3 ms·
A virus spreading to a pandemic level is a stochastic process. If you have enough people vaccinated, then there aren't enough carriers to push r over 1 even if
by arrosenberg 6y ago
A virus spreading to a pandemic level is a stochastic process. If you have enough people vaccinated, then there aren't enough carriers to push r over 1 even if unvaccinated people are catching and actively transmitting the disease. Doesn't matter at an individual level, but the restrictions are a societal issue due to lack of capacity for care and treatment.
- SigmundA 6y agoRight so if you are vaccinated you are no longer a carrier and cannot infect those who are not vaccinated. If enough people get vaccinated they act as a barrier between the carriers and the unvaccinated, hence herd immunity.
- arrosenberg 6y agoAh, I misunderstood your original question a bit. If the vaccinated were still acting as carriers, the critical mass would still be important (though I'd imagine the math would be different) because the window of transmissibility would be much shorter and drive R way down. Vaccine would mean less viral load, less viral load means less transmission overall. This seems less likely to me than what is actually happening (vaccine inhibits transmission), but I could picture mechanisms by which that would happen.
- refurb 6y agoIt’s not black and white “vaccinated = no longer a carrier”, but rather a gradient where vaccinated people have antibodies which reduce the amount of viral shedding to such low levels (some will be zero) that transmission is potentially an order of magnitude less.