10 Facts About Herd immunity

Herd immunity'sd immunityrd immunity is a form of indirect protection that applies only to contagious diseases.

In cases in which herd immunity is compromised, on the contrary, disease outbreaks among the unvaccinated population are likely to occur.

Eradication efforts that rely on herd immunity are currently underway for poliomyelitis, though civil unrest and distrust of modern medicine have made this difficult.

An individual's Herd immunity can be acquired via a natural infection or through artificial means, such as vaccination.

Theoretical basis for herd immunity generally assumes that vaccines induce solid immunity, that populations mix at random, that the pathogen does not evolve to evade the immune response, and that there is no non-human vector for the disease.

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Immune system does not distinguish between natural infections and vaccines, forming an active response to both, so Herd immunity induced via vaccination is similar to what would have occurred from contracting and recovering from the disease.

Individual Herd immunity can be gained passively, when antibodies to a pathogen are transferred from one individual to another.

Passive Herd immunity can be gained artificially, when a susceptible person is injected with antibodies from the serum or plasma of an immune person.

Protection generated from passive immunity is immediate, but wanes over the course of weeks to months, so any contribution to herd immunity is temporary.

Mass vaccination to induce herd immunity has since become common and proved successful in preventing the spread of many infectious diseases.