For God's Sake Stop Calling It "Herd Immunity"
The phrase "herd immunity" pops-up regularly in public discussion of COVID-19. The idea is that if enough people get infected, recover, and become immune (or get immunity through vaccination), the pandemic will end because the virus will have nowhere left to spread.
There was a huge argument—sorry, row—in the UK last spring when officials implied they might protect old people and let nature take its course with everybody else. Sweden flirted with the strategy by foregoing lockdowns, but has seen no benefit.
Letting people get sick is just dumb. Right now in Arizona there is about a 7% chance that if someone gets infected they will wind up in the hospital. The do-nothing strategy is based on the incorrect notion that only old people can be harmed by COVID-19.
According to a paper by David Jones and Stefan Helmreich in The Lancet, the phrase "herd immunity" has its origins in the early 1900s. It was used by livestock veterinarians to describe a strategy for dealing with an epidemic of spontaneous abortions in cattle. In this case the adjective "herd" is literally accurate and completely appropriate.
For us humans, not so much. As the authors of the Lancet article point out, "a herd usually describes domesticated animals, especially livestock. Herd animals like cows, goats, or sheep are sacrificed for human consumption. Few humans want to be part of that kind of herd."
True, but actually it's even worse than that. You may have come across the term "sheeple," a portmanteau of "sheep" and "people." It refers to people who do what they are told without asking questions, or who do things just because the rest of the herd is doing them.
Smarty-pants social media users who think they can see nefarious plots that are invisible to everybody else like to use this term. A lot. It is often found as part of the phrase "WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!!!"
Vaccine conspiracy theorists in the cesspool that is Facebook rant about sheeple doing the only thing we can do to end the pandemic. I considered including some examples from their posts here. But I decided against it because I don't want to do anything to amplify their nonsense. (BTW, wasn't Facebook supposed to be cracking down on garbage like this?)
So the nut-jobs are railing against people going along with the herd by getting vaccinated. Meanwhile, our health experts are referring to those same people using language that was developed for actual herds of animals. Sheeple, indeed.
Words matter, folks. I implore the public health community to stop using the phrase "herd immunity." It only frames things in a way that helps validate crackpot ideas. A much better framing for the goal of vaccines would be "collective immunity," or better yet "team immunity."
If you know anybody in the public health community, especially leaders, please pass this post along.
