24 December 2020
How did politicians, journalists and scientists soften us up to accept 'herd immunity' without vaccination?
Feb 3 Boris Johnson's Greenwich speech in which he counterposed what he called 'market segregation' and 'freedom of exchange' as alternatives in how to deal with the Coronavirus. He favoured (of course) 'freedom of exchange' over - what I think he means - state intervention in dealing with the virus.
Here are two more examples:
Daily Telegraph:
“Not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the Covid-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.”
Jeremy Warner Daily Telegraph
March 3 2020
In March 12 2020
Robert Peston explained here in the Spectator why we had to go with 'herd immunity' but without him mentioning the inevitable toll of deaths and permanent damage it would inflict.
(copy and paste the link into your browser)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Herd-immunity--will-be-vital-to-stopping-coronavirus
Also in March 2020 we have Toby Young writing a tweet:
"The cost of the economic bailout Rishi Sunack has proposed is too high. Spending that kind of money to extend the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people with underlying health problems by one or two years is a mistake."
And in March 2020, at least three scientists came on TV to tell us that 'herd immunity' (with no mention that they meant 'with vaccination') was the right approach:
Graham Medley, Patrick Vallance and John Edmunds.
Medley said on BBC 'Newsnight; (March 13) '"We're going to have to generate herd immunity...the only way of developing that in the absence of a vaccine is for the majority of the population to become infected..."
1/ 13/03/20: Sir Patrick Vallance (UK Chief Scientific Adviser, SAGE member):
"Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity"
(Today programme, March 13 2020)
"The only way to stop this epidemic is indeed to achieve herd immunity" - John Edmunds, 13th March 2020
(not referring to herd immunity through vaccination)
