If many people in the community are immunized against certain disease, there's less chance of getting the particular disease even for those who aren't immunized. For example, let's say there's three different communities with same number of people who are sick and contagious. However, there are different number of people who are immunized and healthy. In the first community, rests of people are healthy, but not immunized. In the second community, few are immunized people but most are not immunized. In the third community, most people are immunized. Despite the fact that same number of people are sick and contagious in all three communities, spread of influenza is contained only in the third community. Influenza outbreak occured most vigorously in the first community, where no one was immunized. Third community was able to contain the disease because even those who didn’t get immunized were protected against the flu because they were protected by the community’s strong immunity as a whole. In the third community, there was little opportunity for those who weren’t immunized to be exposed to the disease outbreak because of this community immunity. Community immunity is also known as the “Herd Immunity”.
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