American Vaccines Across 250 Years: Smallpox Eradication to COVID-19 Shots

Over 250 years, vaccines developed and deployed in the United States helped eliminate or dramatically reduce dozens of infectious diseases, preventing millions of deaths and hospitalizations, according to federal health data and physicians cited by Fox News Digital. The record spans Edward Jenner's 1796 smallpox vaccine through the COVID-19 shots authorized in December 2020. "There is a reason that vaccines are widely considered to be the greatest public health tool after sanitation," Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News senior medical analyst, said.

From Smallpox to the Bacterial Diseases of the Early 20th Century

Jenner's smallpox vaccine set the template. Smallpox killed roughly 30% of those infected before vaccination, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Jacob Glanville, chief executive of Centivax, a San Francisco biotechnology company, said the vaccine "eradicated a disease that killed 5-10% of all humans who had ever lived for almost all of human history." The World Health Organization credits widespread vaccination with global eradication; the shot is now given only to select military, laboratory and emergency-response personnel.

The century that followed produced a wave of bacterial-disease vaccines. Louis Pasteur developed the first rabies vaccine in 1885. Diphtheria, which recorded 13,000 to 15,000 deaths annually in the U.S. before the 1920s — mostly among children — was addressed by the diphtheria toxoid vaccine introduced that decade. The tetanus toxoid vaccine followed in the same era. A pertussis vaccine arrived in the 1910s, and after widespread immunization, whooping cough cases fell more than 90%, per CDC data.

Mid-Century Milestones: Influenza and Polio

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide, including an estimated 675,000 Americans. The first U.S. flu vaccine was licensed in 1945, launching routine seasonal programs that have since significantly reduced flu-related illness, hospitalization and death.

Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, introduced in 1955, addressed a disease that caused more than 15,000 cases of paralytic polio per year in the early 1950s. By 1979, the U.S. was declared free of wild poliovirus. Measles, mumps and rubella vaccines arrived in 1963, 1967 and 1969, respectively, with the combined MMR vaccine following in 1971. Widespread vaccination has reduced cases of all three by more than 99%; measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 and endemic rubella in 2004.

Modern Vaccines: Hepatitis, Cancer Prevention, and COVID-19

A series of vaccines licensed in the 1980s and 1990s addressed hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b and varicella. Before the hepatitis B vaccine's 1981 licensure, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 Americans contracted the infection each year; acute cases have since fallen more than 80%. The Hib vaccine, first licensed in 1985, cut invasive disease among children under five by more than 99%. The varicella vaccine, available in 1995, has driven chickenpox hospitalizations and deaths down more than 90%.

The human papillomavirus vaccine, licensed in 2006, became the first immunization designed to prevent multiple types of cancer. Vaccines against rotavirus and shingles were also licensed in 2006; a more effective shingles vaccine, Shingrix, followed in 2017.

COVID-19 vaccines received emergency authorization in December 2020, as the SARS-CoV-2 virus caused more than 1.2 million deaths in the United States, per CDC and NIH data. Siegel said that while vaccines carry side effects and a risk of injury, "the benefit to the individual and society vastly outweighs any harm."