This is one reason that "herd immunity through everyone getting exposed and lots dying" is not the same thing as "herd immunity through vaccination". If you va

This is one reason that "herd immunity through everyone getting exposed and lots dying" is not the same thing as "herd immunity through vaccination". If you vaccinate a big chunk of the population when only 1% are currently infected, you hit R(effective) = 1 much sooner. While becoming immune through infection essentially guaranties there are a tremendous number of infectious persons at the point R(eff) drops to 1.