You won. Get over it.
Revealed: the inside story of the UK's Covid-19 crisis | World news | The Guardian
Revealed: the inside story of the UK's Covid-19 crisis | World news | The Guardian
Herd immunity
Given the repeated denials, it can be overlooked that the reason the world believes that attaining herd immunity was the government’s approach is largely because Vallance said it was. On Friday 13 March, when the virus was spreading exponentially, he set out publicly to explain the government’s strategy.
“Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely,” Vallance explained on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity, so more people are immune to this disease, and we reduce the transmission. At the same time, we protect those who are most vulnerable to it. Those are the key things we need to do.”
Asked on Sky News what proportion of the population would need to become infected to achieve herd immunity, Vallance replied: “Probably about 60% or so.”
Few mitigation measures were yet put in place. The week is remembered for the mega-events that went ahead: the Cheltenham Festival of horseracing, the Liverpool v Atletico Madrid Champions League tie, the Stereophonics concert in Cardiff. In allowing them, the government was indeed, as it consistently said, following the UK science that, surprisingly to many, considers that “mass gatherings” do not have a major impact on virus transmission. The numbers of people infected will almost certainly never be known, but the pictures of packed stands, particularly at Cheltenham, have become emblems of the government’s delay and inaction.
On 11 March, the WHO formally declared Covid-19 a pandemic. Tedros, the director general, maintained that the virus spread could still be confronted, and criticised “alarming levels of inaction” by some countries.
That same day, a further explanation of the government’s strategy was given by Dr David Halpern, a psychologist who heads the Behavioural Insights Team, a company part-owned by the Cabinet Office, which it advises. “There’s going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows, as we think it probably will do, where you’ll want to cocoon, you’ll want to protect those at-risk groups so that they basically don’t catch the disease, and by the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity’s been achieved in the rest of the population.”
At a press conference the following day, Johnson famously said: “I must level with the British public: many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”
Whitty announced then that the initial effort to contain the disease by testing and tracing had been abandoned, yet despite that, and Johnson’s dire warning, the measures discussed for the new “delay” phase were almost negligible. People over 70 were advised not to go on cruises. Johnson said even “household quarantine” would not be required until sometime “in the next few weeks”. The government’s published plan did say that social distancing and school closures could be considered.
That evening, the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt spoke on the BBC, saying he was concerned Britain had become an “outlier”. Hunt says now he became worried that Whitty was too resigned to the virus spreading: “I couldn’t understand why they were so certain that nothing could be done to stop nearly 60% of our population becoming infected, when I had figures showing that even in Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak in China, less than 1% of the population actually became infected.”
Vallance made his media appearances the following day, explaining the herd immunity approach. He was asked on Sky News why in the UK “society was continuing as normal”, and it was put to him that a 60% infection rate would mean “an awful lot of people dying”.
Vallance replied that it was difficult to estimate the number of deaths, but said: “Well of course we do face the prospect, as the prime minister said yesterday, of an increasing number of people dying.”
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, issued the first denial that herd immunity was part of the government’s plan, despite Halpern and Vallance having days earlier indicated that it was, in a column in the Sunday Telegraph on 15 March. “We have a plan, based on the expertise of world-leading scientists,” Hancock wrote. “Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy.”
By then, a dizzying number of experts were sounding the alarm. An open letter issued on 14 March dismissing herd immunity as “not a viable option” and calling for stricter social distancing measures so that “thousands of lives can be spared” was signed by more than 500 UK scientists.
Ultimately, the evidence that appears to have prompted the change of course was contained in the Imperial College paper, published on 16 March.
Given the repeated denials, it can be overlooked that the reason the world believes that attaining herd immunity was the government’s approach is largely because Vallance said it was. On Friday 13 March, when the virus was spreading exponentially, he set out publicly to explain the government’s strategy.
“Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely,” Vallance explained on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity, so more people are immune to this disease, and we reduce the transmission. At the same time, we protect those who are most vulnerable to it. Those are the key things we need to do.”
Asked on Sky News what proportion of the population would need to become infected to achieve herd immunity, Vallance replied: “Probably about 60% or so.”
Few mitigation measures were yet put in place. The week is remembered for the mega-events that went ahead: the Cheltenham Festival of horseracing, the Liverpool v Atletico Madrid Champions League tie, the Stereophonics concert in Cardiff. In allowing them, the government was indeed, as it consistently said, following the UK science that, surprisingly to many, considers that “mass gatherings” do not have a major impact on virus transmission. The numbers of people infected will almost certainly never be known, but the pictures of packed stands, particularly at Cheltenham, have become emblems of the government’s delay and inaction.
On 11 March, the WHO formally declared Covid-19 a pandemic. Tedros, the director general, maintained that the virus spread could still be confronted, and criticised “alarming levels of inaction” by some countries.
That same day, a further explanation of the government’s strategy was given by Dr David Halpern, a psychologist who heads the Behavioural Insights Team, a company part-owned by the Cabinet Office, which it advises. “There’s going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows, as we think it probably will do, where you’ll want to cocoon, you’ll want to protect those at-risk groups so that they basically don’t catch the disease, and by the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity’s been achieved in the rest of the population.”
At a press conference the following day, Johnson famously said: “I must level with the British public: many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”
Whitty announced then that the initial effort to contain the disease by testing and tracing had been abandoned, yet despite that, and Johnson’s dire warning, the measures discussed for the new “delay” phase were almost negligible. People over 70 were advised not to go on cruises. Johnson said even “household quarantine” would not be required until sometime “in the next few weeks”. The government’s published plan did say that social distancing and school closures could be considered.
That evening, the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt spoke on the BBC, saying he was concerned Britain had become an “outlier”. Hunt says now he became worried that Whitty was too resigned to the virus spreading: “I couldn’t understand why they were so certain that nothing could be done to stop nearly 60% of our population becoming infected, when I had figures showing that even in Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak in China, less than 1% of the population actually became infected.”
Vallance made his media appearances the following day, explaining the herd immunity approach. He was asked on Sky News why in the UK “society was continuing as normal”, and it was put to him that a 60% infection rate would mean “an awful lot of people dying”.
Vallance replied that it was difficult to estimate the number of deaths, but said: “Well of course we do face the prospect, as the prime minister said yesterday, of an increasing number of people dying.”
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, issued the first denial that herd immunity was part of the government’s plan, despite Halpern and Vallance having days earlier indicated that it was, in a column in the Sunday Telegraph on 15 March. “We have a plan, based on the expertise of world-leading scientists,” Hancock wrote. “Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy.”
By then, a dizzying number of experts were sounding the alarm. An open letter issued on 14 March dismissing herd immunity as “not a viable option” and calling for stricter social distancing measures so that “thousands of lives can be spared” was signed by more than 500 UK scientists.
Ultimately, the evidence that appears to have prompted the change of course was contained in the Imperial College paper, published on 16 March.
I wonder why they're speaking out now 
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