Re:When Vaccine Apathy, Not Hesitancy, Drives Vaccine Disint...
by tzs on Sunday July 18, 2021 @08:51PM
(#27878131)
You are thinking about individual immunity. The comment you were responding to was about herd immunity.
Herd immunity is when enough people have individual immunity that when those without immunity get infected so many of those around them are immune that the outbreak quickly dies out on its own.
Even if individual immunity is the same for variants A and B of some virus, if variant B spreads more easily than variant A then you will have to have a higher percentage of the population with individual immunity in order to have herd immunity.
Herd immunity is when enough people have individual immunity that when those without immunity get infected so many of those around them are immune that the outbreak quickly dies out on its own.
Even if individual immunity is the same for variants A and B of some virus, if variant B spreads more easily than variant A then you will have to have a higher percentage of the population with individual immunity in order to have herd immunity.