Same reasons as everywhere else: The vaccines ended up attenuating in their effectiveness faster than expected, while everyone who was vaxxed went around town (and going to restaurants, and clubbing, etc) thinking they were now bulletproof. As we have seen, they weren't.
It remained a non-event for the vast majority of the population because the most vulnerable proportion of the population participated in a widespread vaccination campaign. If a little extra screen time in the media made that campaign successful it paid dividends for public health, imo.
People got sufficiently tired of deadly smallpox outbreaks to mount vaccination campaigns, eventually we managed to vaccinate enough of the globe to make the virus extinct.
Smallpox is extinct, diptheria, pertussus and polio are nearly extinct, and measles mumps and rubella would be nearly extinct if not for pockets of antivaxers creating a constant stream of outbreaks.
Go look up how many diseases these people killed prior to the vaccines, and then a few years after. You are absolutely taking for granted what we've accomplished through the use of vaccines.
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