This seminar will be chaired by Michael Blastland, Michael is a writer and broadcaster, journalist and orginator of Radio 4's "More or Less". Art Reingold (UC Berkeley) and Peter Aaby (Bandim Health Project) will join the discucsion.

Title: “Experimental Epidemiology” and beyond: historical considerations of individual and population immunity in the age of covid-19

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Summary: How individual and population immunity arose as epidemics developed was intensively investigated through experimental studies of colonies of mice c. 1920-1940 in the UK and US. Greenwood, Bradford Hill, Topley and others performed many experimental manipulations of, eg, ectromelia virus (ECTV) induced epidemics of mousepox, attempting to capture the fundamental (and mathematically codifiable) laws of infection and immunology. Simultaneously – and with Greenwood (as ever) the link - human clinical and epidemiological data were interrogated by Dudley, Stallybrass and others, with the aim of understanding the spread of human infection and – fundamentally – how this process could be controlled, to limit the harms. Individual and population immunity were recognised to be graded, continuous processes, that were continuously adapting to the microbiological milieu, and thus shaping the very exposure patterns that would influence their own future trajectories. In this seminar I will summarise the development of the now-contested notions of “herd immunity” and “harvesting” (then trading under the even less friendly label of “mortuary selection”) and bring out the value of such when envisaging possible future scenarios for covid 19 in Britain.

Biography: George Davey Smith was a member of the noise-terrorism outfit Scum Auxiliary in the early 1980s. Since artistic and commercial success eluded them, he has had to earn his living working as an epidemiologist in the provinces.

All welcome