Mother Jones illustration; Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty, George Konig/Keystone Features/Getty
On Sunday, after four weeks of absence from Congress caused by a medical emergency—which led to extensive speculation about his health—Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) released a letter to his constituents saying that his hospitalization was the consequence of a fall. The 84-year-old former Senate Majority Leader noted that he has lifelong mobility issues related to a childhood case of polio.
Polio—largely eliminated in the US following the pathbreaking development of the Salk vaccine in 1955, when McConnell was 13—is a life-altering disease: if it doesn’t kill a person, it can lead to disabilities. Even decades after a polio infection, people can develop what is called post-polio syndrome, which contributes to symptoms such as muscle weakness and pain. Falls like McConnell’s are often related, at least in part, though McConnell has not publicly said whether he’s been diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, and falls not related to the condition are not unusual at his age.
Despite over a century of knowledge of the impacts of polio, and seventy years of widespread vaccine availability, some American parents are either delaying or avoiding getting their kids vaccinated against it. According to CDC data published in March, around 8 percent of toddlers born in 2021 and 2022 did not receive at least three polio vaccines by age two, with similar data available for kids born in the early 2010s. Unlike with measles , there have yet to be polio outbreaks as a consequence, with just one recent recorded case in the United States in an unvaccinated adult in 2022 (and none in children).
McConnell has consistently advocated for vaccines and spoken about his experience with polio decades after his infection at two years old—a voice that might help sway vaccine-hesitant parents who lean conservative, and a counterpoint to President Donald Trump’s expression of anti-vaccine sentiments, and appointment of anti-vaccine activists to top public health posts.
McConnell voted against confirming anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary in February 2025. In a statement released at the time, McConnell made his views on anti-vax sentiment clear.
“I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world,” he wrote. “I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.”
It would be ahistorical to portray McConnell as any sort of health care hero. As Senate Majority Leader during the first Trump administration, McConnell led efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which, among other things, bans insurance companies from refusing to cover chronically ill people based on their disabilities. He also voted for Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the 2025 budget bill that has already resulted in major public health cuts and which will strip millions of people of Medicaid through administrative burden.
Texas pediatrician and vaccine advocate Vincent Iannelli, who maintains a website tracking anti-vaccine propaganda, says voices like McConnell’s have been important in containing anti-vax sentiment. Trump, meanwhile, has questioned whether McConnell truly had polio—and various anti-vaxxers have done the same.
“The polio vaccine in particular is one of the greatest accomplishments of our science innovation,” American Public Health Association executive director Dr. Georges C. Benjamin told me. Benjamin noted that polio has been detected in wastewater domestically, suggesting that there are further unreported cases. “In communities that are not picking up the vaccine, the risk of polio is occurring,” he added.
New York University Grossman School of Medicine professor emeritus Arthur Caplan had polio when he was six years old and experienced temporary paralysis. Decades later, Caplan is experiencing the effects of post-polio syndrome, and now uses a mobility aid.
“It’s hugely important that polio survivors bear witness to the terrible damage that polio did in the US,” Caplan told me.
Asked what he thought about parents not vaccinating their children on the grounds of parental autonomy, Caplan, a bioethicist, says: “That is utter bullshit.”
Grace Rossow contracted polio in India as an infant in 1992, shortly before being adopted by a family in the United States. Despite access to quality medical care, Rossow’s symptoms, including paralysis in one leg and fatigue, persist. She’s had 19 surgeries to address the fallout.
Recovery from health problems, due to underlying neuromuscular issues, takes much longer after polio, Rossow, now 34, told me.
Right now, polio risk remains very low, Iannelli says. But if vaccination rates drop—as they have for other conditions, including measles, where such a drop was once hard for public health officials to imagine—that could change. Caplan cites the Florida surgeon general‘s efforts to end vaccine mandates in schools.
“Polio can hide. It hides in animals. People are asymptomatic. You cannot let your guard down against polio,” Caplan said. “It’s especially important for McConnell and other people who had polio to speak up.”
