A critical care doctor brings a frontlines perspective to the frustration of dealing firsthand with vaccine hesitancy and discusses the limitations of science and medicine.
In Africa, it’s more rational to prioritise vaccine access, rapid rollout and community engagement, than pushing the narrative of vaccine-induced population immunity.
Once we achieve herd immunity, people who are not vaccinated benefit indirectly from the immunity of those around them. But it’s not easy to say exactly when we’ll reach this threshold for COVID-19.
New Zealand’s approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for 12-15 year olds will bring the number of people eligible for the jab to 85% of the population, raising the chance of reaching collective immunity.
Vaccines have successfully curtailed viral diseases for decades. But as COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy shows, mistrust and misinformation continue to put lives at risk.
It is unlikely that we will reach full herd immunity for COVID-19. However, we are likely to reach a practical kind of herd immunity through vaccination.
As vaccine eligibility is expanded to adolescents and young adults, understanding who might be more likely to be vaccine hesitant, and why, can help inform public health strategies
Donald E Miller, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
A scholar of the Rwandan genocide argues that while a genocide and a pandemic are very different, the experiences of Rwanda’s survivors may provide lessons on how to heal from pandemic trauma.
Vaccination rates for COVID-19 have been lower than desired for herd immunity, or when enough people become immune for new infections to stop. What will life look like without it?
It’s quite likely this virus will never be eliminated from the world. But even so, getting vaccinated enormously reduces your risk of severe outcomes like hospitalisation and death.
The government should be explicit about what proportion of the population will need to be vaccinated to warrant border reopening. Australians could then measure progress towards that goal.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand