Herd immunity becomes Herd Protection, the new buzzword?

What happens when politicians preach concepts like “herd immunity” through mass vaccination and promise a return to “normal”, only to find that when these targets are reached, the virus continues to spread & mutate amongst the population?

Easy, let’s have the expert academia work on changing the narrative and hope no one notices. In this way “herd immunity” can easily become “herd protection”. For politicians this reframing of public discourse and language is important as it gives legitimacy if and when they need to reimpose restrictions and lockdowns on highly vaccinated populations.

Experts have used the terms immunity and protection interchangeably on this topic, however the media and politicians have latched onto the overall meaning of “immunity” in pursuit of convincing people that draconian measures such as vaccine passports are a necessity.

Currently in Australia, we are in the phase where “immunity” is being discussed by academia, the media and the government in order to increase vaccination rates. However, if we look at the international experience there will come a time when our academia, media and government leaders will begin the process of reframing the public discourse from “immunity” to “protection”.