In case you haven’t heard, a bunch of jerks think that they’re smarter than the vast majority of the medical and scientific communities and have decided that their children don’t need vaccinations. Unfortunately, these people may be your neighbours. Even more unfortunately, their actions can affect you. So, how many people need to skip vaccinations before you need to worry?
Well, some researchers in Boston did the math, and they found that between 96% and 99% of people need to have been vaccinated in order for herd immunity to work. Normally, doctors expect that the unvaccinated will consist of people either allergic to vaccinations or infants to young to be vaccinated. Unfortunately, there are plenty of pockets of lower vaccination rates in this country (look at these Toronto schools, for example, where exemptions are as high as 40%), which means that measles outbreaks are absolutely possible.
So, what’s a healthy guy to do? Well, if you’re travelling, you can make sure you’re up-to-date with all your boosters. Other than that, you’re basically restricted to demanding our feckless leaders do something and hoping that anti-vaxxers go the way of flat-earthers. Here’s hoping.
