> Matt Hancock insists 'herd immunity' not part of government's plan for tackling coronavirus
> Mr Hancock added: "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."
https://politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstrea...
The amount of politicizing people are engaging is a bit sad. Especially when you take a wider view at how every country with the best doctors and scientists have dealt with it. Significant criticism has happened across party and ideological lines (Which you’d hope the healthcare bodies would be largely independent of and instead follows the best scientific advice). Even here in Canada where our prime minister’s wife got COVID-19 and are both in isolation, yet they’ve been even less aggressive than the policies the UK has already announced.
It’s obvious few countries and even WHO were well prepared for something of this scale and a ton of criticism today has the benefit of retrospect. Meanwhile aggressive policies, like the US closing borders and China locking up entire apartment buildings when one resident gets sick, also got immediate heavy push back, and globally has been far more the exception than the rule.
Even with better preparedness, which no doubt will be adopted after this event, there is still a difficult balance between scaling up restrictions on daily life without being accused of being “draconian” (which is how I remember the same UK press characterized Italy’s early moves). Especially politically, let alone scientifically.
We should be spending more effort on finding the right balance, which is still not obvious nor scientifically well established for countries with lower rates, even today. Those are the hard questions, political opportunism is easy and low effort.