What is Herd Immunity and How long will it take to kick in?

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What is Herd Immunity and How long will it take to kick in?

In: Biology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Herd immunity is the idea of being protected by having the majority, or all of the population either recover from a disease/virus or create some form of immunization, like a vaccine.

the time it takes to occur depends on several factors.

When it comes to diseases and viruses, they can be radically different in how easily/quickly they spread, how fatal they are and the behaviors of those infected. To get herd immunity, you need the majority of the population to have an immunity to something. If you try to prevent the spread of something (like COVID-19, by social distancing) you’re prolonging the exposure to the population and making herd immunity take longer to occur, the exchange here is that our medical systems aren’t overran and we’re able to keep a lot more people alive.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Herd immunity describes how people who are not immune to something can be protected from it when the majority of people around them are immune, making it difficult for a containment to make its way to that person.

In order for it to happen, the majority of people need to be immune, but that is unlikely to happen naturally for a VERY long time. There have only been 6.2 million confirmed cases out of a 7.8 billion world population.