If Ron DeSantis was governor of California in another time and dimension, the mural in  the 100 block of North Maple Avenue in Manteca would be in jeopardy.

DeSantis doesn’t like public art work that doesn’t reflect his agenda.

It is why after years of them being in place, he recently ordered all street art be eradicated from Florida streets. The art work that drew his ire resembled rainbows.

It is amazing it took DeSantis, who has a strong law and order record, to determine art work on street pavement could distract motorists and create unsafe driving conditions.

Enough said.

So what is the mural and why might DeSantis find it offensive?

It’s the Rotary mural.

It shows the service work of the worldwide organization including advancing literacy and building homes for impoverished families.

But the main focus of the mural funded by the Manteca Rotary is the Polio Plus effort in its 40th year to eradicate polio worldwide.

DeSantis this week managed to get the State of Florida to trash its mandate that children in the Sunshine State no longer need vaccinations to enroll in public schools.

Florida’s vaccine requirements weren’t much different than California’s — whooping cough, measles and mumps to name a few.

The list also includes polio.
Once a dreaded scourge of childhood even in the United States, a concerted effort by the 1.2-million member strong Rotary International is on the cusp of eradicating the virus worldwide over the next several years.
The word “polio” conjured up fear in this country as late as the 1950s before the Jonas Salk vaccine was developed in 1955 with the support of the March of Dimes.

In the year 1958, a record 58,000 Americans contracted polio.

The virus can be deadly.

But its signature legacy is paralyzing parts of the body forcing its young victims to deal with everything from having no muscle control in their legs for the rest of their lives to being forced to live in an iron lung.
There were 385,000 children stricken with polio worldwide during 1985. By 2012, the number of new worldwide cases had dropped to 291.
It is the direct result of arguably the most ambitious project ever undertaken by an international service club —  Rotary’s PolioPlus.
When the effort started in 1985, there were 71 polio-free countries and 125 that were not. By the end of 2012, there were 193 polio-free countries with only Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan classified as polio endemic.
The polio vaccine that also includes inoculation against other childhood diseases costs less than $1.

To effectively keep polio in check, every child must be immunized. The effort requires an ongoing immunization program in countries that are polio free.
Others have joined forces with Rotary in the bid to free the world’s children of polio with the most notable being the Bill Gates Foundation.
Most of us are fortunate not to have a grasp of what polio can do.
We can’t comprehend 11-year-olds being forced to crawl around because their legs are useless.
I’ve known three people who were stricken with polio that were infected here in California in the 1940s and in the 1950s.

Charla McCollum was lucky to have a fairly mild case.

In this case, “luck” meant tiring easily when she walked and always being in pain.
Paul Yokote was confined to a wheelchair due to not being able to use his legs at all.
The third victim, Jesse, was a classmate in the third grade that used two forearm crutches to get around. He had one good leg. Polio had severely weakened the other.
Ironically, Jessie had contracted polio in 1962.

It was the same year that my mom took me to a polio clinic in Roseville where the vaccine was encased in a sugar cube.
Jessie was one of 910 new polio cases in the United States during 1962. Just two years earlier before the Salk vaccine became widely available, there were 45,000 new polio cases in one year.

Salk was hailed as a national hero.

It was understandable as every adult living in the 1950s had grown up knowing someone who was paralyzed or had died from polio.
Here we are in the United States some 73 years later and most of us never think about polio.
Making polio that inconsequential on a worldwide basis has been an unwavering goal of Rotary since 1985.
Just 100 years ago in the 1920s, a major polio endemic in this country had parents forbidding their children from swimming and doing routine childhood activities due to fear that the highly communicable virus was transmitted by coming into contact with water.

Today we have no such fears.
Rotary International has vowed not to rest until the word “polio” no longer strikes fear in the hearts of parents anywhere on the face of the earth or the actual virus cripples a child for life.
But guess what.

In 2024, there was a resurgence in polio with 62 new cases worldwide.

This is just years after annual new case count had dropped to a few a year.

If you think that can’t happen in the United States, guess again.

There were 10 countries that unexpectedly had a polio resurgence in 2024.

The reason?

The countries had children that their parents did not see the value of getting the polio vaccine.

Sound familiar?

This is not to say vaccine exceptions should not be allowed.

It’s to point out dropping all vaccine requirements for children — who are far from fully developing their immune system as much as nature and their bodies will allow,  and then dropping them into close proximity with 900, give or take, other kids seven hours a day — might not be a great idea.

Play with fire and the chances are someone is going to get burn.

While you’re at it, why not burn the facts that vaccines, when all things are weighed, have given countless people life who otherwise would have died or been crippled for life.

The numbers make the vaccine miscues a speck of dust compared to a mountain.

That is not to dismiss the pain and suffering of those who suffer side effects.

It is just to point out the body count without vaccines would soar to terrifying levels.