According to a Telegraph exclusive, the number of people with protection either through vaccination or previous infection will hit 73.4% on April 12th – the herd immunity threshold. Sarah Knapton, the Telegraph’s Science Editor, has more.
Britain will pass the threshold for herd immunity on Monday, according to dynamic modelling by University College London (UCL), placing more pressure on the Government to move faster in releasing restrictions.
According to the UCL results, published this week, the number of people who have protection against the virus either through vaccination or previous infection will hit 73.4% on April 12th – enough to tip the country into herd immunity.
The number is in stark contrast to the modelling released by Imperial College this week, which suggested there was just 34% protection by the end of March.
Last week, antibody testing by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggested that, in the week ending March 14th, around 54% of people in England already had antibodies to the virus, and slightly less in the devolved nations.
Since then, a further 7.1 million people have received a first dose of vaccine and nearly 100,000 have tested positive for the virus, with many more acquiring a silent, asymptomatic infection.
It is thought about one in 10 people also have some innate immunity through infections with other coronaviruses – pushing population-level protection up further – while others may be immune through T-cells, which would not be picked up in antibody testing.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: At the end of this story there is a very encouraging note about the Government’s unhappiness with the models SPI-M is relying on for the latest advice it’s feeding the Government via SAGE. Interestingly, almost all the points the Government has raised are points raised by Glen Bishop and others on Lockdown Sceptics.
The Telegraph understands that the Government is unhappy with the pessimistic tone set by models produced by SPI-M, released earlier this week, and has asked other groups to critique the work. The SPI-M summary, presented to SAGE, suggested the roadmap out of lockdown was “highly likely” to lead to increased hospital cases and deaths this summer.
The models were criticised for using out of date and flawed assumptions about levels of population immunity and effectiveness of the vaccine as well as failing to factor in reductions in transmission due to vaccination and seasonality.
Prof Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, said: “In my 20-plus years as a doctor, I’ve never come across a summer surge in a respiratory infection in the UK. The modelling now keeps changing dramatically, so it’s hard to see how it helps us. What we really want to do is look at the real-world data and make decisions from there.
“One of the problems is nobody is going back and checking whether the modelling matched up with the reality. We know that modelling in schools has not helped us because it was incorrect. So we need to have a reality check.”
Stop Press 2: Matt Hancock has dismissed claims that herd immunity will be reached next week. The Times has the story.
[The Health Secretary] appeared unmoved by the optimistic claims. “I was told by some scientists that we were going to have herd immunity in May and then in June and then after that,” he told LBC.“What I prefer to do is watch the data. We’ve set out the roadmap, the roadmap is really clear. It is our route back to normal. We’re on track to meet the roadmap and that is our goal.”
Pressed on why he was not accepting UCL’s claims, Hancock replied: “I think we have taken the right course in plotting our way to freedom and doing it carefully because we want it to be irreversible. We have seen what happens when this virus gets going and we are seeing it getting going right now on the continent and other parts of the world – some of the scenes are really appalling.
“We want to get out of this safely and irreversibly and that’s why we set out the roadmap.”
Also worth reading in full.
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3 weeks to flatten the curve Toby! Everyone aquiesced, they’re not getting out of their self imposed prisons unless they make the decision for themselves. The goalposts will move shortly thanks to dodgy modelling and they’ll drag this out as long as possible in the hope of starting another casedemic.
Our politicians and media are mostly corrupt or just risk averse cowards.
This will be dragged on til everyone gets the vaccine. Stumbling block AZ now, which one will be next?
“When i was your age, herd immunity used to be at 30%! Kids these days… Always complaining…”
Although the UCL analysis is helpful and credible, this whole thing is now getting way past just ‘absurd’, with wildly variant claims on everything – particularly in variance with observed reality.
Returning to normal should have occurred almost a year ago. The useless major measures then imposed by government should never have occurred following the April spike.
But a year on, we again have the ludicrous Armageddon Twins pulling long discredited models out of the tattered hat to justify their existence and the subservience of the populace.
Scottie! I’m getting tired of waiting!
UCL credible? Oxymoron.
Quite so, 11 months ago it was being predicted here at LS that the Covid would return in the Autumn and then annualy as respiratory ailments do.
The only peculiar characteristic of the March-April 2020 ‘spike/wave’ being that it occured in March-April and not the previous Autumn.
The only worthwhile measures to be taken would be for the protection of those then deemed to be vulnerable (until effective and properly tested vaccines emerged).
It may have done, only it wasn’t called CoViD19 then just a bad virus. Don’t forget that in autumn 2019 I saw patients under the age of 55 complaining of a persistent cough lasting 2-6 weeks, worse in people with asthma and diabetes. Both of my nearest hospitals had a wave of patients being diagnosed with respiratory conditions in autumn 2019 that wasn’t repeated in 2020.
In Australia in 2019 they had one of the biggest outbreak of flu for many years and remarkably early in the summer(their winter).There is speculation that this virus in Australia was a coronavirus(less that 1% of influenza cases are really tested for the flu virus) and struck California and western US and probably part of Europe during autumn 2019.The theory is that this virus was outcompeted by Saras-Cov2 in the beginning of 2020. Highly likely this virus gave some cross immunity to Sars Cov-2
Refreshing to hear from a medic. Wish more were able to tell their stories. Sadly nhs employees have been banned from commentary and risk losing their licenses/jobs to practice if they even hint the gov’t narrative might be wrong. I now know why two partners in our practice left at the end of last year. They could see the writing on the wall and chose not to participate.
It was hearing about that which alerted me that something going on, and there was/is.
I had covid in October/November 2019, which has left me with lung damage for which i have periodic CT scans. When I suggested in the spring that I’d had coronavirus the nurse said “Oh, everybody thinks that!” So I went for a blood test, which showed a full antibody count.
Colleges, back in October after the summer holidays, were experiencing a respiratory illness which students called ‘the student virus’. Many Chinese students returned from China at that time. Funny, that.
Yes we had that here (East Suffolk) and it was followed by comparatively low levels of official covid. I still know far more people who had “pre-covid” than actual covid.
Most people didn’t bother their doctors, but the ones who did were told there was a “nasty virus” doing the rounds.
I’ve heard similar tales from the west country and elsewhere. North Norfolk would be interesting seeing as it supposedly has very low levels of covid, were they also hit?
Here in the westcountry there was widespread illness over Xmas 2019 largely unnoticed because people were ill during the two week Xmas New Year closedown.
We didn’t have much of a first ‘wave’ and not much of a second either.
Yep, that’s very much our experience here in SW Devon.
The spike last April was caused by removing infected patients back into care homes.
Ah, but let’s not forget that SAGE is Government-approved science™. It would be completely brazen if SAGE try to discredit this model while keeping a straight face, but I half expect them to try.
I hope I’m not being naive but I think I sense a change in the press coverage recently, so dare we hope? When I say press, I meant except for the BBC which has disgraced itself constantly with its “journalism” – I say scrap the license fee, I’d happily lose their “services”
Absolutely. Defund the BBC. They’ve lost all credibility.
Brainwashing House
Depends what the plan is in the long run. I think the government is on the verge of losing control of the population, especially with summer weather on its way, so they know they can’t keep lockdowns going. So they will appear to be benevolent, letting people have their way, with the media encouraging them, all the while preparing a testdemic in the background. We’ve already heard about free mass testing being offered to everyone. So after the false positive harvest starts coming in, the government will achieve all their goals:
And the media will come right back in step, supporting lockdown, blaming everything on covidiots, and ushering in the new world order, where everyone is on house arrest and the elites are free to roam the planet and vacation anywhere they like.
That’s my theory and i’m sticking with it.
Wow, scepticism!
You will be proved 100% right. No doubt the script has long been written, with SPI-B busy working on executing the
manipulationcommunication planI agree with all you say except point 5. The upcoming elections aren’t about electing a new government (although I wish it was) they are about electing Councillors at the district and county level. The best we can do is send a very clear message to the government by not voting for Conservative candidates.
Fair enough, should have expressed myself better there.
That usually happens naturally in local elections.
I don’t disagree. I suspect they will roll out the flu vaccine extra early hoping it will cause another “wave” leading to another lockdown in autumn and over winter.
Of course it will al be blamed on the unvaxed
You mean you haven’t done already??
I did 15 years ago, shame I can’t repeat it annually.
Same her re BBC. Might have been on fence re license fee previously but now I’m all for scaping it.
Checking predictions against actual results, cost benefit analyses … these concepts have no place in Government Approved Science.
Michelangelo had been chipping away at his immense block of marble for many months. At long last, exhausted, dusty, but triumphant, he was ready to unveil his masterpiece.
He revealed his mighty sculpture of David.
No cheers from the Florentines.
David had two heads, seven fingers on each hand, and as for his much-anticipated … well, never mind.
His friend and colleague, the, great Messer Carlo Enhegano, explained gently to Michelangelo that ‘One of the problems is nobody is going back and checking whether the modelling matched up with the reality.’
246 Fully Vaccinated People in Michigan Test Positive for COVID-19; 3 Dead
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/246-fully-vaccinated-people-in-michigan-test-positive-for-covid-19-3-dead_3765643.html?v=ul
Anti Lockdown Newspaper: https://thelightpaper.co.uk/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics
Other commitments at that time. South Hill Park is a fairly high profile place in our town. The arts centre there though is now on the brink of collapse due to lockdown.
Breakthrough COVID in many states now. People who had the miraculous vaccine now getting COVID. What about all the elderly in nursing homes here who got COVID post vaccination. Four homes in Devon. Where else? Why has this news been buried?
Tyrant Klaus Schwab Declares Unvaccinated People To Be A Threat To Humanity
https://humansarefree.com/2021/04/klaus-schwab-unvaccinated-people-threat-to-humanity.html
Anti Lockdown Newspaper: https://thelightpaper.co.uk/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics
that’s after the behaviourists got at the translation. The original said Unterm3n5chen. They told him his language needed tweaking. Be kind. Stay safe.
Why was Schwab’s chillingly brazen evil not reported ATL? Rhetorical question.
Now there is one bloke I’d like to meet face to face.
He should look in the f,in mirror!
Anyone know of any LS gatherings in Somerset or West Country?
Herd immunity would have taken place anyway without all of this pointless destructive stupidity.
And much faster!
I know, but common sense flew out of the window once they brought in SAGE.
A model should attempt to provide a credible explanation for what has happened in the past in order to make future predictions. And if those future predictions are wrong the model is wrong and useless.
We are entering Summer. Respiratory viruses go away in the Summer. A model that doesn’t factor this in and can’t explain Summer 2020 should be put in the bin without further consideration.
The data analyses show very clearly that lockdowns do not materially if at all prevent deaths from covid. They may increase covid deaths, they may slightly reduce covid deaths or they may have no affect at all.
Clearly deaths went down in Spring 2020 because of immunity and seasonality because data analysis across the world shows us it wasn’t lockdowns. These are the only plausible reasons that anyone has come up with for the decline. Immunity and seasonality pushed us above the herd immunity threshold in Spring 2020.
Herd immunity is not a single threshold that is passed. It is a dynamic threshold that goes up and down seasonally and we cycle in and out of herd immunity. It is sensible to think of the herd immunity threshold going up in Winter and down in Summer. When seasonality increases the threshold, immunity falls below it. And when immunity pushes us back above the herd immunity threshold the virus declines. And to an extent waning immunity can also push us back below this dynamic herd immunity threshold over time, or as the virus mutates slowly.
We cycled above the herd immunity threshold in April 2020. And then we cycled back below the herd immunity threshold in Autumn because of seasonality.
When the virus triggered in February/March (what triggers viruses isn’t understood) we were heading out of Winter. Because the seasonal affect is greater in Winter than in March/April there was an unwinding of the initial ‘wave’ in Autumn/Winter because the herd immunity threshold was at a higher point than we had yet experienced in Spring 2020. This was the secondary ripple that we see if we look at age standardised all cause mortality. Not a fabricated second wave based on dodgy PCR testing and mis-labelling.
So we cycled back into herd immunity around late December 2020 because of immunity and because we were at the herd immunity threshold peak seasonally. This happened before experimental vaccination could have had any affect, in fact vaccination seems to have pushed up the herd immunity threshold in January because it made those vaccinated susceptible in the weeks after first vaccinations so we had to cross the threshold again. Again data analysis, not fabricated models, shows this vaccination affect quite clearly across a number of countries.
And seasonality as we enter Spring/Summer is now pushing the herd immunity threshold down and immunity means we are getting further above the threshold. That is why all cause deaths are collapsing despite the deaths caused by lockdown.
When we enter September 2021 there will be a normal increase in respiratory infections but because SARS-C0V-2 has already been present at a seasonal peak it is only waning immunity that will cause its re-emergence. This is what is meant by a virus being endemic. There are trillions and trillions of viruses about so it may be a different virus that enters the virome in Winter 2021. If experimental vacination has any affect in protecting against SARS-C0V-2 it will just mean the most vulnerable will be affected by a different virus instead.
These are basic realities that these models don’t allow for. These models are complete and utter garbage. They are simply fairy tales to describe medieval belief systems of conflicted or incompetent scientists.
The scientific method does not involve fairy tales.
Somebody said science is always correctable otherwise its not science but a religion.
Agreed, Heneghan would agree, as would most experienced epidemiologists who were saying this in March last year.
However the models are not to inform or guide they are there as something the media can use to maintain fear and allow the government to continue to tighten its totalitarian screw.
Good post, which ought to be the starting point for any mathematical predictions. Fergusson et al. are charlatans.
The fascinating question is what triggers the virus? I suspect it’s more complicated, or at least there are other factors involved, than just seasonality (important thought that clearly is).
Something seems to switch it (and other viruses?) on and off in say 70-day cycles. I wonder if there is something like temporary immunity, which may increase when the body detects the virus being around? Hence a population can reach a temporary herd immunity when the virus is running rife, but which is lost when all goes quiet again, leaving the virus able to make a resurgence when the conditions are again right.
Only my musings, based on what I see going on.
“affect” is not a noun, please.
Great analysis
I saw my MP wearing casual clothes sprint into my close of 7 houses yesterday I presume leafleting for the May elections. I say presume because he went straight past my door and was walking so fast I couldn’t catch him from where I was on the top floor. I presume after my emails to him I’m on a list of non-confrontation.
It would be really nice if the government had started to end the psyop. But seriously folks who really believes that? They have continually played the game of suggesting good news only to stamp on it a few days later. Its well known psych. It is used to condition the plebs.
its very difficult to believe ONS numbers as they are modelled. Its very difficult to believe vaccination immunity numbers because there is no proof they confer immunity.
What I think we can hope for is that with a reasonable amount of ‘mingling’ this summer, the natural herd immunity could have reached a threshold by the autumn that will leave SARS2 as just one of millions of endemic virus which will contribute to respiratory illnesses and not much more. That is of course hoping that the ‘vaccinations’ don’t bugger up the immune system completely.
The problem is there is no such thing as herd immunity to a casedemic. Reality doesn’t matter to these people. When the bulk of the herd (flock?) docilely line up for testing and you have complete control of Ct numbers and have refined age old clinical definitions of ‘sick’ and ‘well’ you have whatever cases you need to justify the desired actions. Add the perpetuation of the myth of asymptomatic transmission and you have all the prerequisites. It must be obvious to everyone now that having decided what measures they want (for whatever their motives), they are now simply creating models and numbers to justify those measures.
So many scientists have warned against these vaccines with the exception of use for the highly vulnerable. That advice has been ignored. Everybody can have the vaccine despite their risk. Heartbreaking.
I could have told Boris that. Jesus
Are we allowed to mention herd immunity now?
72% HI vs 37% HI at ICL.
Somebody is either lying or completely inept at their job.
Carl Henegens recent comments are interesting regarding variants and reflect the reality that these vaccines are next to pointless without I’d say at least 4 doses a year. At one point in the SPI-M document from 31st March is suggests that, in one scenario, 60 to 70% of the summer wave of deaths will be in the vaccinated group.
You can caveat it as just a model, but it’s quite the scenario. How do you spin that? “It could have been much worse, praise the vaccines”.
An economy based on vaccine production and roll out into arms. Humanity is reaching its end point.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if fresh “blood” was brought in to advise government. World renowned experts like Drs. John Ioannidis, Martin Kuldorff, Carl Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Scott Atlas, Jay Battacharya. To name a few.
Modelling, what a farce. Anyone with an IQ surpassing that of a cabbage, would know that a model will tell its maker what ever he wants.
All you need do is look to the ugly sister of the Wuhan Flue – Global Warming – to see in over 30 years of modelling catastrophy – not ONE of the forecasts/predictions has come true.
GIGO is alive and still making money.
And what about prior immunity which despite aforementioned models not taking it in account, pretty sure feels like a “thing” if you look at how many people didn’t catch it during the unplanned experiments on close-confine cruise and military ships.
May elections. The Government narrative is that we were all gonna die till they brilliantly got us saviour vaccines, ta da. For the first time, Boris and Gove’s interests differ from those of Prof Wormtongue and his gang of jab the world friends. Boris definitely does not want “we could all die again in summer” as his election slogan.
Good.
Cracks are opening. But how terrible that it has needed young people to die – who would not have died from Covid – to begin to crack the arrogant, profit-hungry, vote-chasing claim that the new, largely untested jabs are completely safe. They could have been offered carefully, cautiously, with informed consent.
There would be much more reliable evidence of population immunity if some of the magic billions wasted last year had been given to those developing faster, cheaper, more long term T cell tests. Could it possibly be that Wormtongue and Sauron see these as against their interests?
Getting rid of SAGE would be a start.
Carl Heneghan has a short memory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_the_United_Kingdom
It’s certainly encouraging to see some scepticism creeping into Government comments on the Imperial and related models. Even asking why their predictions seem so far from reality.
Also in the Telegraph (I think) Carl Heneghan points out that the models the Government likes to rely never seem to get retro-fitted to the reality they didn’t predict. That should be basic good practice to my mind, and that Carl’s comment is published at all signals something of a change (although I think it was “Sensible” Sarah Knapton who included it).
The Birmingham Uni ‘Mapping the Virus’ seminar with a scientific panel chaired by Prof. Alice Roberts was clear that they regarded safety relying on 90%+ vaccination and that as per measles, whooping cough etc would lead to further outbreaks. They dismissed any idea of herd immunity outside this.
I’m expecting a sudden shift with the “Honest, we are following data not dates, so we will allow you to go in your garden a week early in June if only you vote for us in May” announcement. I will never vote Tory again and I vowed never to vote Labour again when Blair was elected as leader.
We need a new direction. What is the point of consistently voting in cretinous liars?
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