Enough With the Herd Immunity Mansplaining
What people who throw around ‘herd immunity’ often don’t understand is ‘herd’ or ‘immunity’
Published in
4 min readSep 8, 2020
There’s a lot of Twitter mansplaining about herd immunity. Here’s what it means. I actually think it means one of several things depending on who says it.
- The first thing it means is “This is too hard. I give up. We might as well just get it, dear, and get it over with.” Tired of missing your football games? Aching to go to the BBQ? Believe in herd immunity. This reaction isn’t just understandable. It’s predictable. Of course it happens when no one provides a credible light at the end of the tunnel. If you won’t give me a strategy or one I believe, I will make one up.
- The second thing it means is “Having studied epic graphs for two months now, I declare myself an expert.” A variation of this is that people like my tweets when I talk about herd immunity. Nothing makes me feel more alive than relevance! Yes, there are curves in some cities where the outbreak happens over weeks that flatten out. Since many in this group have already ruled out masks and social distancing, it must be herd immunity. Besides, this group saw a pre-print that’s a study on T-cell cross-immunity. Well, they didn’t see the study. They saw an article about it. Okay, they didn’t see an article, but…
