Blockchain records could help us achieve herd immunity Premium But even as the world strives for elusive immunity, the question of how to vaccinate almost 8 billion people as rapidly as possible has not yet been answered (Photo: Istock) Share Via Read Full Story In 1917, the US Bureau of Animal Industry was worried about a mysterious cattle infection killing unborn calves. It realized that a cow that had an abortion was highly likely to become immune to it, calves born and raised in such an affected herd had tolerance of the disease, and so the phrase ‘herd immunity’ took birth. As the covid pandemic engulfs the world in wave after tsunamic wave of sickness and death, the only light at the end of this tunnel seems to be humans achieving vaccine-induced herd immunity. The rapid development of covid vaccines has been the biggest triumph of science in recent times. A combination of fundamental research in mRNA, the marvel of gene sequencing and the instant availability of data off the internet gave the world a new kind of vaccine within a year of the disease’s global outbreak.