Note on “herd immunity”
The idea of “herd immunity” is currently very big in the British media.
Last year it was a term that was associated WITH Dominic Cummings (“herd immunity and let the old people die“). But now it is supposedly something wicked that he plans to accuse Boris Johnson of (for a while) aiming for.
Talk about things going down the “memory hole”.
Talk about scarewords too.
What do people think the aim of vaccination is supposed to be, if it’s not herd immunity?
Nobody is claiming that the aim is to vaccinate 100% of people, even of people in certain age groups.
Nobody is claiming that 100% of those who ARE vaccinated will become immune, either.
Taking things at face value, the aim of vaccination is precisely herd immunity!
So why all the codswallop?
Part of it is because of the caste system, and the way many people in Britain get turned on when they speak of the castes beneath them as forming a “herd” – the “natives”, the “heathens”, the “general public”.
For those who don’t already know, “herd immunity” is achieved when the proportion of individuals in a community who are immune is large enough to stop a virus or bacterium from spreading and therefore to cause it to die out. That’s what the term means. That idea is very easy to understand, whatever your view might be of vaccination, of particular vaccines, or of anything else. But you wouldn’t know that from the way it is used in the British media.