Simple steps like wearing a face mask can lower the risk of getting COVID-19 for the wearers and those around them. Jennah Moon/Getty Images Melissa Burdi, Purdue University As temperatures fall, people are spending more time indoors. That heightens the risk of the coronavirus spreading, but there are some simple steps you can take to help protect yourself and everyone …
Read More »Tag Archives: Herd immunity
What coronavirus survey told us about getting people to take a vaccine
The search goes on. Shutterstock/Orpheus FX Lynn Williams, University of Strathclyde Vaccination will be hugely important in controlling future waves of COVID-19. But for it to work, we will need high levels of public acceptance of a vaccine, if and when it eventually becomes available. In recent years, vaccination rates have fallen across the world, and public confidence in vaccines …
Read More »¿Conviene hacerse el sueco con el coronavirus?
Shutterstock / OPOLJA Salvador Peiró, Fisabio La respuesta sueca a la COVID-19 ha sido mucho menos intensa que en cualquier otro país europeo, incluyendo sus vecinos nórdicos. Suecia no sólo eludió los confinamientos generalizados sino que mantuvo abierta la escuela primaria, continúa desaconsejando el uso de mascarillas (salvo situaciones específicas) y hasta hace poco mantenía sin aislar a los contactos …
Read More »Coronavirus: is Manaus, Brazil, the first city to reach herd immunity?
Gordon Dougan, University of Cambridge Two years ago, I visited the Brazilian city of Manaus at the start of a trip through the Amazon. Since my childhood, I had been fascinated by this dot on the map that sits at the centre of the Amazon basin at the confluence of the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers. The city is ultra …
Read More »Current rates of vaccine hesitancy in the US could mean a long road to normalcy
Matt Motta is a political scientist at Oklahoma State University. He studies the social and political determinants of anti-science attitudes, and investigating their policy impact. In this Q&A he answers questions about the current levels of vaccine hesitancy in the US and how that might affect the country’s ability to achieve herd immunity after a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available.
Read More »Herd immunity: why the figure is always a bit vague
hobbit/Shutterstock Adam Kleczkowski, University of Strathclyde Nearly 100 years ago, two British researchers, William Topley and Graham Wilson, were experimenting with bacterial infections in mice. They noticed that individual survival depended on how many of the mice were vaccinated. So the role of the immunity of an individual needed to be distinguished from the immunity of the entire herd. Fast …
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