Vaccines are the real MVP: they've been saving lives for hundreds of years.
RFK Jr. and others who erode trust in life-saving medical tools are dangers to our society and they do not care about improving health.
Vaccines are objectively one of the most impactful scientific interventions in human history. Today, we have vaccines that protect against dozens of debilitating and deadly diseases, with new candidates under study all the time.
Vaccine science and infectious disease immunology was what ignited my passion for science above all else. For those that don’t know, that’s my research background. Today, I work in life sciences biotech, which means I still work heavily in the infectious disease, vaccine, and cancer space.
But over 20 years ago, I took a microbiology class my junior year of high school. I was already a nerd, let’s not pretend I wasn’t. I was obsessed with creepy crawlies, vectors of disease, and communicable illness, but microbiology really took it over the edge.
So much so that I did a high school senior project on the meningococcal vaccine (caused by Neisseria meningitidis, this infection can have mortality rates between 10 and 50% and can progress from mild symptoms to death rapidly). My college essay? Me waxing poetic about how I was going to study the host response to infection and get my PhD and be a disease chaser. And that’s pretty much what I did, to a T. Thanks Mr. Ambruso!
This is one reason why the present era is particularly saddening. I think about baby Andrea: doing her first mRNA transfection, transforming E. coli using genetic engineering, envisioning the future applications of emerging scientific tools while bright-eyed and bushy tailed. And now? We are witnessing a societal rejection of science, critical thinking, subject-matter expertise, and a collapse of public health.
Before vaccines, disease and death due to acute illnesses were common. Now, they are almost unheard of, but that is threatened by refusal to vaccinate.
Unfortunately, vaccines are victim of their own success.
Most people today - even if they personally refuse vaccines - have benefited from vaccination campaigns, which have reduced or eliminated the presence of many diseases that were serious public health and societal challenges in decades past.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
Vaccines have nearly 300 years of history behind them.
Remember when I wrote about variolation during the Revolutionary War? That was the predecessor to modern vaccination. Variolation was the intentional, but controlled. introduction of live smallpox virus to a person, which caused them to develop a milder illness, but after recovery, gave them immunity to this disease which killed millions upon millions.
Variolation dropped mortality rate of smallpox from 30% to roughly 3%. Since they were still using Variola virus, in some instances, people could develop a severe case of smallpox and succumb, but the benefit far exceeded that risk. Read more below:
The USA exists because of vaccines. Vaccinations: patriotic since 1776.
Today, July 4th, marks Independence Day here in the US: the day that commemorates the Declaration of Independence, ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. This effectively established the United States of America.
But vaccination soon replaced variolation.
Vaccination is called such because of this history. Edward Jenner, an English physician and scientist, had heard of stories that people - primarily milkmaids - who had contracted cowpox were immune to smallpox. Jenner called the Cowpox virus Variolae vacciniae (smallpox of the cow).
Jenner ran one of the first published challenge studies.
Sarah Nelms (milkmaid) May 1796 contracted cowpox while caring for cows on the farm. Jenner took a pustule from her and scratched the material into the skin of an 8-yr old boy named James Phipps. James developed mild symptoms for ~9 days. In July that year, Jenner challenged James with smallpox by deliberately introducing the virus, and James did not develop smallpox. He published his findings in 1797/1798, and by 1800, this practice began spreading across Europe.
Jenner coined the new immunization process “vaccination” originating from the Latin for cow, vacca (also why Cowpox is called Variolae vacciniae).
While other scientists and physicians contributed, Jenner is attributed as the “father” of vaccination because he devised and documented a scientific method. His methodology, documentation, and sharing of the procedure allowed this technology to spread globally: the goal of public health.
We replaced cowpox virus with Vaccinia virus (a closely related family member to both cowpox and smallpox). This method of smallpox vaccination is the one used in our modern era.
Smallpox, a viral illness with 30-50% mortality rate, has been ERADICATED from the planet because of vaccines.
Smallpox is a serious disease caused by the Variola virus. It has existed for over 3000 years and was one of the most devastating plagues on humanity.
Variola virus is in the Orthopoxvirus family, the same family as mpox. These viruses are are transmitted by close and direct contact. Smallpox is spread via close contact respiratory droplets, physical contact, and contact with contaminated objects. Smallpox virus can survive in scabs from pustules or dried infected bodily fluids for weeks or months, which, during the era of limited hygiene practices, facilitated rapid spread especially in close quarters and among lower income families.
The virus causes a severe systemic viremia (spread of the virus throughout the body) where it infects and targets key organs and migrates to the skin, leading to the rash most people have only seen photos of. There are different manifestations of smallpox, from ordinary [including discrete and confluent], to flat, and hemorrhagic. Depending on the manifestation, mortality rate could reach 100%.
Smallpox caused millions of deaths every year before we eradicated it from the planet thanks to vaccines. After the deployment of global vaccine campaigns, including one in the US in 1947 and one by the World Health Organization in 1967, the last known case of smallpox was reported in Somalia in 1977.
Smallpox was eradicated worldwide by 1980 and this is entirely due to vaccinations.
We’ve made a lot of progress since the 1700s in developing better methods to vaccinate against additional deadly and debilitating diseases.
Before vaccines for many of the below communicable illnesses, infections caused thousands to millions of illness and deaths every single year. Now? We have life saving tools that can protect our societies, particularly children, who are at highest risk for many of these diseases.
Measles vaccines are estimated to have prevented 56 MILLION deaths globally between 2000 and 2021.
Measles is caused by the measles virus and is the most contagious human pathogen. The first iteration of the measles vaccine came out in 1963.
Prior to 1963, measles led to serious epidemics every couple of years and caused on average 2.6 million deaths annually (when the global population was much lower; for context, it was 3 billion in 1960, compared to 8.1 billion today).
The US eliminated endemic measles in 2000 thanks to vaccines.
We still have sporadic measles cases here, this means we don’t have endemic measles (that exists within the country). Measles outbreaks that occur are initiated by international import by an unvaccinated (or non-immune) person, and are spread when they encounter other unvaccinated individuals.
Unfortunately, declining vaccine rates as a result of anti-science disinformation spread by people like RFK Jr., survivor bias (people forgetting the importance of vaccines), and complacency have increased the frequency and range of these episodic outbreaks, which threatens our status as being free from measles.
Read more about measles here:
The world is almost free from polio too, thanks to vaccines.
Polio, caused by the poliomyelitis virus, an enterovirus that spreads person-to-person and through fecal-oral routes. Initially, the virus infects and replicates in the GI tract like other enteroviruses, but can spread to the central nervous system, where complications can lead to paralysis, organ failure, and death.
While the majority of infections are mild or even asymptomatic, that also means that many infected individuals do not know they are infected and can transmit the virus to others.
In about 8% of polio cases, meningitis can occur. In about 1% of polio cases, paralytic polio occurs, which causes flaccid paralysis, muscle weakness, and death, particularly if the diaphragm and respiratory muscles are involved.
I’m sure you’ve seen the photos of iron lung wards, right? That was because of polio spreading rampantly through populations.
Some people never recover muscle function. Post-polio syndrome (like all infections, yes, people can present with post-acute sequelae) can lead to long-term complications for decades, even for life.
Prior to the development of polio vaccines, hundreds of thousands of cases occurred every year. In 1952 alone, 58,000 cases occurred in the US, which resulted in 3,145 deaths and 21,269 cases of paralysis. (that’s a total fatality rate of 5.4% and a complication rate of 36.7%). Mortality from paralytic polio ranges from 5-15% depending on the degree of muscle paralysis and which muscles are involved.
Thanks to vaccines, polio has been eliminated in the US since 1979.
There are two vaccines for polio, the oral polio vaccine (OPV, Sabin vaccine) and the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV, Salk vaccine). Jonas Salk introduced the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) in 1955, and Albert Sabin developed the oral polio vaccine (OPV) in the early 1960s. The OPV was instrumental in mass immunization campaigns while high levels of wild polio circulated. I found my old vaccine records as a kid and yep, I got the OPV!
Today in the US, the IPV is the only one administered since 2000, because we don’t have to control circulating polio in the population. The OPV induces more robust immunity because it more effectively targets the GI tract niche where poliovirus replicates and induces mucosal immunity. This is the one you might have remembered getting on a sugar cube, perhaps?
Since then, global cases of polio have dropped by over 99%. There are only two countries in the world with endemic wild polio, Afghanistan and Pakistan. These countries have socioeconomic and geopolitical challenges with vaccination campaigns, including political and social instability as well as anti-vaccine disinformation. But the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has a target to eliminate wild poliovirus by 2027, and to hit that benchmark, we need all the factual science we can get.
We have made substantial progress with other communicable diseases as well.
Diphtheria is a bacterial illness with a mortality rate up to 20%. Vaccination has near-eliminated it in many parts of the world.
Diphtheria is caused by the toxin-producing bacteria Corynebacterium diphtheriae and can cause serious symptoms including myocarditis, neurological involvement, and respiratory obstruction. It is most severe among young children and older adults. In the 1920s, the US reported roughly 200,000 every year, with around 15,000 deaths.
In the 1940s, the toxoid-based vaccine was developed, which nearly eliminated diphtheria in many parts of the world (including in the US). In children, the DTaP vaccine protects against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. In adults, the TDap vaccine is administered every 10 years to maintain that protection.
Today, there are fewer than 5 cases reported in the US every year. Thanks vaccines!
Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is another preventable illness thanks to vaccines.
Pertussis is caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis is a highly contagious respiratory illness and is particularly dangerous to young children.
Prior to vaccines, pertussis causes millions of cases globally and thousands of deaths every year. The first pertussis vaccine was developed in 1914, and was combined with diphtheria and tetanus in 1940, called the DPT. Since 1991 we have used the acellular pertussis version, the DTaP.
The benefit? It includes fewer antigens than the whole-bacterial cell version and fewer side effects but just as effective. And they say we don’t care about safety.
Prior to the 1940s, whooping cough caused roughly 200,000 cases every year in the US, with about 9,000 deaths, primarily among young children and infants. Today, we have only periodic outbreaks, which are usually linked to adults not getting that 10-year vaccine and waning memory immunity. That’s why in 2006, CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended the adult vaccination schedule.
There are many more examples, but I want to close with one last one, because it speaks to the false claims of RFK Jr. and his “desire” to combat chronic illnesses.
HPV vaccination can eliminate several types of cancers
I am ALL for tackling chronic illnesses. The reason we have chronic illnesses as a primary cause of death today though is because we no longer have to contend with acute illnesses as a primary cause of premature death. Our life expectancies have increased, our access to healthcare has (sorta) increased (if you’re rich), and we have incredible science and medical interventions at our fingertips.
And that includes a vaccine for viruses that prevents cancers.
Yup, the HPV vaccine (also the Hepatitis B vaccine) prevents cancer. And not just cervical cancers, but anal cancers, throat cancers, vaginal cancers, vulvar cancers, and penile cancers. Cancers are chronic diseases, I think everyone can agree to that, right?
And we have the long-term data to demonstrate that HPV vaccination, especially before any potential exposure to the HPV strains in question, is now preventing cancer. It is absolutely incredible. And this is being reported around the world in countries with HPV vaccine recommendations.
I’ve written much more about HPV, how these viruses cause cancer, and the data behind this here:
Guess what? We can prevent some cancers through vaccination.
Media headlines lately are all chattering about “rise” of cancer in young adults. Of course, many people are understandably concerned: the term cancer connotes fear. Of course, as the media is wont to do, they lump all cancers into a single bucket, and fail to note that many cancer rates are declining. If you want a quick overview of the diversity of cancers,
But if RFK Jr. and his MAHA crew (like Calley and Casey Means) actually wanted to improve health and reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases - like cancers - shouldn’t they be shouting this from the rooftop?
Unfortunately, they aren’t. Because their actions demonstrate that, even if the words they say claim they do. And this doesn’t even start to discuss the fact that many acute illnesses that can be prevented by vaccines can actually contribute to and worsen chronic diseases (but RFK Jr. doesn’t understand how health is complex and multifactorial).
The reality? Anti-vaccine rhetoric is a top 10 global health threat.
Vaccines save millions of lives every year. They’ve increased our quality and quantity of life.
We are no longer dying from acute infectious diseases as a result of vaccines.
But anti-vaccine rhetoric and refusal to vaccinate threatens that. We can help combat that: by getting vaccinated with all recommended vaccines to protect ourselves and those around us. Let’s combat disinformation with facts - because better science literacy improves public health and health outcomes.
We all must join in the fight for science.
Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.
Stay skeptical,
Andrea
“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:
Thank you so much for this. It's so frustrating to have family who are anti-vax and are pro RFK, Jr. I even have friends who've decided that measles don't exist because of that German Court Case with Dr. Stefan Lanka. They're more worried about kids getting Autism, nevermind that it's all been debunked. What has happened to people's brains???
These are dark times, so I am grateful that you continue to communicate accurate information to us! I’m not sure we can make headway with anti-science people. When I start to explain research methodology or evidence-based data, they will tell me that those methods are bogus. There is nowhere to go from that point. Perhaps they’ll change their minds when their brainwashed loved ones die. It’s sad that this is what it might come to, but I can’t talk sense when confronted with their nonsense.