I recently saw this post by @chron where he explains why he doesn't believe in herd immunity: I Am An Unvaccinated 17 Year Old: I Do Not Believe In Herd Immunity And This Is Why!
Unfortunately he made some big mistakes in his assumptions which I want to set straight now.
@chron, please don't take this personally - However, since so many people read your article, I just feel it's right to publish my response this way. I would be happy to have your reply here and I am open to answer any questions you might have.
Before you start RAGING IN THE COMMENTS please READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.
I did with your post, so I hope you will do the same with mine!
First off, I totally agree with you about the little story from your home country Indonesia.
If this really happened then the parents (wheter they are pro or against vaccines) have all the right to be upset. Even though I believe vaccines are great, vaccinating children without their parents permission is horrible and should be considered a crime.
But now let's come to the part of your post I don't agree with!
The percentage of a population that is needed to achieve herd immunity is 83-94%.
If I am right, you agree with the assumption of what percentage of vaccination is needed for herd immunity to work, but
According to these statistics the threshold of herd immunity will not be achieved (83-94%) in these countries.
you think the threshold isn't guaranteed to be reached.
Well, your assumptions are based on wrong calculation!
Since you used Australia as your first example I will just go into detail there as well.
In 2015 Australia's population was 24 million people and Australia received 7.4 million visitors that same year. This equates to approximately 30% of Australia's population arriving during the course of 12 months.
Before I even go into your biggest missassumption I would like to correct your equation:
7,4 million divided by 24 + 7,4 million equals 0,2356... => It is rather approximately 20% than 30%!
EDIT:// Ok, maybe you meant that the amount of tourists is close to a third of the amount of real inhabitants. Than it would be around 30% of course.
But now we will come to the real problem of your assumption
While the people who live in Australia mostly stay there over the whole year, tourists come and go. At no time there will be 7.4 million tourists at once. Not even close to that.
It doesn't matter how many tourists there are over the whole year. The thing that matters is how many there are at a certain point of time.
I didn't find exact statistics on how many tourists were in Australia during each month. If you find them, I will be happy to use them.
For now let us just assume that it is fairly even (which of course will not be totally true in reality) and that the average time spent in Australia as a tourist is one month (which will probably be way lower in reality.
Under those assumptions, 0,62 million tourists (7,4/12) are in Australia during each month of the year.
So now we are far away from "approximately 30% of Australia's population"
If we use our numbers, approximately 2,5% ((0,62/(24+0,62))x100) of Australia's population are tourists at a certain point of time.
So now we have 2,5%!
Even if every single tourist who comes to Australia was not vaccinated, this would not be nearly enough to cause serious problems to the 83-94% needed.
Conclusion
I really hope that you understand now, that tourism isn't able to harm the concept of herd immunity in Australia. And it also won't in the United Kingdom or the United states. I have shown you your errors, so you can calculate those two for yourself. The results will be the same.
Last but not least I want to answer the questions you posted at the end of your post!
What do you think? Should herd immunity be trusted? Is the medical industry tricking us?
And more importantly, are you afraid of me because I am unvaccinated?
Yes, I think herd immunity should be trusted!
A wrong assumption was tricking you here, not the pharma industry.
No, I am not afraid of you.
Why? Because I am vaccinated. However I would not want to have you around my little baby if I had one.
Final words
@chron, I really hope you are not taking this post of mine as a personal insult. You just made a wrong assumption - Not a big deal, happens somewhere every blance of a second.
I am not here to convince you to be pro-vaxx - I just wanted to correct your mistake so that others who have the same logical error will see this as well.
I would love to get an honest response from you.
And I would urge you to correct your original post or at least link to this post.
Making a mistake is not that big of a deal. Making a mistake, not standing up to it and hiding it however is really bad!
This is one of the most important messages we learn at university. One error often doesn't cause a problem, since there are many control mechanisms. If there however is a chain of mistakes, serious harm is very likely.
So I would like to end my post with a question as well:
Are you willing to stand up and admit you were wrong? Or will you try to get this correction hidden because it doesn't support your thinking?
We will see!