John Snow, father of epidemiology. Experts have signed the John Snow Memorandum, opposing the concept of herd immunity. Credit: Wikimedia
Synopsis
Should the coronavirus be allowed a free run that eventually helps build herd immunity, or will letting the guard down accentuate the outbreak and cause more deaths? For India, much depends on political and socio-economic factors.
In recent weeks, Great Barrington, a ski town with barely a few thousand inhabitants in Massachusetts, the US, has suddenly sprung to fame. Three leading epidemiologists — Martin Kulldorff, who teaches at Harvard University; Sunetra Gupta from Oxford University; and Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University — formed a group at the county to pen down their concerns on the raging pandemic and suggest means to get out of it. With all