In early March of 2020, there was rising public concern that the UK was taking an altogether different approach to its neighbours, leading some people to joke that Britain was the world’s “control group”. To allay public fears, the health Secretary Matt Hancock wrote an op-ed in The Telegraph on March 15th claiming that “herd immunity” was not part of the government’s plan. Here’s the full quote:
We have a plan, based on the expertise of world-leading scientists. Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy. Our goal is to protect life from this virus, our strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and protect the NHS through contain, delay, research and mitigate.
Now Dominic Cummings – the former chief advisor to Boris Johnson, who left No. 10 “with immediate effect” in mid November – has claimed that the government did intend to pursue a “herd immunity” strategy. At 3:38 this afternoon, Cummings tweeted:
Media generally abysmal on covid but even I’ve been surprised by 1 thing: how many hacks have parroted Hancock’s line that ‘herd immunity wasn’t the plan’ when ‘herd immunity by Sep’ was *literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings* until it was ditched
In a subsequent tweet, Cummings elaborated on why the government’s original plan was “ditched”. He writes:
In week of 9/3, No10 was made aware by various people that the official plan wd lead to catastrophe. It was then replaced by Plan B. But how ‘herd immunity by Sep’ cd have been the plan until that week is a fundamental issue in the whole disaster
What Cummings says is of course broadly consistent with the statements Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance had made up until the date of Hancock’s article, as well as with the infamous ‘UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011’. In a hearing of the Health and Social Care Committee on March 5th, Whitty said, “what we’re very keen to do is not intervene until the point we absolutely have to, so as to minimise economic and social disruption.”
Opinions obviously differ about whether the original plan would “lead to catastrophe”, but it’s interesting to have an insider’s perspective on the Government’s early planning.
Stop Press: In a further tweet, Cummings has accused the Government of lying. He writes:
No10 decided to lie: ‘herd immunity has never been… part of our coronavirus strategy’. V foolish, & appalling ethics, to lie about it. The right line wd have been what PM knows is true: our original plan was wrong & we changed when we realised
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Why stick to that when you can unethically brainwash a population, soar in the polls and retain power for an indefinite period…?
I smell fear and panic. The Fuellmich and O’Bernicia net is obviously closing-in on these gangsters and the blame game has begun.
I look forward to Nuremburg II.
Me too, although it seems to gone ominously quiet on those fronts of late. Is anyone able to provide an update on what’s happening?
O’Bernicia posted an update a week ago saying there has been a failed attempt to sabotage his case by an unknown person/s.
https://www.thebernician.net/failed-attempt-to-sabotage-pcp-by-persons-unknown/
ok – he has managed to get deputy RM to reconsider original erroneous decision. What is to stop that judicial officer “reading all the evidence” this time [as opposed to just the statement of claim] but still coming to the same decision and forcing them to an appeal to the high court which they will likely not succeed in. I am sorry to sound so pessimistic – I want them to succeed in this just as much as the rest of us here – but I don’t see how they will manage to buck the judicial trend, which has been ongoing the whole way through this ‘pandemic’, of all cases being decided in favour of the government [other than the hancock PPE case which was so glaringly obvious that if they hadn’t decided against him public would have smelled a rat] by order of the government “because we are in an emergency situation”
Cummings was some amalgam of Machiavelli & Rasputin last year. The power behind the throne whose every word should be treated with suspicion. What changed?
NutNuts got Bozo’s nuts in a nut-cracker!
Bullseye
That’s right , but he is a khazar and his real allegiance lies there.
is is just another “distraction” story – to get us obsessed with so that we don’t see what is really going on letting them ramp this up another level, with Cummings playing along, meanwhile “working from home” all the time?
My thoughts too.
It’s just putting out BS, a distraction, nothing more.
We probably reached herd immunity months ago, but you’d never know based on the official data that has been fried up more than a Scotch egg.
I had high hopes the UK would be like Sweden last March.
What a different world it would be if the UK had.
Yes, for a few days I felt quite impressed by Bozo.
I think you needed a lie-down
No, that was after March 23rd!
Although we wouldn’t have had “herd immunity by September”: note that Sweden had a bad second wave in autumn/winter 2020 just like all the other European countries.
Or as it is more customarily known ‘winter’. It was a mistake underestimating the seasonality factor, but continued restrictions and working from home throughout the summer, on the basis that there could be a ‘second wave’ at any moment, can only have made things worse when it came to the winter. Recklessness in the name of caution. Herd immunity happens sooner or later, it’s just impossible to know whether it’s happened in a winter-proof form when you’re in summer.
No, they didn’t. They had a moderate secondary ripple. Back to normal now. They delayed vaccination & immunised much more slowly. People realise vaccination isn’t necessary yet like other Scandi nations, they’re well aware of the very high serious adverse event rates.
The Swedes expressed dismay, they felt they had been let down, they expected the UK to be with them.
People, like Blair, saw an opportunity to push through ID plans.
Agree; it’s never been about the virus, it’s always been about control of the masses. Wait for the ‘climate change’ lockdowns.
I should have said and opportunity to ‘attempt’ to push through
May I take this opportunity to say how much I despise Tony Blair?
#me too
This has been planned for years – there’s not been a pandemic. We’re dealing with an enormous fraud.
we know that but how do you convince everyone else? – every time I try I get shouted down with the “official BBC narrative” being trotted out – the brainwashing has been so complete that pushback at even the most basic level just isn’t effective.
It is surely gilding the Lily to say that “planning” ever came into it. It was all about the “optics” and the politics of looking good and arse covering. Whitty and Co are just as political, and the attractions of getting the whip hand over a weak Johnson and an opportunist Hancock were hard to resist.
That’s why Sage are now the de facto government of the UK
Reluctantly, I have to say that this is interesting, even if it raises a host of unanswered questions for a crew I would’t trust with a child’s piggy bank.
This little Maserati from Handoncock is a real zinger :
“We have a plan, based on the expertise of world-leading scientists. Herd immunity is not a part of it. That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy. Our goal is to protect life from this virus, our strategy is to protect the most vulnerable and protect the NHS through contain, delay, research and mitigate.
‘Herd immunity is not a part of it.’ …. yet everything was (then) hung on artificial immunisation, the whole point of which is to create herd immunity!
I suppose it backs up the theory that the little biddable salesman/wanker has absolutely no f.ing idea.
I’m not sure which is worse – this ‘Cluelessness in Charge’ or more purposeful motivation.
What it does confirm is that this bunch of pseudo ‘advisors’ would sell their own grandmothers for advancement and a few bob.
What a shower of devious cupid stunts!
A shower? More like a flood of biblical proportions! We need an ark to escape this lunacy.
“it’s interesting to have an insider’s perspective on the government’s early planning.” Assuming he’s not lying, or embellishing the truth for his own ends. Of course no ex-political hack who’d recently been sacked would ever do that.
Exactly
the naivety of the LDS reporting of a wonder to behold.
If only they had fired him earlier and stuck to the prior, age old and well tested in real life plans.
We would have ended up with a death rate as low as Belarus’, no collateral damage at all and no QALYs lost there (240x the number of QALYs ‘saved’ without our role in the genocide in the 3rd World), our liberties, society, fiscal and general health still intact and our children still having a decent future.
But then, some people couldn’t have enriched and empowered themselves more and the preparation to enslave and finish off the population could not have been made.
You may well be right although we should never forget the role of the mendacious press that fought tooth and nail for lockdown.
Sacked man says “Yer all bastards, nerrrr”.
Oh God. here we go again in the picture with politicians rolling their sleeves up when on photo-ops in hospitals. Spinmeister Blair started it if I remember correctly.
What’s it supposed to signify? “We are actually caring, hygienically – minded types, almost like doctors actually” (never mind that doctors don’t do it)
I give up with these empty, totally narcissistic wankers.
After initially announcing that the government would stick with the wholly sensible 2011 pandemic strategy Boris then saw those hysterical msm covid headlines, lost his bottle, ripped-up the pandemic plan and panicked … he has since dug himself a huge hole that he cannot possible get out of without facing some very serious questions and possible legal proceedings too and so he has had to go along with the whole nonsensical deadly virus narrative and even hired behavioural scientists to save his inept corrupt neck yes, even to point of a national vacination program – in my opinion thats the end of story really except that being the opportunists that all politicians are he (or his cabinet) then decided not to let a good (manufactured) crisis go to waste and introduce some of the most oppressive and divisive measures ever announced by an elected British government in its entire history – measures that would not look out of place under some far-flung totalitarian regime but would never have seen the cold light of day under normal circumstances in a liberal democracy.
I’d agree with most of that, but you don’t mention the “internationalist” aspects. With all the MSM like baying hounds, consistently agitating for ever higher levels of restriction to be imposed sooner, Johnson could see that it was impossible to expect support for any push-back against the orthodoxy from the other G7 leaders etc., and he lost his bottle. The shit-show that followed is, as you suggest, all about him (and his key advisors) positioning themselves to argue that “there was no alternative” to the lockdown orthodoxy.
Trump was pushing back against it from what I remember
I could have done it by June
What Cummings says is of course broadly consistent with bollocks.
What we have here is more chaff, more obfuscation, deflection and disinformation being peddled as news and truth.
We are lead by a bunch of agenda driven idiots who’ve spent the last year comprehensively muddling the already numbed brains of the people.
They are intent on taking our rights, our wealth , our independence and our freedom and then making everyone grateful for the outcome.
Toby & co, how about some real journalism and some proper reports on the junk science behind it all going back to the WHO and the interlinked vested interests , and into the vaccine scamology ???
Not a f…..g chance , is there ?
Incredible …
You would think they would have enough shit to wade through after all this time.
Perhaps they are just going through the motions.
“The right line wd have been what PM knows is true: our original plan was wrong & we changed when we realised”
That makes more sense – I knew Cummins wasn’t principled ,,,, or right, or intelligent (as opposed to clever)
You mean the government actually lied?! Say it ain’t so Dom, say it ain’t so.
Cummings is saying that he knew they blatantly lied but chose not to say anything about it at the time. Thus admitting that he colluded with it and so must bear equal responsibility.
Thanks for clarifying Dom.
Whoever is right or wrong in this tedious little spat, it will serve its purpose. Re-establishing the framework of acceptable discussion. “Herd immunity” is BAD, m’Kay? Lockdown is GOOD, m’Kay? And the Great Barrington Declaration (which everyone _sensible_ who isn’t a COVID-denying conspiracist _knows_ was equivalent to a “do nothing” approach) is BAD, m’Kay?
I find it amusing that herd immunity is now equated with genocide. Don’t they realise that herd immunity is a perfect goal? You’ve got a disease that’s so harmless in most people it’ll just be like a cold – or perhaps even symptomless if you believe that. Focused protection of the vulnerable whilst it was still a novel virus, whilst the healthy went about their regular business was a perfect strategy.
Minor correction: Would have been, if it had been done. The other article today re how did a disease that had no symptoms take over the world? also observes that ‘infections’ that cause no real problem for most do not actually ‘cause’ a disease at all. We live with all sorts of junk that we can deal with, most of the time.
Cummings. What a complete fraud and looks bonkers too.
Who do you believe, the known liar Cummings or the known liar Johnson?
What continues to amaze me (although I don’t doubt I’m a mugg to think people in public roles act rationally) that Cummings, Owen Jones & all the rest cannot possibly have read the SAGE minutes, which show that the Govt. followed those scientists’ advice to the letter. Cummings also focuses on Italy’s decision to lock down, pronounces it a success and criticises the UK for not having copied it sooner. He neatly omits that photos of overwhelmed north Italian hospital being overwhelmed led directly to decanting covid patients into care homes to ‘protect the NHS.’ This led to 10’s of 000’s of deaths. He compares Sweden with Denmark while failing to note differences between the two countries, ignores the Jutland study which shows Danish NPI’s had no effect-and on & on…Will a public enquiry actually do a proper job of looking at the evidence and do better than this slovenly and incompetent attemp at analysis?
I dont understand Cumming’s beef with herd immunity. It is the natural way to deal with a pandemic, proven to work over billions of years. It minimises the economic effects and minimises the impact on the quality of life. Plus you get no vaccine deaths and no lockdown deaths, reducing the overall death count. How can he criticise that?
What is the vaccination programme if not a herd immunity policy?
Wrong.
We are not using vaccines and so it cannot be achieved via current jabs. Herd immunity may well be embedded in the un-jabbed by now. The problem is the unnecessary jabbing is likely to result in more dangerous mutations. In which case a lot more of us will be Tom ducked.
The “vaccination programme” is an experimental genetic modification therapy on steroids. Even the manufacturers of the snake oil don’t claim it gives immunity.