India’s indigenous idea of herd immunity: the solution for COVID-19?
Based on folklore and traditional wisdom, when a shepherd purchases a few new sheep from an unknown seller or from a distant place, he keeps them away from his old flock of sheep for a period of 15 days. This, in other words, is a unique practice of herd quarantine. The new flock is permitted to min...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Hong Kong Gold Orchid Science and Technology Co., Limited
2020-06-01
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| Series: | Traditional Medicine Research |
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| Online Access: | https://www.tmrjournals.com/tmr/EN/10.12032/TMR20200519181 |
| Summary: | Based on folklore and traditional wisdom, when a shepherd purchases a few new sheep from an unknown seller or from a distant place, he keeps them away from his old flock of sheep for a period of 15 days. This, in other words, is a unique practice of herd quarantine. The new flock is permitted to mingle with the old flock only after the completion of the prescribed quarantine period. In case someone tries to violate the principle of herd quarantine, the herd council will impose a rigorous punishment.
Whenever traits of virus-causing diseases, like cowpox, sheeppox, and goatpox, appear in cattle herds, shepherds anticipate its inescapability of viral infection and its inevitable outbreak and visualize that herd quarantine may not be a practical solution in the long run. Although shepherds are not exposed to the term “virus,” they have a solid understanding of the very existence of a foreign specie that damages the health of their herds. To mitigate and militate the repulsive repercussions of the virus, they purposively evolve a typical method of treatment named, potthi kattu, known as herd immunity. This can be observed in all remote Indian villages until today.
In the modern framework, the idea of herd immunity was first adopted in 1923 to denote the premunity or immunity of a given total population, examining the rate of disease fatality among populace at various degrees of immunity in an experimental research. The study recognized herd immunity as a naturally occurring phenomenon. During the mid-1930s, A.W. Hedrich’s epidemiological study of measles in Baltimore noticed a substantial decline in new infections after several children had been conscientiously exposed and immune to measles. In light of this, mass vaccination is performed to develop premunity among the masses; this process is called herd immunity in our modern medical sciences, as everybody of us naturally develops immunity after a due course of time.
In contrast to modern science, the original idea of herd immunity is not a natural process since inoculation or variolation is a must. This happens when the virulence of the virus is considerably condensed with the help of natural substances, like herbs and plants, and then the attenuated virus will be inoculated into the body of a healthier animal, where the spurious virus enters through the medical intervention of shepherds which will eventually infect the flock one after the other. By this means, the infection becomes mild, unlike the natural attack. The inherent antigens in animals will quickly respond to face the attack of the mild virus by producing awe-inspiring antibodies in order to develop immunity within a stipulated period. |
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| ISSN: | 2413-3973 2413-3973 |