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Disease

Hunker down or go easy? Ten months into the pandemic, scientists spar over herd immunity

Hunker down or go easy? Ten months into the pandemic, scientists spar over herd immunity

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.

By
14 mins read, Last Updated:
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

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