The Cords That Bind Us
Herd immunity is like a protective shield that forms when enough people in a population become immune to an infectious disease- either through vaccination or past infection—so that the disease struggles to spread from person to person, because the virus has fewer “susceptible” hosts to infect, outbreaks slow down or stop altogether.
So even if someone who isn’t immune gets sick, they’re surrounded by so many immune people that the disease has nowhere to go - it hits a “wall” of immunity and fizzles out.
Imagine the disease is like a forest fire. If most of the trees are fireproof, a small fire that starts can’t spread very far because it keeps running into trees that won’t burn. If this continues and nothing is feeding it, it will eventually die out on its own.
This is exactly what happens with herd immunity.
What am I on about again? I have always said that nature and science are our playbook in life. Almost everything we need to know we can learn from nature and the sciences. The lessons abound; we only don’t know how to look or how to apply them.
The concept of herd immunity draws a lot of interesting parallels for how we can think about influence, associations, the quality of our lives, how we achieve our goals, etc.
For example, building good habits, just like diseases struggle to spread when most people are immune, bad habits have a harder time taking hold when you’re surrounded by people with good ones. If most of your friend group exercises regularly, eats well, or has positive attitudes, you’re more likely to adopt those behaviours too.
The “virus”, aka one’s bad habits, keeps hitting brick walls, no one to reinforce it or give it life, at some point it becomes more stressful maintaining it in that circle you found yourself and easier to pick up the good habits.
The essence of herd immunity reminds me of Ubuntu, an African philosophical concept, often translated as “I am because we are. It speaks to the idea that our well-being as individuals is fundamentally tied to the well-being of our community. It’s about recognising that we exist in relationship with others and have responsibilities to each other.
Life is a team sport. We could underestimate the power of our environments and the influences within them in shaping our outcomes, whether positively or negatively. Our individual and collective welfare are intertwined.
We don’t have to be perfectly strong on our own if you’re part of a community that is collectively strong and can hold us while we build our own “immunity”
In medicine, herd immunity stops disease spread; in goal-setting and life, it spreads progress. When enough people are winning, the energy becomes “contagious”. Within a strong “immune” community, hard things become less daunting. They become more within reach.
Keep going,
Ije