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It was Sir Patrick Vallance who said it, @Fyoosh posted it up:
“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 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.” — Sir Patrick Vallance.
Some videos of this same line:
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-sir-patrick-vallance-covid-19-herd-immunity-2449703
Fox-
Thanks for finding this.
It looks like it's gone from "this is some kind of herd immunity" as a consequence of our actions to "we are planning on herd immunity as our only plan".Which is a bit like viral replication.
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Thanks. As stated- I couldn't find it in the mire of twitter posts and articles.
As @Chalfie says, it still represents a possible misunderstanding of causality- ie- herd immunity is a potential outcome of the policy, not the policy itself.
Vallance's response to Hancock's article will be interesting reading...I do think we need to step back a bit from demanding unproven strategies, and yes- this means potentially trusting our total omnishambles of a government.
Neither Taiwan nor Singapore shut schools or workplaces (though Taiwan kept schools closed following Lunar New year for 2 weeks).
Hong Kong- which has been seemingly similarly successful- shut everything.
Countries that have shut everything down have had mixed responses, with predominantly worse outcomes than Singapore, say.Nothing is proven to work- arguments against Taiwan, Singapore and HK may include the fact that there could be undertesting, they could be early in the viral spread, etc, etc.
Retrospectively- we can assess.
Proactively- we can plan based on best evidence. This brings the unpalatable possibility that the decision made was incorrect. -
I imagine the tories didn’t want him to come out and actually say it with the consequences associated with that plan.
Chalfie
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Can I just ask if someone can find mean example of 'herd immunity' being explicitly used by:
-CMO
-BJ, Hancock or other.
I've searched the transcripts of published speeches from the CMO and the PHE action plan and I cannot find it.
As far as I can tell-and admittedly a less thorough search than I would like- 'herd immunity' has been used by others to describe the UK's response only.
As such- Hancock stating that 'herd immunity' is [not a part of the] plan is POTENTIALLY a clarification of a public misunderstanding, that -due to the nature of its relative explainability vs a much more likely nuanced approach- has spread.
I highlight potentially as I want to see where the phrase and the usage of it has stemmed from.