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Rotary Meeting Today: Special Program
 
President-Elect Annie Vander Werff will review some 2020-2021 Downtown Waterloo Rotary Club events/opportunities. Don't miss out on the latest and the greatest of what's coming up!
 
 

Click to join Zoom meeting at noon:

Meeting ID: 927 7775 0038
Password: 504834

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        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
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People's Community Health Clinic Receives Rotary Gift
 
At our board meeting last week we agreed that our last grant for the month of April was to Peoples Clinic.  As many of you know, many of their clients are from Tyson Fresh Meats which has been particularly hard hit during this crisis. The Clinic is dealing with staff shortages, increased demand, communication barriers, and added stress of providing services to those most in need.  Our grant will assist them in converting their dentistry area to provide more protection to patients and staff. Executive Director Chris Kemp pictured with $1,000 check.
 
A Message from Our President

I would like to take this opportunity to update everyone on some of the decisions that were made at our last board meeting regarding our meetings, dues and charitable contributions.  We will not be meeting in May as the Governor’s restrictions are ongoing for Black Hawk County.  During the Board meeting we decided that we will extend our charitable giving grants each week through May for a total of 8-$1000 grants through the months of April and May.  This is an outstanding contribution from our Waterloo Rotary Club to organizations providing aid and assistance to those most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.  As a reminder, below is a list of the organizations that we’ve chosen to support.

Northeast Iowa Foodbank:  Our Club donated $1,000 to the Foodbank as they face challenges during this crisis.  The Foodbank is having fewer volunteers and less food.  They are serving many more families, working class individuals, seniors, and ultimately, those affected by COVID-19 directly.

Boys and Girls Club of the Cedar Valley:  Our Club donated $1,000 to the Boys and Girls Club to assist them with providing mobile lunches for the lunch delivery program.  They have been providing an outlet for youth in the Cedar Valley for years.  Our Club continues to support this non-profit as they struggle to provide assistance during this crisis.

Salvation Army:  Our $1,000 grant to the Salvation Army assisted them in meeting the increased demand for their services during this crisis.  Their lunch time meals on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays have seen an increase in attendance and our assistance will help  them deal with the increased demand.

Peoples Community Health Clinic: Many of their clients are from Tyson Fresh Meats which has been particularly hard hit during this crisis. The Clinic is dealing with staff shortages, increased demand, communication barriers, and added stress of providing services to those most in need.  Our $1,000 grant will assist them in converting their dentistry area to provide more protection to patients and staff.

During our most recent board meeting we discussed candidates for future grants.  We have agreed to award our first two grants to the following organizations:

Allen / MercyOne Foundations:  In response to the COVID-19 crisis our District 5970 decided to award each Club a $1000 grant to provide assistance to organizations of their choice.  The Board agreed to apply for this grant as well as providing $1000 match.  The $2000 will be split between both hospital foundations to assist in providing adequate PPE to staff as they provide clinical and hospitalization services for the Cedar Valley. 

Foster Graduate Gifts:  Each year graduating foster youth are recognized in the community through an open house.  Due to COVID-19 restrictions, an open house will not be held this year.  To provide support and to assist the graduating youth in starting their independence our Board agreed to provide $100 gift cards to each of the 9 graduates.

In identifying grant recipients, we have counted on feedback from our survey held last month and input from Rotarians dealing with the various non-profits in the Cedar Valley.  Each grant recipient is voted on by the Board.  The Board is always looking for ways that we can assist various organizations and welcome all feedback.  We have two more awards to distribute and are looking to identify two more worthy candidates.

As a Rotarian of this Club, I couldn’t be more proud of our assistance and generosity.  This is what being a Rotarian is all about, “Service Above Self”.

I hope everyone is finding a way to enjoy the nice weather we’re having and ways to cope with being a little bit isolated and most importantly that everyone is staying healthy and safe.

 
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Jonas Salk tested Polio vaccine on his own kids


In this April 1955 photo, Dr. Jonas Salk reads Life magazine with his wife, Donna, and three boys. From left are Jonathan, 5, Peter, 11, and Darrell, 8.(AP)

Peter Salk still remembers the trepidation he felt when his father came home from work one day in May 1953 and promptly began boiling a set of needles and syringes on the kitchen stove.

With several years of research and promising results in monkeys fueling high hopes, Dr. Jonas Salk had brought from his lab at the University of Pittsburgh a still-experimental vaccine candidate to their Pine home. His family would become among the first humans in the world to test a shot against the mysterious polio virus crippling and killing children.

“I’m sure that my father told us [the importance of] what was happening,” said Dr. Peter Salk, 76, a University of Pittsburgh professor of infectious diseases and microbiology and president of the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation, speaking by phone from his California home. “I … was just not happy at the notion of having another shot.”

Peter Salk was 9 years old. He didn’t have a sense of the medical history that he and his family were making, nor the millions of lives that would benefit.

 

All he knew was that, like many kids his age, he hated needles — so much that he’d previously crouched and hid behind the kitchen wastebasket to avoid getting one.

Standing beside his two brothers, he braced for the injection. Two weeks later, they received a second dose while photographed to generate publicity for the March of Dimes, which was pumping millions of dollars into polio research.

“The point of that was to demonstrate my father’s confidence in the vaccine,” Salk said. “But … it was also, from my father’s side and my mother’s side, ‘Let’s get these kids protected.’”


In this Oct. 7, 1954, photo, Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, holds a rack of test tubes in his lab in Pittsburgh.(AP)

Last month marked the 66th anniversary of the day when the first inoculations began on nearly 2 million children who received Salk’s vaccine candidate in 1954. By 1955, the pivotal public health experiment was deemed a success, with the vaccine proving to be safe, potent and 90% effective in thwarting polio.

The achievement put Pittsburgh on the global map as a leader in cutting-edge medical research and set the stage for decades of investments and advancements in Pitt’s vaccine research capabilities. As the nation confronts the covid-19 pandemic, Pittsburgh scientists have joined the global race to stop the spread of yet another disease horrifying the world.

Much has changed in terms of medicine, technology and FDA regulations around vaccine development since Salk’s quest in the 1950s. Scientists today, for instance, typically are not allowed to start trying out their experiments on their own kids.

“In 2020, it’s much harder to do that kind of self-experimentation, although it does occur,” Adalja said. “There are a lot of concerns that the FDA would have regarding human research subjects. Was there informed consent? Are they part of a proper trial? All of that would be something that would probably not happen as easily as it could in the 1950s.”

Scientists also have so much more technology and methods available, with the COVID-19 genome sequence getting mapped within mere weeks of the first samples studied in early January.

Read the full article from the Pennsylvania newspaper The Morning Call

 
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Russell Hampton
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