HERD IMMUNITY


Post By: Shilpa Shantharam                   

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In a population if most of the people are immune to a disease (transmittable disease) then, it provides indirect protection to people who are not immune to the disease and are part of the same population. Some deadly diseases like Polio, Small Pox, Measles etc., were controlled or eradicated by the usage of this method. This process mainly involves increasing the number of individuals who are not susceptible to the infection by immunizing them.
Consider a healthy population, if an individual infected with certain transmittable disease (which is completely new to that particular population) becomes a member of that population then the community becomes more susceptible to be the victim of that disease, as that community members have never experienced that disease before. Their body is completely unaware of that type of disease or the entity causing that disease hence in this condition if no measures are taken then the disease spread vigorously which might have some severe implications. But, as soon as the new infection’s presence is detected if we immunize a large number of people of that population we can succeed in minimizing the severe effects of the infection. This one way provide protection to people who are not immune to that disease but are in proximity to the infection. The more people who are immune a fewer people the infection can spread to hence decreases the infection catching probability.
The question is how to immunize people?
One best method of immunizing people is finding the vaccine to that infection. The vaccine helps develop an antibody against that particular type of infection. This antibody’s features will be stored in the memory cells, so next time when the individual comes in contact with the same type of infection the person’s body recalls the type of antibody required to knock down the entity and immediately releases it, hence the infection dies even before growing inside that individual. Any effective defence by the body’s immune system against the entity causing the infection is stored in the memory cell for future safety.

The benefit of achieving Herd immunity by vaccination is that in most of the cases it helps in ELIMINATING that infectious agent from the population. People who gets the vaccination to become immune to that disease and protect people who did not take the vaccination due to their disbelief or economical issue or any other reason.
Any an individual having a past record of the same infection, and had completely cured by the effects is also immune to the further attacks of that entity causing the disease this can also be used as an immunizing tactic. This method emphasises people getting infected so that their body familiarises with the agent causing the disease and recovering from the disease. If the reinfection of the disease is not possible then this tactic helps in achieving immunity against that agent causing infection. But this process is dangerous and not economical, people have to undergo severe pain and treatment. In case if there is no treatment for the disease then this method is useless.
 SARS COV-2 and HERD IMMUNITY
Even though this method was successful in the elimination of some of the deadly viruses, considering the condition of the recent pandemic whether this method will show any positive effect is a serious question. Primarily the world is still struggling to find the vaccine to the deadly disease. According to some sources the discovery of vaccine is under process and might even take a number of years. Without vaccine trying to achieve herd immunity is just as letting people die fighting against the virus in the name of achieving immunity. In the case of SARS COV-2, there is no proof that person once infected by the disease won’t experience it again. The virus causing the infection is new and still, a lot of research is being pursued to learn about the virus and the immunity offered after the attack of the virus. For the herd immunity to be effective at least 80% of the total population should be immune to the disease, at the given condition there’s no possible way to achieve herd immunity.
Herd immunity is a possible solution to overcome this pandemic when the Vaccine to this virus is discovered, Until then following the government regulation for safeguarding ourselves against this virus is the only option.

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Reference:
1.    Concepts of herd protection and immunity Peter G Smith
2.    https://www.jhsph.edu
3.    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov


Comments

  1. JAMBUGANESHMay 25, 2020 at 7:50 AM

    I guess it's tough to implement this herd immunity in a very high population country... As production of vaccine and its supply doesn't match with the number of people... What's your opinion... Is there a alternative?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shilpa shantharamMay 25, 2020 at 11:01 PM

      In highly populated and developing countries like India we can't hold on lockdown for a long time, it's causing economic distress in so many ways. Researchers say letting people free allowing them to get infected and then cure themselves might evolve resistance in them. Provided reinfection is not there. At this point considering the death rate and the way this virus had spread globally, herd immunity seems to be the best option, although I would recommend vaccination method to achieve it.

      Delete
    2. Shilpa shantharamMay 25, 2020 at 11:05 PM

      And about supplies to the vast population, this method implements majority of the population to be resistant to the virus so even though not the entire population gets the vaccination if it's atleast made possible to 80% of the total population then this method might be a success

      Delete
  2. Igor BMay 31, 2020 at 12:35 PM

    Thanks for interesting herd immunity explanations. I know some people said, "I hope we don't get to the level of herd immunity." This is because we don't want such a huge number of infections. We want to minimize the number of infections. It would be better if only 1% of all humans were infected instead of 80% or 90%.

    It would be nice to erase this virus before it becomes extremely widespread. Good luck.

    Check out Economy and Stock Market News. Read interesting latest news about world, business, investments, marketing, advertising, funny moments and more. Take a look at Canada Forums for interesting Canadian news.

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