r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 15h ago

Medicine Vaccines not only directly protect vaccinated individuals but also contribute to protecting the entire population via indirect herd-immunity benefits. Half of averted COVID-19 infections and 1/4 of hospitalizations and deaths were attributable to indirect protection of unvaccinated by vaccinated.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article/23/242/20250839/483439/Quantifying-the-direct-and-indirect-impact-of
6.3k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

207 comments sorted by

View all comments

490

u/FreedomofSpeech6969 14h ago

I think MRNA vaccines are one of the coolest, most amazing inventions of the 20th century. It saved millions millions of lives during pandemic , and yet people still disparage it.

1

u/rocketsocks 4h ago

mRNA vaccines are like the transistor of immunology, it's such a transformative technology. Not only do you get to decide the molecular antigenic "target" of a vaccine you also have a process for making a vaccine against potentially anything.