Nafeez Ahmed investigates how the adoption of the outlandish policy, which would have led to half a million deaths, coincided with the presence of Boris Johnson’s controversial chief advisor
The minutes of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) not only confirm that the Government did not at any time give serious consideration to the possibility of suppressing the Coronavirus, they throw new light on its fascination with the idea of ‘herd immunity’.
Herd immunity occurs when a sufficiently large number of people in a population have obtained immunity, preventing a virus from being transmitted onward. Usually, it is achieved purely as a result of vaccination, but in some cases scientists agree that it can build up naturally over time.
The SAGE minutes which I have delved into provide compelling circumstantial evidence that, contrary to official denials, herd immunity was a central Government strategy – even though SAGE scientists were not able to offer any scientific justification for it at all.
Asymptomatic Infections – Looking for Herd Immunity
On 13 February, the same day that the Government wanted to consider the impact of school closures on “the wider economy”, SAGE minutes reveal that it decided to establish another sub-group, SPI-B (Scientific Pandemic Influenza – Behaviour), “to provide behavioural science advice via SAGE throughout this incident”.
A cross-section of behavioural scientists at SPI-B would later advise the Government to use herd immunity as a way to justify an emerging policy of ‘shielding’ the elderly and vulnerable, while allowing the rest of the population to get infected with the Coronavirus.
Until mid-March, the SAGE documents confirm that the Government continued to expect that the virus would achieve “sustained transmission” in the UK, while simultaneously refusing to implement any measures that might prevent that from happening.
On 18 February, for instance, the SAGE minutes conclude: “When there is sustained transmission in the UK, contact tracing will no longer be useful.”
The Government was not trying to prevent people getting infected and dying, but to keep this at a level which would not collapse the healthcare system.
The Government also displayed a particular interest in understanding the scale of asymptomatic cases in the UK – which was of direct relevance to the herd immunity strategy.
While it is easier to track the number of people showing symptoms, if more people had become infected without showing symptoms, this would suggest a wider degree of transmission – giving an indication of progress in achieving herd immunity. Accordingly, the SAGE minutes called for efforts to “better understand asymptomatic cases” through more “comprehensive swabbing of returning global travellers”.
By 27 February, in a meeting attended by Dominic Cummings’ Downing Street advisor Ben Warner, SAGE updated its assumptions for a reasonable worst-case scenario. It said: “80% of the UK population may become infected, with an overall 1% fatality rate in those infected.” It also added that: “Only a proportion of those infected will experience symptoms”.
Though seemingly innocuous, this is a crucial observation because the Government appeared to believe that a much larger number of people were asymptomatically infected, consistent with the hope that its strategy was potentially heading towards achieving herd immunity.
But it also seemed to have accepted that doing so would come at a huge cost. The Government’s working assumptions indicated an expectation that as many as 500,000 people could die with COVID-19.
Just a week earlier, Government figures produced by the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) had advanced an even worse figure of up to potentially 1.3 million fatalities. Those figures, updated by SAGE on 27 February, showed that the Government estimated that some 37% of people infected would be asymptomatic.
Despite the Government’s own figures suggesting it was on a path to a colossal scale of death, social distancing measures were not implemented until weeks later when the Government realised that NHS capacity would be overwhelmed. The Government was not trying to prevent people getting infected and dying, but to keep this at a level which would not collapse the healthcare system.
Two Months of Herd Immunity Thinking
In early April, Byline Times obtained leaked recordings of a confidential Home Office call showing Rupert Shute, Deputy Chief Science Advisor,