[johncearls]

> Herd immunity is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that can occur with some diseases when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through vaccination or previous infections, thereby reducing the likelihood of infection for individuals who lack immunity.

Right from wikipedia.

[XorNot]

Yes, and wikipedia is not the study of epidemiology.

Epidemiology as a field did not publish papers or study the idea of "natural" herd immunity till last year when politicians started throwing the term around and a whole lot of researcher's scrambled to see whether this insanity had any merit.

Of which the answer is what we already knew just spelled out more specifically: no, this doesn't actually happen in the wild without vaccines, because it's literally just spreading the virus. Viruses burn themselves out after infecting basically everyone, provided immunity is long lasting.

[manwe150]

It is misleading though, since this definition is merely ‘flattening the curve’ for the rest of human life, and accepting the increased death rate every year. By contrast, a successful vaccination effort also ‘flattens the curve,’ but additionally substantially reduces the rate of deaths. The latter is what we have observed happen with high confidence in the vaccinated population for COVID: deaths of vaccinated individuals is much less common than for unvaccinated (back of napkin math seems to currently be somewhere between 100-1000 to 1 across most age ranges)