Sharing expertise could have saved lives

We were delighted to see the response from Colin Roberts ( VR , 27 June/4 July 2020, vol 186, p 652) to our debate article published in April ( VR , 18/25 April 2020, vol 186, pp 462-463). We appreciate the original definition of decimation as the killing of one in 10 of a population, and the reference to the Great Plague and Black Death; we now stand corrected about stating that ‘no single disease has ever decimated a population.’\n\nHowever, within modern memory, no …