I’m old enough to remember being sent to play with other children who had measles and chickenpox. That was before we had vaccines for either. We’d have a happy time picking off each other’s chickenpox scabs, leaving our generation marginally scarred for life. It was an understandable practice – neither disease had a high child mortality rate – it was far more dangerous in adults, so keeping up herd immunity this way had pretty good odds.
We’re about to come out of lockdown and enter the “New Normal”, whatever that may be. It means that as far as Covid-19 is concerned, we’re back in the pre-vaccination world. Throwing technology at the problem appears to be the first choice of most Governments, but we should think about whether there are some pre-vaccination strategies which are worth revisiting.
