Why is Community Immunity important?

Community immunity, also known as herd immunity, is crucial in order to contain and prevent infectious disease from spreading in a community. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the a negative association was created with the term "herd immunity" so now it is more commonly referred to as community immunity.  This can be achieved by enough people in a population being vaccinated. The figure below represents this nicely:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/herd-immunity/

The choice to get vaccinated does not only affect you, it affects everyone around you. If you are not vaccinated you are not only at high risk for contracting the disease yourself, you are also contributing towards the spread of a disease. There are certain individuals that cannot get vaccinated. For example, an immunocompromised individual, someone who has cancer, and others typically cannot receive certain vaccines. If a majority of a community gets vaccinated we can protect those who are not able to get vaccinated. This is because the disease will have no where to go and the spread of disease can be contained. This is important to consider when an individual may think "I already had Covid and I handled it just fine, so why do I need to get vaccinated?". There are many reasons why that statement is wrong but a big part is explaining to the individual that that does not only affect them but they may be contributing towards the spread of disease, possibly to those who may be unvaccinated due to certain conditions. In order to work towards achieving community immunity with Covid, it is important to stay up to date with boosters as you can maintain immunity and protect against different types of strains. Community immunity helps us maintain and contain outbreak against vaccine preventable diseases. 

So where does community immunity not play a role? An example of a disease where community immunity has no effect is tetanus. Tetanus is a non-communicable disease which means one person cannot give the disease to another. The bacteria that causes tetanus, Clostridium tetani, is typically found in soil and is transmitted to humans by coming in contact with open wounds. Once infected with tetanus, you cannot give it to anyone else so community immunity is not relevant. This should not take away of the fact that it is super important to get vaccinated against tetanus as it is a very serious disease.