Some people cite health freedom as a reason to not vaccinate, and while their concern may be legitimate, it doesn’t circumference why we use vaccines in the first place. The first reason we use vaccines is to protect our bodies from dangerous viruses and infections—that’s the reason everyone thinks of. The second reason is herd immunity.

Herd immunity refers to the resistance to the spread of a disease within a population. This immunity is only possible through vaccines. In order to protect a population from a disease, the recommended vaccinated number of individuals is 90-95%, especially for highly contagious diseases. That remaining 5-10% of people who are not vaccinated is not reserved for anti-vaxxers.

If the recent pandemic taught us something, it taught us that allowing people to get sick just to achieve herd immunity does not always work as good in reality as it does on paper. For this reason, the world is still searching for an Ebola vaccine, as it still kills people no matter how many or how often a population got in contact with the virus. For this reason, while herd immunity is a matter of science, we can only achieve it by getting vaccines, not by getting sick and putting our lives in danger.

It’s for those who are unable to have a vaccine. This can refer to a number of people including cancer patients, newborn babies, those with life-threatening allergies, elderly, and those with autoimmune deficiency disorders. This 5-10% is a marginal amount of the population who would be unable to fight off dangerous diseases if caught. If you want some solid data to combat antivaxxers, let’s take a closer look at how the measles spread in order to break this down.