4 ms·
Maybe I'm doing the math wrong, but if herd immunity threshold is 82 to 94% then isn't it ok that 7% of the children aren't immunized?
by chrismcb 12y ago
Maybe I'm doing the math wrong, but if herd immunity threshold is 82 to 94% then isn't it ok that 7% of the children aren't immunized?
- soneil 12y agoIt's borderline. If 7% have 'personal belief exemptions', then the 'herd' is at 93%. And we have at least one example (the child in the article) of further members who aren't vaccinated outside of this 7%. So the actual number is likely to be a little lower than 93%. Personally, I don't believe a model as simple as a % is likely to be workable in a school. If one of those 7% happens to sit beside him in every single class, the odds are going to defy the 'threshold' very quickly.
- nl 12y agoThe vaccine doesn't work for 3% of people, so that's down to 4% we are ok with. Then there is a set of people who can't get the vaccine for various reasons. The most obvious of these are very young infants, but it also includes elderly people who didn't get it when they were young as well as suffers of various diseases. Then there are people with depleted immune systems (chemo patients etc) who are vulnerable to diseases even if they are immunised. It seems likely this set of people adds up to between 1% and 2%. That drops it to 2-3%.