The kind of COVID-19 herd immunity we can realistically expect

COVID.
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How does the COVID-19 pandemic end? A lot of public health rhetoric suggests the goal is what has sometimes been dubbed "COVID zero." When we talk about "stopping the spread," for instance, we envision a scenario where the virus dies out among the general population because each infected person is unable to transmit the disease either by encountering no one or encountering only immune people.

It is possible to end communicable illness this way. That's what we did with smallpox worldwide and polio in the Americas with vaccine-induced herd immunity. Other illnesses, like measles, which we commonly vaccinate against, aren't quite eradicated, but outbreaks are rare and serious illness among the vaccinated even rarer.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.