Neither Matthews nor the doctor tells the sailor, or his bride, why they need the shots, nor anything about the baby having meningitis.
Babies who are choking and cannot breathe, cannot cry, since the same airway is used for both functions.
Williams notified the newspapers and radio stations around 2:40 PM. Matthews later narrows down the time to the store owner as being after 4:00 PM. Even with an afternoon publishing time for evening delivery, the story could not have been printed so quickly as to make the paper that was delivered to the rural store via bus a few hours after the incident as shown.
According to the Mayo Clinic, while signs of meningitis can be presumed given certain infections, it would not be able to be confirmed until a blood culture test or a spinal tap were performed. The doctor would have been unable to confirm his diagnosis at the home as was shown.
At no point did Jim, the sailor, tell anyone that he had performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the baby. However, the doctor tells Matthews, "Mrs Hoffman just told me. The child was choking, and a young sailor got it to breathing again. To do it, he breathed in the baby's mouth."
The amount of time it would have taken for the father to drive to the doctor (without the baby), and for the doctor to drive back, would have resulted in the death of the baby if he had truly been choking. Additionally, no parent would leave a sick baby to get the doctor under those circumstances; they would take the baby to the doctor. A similar error takes place when Matthews leaves the doctor at the store instead of taking him along to the cabin. This would have caused a needless delay in the patient getting medical treatment.
Everyone who came in contact with the sailor was supposedly at risk. Yet when the sailor finally got his inoculation, the doctor did not inoculate the sailor's new wife.
After speaking to the doctor, Matthews breaks radio protocol by not using his famous "2150 to headquarters" line.