Vaccines currently need to be sold as personal protection over herd immunity. Taking the vaccine reduces your risk of severe outcomes and death. It’s a personal choice to have this benefit. And prioritize it to reduce suffering in the highest risk. 1/

People can be educated to make the proper decision for themselves. This also helps as different vaccines have different effectiveness in preventing symptomatic disease but all seem to have the benefit of preventing severe outcomes. People may feel they didn’t get the best one 2

People who choose against this choose against a positive health behaviour. But those who choose to get vaccinated protect themselves even against those who choose against it. Yes there will be antivax folks getting sick but is that different than a long term smoker with MI? 3/

Tetanus vax is this basically - has no effect on downwards transmission (tetanus is in soil worldwide) but clearly it reduces personal risk. We do it so we don’t deal with the terrible illness in our own lives, but our decision is personal here 4/

Aiming for herd immunity is difficult with trust, engagement, anxiety etc. and when everyone who needs to have access has access, measures to go to normal can emerge - the goalpost changes to personal protection rather than community 6/

It is a happy side effect if the vaccine reduces transmission. And with optimization of vaccines this may be even more achievable. But the goal now is give everyone a dose of something, protect them from bad outcomes, and figure it out once the dust settles 7/