout started, including problems with supply, staffing, logistics and communications. But with time, most states have built up their capacity to administer shots, and 45 states have moved beyond the narrow initial categories of nursing home residents and frontline health care workers to start inoculating all residents above a certain age.

So the national pace has more than doubled in a month, setting the country on track to meet President Biden’s initial goal of getting at least one shot into 100 million people in his first 100 days in office — a million a day.

Yet even at that rate, the Biden administration estimates that by the end of April, about 67 million people will have had both shots and be fully protected — less than halfway to the 160 million or more who may need to be vaccinated for a level of herd immunity, even after allowing for people with natural antibodies from a cleared infection.

On Monday, President Biden raised his goal to 1.5 million shots a day.

In this lesson, you will learn about mass vaccination campaigns from the past and consider the lessons we can apply from history to our present campaign. In a Going Further activity, we invite you to make a recommendation to President Biden about how to improve the current vaccine rollout.

Warm Up

Do you know anyone who has received a Covid-19 vaccine? How closely have you been following the story of the biggest vaccine drive in our country’s history? How well do you think the rollout is going?

Before reading, click on the link to below for the Times interactive “See How the Vaccine Rollout Is Going in Your State” and take a few minutes to explore the map.

Then answer the following questions adapted from our “What’s Going On in This Graph” feature:

• What do you notice? What did you learn about the vaccine rollout in the United States?

• What do you wonder? What are you curious about that comes from what you notice in the map?

• What impact does this have on you and your community?

• What’s going on in this graph and this map? Write a catchy headline that captures the map’s main idea.

Questions for Writing and Discussion

Read the featured article, then answer the following questions:

1. The article examines five vaccine drives over the past two centuries:

1803: Smallpox
1947: Smallpox, again
1955: Polio
1976: Swine flu
2009: H1N1

Identify at least one success or failure for each.

2. Look at the photos closely and read the captions in the article: What similarities and differences do you notice between the images of past vaccine rollouts? How do the photos compare with any of the images from the current drive that you may have seen? Which image stands out and why? What questions emerge from your examination of the photos?

3. In New York City, nearly 700,000 people have already received a vaccine dose. However, in 1947, the city was able to vaccinate more than 6 million in less than a month for smallpox. What are some reasons for the effectiveness of the earlier drive, according to the article?

4. Ms. Gross writes that many questions that arose in vaccine rollouts decades ago are still debated today, like, How should the local and federal authorities coordinate? Who should be vaccinated first? What should officials do about vaccination resistance in communities? Choose one of her questions and give your own opinion based on the successes and failure of the past.

5. What important lessons can we apply from the history of vaccine campaigns to the current one? Name at least two.

6. What is your reaction to the article? Does it change your view of the current vaccine campaign? What did you find most memorable, surprising or thought-provoking? What questions about vaccines and the current vaccine distribution effort do you still have?

Going Further

Option 1: Make a Recommendation to President Biden

Imagine you are a member of the president’s coronavirus team: What advice would you give to President Biden to improve the current vaccination rollout in the United States?

In December, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed to get “at least 100 million Covid vaccine shots into the arms of the American people” during his first 100 days in office. On Jan. 25, Mr. Biden revised his target:

President Biden, under pressure to speed up the pace of coronavirus vaccination, said on Monday that he was now aiming for the United States to administer 1.5 million vaccine doses a day — a goal that is 50 percent higher than his initial target but one that the nation already appears on track to meet.

The president made his comments just hours after he banned travel by noncitizens into the United States from South Africa because of concern about a coronavirus variant spreading in that country, and moved to extend similar bans imposed by his predecessor on travel from Brazil, Europe and Britain. Those bans were set to expire on Tuesday.

Mr. Biden has vowed to get “100 million Covid-19 shots in the arms of the American people” by his 100th day in office. Because two doses are required, and some Americans have already been vaccinated, his promise would cover about 67 million Americans. To realize it, the United States would have to administer one million shots a day.

Read the rest of the Jan. 25 article, and then consider: What are the strengths and weaknesses of President Biden’s plan for improving the coronavirus vaccination campaign? Is it too ambitious or not ambitious enough? Do you believe that it adequately addresses the problems in the rollout so far? What is missing from his plan? What lessons from two centuries of vaccination drives can you offer to the new administration?

To help you formulate your advice to the new president, read, watch or listen to these resources to better understand the successes and failures of the current vaccination campaign and Mr. Biden’s plans to improve it:

Biden Pledges Federal Vaccine Campaign to Beat a Surging Coronavirus
Here’s Why Distribution of the Vaccine Is Taking Longer Than Expected
New Pandemic Plight: Hospitals Are Running Out of Vaccines
Black and Latino New Yorkers Trail White Residents in Vaccine Rollout
How West Virginia Became a U.S. Leader in Vaccine Rollout
Please, Biden, Try for 2 Million Shots a Day
Four Ways to Fix the Vaccine Rollout
Biden Unveils Plan to Combat Coronavirus | Video
‘We Have to Start Treating This as the National Emergency It Is.’ | Podcast
Vaccination Day at Dodger Stadium: Hours of Traffic and 7,730 Shots | Photo Essay

Option 2: Create a Visual Timeline

Create a visual timeline that explains and compares vaccine drives throughout history. Consider how you can use images, shapes, size and color to represent important information, like scope, time, location and other recurring themes and lessons. Here are more tips from Venngage.

Sketch the timeline on a piece of paper or try building it digitally on a free platform like Padlet or Venngage.

Need an example? Here’s one from the History of Vaccines.

Option 3: Analyze a Graph of Vaccinations Around the World

More than 94,100,000 vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, equal to 1.2 doses for every 100 people. There is already a stark gap between vaccination programs in different countries, with most yet to give a single dose.

Look at the first map of the world on the interactive article “Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World.” As you study the map, begin with the same guiding questions for the warm-up activity:

• What do you notice? If you make a claim, tell us what you noticed that supports your claim.

• What do you wonder? What are you curious about that comes from what you notice in the map?

• What’s going on in this map? Write a catchy headline that captures the map’s main idea.

Then consider these additional questions:

How is the global map similar to and different from the map of vaccinations in the United States? What factors do you think account for the differences? And finally, what responsibility does America have for supporting vaccinations in the rest of the world?

Option 4: Research Vaccines Further and Inform Others

Currently, two vaccines, by Pfizer and Moderna, have been authorized for use in the United States, and a third vaccine, from Johnson & Johnson, is expected to be approved in February. Researchers are testing 67 coronavirus vaccines in clinical trials on humans. What questions about vaccines and vaccinations still remain?

A good place to begin finding explanations for your queries is the Times feature “Answers to All Your Questions About Getting Vaccinated for Covid-19,” which provides straightforward answers to often-asked questions about getting a vaccine, safety and side effects, children and schools, how the vaccines work and what happens after vaccination.

Or you might look at The Times’s Covid-19 Vaccines page, which includes these recent articles:

How Nine Covid-19 Vaccines Work
Emerging Coronavirus Variants May Pose Challenges to Vaccines
See Which Country Is Leading the Global Race to Vaccinate
How New York City Vaccinated 6 Million People in Less Than a Month
What You Can Do Post-Vaccine, and When
Early Vaccine Doubters Now Show a Willingness to Roll Up Their Sleeves
When a Close Friend Has Doubts About Vaccinations

After your research, consider how you might share what you learned: How can you best explain the information to others?

You might use information from the article or your own research to create a poster or an infographic. Or you can create a public service announcement, like this one, using images, video, text, statistics and music.

Another option? Use your questions and research as the basis for an entry to our Second Annual STEM Writing Contest, in which we challenge students to choose an issue or question in science, technology, engineering, math or health, and then write an engaging 500-word explanation. The contest runs from Jan. 19 to March 2, 2021.

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