Online discussions lately have touched on "herd immunity". Interestingly, some of the vaccination-skeptical individuals are skeptical about this too, even though their freedom from certain diseases, even while remaining unvaccinated themselves, has much to do with the concept.
Although there are several slightly different ways of defining this term, the basic concept revolves around this: in a given population, if enough individuals are vaccinated and, assuming they are therefore pretty much immune from a particular disease, everyone in the population will be protected, even if not all are vaccinated.
The proportion of vaccinated, immune individuals needed to achieve this depends on several factors. A "Rough Guide to Herd Immunity" presents a brief explanation of the concept.
If you want a shorter, less technical explanation with some diagrams, WikiPedia provides a useful few paragraphs.
If you want an explanation that includes a short video clip, here is one from Vaccines Today.
Finally, although many in the anti-vaccine community are very suspicious of government and public health vaccine programs, here is one page that explains the concept of herd immunity again.
The lessons from history are clear. Vaccines work. The more people vaccinated, the better.
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