During Health Questions this afternoon, Matt Hancock turned fire on the so-called “Great Barrington Declaration” – a strain of epidemiology gaining traction with many on the civil-liberty conscious side of things, which calls for an immediate resumption of “life as normal” for everyone except the vulnerable, and to build up herd immunity.

The declaration has garnered attention after attracting signatures from three leading professors from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford universities. It’s claimed the statement has been signed by more than 6,000 medical scientists, though there is no verification process and one signature is from Dr Harold Shipman so Guido recommends taking this with a pinch of salt…

Hancock this afternoon, however, actively name-checked the campaign while defending the government’s current strategy, arguing that “on the substance, the Great Barrington declaration is underpinned by two central planes and both are emphatically wrong”, namely:

1. We will reach herd immunity: Hancock points out many infectious diseases never reach herd immunity, e.g. measles, malaria and AIDS; plus there’s increasing evidence of Covid re-infection
2. We can segregate the old and vulnerable on the way to herd immunity: Intergenerational homes, older people needing carers and when young people can suffer from long-Covid

Emphatically a non-starter with this government…