For McConnell, virus carries echo of boyhood polio

United States Senator Mitch McConnell’s earliest childhood memory is the day he left the polio treatment centre at Warm Springs, Ga., for the last time. He was just a toddler in 1944 when his father was deployed to World War II, his mother relocated the family to her sister’s home in rural Alabama and he came down with flu-like symptoms.

While he eventually recovered, his left leg did not. It was paralyzed.

Two long years later, after shuttling young McConnell to and from the centre where then-President Franklin Roosevelt received polio care, his mother was told that day that her young son would be able to walk into his life without a leg brace.

More than 70 years later, Senate Majority Leader McConnell walked into the U.S. Senate to pass a sweeping coronavirus rescue package - and shutter the chamber for the foreseeable future - as another dangerous flu-like virus fills the nation with anxiety, quarantines and unimaginable disruptions to American life.

“Why does this current pandemic remind me of that? I think No. 1 is the fear,” said McConnell in an interview with The Associated Press.

“And the uncertainty you have when there’s no pathway forward on either treatment or a vaccine and that was the situation largely in polio before 1954.”

Thousands died from polio, others were hospitalized and some left permanently paralyzed or with post-polio syndrome.

When a vaccine became available the disease declined.

McConnell believes that as we confront the coronavirus today, we will eventually find a similar relief when a vaccine and other treatments become available.

The new coronavirus has caused a global pandemic that has sickened more than 1,673,000 people and killed more than 101,000 worldwide, according to the John Hopkins University, Colombia has 2,223 COVID-19 confirmed cases and 69 deaths.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and a cough that clear up in two to three weeks.

For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.