322. Vaccination, a collective rather than individual concept

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Vaccination is not about individual protection, but group protection. What this really means is that a vaccine with 95% protection will be ineffective if only 60% of people use it, whilst a vaccine with 65% protection will be effective if 95% of people use it. It is not about doting an individual with a shining, Arthurian armour, but about impairing the ability of the virus to spread in a population, so that its famous R number dwindles, and the virus does with it. This poses a significant problem for our highly individualistic societies. It seems, in fact, that many people are incapable of thinking in these terms. They only care, can think of or understand individual protection. The concept of group protection, maybe the concept of group or collective all in all, is beyond them, as if their ability for collectivism, precisely the ability that made humans who we are, has completely deserted them at a fundamental level. The virus, of course, hunts in groups, we must defend as a herd

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Location: Hereford, UK

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