Thanks to effective vaccines and related programs, polio is no longer the devasting disease that paralyzes and kills many people young and old. Those in the older generation may remember seeing people confined to iron lungs, unable to breathe on their own. In the mid-20th century, the polio panic was more pronounced than the COVID pandemic, and the Salk vaccine in 1955 was seen as a miracle. Some polio vaccines are given by injection and some by mouth. View More