November 24, 2023 - 6:00pm
This week the Covid Inquiry touched upon one of the most publicly contentious and yet fundamental concepts of the pandemic: herd immunity. Yet during questioning the Chief Medical Officer for England, Prof. Chris Whitty, perpetuated several unfortunate misconceptions about this basic epidemiological concept.
Whitty’s position this week was that herd immunity is a concept too difficult for the public to grasp and too amenable to misinterpretation. As he told the Government in March 2020, “this is very complicated — please don’t talk about it”. Singling out the Great Barrington Declaration, he branded herd immunity a “dangerous” and “clearly ridiculous” policy approach that should not even be subject to a respectful scientific debate. It is worth, then, looking at several common misconceptions which Prof. Whitty and others continue to spread.
Firstly, Whitty, together with prominent global public health authorities such as the WHO and Anthony Fauci, continues to frame herd immunity as something that can be sustainably “achieved” and held constant rather than a dynamic relationship between susceptible and recovered populations. This new redefinition of the concept is based on diseases like measles, polio and smallpox, where durable vaccines can effectively eliminate a disease. Yet this vaccine-centric perspective isn’t valid for diseases like Covid. Rather, as a mathematical principle, the herd immunity threshold is achieved whenever the rate of infections declines due to a large fraction of the population being immune. Arguing against herd immunity is like arguing against gravity or fluid dynamics.
Secondly, the mainstream position oddly accuses others of “deliberately spreading Covid” whilst ignoring the fact that most people on earth, including in Antarctica, have already been infected. The virus did “spread through the population”, despite two years of unprecedented Government infection control mandates in the UK. Aggregating data at national level also obscures how the virus spreads through local contact networks, with different population densities, living conditions and social interactions. The rate of transmission is not a universal constant, whatever is alluded to in the media.
Thirdly, those who railed against herd immunity claimed that it could never be achieved because there was no lasting immunological protection from infection. This is mathematically incorrect. Herd immunity is established separately from the rate of loss of infection-blocking immunity. Coronaviruses are known to reinfect individuals at regular intervals of a few years, but the first infection confers durable protection against severe disease. Protection from severe disease was also provided from cross-immunity from previous exposure to other coronaviruses, such as the common cold. Interestingly, this implies global travel protects the human herd from a more devastating pandemic.
In the case of respiratory viruses, epidemics are strongly influenced by seasonality (which isn’t well-defined in non-temperate countries). In fact, epidemic trajectories can be explained largely by looking at the arrival time of Covid, which explains the “waves” in winter and the fact that lifting lockdowns did not significantly increase infections in the summer of 2020.
Finally, the ecological framework of herd immunity challenges the command-and-control infrastructure and anthropocentric hubris of government Covid mandates. This is perhaps the most threatening dimension: that two years of heavy-handed restrictions on basic social life and community caused immense social harm but were not altogether effective at controlling the pandemic, despite the models which generated an illusion of certainty. Rather, there are natural laws at work governing the human-microbial-environment interaction beyond our control. Here, human illness and death are an intrinsic yet unfortunate reality that, although minimisable by protecting the most vulnerable as with the Swedish approach, cannot be avoided altogether. Lockdowns were always a porous intervention.
So there is still much to learn about herd immunity and respiratory pandemics. However, we must move beyond the emotive polarisation of basic epidemiological science. Government scientists such as Prof. Whitty continue to misrepresent herd immunity, and their statements have become part of the mental scaffolding which justified the UK’s emergency state. Paradoxically, these same scientists advocated for “herd immunity” and focused protection right before flipping to Plan B on 23 March, 2020.
It is time we rehabilitate the reputation of herd immunity as a foundational reality of epidemiology. Future respiratory pandemic response depends on it.
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SubscribeOnce again kudos to Ian Birrell and fellow journalists for doggedly pursuing this story. You are doing a public good even if you do not receive the recognition you deserve.
There is something funny and surreal in this article. The author is forced to document every little step in the chain of evidence even when the weight of evidence clearly points in one direction.
How much more proof do we need that there was an attempt to cover up even the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan virus lab? I guess it depends on who the ‘we’ is in that question. For people at the highest reaches of US and Chinese (and UK) science who want to cover their own tracks, I suppose the answer is there can never be enough proof.
Thank you for this article and the hard work put in. I am sure that many of us who were called ‘conspiracy theorists’ for being sceptical of the accounts of governments, global organisations like the WHO, aligned ‘interested’ scientists working for many large organisations, big tech and corporate media, big pharmaceuticals and the like – now feel almost proud to be ‘conspiracy theorists’.
I would rather be labelled a “conspiracy theorist” and keep my integrity rather than give in and follow the delusional “naive realists” down the easy road of “the science”, that’s for sure. The problem is that the majority of people, including (in fact, in particular) highly formally educated people, sadly don’t seem to be able or willing to do that. We are facing a crisis of truth and meaning, and it is not going well.
Well said. I’m in much the same mind.
Birrell is full on establishment. Ex speech writer to Cameron, the guy who gave us Libya. Ex deputy editor of the left wing independent.
What he wants you to believe is what the establishment wants you to believe.
How do you square that with his pernicious attitude in digging out the truth of an establishment cover-up over the last couple of years?
Unless you’re contending that it was all an establishment plot to lay an establishment plot that was designed to be uncovered?
I am responding to the article written and not the personal history of the author….
This is what journalism should be.
Fantastic article, proper journalism in action. I pity anyone who clings to the naive belief that whatever is said in a peer reviewed journal is beyond question and necessarily above board. The Drosten protocol, infection fatality rates, effectiveness of lockdown measures, and much more have all been the subject of lies and misinformation published in previously respectable journals. The Lancet, in particular, has been dreadful.
But this how the CCP works – it gets its people into places of influence, it bullies, it intimidates, and it lies, lies, and lies again, through whatever means are its disposal. It has no ethical limits, and absolutely no respect for the truth. It’s ultimately very cowardly – it won’t ever defend its cheating in public, it won’t tolerate dissent, and it knows that its power rests on maintaining deceit.
The sooner more people in the west realise that they – and some in their governments – have been systemically manipulated by this vile, corrupt, despicable regime and its corporate and political allies, the better. The realisation that we have been attacked and tricked in this way will be unpleasant for many – some people just won’t able to process it. But it is now the responsibility of those in leadership positions across our society to put their big boy and girl pants on and start to get grips with this to help us fight this disease of misinformation and reclaim our enlightenment.
It’s worth quoting further paragraphs from Eisenhower’s farewell address, the same one warning of the military-industrial complex:
“Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
It is this process that has rendered science-as-it-is-done completely corruptible. Not to mention subject to the pernicious vagaries of social science and various postmodernisms.
Eisenhower was clearly very prescient. His farewell address should be obligatory reading for every high school and university student, for every academic scientist, for every employee of government science funding agencies, and lastly for every politician. Perhaps that would put a stop to the “follow the science” sheep which sin’t science but scientism (a fanatical religious belief), and restore open scientific/medical debate within academia and medicine.
I became aware of this sometime ago. He said this in 1961, long before the massive explosion in technology. I wonder what he would say if he could see what has happened.
Yet again it is clear that academia are utterly servile to those who fund their research and entirely feckless about who funds their research.
Why do we give these “experts” such credence without first invalidating any who have received payment from an actor in the issue at hand?
That’s right. Follow the money. Applies also to climate research.
Absolutely great article. I agree with every word. Really what needs to happen is that a number of these so-called top scientists should be arrested and charged with treason. Perhaps a little bit overboard but it would certainly provide a lesson and example to others that using letters and esteemed academic/government positions of authority after one’s name does not give one license to knowingly disseminate propaganda at the behest of an aggressive foreign power.
Great article, hope there’s more to come on this issue.
However, I’ve long had great scepticism about the moral compass of science. I’d go so far as to say ethics fly out of the window when scientists think they are doing work ‘at the edge’.
In what mad world would a scientist deliberately take bat viruses from a habitat (where they coexist with the population) and remove them to a lab, then grow and engineer them to be more dangerous? Oh yes, the mad world of science.
It’s no surprise that scientists can be motivated by money, power and ego. Have we, however, by our deification of science enabled this to happen?
We have Covid to thank for showing us the spectacle of UK members of SAGE and NERVTAG fighting with each other publicly like rats in a sack. Sorry, that’s disrespectful to rats. But it shows that scientists are human, not gods.
If I was being pessimistic, I’d say that science will be the death of us. Anybody who has read Justin Cronin’s The Passage will surely agree.
I really want to disagree with you, science should not have to cleave to morals (morals beings fragile and changeable). But science is conducted by people and people are always partisan and easily corrupted, sad to say. Corruptis optimi pessima.
I just get my membership because of article like that! This is journalism, research, professionalism and base on the facts! Well done!
The WHO investigator says a Chinese scientist may have started the pandemic after being infected with coronavirus while collecting bat samples in the field. Whether they will count this as zoonotic transmission or a lab leak is unclear?
What is all this building up to mean in a court of civil law?
Will I be able to join some class action lawsuit in getting my losses paid back by China? Is the 10 Trillion, or whatever it ends up being, wasted by the USA on covid response going to be paid back? My guess is no –
Affirmation of the presentation by Nicholas Wade that tore aside a tight curtain. Clearly much more evidence of the attempts to counter the leak hypothesis. Wade was the first to note dangerous research done at lowered safety levels. The research may or may not be critical to mankind, but if done at all, it must be done responsibly.
One item that seems critical is the fact that this research often results in patents with potential financial gain involved. Given how money corrupts, we might need to alter the patent system for discoveries vital to heath. Some research relates to patents that if public funds are involved should be public property. Scientists employed by the public should be allowed no interest in those public patents.
Thanks for your report. We’ll keep an eye on it. Obviously, vigilance in thorough reporting on these events/issues will not recede until many more questions are sufficiently answered in a manner that is beyond dispute.
Thank you. I an a conspiracy theorist of course. Who else would read such journalism?