Let's get vaccinated!

IS herd immunity a myth? We keep hearing about the need to achieve herd immunity in order to go back to a pre-pandemic normal way of life. However, the threshold or percentage of the total population that needs to get vaccinated before the coveted herd immunity is attained has lately become a moving target. From 70 percent it suddenly became 80 to 90 percent! Measles, which is a highly contagious disease, requires 95 percent of the population to be vaccinated (or have gained immunity by having had the disease) in order for an unvaccinated population to be protected. For polio, the threshold is about 80 percent.

The thing is these are diseases that afflict us only once. The vaccination is truly an immunization against getting infected. But that is not the case with Covid and the Covid vaccines. While so-called breakthrough infections are relatively rare, they happen frequently enough to make it clear that the vaccines do not block transmission. The benefit of getting vaccinated against Covid is to avoid getting seriously ill. Secondly, an infected but vaccinated person is less likely to infect others. So, while the risk of transmission is not completely eliminated it is significantly reduced.