Dreaming of Herd Immunity

As COVID-19 vaccinations speed up, herd immunity is the talk of the town. 

However, some key factors are making it difficult to pinpoint the percentage of immunized people needed to reach herd immunity. They include the emergence of virus variants and whether vaccines can sufficiently reduce transmission, although the data are promising.

The Quote: “If you think of people as tinder and vaccine as water to try to stop a fire, we don’t know how wet each person gets from a single vaccine,” says Marc Lipsitch at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The Boston Globe