Sixty-two years ago Sunday, Elvis Presley took the stage at CBS studios in New York and smiled as a city health official stuck a needle in his left arm. The publicity stunt, broadcast nationwide before Presley's 2nd appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” was meant to convince the American public that the new polio vaccine was safe. It worked. And playing to Presley's demographic apparently helped. About 75 percent of Americans under 20 had received at least one polio shot by August 1957, when the first national survey was taken; this rose to nearly 90 percent by September 1961, according to a 1962 public health report.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Sixty-two years ago Sunday, Elvis Presley took the stage at CBS studios in New York and smiled as a city health official stuck a needle in his left arm. The publicity stunt, broadcast nationwide before Presley's 2nd appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” was meant to convince the American public that the new polio vaccine was safe. It worked. And playing to Presley's demographic apparently helped. About 75 percent of Americans under 20 had received at least one polio shot by August 1957, when the first national survey was taken; this rose to nearly 90 percent by September 1961, according to a 1962 public health report." in the context of "Karin Roberts, writing for NBC News on the 62nd anniversary of Elvis' polio advocacy, as noted in an article entitled "When it comes to vaccines, celebrities often call the shots", and published on October 28, 2018." to mean that wisdom is timeless.