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The forgotten link between Candy Land and polio and why it still matters

The history of the classic board game holds an important lesson about disease.

Photo credits: Amazon (left), Bror Brandt (right)

Candy Land was created for kids in the hospital with polio.

Candy Land has been adored by preschoolers, tolerated by older siblings, and dreaded by adults for generations. The simplicity of its play makes it perfect for young children, and the colorful candy-themed game has endured as an activity the whole family can do together.

Even for the grown-ups who find it mind-numbing to play, there's some sweet nostalgia in traversing the Peppermint Forest and avoiding the Molasses Swamp that tugs at us from our own childhoods. There are few things as innocent and innocuous as a game of Candy Land, but many of us may not know the dark reality behind how and why the game was invented in the first place.

candy landCandy Land has been a family favorite for decades, but it was originally created for kids with polio.m.media-amazon.com

Candy Land was invented by retired schoolteacher Eleanor Abbott while she recovered from polio in 1948. She was convalescing in a San Diego hospital surrounded by children being treated for the disease and saw how isolating and lonely it was for them. The game, which could be played alone and provided a fantasy world for sick children to escape to, become so popular among the hospital's young patients that Abbott's friends encouraged her to pitch it to game manufacturer Milton Bradley. The post-World-War-II timing turned out to be fortuitous.

“There was a huge market—it was parents who had kids and money to spend on them,” Christopher Bensch, Chief Curator at the National Toy Hall of Fame, told PBS. “A number of social and economic factors were coming together for [games] that were released in the [post-war era] that has kept them as evergreen classics." Candy Land soon became Milton Bradley's best-selling game.

Since the game doesn't require any reading or writing to play, children as young as 3 years old could enjoy it when they were feeling sad or homesick in the polio ward. As the polio epidemic ramped up in the early 1950s, the game gained even more popularity as parents often kept their kids indoors during polio outbreaks in their communities.

The polio vaccine changed the game—both for the disease and for Candy Land. Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) was licensed in the spring of 1955 and a widespread vaccine campaign was launched. By 1961, polio cases had dropped from 58,000 to only 161. The disease was considered eradicated from the Americas in 1994, and, as of 2022, the only countries in the world to have any recorded cases were Pakistan and Afghanistan.

graph of polio cases from 1988 to 2021Vaccine GIF by World Health OrganizationGiphy

In the 70 years since the polio vaccine came out, Candy Land's connection to the disease has been lost, and it's now just a classic in the family board game cabinet. The fact that polio has so successfully been controlled and nearly eliminated makes it easy to forget that it used to be a devastating public health threat that spurred the need for the game in the first place. Children are routinely vaccinated for polio, keeping the disease at bay, but anti-vaccine messaging and fear threatens to impact the vaccination rates that have led to that success. Vaccination rates took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the appointment of one of the most popular vaccine skeptics as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, public health specialists are concerned.

There is no cure for polio, so the vaccine is by far our best weapon against it. According to infectious disease experts, it's not impossible for polio to make a comeback. “It’s pockets of the unimmunized that can bring diseases back," Patsy Stinchfield, former president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told Scientific American. "If you have a community of people geographically close to each other and they all choose not to vaccinate, that community immunity is going to drop quickly. And if a person who has polio or is shedding polio enters that community, the spread will be much more rapid.”

Without herd immunity, vulnerable people such as babies who are too young to be vaccinated and people with compromised immune systems are at risk in addition to the unvaccinated. And since up to 70% of polio cases are asymptomatic, there can be a lot more disease circulating than it appears when symptomatic disease is detected. No one wants the serious outcomes that can come with polio, such as paralysis, the inability to breathe without assistance, or death, especially when outbreaks are entirely preventable through vaccine-induced community immunity.

The fact that kids have been able to enjoy Candy Land for decades without thinking about polio at all is a testament to vaccine effectiveness, but it's also a reminder of how easy it is to take that carefreeness for granted.

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Man returns to the ICU where he almost died of COVID-19 to apologize to healthcare workers

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Richard Soliz spent 28 days at Harborview Medical Center and nearly died of COVID-19.

Throughout the pandemic, we've seen countless stories of patients in the ICU, terribly sick with COVID-19, still insisting that the virus isn't real. Such stories of denial are frustrating, especially for healthcare workers who are doing their best to save people's lives.

That's why this story of a COVID patient returning to the hospital to thank—and apologize to—the medical staff who helped him offers a ray of hope that not all who are in denial will stay that way.

According to KOMO News, Richard Soliz hadn't known anyone who had gotten sick from the coronavirus. He had also fallen prey to misinformation on social media about the vaccine, so had chosen not to get vaccinated. Then he fell ill in late August, spiked a fever and found it difficult to breathe.

"That's when I really knew I was in a bad situation," Soliz said. "That's when I knew, hey, this is COVID. Man. I contracted the virus."

Soliz told KOMO he was embarrassed when staff at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center asked him if he was vaccinated. Pulmonologist and director of the ICU Dr. James Town told CNN that when Soliz was admitted, about 99 out of 100 COVID-19 patients at Harborview had not been vaccinated

Soliz ended up spending 28 days in the hospital. He was put on a ventilator and a heart monitor in the ICU and nearly didn't make it.

"I am certain that there is truth to this virus, and not being vaccinated leaves you vulnerable to the extent of possibly really taking a person's life," Soliz said. "I personally know that, because I was not vaccinated. I did not act, I wasn't certain, and I nearly lost my life."

Soliz did make it, though. Then he did something that few unvaccinated COVID-19 survivors do. He went back to the hospital to thank the medical team that treated him—and apologize for not getting vaccinated.

"I was literally on my deathbed and hanging from a string, and [doctors and nurses] tended to me as perfect strangers," Soliz told CNN. "I just had to say something."

Soliz thanked Dr. Town and told him he deeply regretted not getting the vaccine.

"No one blames you or judges you," Town responded. "Everyone is just happy that you are willing to share the story, I think. And happy that you're better."

Healthcare workers are heroes. Seriously.

"It's emotional for us to see someone do well," Town told KOMO News. "Particularly when things are so dark."

Other staff members were moved by Soliz's apology and gratitude.

"We do put so much of our own heart into the care and worry," nurse Kimmy Siebens said. "We never really get to see people get that much better. And so it's amazing. It makes it feel like it's definitely all worth it, you know?"

Soliz has a message he wants everyone to hear:

"Please go get vaccinated because this virus is real. Real enough to take someone's life (or) put you in the ICU."

Though a majority of American adults have gotten vaccinated, misinformation about the vaccines has resulted in millions of people choosing to reject the COVID-19 vaccines. Public health experts have tried every which way to convey to the public that the No. 1 thing people can do to mitigate the effects of the pandemic and safely get back to normal is to get vaccinated. Vaccines make viral infection and transmission less likely, and drastically reduce the chances of hospitalization and death. It's unfortunate that it may take more stories like Soliz's to convince some people, but here we are.

Thank you, Richard Soliz, for acknowledging you made a mistake and for serving as a good example of humility and gratitude after your hospitalization.

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Vaccine mandates work, most people support them, and it's maddening that we even need them at all

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash, @kimmaicutler/Twitter

As debates over vaccine mandates raged this summer, United Airlines took the decisive step to require all employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19. Employees who applied and were approved for a medical or religious exemption would be placed on medical leave and risk losing income. Those who refused the vaccine and did not receive an exemption would be terminated.

The not-messing-around approach worked smashingly. Prior to the deadline, only a fraction of a percent of United's staff—320 out of 67,000 employees—ended up choosing termination. That left United Airlines with an astounding 99.5% vaccination rate.

United took a risk and it paid off. Not only did the company retain the vast majority of its workforce, but applicants started clamoring to work for the airline. According to The New York Times, the airline received 20,000 applications for approximately 2,000 flight attendant positions after the vaccine mandate was announced.


United kicked off a trend. Other airlines followed suit, and we saw more and more companies requiring employees to be vaccinated.

Vaccine mandates have proven successful, but not without controversy. Within an already understaffed health care industry, the risk of losing employees who refuse to be vaccinated is real. So is the risk of unvaccinated health care workers treating patients.

In California, mandates for health care workers resulted in a huge uptick in vaccinations. The same thing happened in Texas. Despite predictions of a mass exodus of New York and New Jersey health care workers, only a small number chose to quit when mandates took effect. In fact, many of those who chose to stay on and take the alternative weekly testing option decided to get vaccinated after just a few weeks of being swabbed.

Mandates clearly work—but it's maddening that we have had to resort to them. Some success stories have proven that mandates aren't always necessary to reach a high vaccination rate. After being the only team in the NFL to have zero COVID-19 cases during last season, the Seattle Seahawks made a strong push to get their staff and players vaccinated. The NFL asked for teams to try for an 85% vaccination rate; with just one player declining, the Seahawks hit a whopping 99% vaccination rate weeks before the football season even began. By the time the season officially started, the NFL reported that 93% of players across the league had been vaccinated—a far higher percentage than the general population.

Perhaps that's due to the stringent protocols players who aren't vaccinated have to go through. Perhaps it's the sense of competition within the league and the knowledge that COVID-19 outbreaks can derail a team's chances of a winning season. Perhaps it's because NFL players are supportive of science and common sense than the average American. Whatever it is, the NFL has proven it's possible to create a culture that results in a high vaccination rate without mandates.

If only we could figure out how to create that culture in this country as a whole.

There are legitimate debates to be had about the government mandating vaccines (despite public schools having mandated vaccinations for more than a century), but it's harder to argue against private businesses and organizations requiring them as a condition of employment or participation. People sure do try, though. Anti-vaxxers and "freedom fighters" who disagree with all manner of mandates in the name of personal liberty are loud and proud in their stance. But that doesn't mean they're right.

According to Gallup, the majority of Americans support COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Other polls, including one from Fox News, have found the same thing. If mandates are going to help us stop losing tens of thousands of Americans every month, bring them on.

In a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 700,000 Americans in a year and a half, vaccines that lower the risk of infection and transmission and greatly lower the risk of hospitalization and death are a gift. Mandate or no mandate, getting vaccinated is objectively the right thing to do. It would be fabulous if we could get to a high vaccination rate without creating requirements, but with few exceptions (like the NFL), that ideal has proven to be unrealistic.

If it weren't for the massive misinformation machine derailing reality for millions, far fewer people would refuse the vaccine. We're battling a crisis of viral conspiracy theories in addition to the actual viral pandemic, and something has to give.

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State trooper's sign-off after refusing vaccine sounds reasonable, except for one major flaw

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Washington State Patrol officer gives final sign-off at state vaccine mandate deadline.

In Washington state, the vaccine mandate deadline—after which state employees who declined to get vaccinated for COVID-19 would be let go—arrived on October 18. There have been some high-profile holdouts in the state with the mandate, including the Washington State University (WSU) football head coach who was ousted this week from his $3.1 million-a-year position over his refusal to get the vaccine. And though many have gone ahead and gotten the shots, a handful of state employees have stood their ground on principle, choosing to give up their careers rather than comply with a government mandate in a public health emergency.

One of those employees is this Washington State Patrol officer who shared a video of his final sign-off on the mandate deadline. What I find interesting about this particular video is that he's so calm and reasonable sounding. He's not spouting conspiracy theories. He's not cussing out the governor. He's not ranting about tyranny. He's simply stating that he's taking "a moral stand for medical freedom and personal choice" and sharing words of thanks and encouragement to his fellow officers. His seemingly sane sincerity is almost enough to make me sympathetic.

And yet, ironically, everything he says makes it clear that his refusal of the vaccine makes zero sense.


The fatal flaw in this video is how the officer repeatedly talks about staying safe and coming home at the end of the day. He talks about how relieved his wife and kids are at the end of each shift. He makes it clear that an officer's job is dangerous and he tells his fellow officers to "stay safe" and "take care of one another."

Here's the thing. The single greatest danger to police officers' safety is COVID-19. That's not a guess or assumption, it's math.

According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, COVID-19 was the No. 1 cause of death for police officers in the United States in 2020, and so far in 2021 as well. And it's not just No. 1 by a little bit. In fact, five times more officers have been killed by COVID-19 than by gunfire in the past two years. In Washington state specifically, half of the law enforcement officers who have died this year were killed by COVID-19. In 2020, it was more than half.

COVID-19 vaccines reduce the chance of getting and transmitting COVID-19 and greatly reduce the chance of death from the virus. So if this officer is truly as concerned about safety as he sounds, he'd get the vaccine. If he's as concerned about his fellow officers as he sounds, he'd get the vaccine. If he wants officers to take care of one another, as he says, he'd get the vaccine—and he'd encourage others to do the same. If he cares about protecting and serving the people of Washington, he'd get the vaccine.

He talks about the number of officers and sergeants who will no longer be serving as of this week, due to their refusal to get vaccinated. But what about the officers no longer serving because they were taken by COVID-19? Many of those officers didn't have a choice to get vaccinated because they died before vaccines were available. How would they feel about their fellow officers refusing to do the one simple thing that could have saved them from dying in the line of duty?

Police officers are required to do risky things in their job. Driving around in a patrol car carries a risk. Being armed with a gun carries a risk. Obviously, chasing down criminals carries a risk. Does getting vaccinated for COVID-19 carry a risk? Yes. But it's a tiny one, and remaining unvaccinated is a far, far riskier choice for you and your colleagues and the people you swore to protect and serve.

The officer said he was taking a stand for medical choice, but he's doing so without acknowledging 1) the public health emergency/global pandemic that prompted the need for the vaccine he's refusing, and 2) the fact that caring about safety makes getting vaccinated the only logical choice.

But a choice it is. Losing your job over vaccine refusal during a public health crisis that has killed 700,000 Americans is a choice. And it's one that doesn't make any sense when the purpose of your job is to protect and serve the public.

Sir, I get the "medical freedom" argument, but you are refusing to take one small risk to minimize a known danger that has killed more of your fellow officers than every other line-of-duty cause of death combined in the past two years. Just seems like an odd hill to choose to die on.

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