Core Concept: Herd immunity is an important—and often misunderstood—public health phenomenon

摘要

In December, Anthony Fauci predicted that 70 to 85% of the United States population may need to be vaccinated to achieve “herd immunity” against SARS-CoV-2 (1). Yet he was very careful to qualify his comments. “We need to have some humility here,” he said in a New York Times interview, “We really don’t know what the real number is.” (2) Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted that the number could be as high as 90%. But even a year into the pandemic, there were too many uncertainties to offer a definite threshold. And with vaccine hesitancy widespread, he worried that setting the bar at such a high number would cause the public to despair of ever reaching it.