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Rotary Foundation Fights
Against Polio
 
Ray Brown is our favorite Foundation Chair, despite being the only one                                           (Getty Images)
 
 
This Past Tuesday, November 8, 2022
 
Hello all. Here is a late edition of the HubBub, but you can think of it more as a mid-week bonus.
 
November 8th may feel like it was a while ago, but topics were discussed that are too important to just gloss over, so, let the recap begin.
 
Ray Brown, our favorite (and only) Foundation Chair, spoke to the club about the Foundation, as November is the Month of the Foundation.
 
Polio is the largest cause that the Rotary Foundation is involved with. To give some background, Polio has evidence to show that it has been around since the ancient Egyptian days. Lots of work has been done to stop Polio, but there is still plenty of work to be done. After the creation of the Global Polio Eradifiaction Committee in 1988, global cases of Polio went from 49,000 all the way down to 6. This is a 99.9% reduction of Polio in the wild. Due to vaccine derived mutation, the number of cases jumped back up in 2020.
 
Over the years, the Rotary Foundation has given over two billion dollars towards eradication. When you contribute to the Foundation, you move closer and closer to being awarded your Paul Harris pin. If you are close to reaching your goal, our club will contribute a portion to help you reach Paul Harris Fellow status. And a bonus, $8 of your monthly dues contributes to your Paul Harris goal!
 
In the spirit of Paul Harris and the Foundation, we awarded some Rotarians with their pins.
 
 
Dahlya McDonald and Dr. John Garcia receiving their pins
 
 
 
Paul Mathys receiving +3 Fellow Sapphires
 
 
 
Next Tuesday, November 15 and 22, 2022
 
To be continued!
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Rotarians Around the World
 
 
 
Warren Shanmugam joins us all the way from Rotary Malaysia! President Mel and Joyce were excited to present our guest with a flag of Downey to commemorate his visit to our club.
 
 
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SnapShot: November 8, 2022
By Lorine Parks

Rotary November 8, A FAMILY AFFAIR and a MINOR MIRACLE

 

Brian Saylor introduced both his sons today, as “special guests” That is the not so secret phrase that means they are candidates for membership in the club.

 

If Brian’s boys do become Downey Rotarians, they will join a happy line of father-son combos, today exemplified by Raul and Alex Lopez, both past presidents, Raul in ‘94-95, and Alex in 2017-18. Brian was our prez 2008-09.

 

Recently we have had Chuck Hutchinson, pres 1974-5, and son Tom; and Ralph Granata and Paul. Going back in time, father Arch Morris was president in 1941-42, while his son, our friend Art, was away in the U. S. Navy in the South Pacific during World War II. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Mario Guerra’s father was also a Rotarian in Cuba and president of the Rotary Club of Havana, before they left on a freedom flight in 1956.

 

We even had a father and daughter-in-law duo, in Don Davis, `87-88, and Diane Davis 2011-12. And now we have a unique mother and son-in-law- pair, our present president Amelia “Mel” Sanchez and David Minishian, to continue the tradition.

 

Our meeting was packed, nearly 40 attendees. Nice to see us coming back up to strength. Remember, the meeting on Tuesday Nov. 15 will be at Café ’n Stuff, 1255 Woodruff at Firestone… Paul Mathys announced that the Golf Tournament was “a huge success,” with lots of sponsors as well as a full roster of players. Results are not all tabulated yet but Paul estimates a record breaking profit of $30,000 to donate to the Arc. Credit a hard working committee, good weather, a new venue and vigorous marketing…We had a visitor today, a Rotarian from Malaysia. Prez Mel presented him with our colorful new club flag. He picked a day when Rotarians around the globe could relate to the Program we presented.

 

SPEAKER Foundation Chair Ray Brown awarded pins and certificates to Dr. John Garcia and Dahlya McDonald for becoming Paul Harris Fellows. Ray explained that the Foundation is how Rotary fuels all our service projects, from water access to childhood education, and the pins have sapphire chips to signify different levels of giving, and ruby ones for even higher participation. Then Ray awarded one of the special pins to Paul Mathys, and named himself as well.

 

Ray always manages to present the work of the Rotary Foundation in a new and interesting way. The subject was Polio, and after bringing us up to speed on the history of the scourge and the good the bad and the ugly of the Salk and Sabin vaccines, Ray described the new challenge. “This is a Big Deal,” Ray said. “Sabin's live-virus, oral polio vaccine, administered in drops or on a sugar cube, has replaced Salk's killed-virus, injectable vaccine in many parts of the world. But it has created a new monster: a new virus has mutated to the “vaccine-derived polio virus,” that is resistant to the vaccine, as compared to the original “wild” virus.”

 

This new menace, the vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV), is a strain related to the weakened live poliovirus contained in oral polio vaccine (OPV). If allowed to circulate in under or unimmunized populations for long enough, the weakened virus can revert to a form that causes illness and paralysis. This was the cause of a case discovered in upstate New York in July 2022.

 

The response? Polio vaccination does protect people against naturally occurring polioviruses and VDPVs, and we can achieve herd immunity, if enough people are vaccinated.

 

The United States has used inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) exclusively since 2000. IPV is given as an injection in the leg or arm, depending on the person’s age and protects against paralytic disease caused by any type of poliovirus, including VDPV. So, continuing to achieve high IPV vaccination coverage is the best way to keep the country polio-free.

 

This writer is old enough to remember life pre-vaccine, when the entire community panicked each time an outbreak occurred. Ray’s presentation showed a picture of the iconic iron lung, a frightening barrel-shaped machine that encased the entire body from toes to chin, and varied the air pressure to stimulate breathing, the way a positive-pressure airway ventilator can today. The disease is highly infectious and can kill, and usually leaves the victim paralyzed.

 

Does anyone remember why President Franklin Roosevelt’s profile is on the dime today? FDR was a polio survivor, paralyzed from the waist down, and he initiated a grass-roots drive to eradicate polio, each asking each child to give ten cents, something a child could do.

 

There were yearly appeals, called The March of Dimes to cure infantile paralysis, that even today works to prevent birth defects and infant mortality, and support educational programs. FDR used his birthday January 30th, as the occasion for the President’s Birthday Ball, a fundraiser on a grand national scale to raise millions for the cause.

 

Ray’s presentation was marvelous, and then a sort of minor miracle occurred when at the end, Patricia Megallon moved around the room, handing out to each Rotarian her or his own personalized Paul Harris account, telling each of us exactly how much more we would need to donate to achieve a new Paul Harris level of giving. We’re not talking dimes anymore.

 

Impressive preparation, from Ray and Treasurer Barbara Lamberth on down. How soon can you achieve that next level?
 
 
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