3 ms·
No, herd immunity means "enough people are resistant so the vulnerable ones don't get infection spread to them at all". There's a big difference there.
by stargazer-3 6y ago
No, herd immunity means "enough people are resistant so the vulnerable ones don't get infection spread to them at all". There's a big difference there.
- sp332 6y agoHow would you be resistant without getting infected? There's no vaccine.
- qaq 6y agobecause there is enough people who are resistant in the population that virus can no longer spread
- sp332 6y agoI thought herd immunity required >90% of people to be resistant, but I guess that's only true for very contagious stuff like measles. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity#Mechanics COVID-19 might only need 30% of the population to be resistant if it has an R0 of 1.4, or 75% if the R0 is 3.9. It's still a good chunk of the population but it's a lot different than I thought.
- ArnoVW 6y agoIf the propagation of a virus is similar to a fire running through a population, herd immunity is analogous to a backfire. If most of the people are immune, the fire has no combustible to propagate and it stops. The level at which this happens depends on the ease at which the virus spreads. If it spreads easily, herd immunity kicks in much later than in the reverse case.
- dragonwriter 6y agoYou wouldn't be, you'd just be relatively unlikely to be infected since most people around you would be immune and the virus would have difficulty getting to you. But the degree and duration of immunity that usually follows SARS-nCoV-2 infection isn't well established yet, and coronaviruses in general are noted for not producing lasting immunity.
- sp332 6y agoYeah that's what I'm asking. By the time you get to "herd immunity", most of the population has already been infected. To get most people to be resistant, most people need to get sick first!
- StavrosK 6y agoRight, enough people are resistant because they already got infected. I don't see how that's different from what I said.
- badestrand 6y agoIt's different because when you go for herd immunity you would try to infect low-risk groups first so the high risk groups would never get it at all. This would result in an overall minimal death rate, could be a tenth or less of the death rate if the infections were evenly distributed.
- ozim 6y agoSecond that. I would write it differently: Enough people are resistant so instead of becoming virus factories and spread it further they stop the infection with their immune system.