Dr. Jen Ashton has what you need to know about reaching global herd immunity.
we have of course abc chief medical correspondent dr john ashton with us as we track all the major developments so let’s start off today with the latest coronavirus case numbers from johns hopkins university there are now 123.2 million cases confirmed worldwide now more than 542 thousand american lives lost as the number of americans getting those vaccinations also rises the cdc reporting more than 81.4 million americans have now received at least one dose of vaccine so that’s about 31 of american adults so we’re talking about herd immunity again what was that look so okay so let’s go through that you guys because this is controversial there are some epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists who say that there are issues that may make achieving herd immunity actually impossible here they are number one we don’t know what the effects of these variants will be globally and here in the u.s number two the vaccine rollout has been and continues to be uneven not only within countries but between countries surrounding countries that could have an impact also immune protection it is unclear what the durability will be how long immune protection will last whether that’s from natural infection and or vaccination and the big wild card here you guys human behavior this is an unknown variable so again if you look at how the virus behaves how humans behave you have to take into account both of them and all of these could have an impact on achieving that so-called hurt immunity just look at miami from over the weekend and you can kind of see some of the human behavior playing a role in this so if herd immunity is not necessarily something we can count on what then do you say to those hesitant to get the vaccine well look i think we have to look at this both in terms of what we can do to protect ourselves as individuals and how that then therefore can protect the loved ones and people around us and then the opposite how we can protect ourselves as a society as a community and how that in turn can affect individuals that road goes in both directions and we still have to do everything we can right now and vaccination is top of the list all right we have of course abc chief medical correspondent dr jen ashton with us as we track all the major developments so let’s start off today with the latest coronavirus case numbers from johns hopkins university there are now 123.2 million cases confirmed worldwide now more than 542 000 american lives lost as the number of americans getting those vaccinations also rises the cdc reporting more than 81.4 million americans have now received at least one dose of vaccines so that’s about 31 of american adults so we’re talking about herd immunity again what was that look so okay so let’s go through that you guys because this is controversial there are some epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists who say that there are issues that may make achieving herd immunity actually impossible here they are number one we don’t know what the effects of these variants will be globally and here in the u.s number two the vaccine rollout has been and continues to be uneven not only within countries but between countries surrounding countries that could have an impact also immune protection it is unclear what the durability will be how long immune protection will last whether that’s from natural infection and or vaccination and the big wild card here you guys human behavior this is an unknown variable so again if you look at how the virus behaves how humans behave you have to take into account both of them and all of these could have an impact on achieving that so-called herd immunity yeah just look at miami from over the weekend and you can kind of see some of the human behavior playing a role in this so if herd immunity is not necessarily something we can count on what then do you say to those hesitant to get the vaccine well look i think we have to look at this both in terms of what we can do to protect ourselves as individuals and how that then therefore can protect the loved ones and people around us and then the opposite how we can protect ourselves as a society as a community and how that in turn can affect individuals that road goes in both directions and we still have to do everything we can right now and vaccination is top of the list all right dr jen thank you very much well hey there gma fans robin roberts here thanks for checking out our youtube channel lots of great stuff here so go on click the subscribe button right over right over here to get more of awesome videos and content from gma every day anytime we thank you for watching and we’ll see you in the morning on gma
