Yesterday I watched a PBS documentary that I had recorded the night before. As the first few moments were being narrated I thought to myself, "OMG, this is now." It was about polio a disease that struck everyone and every place randomly. Even one of the most privileged people in the USA , Franklin Delano Roosevelt, could not escape its clutches. Roosevelt began a warm water clinic where other polio patients could be given treatment to attempt to recover from polio. Eventually Roosevelt asked his law firm partner, Basil O'Connor, to take control of the rehab clinic and to begin a campaign in order to secure funding to maintain it. Because the country was in the grips of the Depression attempts to get funds from the wealthy was not enough, so he reached out to the public who was now suffering the most from the epidemic and through various means asked for each person to send a mere 10 cents to the White House to fund a way to find a vaccine against Polio. I never really knew what the March of Dimes was but it arose from the thought that it was everyone, including the government, that had to work together to cure polio. It took a long time to find a vaccine. I highly recommend the documentary.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/polio/