{"647797":{"#nid":"647797","#data":{"type":"external_news","title":" Core Concept: Herd immunity is an important \u2014 and often misunderstood \u2014 public health phenomenon","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EEven as health\u0026nbsp;officials continue to try to calculate \u0026mdash;\u0026nbsp;and communicate \u0026mdash;\u0026nbsp;when herd immunity\u0026nbsp;might happen, they have to contend with both public misunderstanding of the term and scientific disagreement over what it means.\u0026nbsp;Even within public health circles, \u0026ldquo;some of our colleagues have disagreed with one another\u0026rdquo; on the definition of herd immunity, says \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/biosciences.gatech.edu\/people\/joshua-weitz\u0022\u003EJoshua Weitz\u003C\/a\u003E,\u0026nbsp;Patton Distinguished Professor and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences at the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/biosciences.gatech.edu\u0022\u003ESchool of Biological Sciences\u003C\/a\u003E. Changes in behavior can lead to declines in cases, he says, \u0026ldquo;that do not imply that the population has reached herd immunity.\u0026rdquo; Populations develop immunity through a combination of vaccination and natural infections, Weitz says, and the safe and ethical route to reach herd immunity is through vaccinations.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"34434","created_gmt":"2021-05-27 18:46:13","changed_gmt":"2021-05-27 18:46:13","author":"Renay San Miguel","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","publication":"wendy truran","field_article_url":"","publication_url":"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/118\/21\/e2107692118?etoc=","dateline":{"date":"2021-05-25T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2021-05-25T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"1278","name":"College of Sciences"},{"id":"1275","name":"School of Biological Sciences"}],"categories":[{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"}],"keywords":[{"id":"4896","name":"College of Sciences"},{"id":"166882","name":"School of Biological Sciences"},{"id":"11599","name":"Joshua Weitz"},{"id":"184289","name":"covid-19"},{"id":"187370","name":"herd immunity"},{"id":"42581","name":"vaccinations"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}