Simon Clarke

What lockdown sceptics get wrong

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One of the more peculiar features of Covid is just how cleanly the crisis has split us down political lines. As a serving Tory councillor, you may assume that my views on masks, lockdown and the virus are predictable. But I’m also a microbiologist and I’m dismayed by the attitudes of some fellow travellers. 

Pandemics, particularly ones involving dangerous viruses like this one, are not merely a question of personal freedom but also of collective responsibility. Of course I desperately want a return to normal life. To be frank, however, I do not think that’s going to happen any time soon. Why? Because the virus is simply too dangerous to be left unchecked. I don’t believe a vaccine is imminent (more on that later) — which means, for the foreseeable, we’re going to have to ‘learn to live with this virus’, as the dreary phrase goes. So the question is: how can we best do that? 

One suggestion is that we let the virus work its way through the nation’s respiratory tracts so that we reach levels of herd immunity. This, I’m afraid to say, is a fanciful and dangerous notion. There is, in fact, no precedent for natural infections providing lasting herd immunity. It doesn’t happen with measles; we still get outbreaks even with a vaccine. It didn’t happen with smallpox, either, or indeed countless other infectious diseases. 

What’s more, we often hear that, because of the common cold, many might already have what’s called cross-reactivity immunity. This means that people are afforded immunity from having had a common cold before. It’s an attractive idea, sure, but it remains nothing more than an airy theory and I would question the wisdom of gambling lives on a mere hypothesis. Does anyone seriously think that the million people worldwide who have died from the virus had not had a common cold before? We’re not even protected against reinfection by those very same cold viruses, so why would we be protected against their lethal cousin?

Those pushing herd immunity are trying to create the impression of a genuine and serious scientific debate where there is none.

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