Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub
Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub
Of the various ideas being touted to ease the world out of viral lockdown, one of the most striking is that of giving “immunity passports” to those who test positive for antibodies to sars–cov-2, the virus that causes covid-19. These passes would let people move around and return to work—based on the assumption that possession of such antibodies prevents reinfection. This might sound like a reasonable assumption. It is, after all, true of many other infections. Assumptions, however, are not data. So on April 24th the World Health
