Enlarge / The Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. (credit: Getty | Andi Rice )

Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday hastily passed a bill to provide some civil and criminal immunity to patients and health care providers using in vitro fertilization. The bill, signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey within the hour of its passing, comes into play in the event that embryos—which were recently ruled to be "children" by the state's Supreme Court —are damaged or destroyed, a standard and common occurrence in fertility treatment.

The new protections are intended to restore IVF treatment in Alabama after the state Supreme Court's ruling last month led at least three major IVF providers and one embryo shipping company to suddenly halt aspects of their work in fear of liability for wrongful death lawsuits. People going through the arduous and costly process of IVF were then abruptly denied the very time-sensitive treatments needed to try to grow their families. The ruling drew outcry from around the state and across the nation.

IVF is a type of assisted reproductive technology that involves fertilizing painstakingly harvested eggs with sperm in a lab setting, allowing the fertilized eggs to develop into embryos, and then either transferring a limited number of them into a uterus at a key time in hopes of implantation or freezing them for later use. Not all fertilized eggs develop into viable embryos, and any embryos that are unviable or unneeded are routinely discarded.

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We all know a “ COVID virgin ,” or “ Novid ,” someone who has defied all logic in dodging the coronavirus. But beyond judicious caution, sheer luck, or a lack of friends , could the secret to these people’s immunity be found nestled in their genes? And could it hold the key to fighting the virus?

In the early days of the pandemic, a small, tight-knit community of scientists from around the world set up an international consortium, called the COVID Human Genetic Effort , whose goal was to search for a genetic explanation as to why some people were becoming severely sick with COVID while others got off with a mild case of the sniffles.

After a while, the group noticed that some people weren’t getting infected at all—despite repeated and intense exposures. The most intriguing cases were the partners of people who became really ill and ended up in intensive care. “We learned about a few spouses of those people that—despite taking care of their husband or wife, without having access to face masks—apparently did not contract infection,” says András Spaan, a clinical microbiologist at Rockefeller University in New York.

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In the early days of the pandemic, there was an idea being thrown around that we should attempt to reach “herd immunity” as soon as possible. It was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea, because it amounted to giving up and letting millions of people die . And yet, now that we have a vaccine, herd immunity is suddenly a good thing. What gives?

In short, herd immunity from vaccination protects people from getting sick. Herd immunity from natural infection is what you get after you have failed to protect everybody from getting sick.

“Herd immunity” describes how the community protects people

Let’s talk about what herd immunity actually means. It’s also called “community immunity.”

If most people in a community are immune to a contagious disease, then the few individuals who are not immune are at a decreased risk of catching it. If nearly everybody in your city is immune to measles, for example — either from the vaccine or from surviving it as a child — then babies who are not yet old enough to get the MMR vaccine are protected simply because there aren’t many people around to be able to transmit measles to them.

Herd immunity is not perfect protection, but it means that there aren’t many people who are susceptible to the disease, and that those people are not likely to be in contact with each other. It would be very difficult for an outbreak to start in a community like this.

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Herd immunity is a goal of vaccination

Vaccinating one person protects that person; vaccinating most people protects vulnerable people throughout the community.

The definition of “most” will depend on how infectious the disease is. For measles, you’d need at least 92% of people to be immune. For COVID-19, one common estimate is that 70% of people need to be immune to reach herd immunity.

Herd immunity has kept diseases in check in the past. Smallpox vaccination campaigns resulted in smallpox being eradicated from the earth — the only human disease that has ever been fully eliminated. Measles still exists, but outbreaks in the U.S. quickly fizzle out thanks to our good vaccination coverage and aggressive contact tracing (although the pandemic has interfered with that work.)

Infection-derived herd immunity is not the same thing

In theory, it’s possible to achieve herd immunity through natural infection. But that’s not a smart plan for dealing with any lethal disease, for two reasons:

First, if there is no vaccine, we only achieve herd immunity after many, many people have gotten sick. If you were to have a community in which 70% of people are COVID-19 survivors, that means the community would have buried many of its residents, and many of those who remain would have long-term complications. (Never mind the collateral damage of an overwhelmed healthcare system and the economic consequences of an unchecked pandemic, which would have caused yet more death and misery.) Even if the remaining 30% are protected, it was at a horrifying cost.

Second, if the only way to gain immunity is to become infected yourself, there is no way to provide that immunity to new arrivals — like babies — without exposing them to all the dangers of the illness. Herd immunity without vaccination is temporary.

The reason vaccines are so valuable is because they give us immunity without requiring us to go through all the danger of getting sick. Herd immunity from natural infection is the result of a tragedy, while vaccines allow us to reach herd immunity safely.

The post Why Is ‘Herd Immunity’ Suddenly a Good Thing? appeared first on Lifehacker Australia .

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