Widespread vaccination has helped reduce or virtually eliminate many dangerous and deadly diseases in the United States. Yet, because vaccines have been so effective in eliminating threats, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate how important they have been to public health.
“We are very bad at measuring risk,” says epidemiologist René Najera, editor-in-chief of The history of vaccines, an online resource by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. “And so when we don’t see a lot of people dying from something, we think it’s okay.”
Here are four major diseases that you may have forgotten (or minimized) thanks to the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing or eliminating them.
1. Smallpox
Smallpox is the only human disease that has been eradicated globally thanks to vaccines. He is also responsible for the first known vaccine, created by English physician Edward Jenner in 1796. After observing that milkmaids who had contracted chickenpox (a milder disease) appeared to be immune to smallpox, Jenner inoculated a boy of eight years using a milkmaid. cow pox lesion. He then exposed the boy to smallpox, and when the boy didn’t develop any symptoms of the deadly disease, Jenner realized he had developed a way to prevent it.
The experiment, while very unethical by current standards, was a big deal. Smallpox could kill up to 30 percent of those who caught it, and had already killed large numbers of Indigenous people in North and South America after European settlers introduced smallpox and other new diseases to the continents. Soon after Jenner developed the vaccine, Spain began using it to vaccinate people across their empire. The British quickly followed suit, and in the 1850s Massachusetts became the first US state to impose smallpox vaccination.
“In the mid-1900s, right after WWII, countries all over the world decided… ‘Why don’t we just get rid of smallpox? »Says Najera. “And so they are undertaking an effort like no other since or before. This global effort led to the eradication of smallpox in 1979.
READ MORE: The rise and fall of smallpox
2. Rabies
Rabies has played an important role in American cinema and literature – think Old town crier, Kill a mockingbird and Their eyes looked at God. But the deadly disease, which causes erratic behavior, is no longer a major threat in the United States because of vaccines.
In this case, most of the vaccines that have helped save human lives are not used on humans – they are used on other animals that can carry the disease and infect humans by biting them. National rabies control programs have guidelines for the vaccination of companion animals and wild animals and the monitoring of animals susceptible to rabies. Any human being bitten by an animal, whether the animal has been vaccinated or not, should go to a doctor or hospital to receive a rabies vaccine.
Although rabies is still a threat in some parts of the world, many countries have strong vaccination and monitoring programs. “Latin America has one of the best rabies control programs in the world,” says Najera. “I was bitten by a mad dog when I was six [in Mexico]. They caught the dog and the dog died a few days later from rabies, so if I hadn’t gotten the vaccine I probably would have been dead.
3. Polio
Polio was once one of the most feared childhood illnesses in the United States. The viral infection can cause temporary or permanent paralysis, as it did with Franklin D. Roosevelt, a wheelchair user. This paralysis could prevent a person’s body from breathing on its own, which is why so many infected people had to be placed in an “iron lung”. By the late 1940s, it was disabling more than 35,000 Americans each year. The number of polio cases in the United States peaked in 1952, when it caused 57,879 infections and 3,145 deaths.
During the 1954 trials for Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, parents came together to register their children to receive the vaccine. As a result, 623,972 children received the vaccine or a placebo. Trials have shown the vaccine to be 80 to 90 percent effective in preventing polio. Thanks to the continuous immunization of children until today, no case of polio has occurred in the United States since 1979. However, polio has not been eradicated and remains a threat to health in Afghanistan and the United States. Pakistan.
READ MORE: When polio triggered fear and panic in parents
4. The flu
WATCH: The 1918 flu was deadlier than WWI
During the early spread of COVID-19, there was a lot of talk about whether the infectious disease was serious or “like the flu” – that is, not a threat. However, influenza remains a deadly disease that has caused past pandemics and has the potential to cause future ones (Najera believes the next influenza pandemic will happen “sooner or later”).
READ MORE: How the 1957 influenza pandemic was stopped early in its course
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that influenza caused between 12,000 and 61,000 deaths in the United States each year between 2010 and 2020. Globally, it kills between 291,000 and 646,000 people each year.
The deadliest epidemic on record dates back to 1918 and 1919. This influenza pandemic killed an estimated 675,000 people in the United States and up to 50 million people worldwide. It may also have infected a third of the world’s population, or around 500 million people. Since then, there have been several other influenza pandemics.
READ MORE: See full pandemic coverage here.