Herd Immunity

 Let’s start the year off with a little knowledge bomb.  

The term ‘herd immunity’ has taken on a life of its own, and is most popular with people who don’t know what it means.  

Herd immunity is not the same as individual immunity.  The stubborn, the foolish, and the unlucky will continue to get sick and die.  Achieving some nebulous level of vaccination in our society will do nothing to save the lives of those who persist in foolish behavior like tongue-kissing strangers on the street, not wearing a mask, or maintaining distance from others.  

What ‘herd immunity’ means is that those who contract this disease have a reduced incidence of passing it on to others—and reinvigorating the global pandemic—since the majority of those whom they contact will be immunized against it.  

And societal herd immunity provides no protection to stubborn subgroups, who have lower levels of immunization, and continue to mingle without protection.  All one has to do is look at the last few years of localized outbreaks of measles and mumps among the anti-vaxxer cult community to get the point.  We have had societal herd immunity against those diseases for decades, but that does not protect fools.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTRKCXC0JFg