Herd immunity

We keep hearing a lot of information about herd immunity, but what does it mean? The following information draws heavily from the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) and gives us information that we can all understand.

Herd immunity occurs when a significant portion of a population achieves immunity to a disease, either through prior infection or vaccination, so that the disease is unable to spread from person to person. The percentage of the population that must have immunity in order to achieve that goal varies depending on how contagious the disease is.

For instance, measles is highly contagious — so much so that 95% of the population must be immunized in order to stamp out the disease, according to the World Health Organization. For polio, the figure is 80%.

If you have already had COVID you do have some kind of resistance to the virus, but no one knows how much resistance or how long the resistance will last. That’s why it’s important for everyone to get vaccinated, even if you’ve had COVID.

So where do we stand as a country on herd immunity? Since this is a new virus the tracking figures were underreported at first. It is now thought that between people who have taken the vaccine and those who have some natural immunity is 182 million people. Herd immunity will be reached when we get to 230 to 280 million people.

So can we reach herd immunity without vaccinating children and the vaccine-reluctant? The short answer is no.

The longer answer is that convincing at least some of them to be vaccinated will be necessary. More young people will be vaccinated when they are the ones being hospitalized — a trend that is already starting to play out in some states. We’re going to get reports about younger people getting sick and being hospitalized and even dying. It’s awful, but it’s going to be one way that younger folks realize they’re not immortal.

That is what happened in Israel and it was one catalyst that helped propel that country to herd immunity. We’ll get there, but it will take a good part of the next three months to get to or exceed where Israel is right now. The difference is we have 330 million people and they have 9 million. But 60% of the population in Israel has been vaccinated.

So a little bit closer to home where do we stand? Milam County is at 39.7% toward herd immunity, which is actually better than the national average. So we’re doing pretty well. Not where we need to be but it’s climbing.

The longer people wait to get vaccinated, the more time the virus has to mutate which is why it is important to get the vaccine quickly. We already have six individuals in the county with two different variants. And you can bet that number will rise quickly.

And because of the hard work of Judge Steve Young and the Milam County Health Department it’s very easy to get vaccinated.

From Judge Young, “In the coming days we will begin having mini walk-in clinics at different locations throughout the county. We plan to come to Buckholts, Gause, Milano, Davilla and other places to give shots. We plan to offer a Saturday morning clinic in the very near future. We are also making arrangements with various businesses in the county to vaccinate at the workplace for the convenience of the employees.”

In other words, it couldn’t be made any easier to get a vaccine and help us reach herd immunity and get rid of this virus once and for all.

—K.W.C