Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Oct;112(10):1465-1470.
doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2022.306931. Epub 2022 Aug 4.

Immunities of the Herd in Peace, War, and COVID-19

Warwick Anderson  1
Affiliations

Immunities of the Herd in Peace, War, and COVID-19

Warwick Anderson. Am J Public Health. 2022 Oct.

Abstract

Intermittently, the concept of herd immunity has been a potent, if sometimes ambiguous and controversial, means of framing the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic and envisaging its end. Realizing the full meaning of human herd immunity requires further attention to its connections after World War I with British social theory. Distracted by "obvious" yet unsubstantiated correspondences with veterinary research, historians of the concept have not engaged with the more proximate influence of discussions of social psychology and group dynamics on postwar epidemiology. Understanding the openness of early 20th century epidemiology to social thought deepens our appreciation of the significance of herd or population immunity, as well as suggests new avenues for exchange between public health and contemporary social sciences. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(10):1465-1470. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.306931).

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Anderson Warwick “Immunities of Empire: Race, Disease and the New Tropical Medicine,”. Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 1996;70(1):94–118. doi: 10.1353/bhm.1996.0002. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Topley W. W. C., Wilson G. S. “The Spread of Bacterial Infection: The Problem of Herd Immunity,”. Journal of Hygiene. 1923;21(3):243–249. doi: 10.1017/S0022172400031478. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Jones David S., Helmreich Stefan “A History of Herd Immunity,”. The Lancet. 2020;396(10254):810–811. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31924-3. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Robertson David S. “Of Mice and Schoolchildren: A Conceptual History of Herd Immunity,”. American Journal of Public Health. 2021;111(8):1473–1480. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2021.306264. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Trotter Wilfred . Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. 2nd ed. London, UK: T. Fisher Unwin; 1916.