Have You Heard This Problem? - Getting the American Herd to Understand Herd-Immunity

 I was watching today’s White House Press Briefing and there were once again questions about herd-immunity regarding COVID-19. You might think that there would be a respectable general level of knowledge and understanding about herd-immunity in the population since it’s been a topic for months. If you thought that, you would be wrong.

I do not know why we expect a good understanding of the public in general; when I am not convinced that the media, which “informs” the public, understands herd-immunity at a nominal or competent level. The most informative thing that the news media could probably do is conduct a survey on what the public thinks/understand herd-immunity is. Note: I did not use the term: poll, because it is and has been overly contaminated by our political parties.

A question asked today was: “When does the Administration expect the nation to reach herd-immunity?”

Now that question implies or assumes a meaning to ‘herd immunity’ that is not particularly applicable. This is not because one could not answer the question precisely enough. You could give a range or a referencing periods like a month, a season, or a year; but even then, that answer conveys a particular idea or notion about herd-immunity that is not truly informative to the nation.

What then is the problem? Partly, the problem is that the idea that ‘herd-immunity’ is a single point, state or condition which is known is misleading. So, it may well be necessary to better define what ‘herd-immunity’ means and make it clear that it is not a process or strategy that is being used to reach a goal but is a goal for the processes and strategies that are being followed to reach that goal. Even here, it will be important and necessary that the public understands that ‘herd-immunity’ does not stop, prevent, or eradicate the Corona virus.

Another facet of the problem, is that ‘herd-immunity’ once reached does not mean that treatment, mitigation, and prevention efforts are complete. This does not seem to be the concept that journalists have, else they might be asking better questions; or at least there ought to be one journalist who would ask a better question. Complicating this is the broad spectrum of differences in the population that may make reaching ‘herd-immunity’ a tad bit unbalanced. Herd-immunity will not be reached in every region simultaneously, or in every state, or within some states. It’s possible that herd-immunity will arrive in urban and rural communities at differ times. The nation may reach an aggregate measure of ‘herd-immunity’ but, in reality there may be some areas that are still far away from herd-immunity.

So, what is the “right” answer to this well-conceived question of when does the nation get to ‘herd-immunity’? I suspect that it might be the same time at which the news media understand what ‘herd-immunity’ really means. No, that can’t be right. America will reach ‘herd-immunity’ way ahead of when the bulk of journalist probably do. When with the public understand what ‘herd-immunity’ is and what it means to reach it? I can’t say that I am any more hopeful than I am about journalists.