See our page on herd immunity for an explanation of what herd immunity is.

There are some problems with this idea:

• Herd immunity will not definitely protect anyone who is not vaccinated. There are low vaccination rates in some parts of the UK and in some communities. This means that if your CHILD is not vaccinated, it is quite likely that MANY of the people they come into contact with will not be vaccinated either. So if one person gets an infectious disease, it can spread quickly through all the unvaccinated people in the group (this happened during the 2013 measles outbreak in Wales).
• For herd immunity to WORK properly, most people in the population need to be vaccinated. The exact rate DEPENDS on the disease; in the case of measles, 19 out of 20 people need to be vaccinated to protect the population. When measles vaccination levels DROP below this level, outbreaks and epidemics become more common. So if you decide not to vaccinate because you think that herd immunity will protect you, you are making it less likely that you will be protected.
• Herd immunity does not protect against all diseases. The best example of this is tetanus, which is caught from bacteria in the environment, not from other people who have the disease. It doesn’t matter how many people around you are vaccinated against tetanus – it will not protect you as an individual.

See our page on herd immunity for an explanation of what herd immunity is.

There are some problems with this idea: