Episode 2: A Conversation with Knut Wittkowski, PhD

Prof Knut Wittkowski, for 20 years head of Rockefeller University’s Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design, says social distancing and lockdown is the worst way to deal with an airborne respiratory virus and offers data showing China and South Korea had already reached their peak number of cases when they instituted containment measures. In other words, nature had already-or-nearly achieved herd immunity. Professor Wittkowski urges schools open now so the virus may spread harmlessly among the young, and thus shorten the amount of time elderly and immunocompromised must be sequestered. Our current course, he warns, will only prolong the crisis and likely guarantee a “second wave” of infections in the Fall.