Did the UK Go for Herd Immunity?

Saturday, 31 July 2021

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The UK Government has strongly denied that it ever considered using the tactic of attaining natural herd immunity for the population as a method to deal with the Covid pandemic – except for the many times that they did admit that this was exactly what they were planning and promoted the idea. Confused? It is confusing – mostly because the UK Government has gone out of its way to handle the pandemic crisis in a rather unique manner – by saying they are doing one thing – following the science, when in fact they are doing the complete opposite.

So what is Herd Immunity?

In simple terms this is when a large enough percentage of the population becomes immune to the disease. This can occur naturally with some diseases when enough people contract the virus and develop defences against it. Herd immunity can also occur through vaccination programmes. The point is to get enough people immune so that the virus has limited options to spread and eventually dies out.

The concept of developing natural herd immunity was particularly inviting to the current UK Government because this specific route involved them doing nothing- sweet sod all to stop the spread of the virus. Whilst other countries were flailing about, closing borders, imposing methods to track the spread and advising citizens on the best course of action – our Government chose the option of saying "Piss all that for a game of soldiers". Why? Well because their donors didn't want the economy – which translates to rich peoples profit margins affected. Johnson was only too happy to oblige.

Rather quickly it transpired that Covid was more contagious than previously thought and had more potential to harm huge swathes of the population so the Government sprang into action. Actually they pissed about and waited even longer and when they did actually start to do something it was all a façade – window dressing to give the vague impression of giving a solitary shit about anyone but themselves.

Did they really go for Herd Immunity?

When you look at the UK Governments response to the unfolding crisis it becomes very clear that this was precisely what they intended. Here is a timeline of the events and the strikingly large amount of evidence that the UK Government decided to conduct an experiment on the general public in an attempt to curry favour with their donors – an experiment that cost over 150000 lives.

On the 3^rd February 2020 Boris Johnson made a speech to the Tory party donors in which he said:

"Global growth is itself anaemic and the decline in global poverty is beginning to slow," he said. "And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as Coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange."

He went on to suggest that the UK would be the country "ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion".

Also in February it was revealed that government advisor Dominic Cummings had stated "herd immunity, protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad." As reported in the Financial Times:

"The acceptance that the disease would inevitably spread widely across British society — but could be managed — meant that Britain did not immediately announce tough social-distancing measures and had a limited testing regime. "Dominic supported the policy 100 per cent," said one Downing Street official"

By this time the UK government had moved 20000 covid patients into care homes to recover. Covid began to spread like wildfire in care homes. Strangely the policy set out by the UK Government insisted on not testing patients transferred to the care homes and not providing adequate PPE for the care home staff. If a care home resident was suspected to have covid, the plan was to quarantine everyone inside together – ensuring that all or most residents (who were quarantined with them) caught the disease.

The lack of PPE was an ongoing concern during the crisis. In April PPE stocks were so low that nurses were improvising by wearing cut up bin bags. Billions of pounds in contracts were given to their friends – most of these contracts reeked of corruption.

As reported in the FT:

"In a report released on Wednesday, the NAO highlighted contracts where the supplier had a close link to Whitehall. They included a £550,000 consulting deal with Public First, whose two directors previously worked for Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, and a technology agreement worth about £1m with Faculty, whose shareholders until recently included Theodore Agnew, another Cabinet Office minister.

The Cabinet Office "failed to document any consideration of any potential conflict of interest" and "failed to document why it chose this particular supplier" when it awarded the contracts, the NAO said.

In a third example, it said health department officials failed to consider a potential conflict of interest in a £252m contract to supply PPE with Ayanda Capital, a private investment firm. The deal was controversial because Ayanda's board is advised by Andrew Mills, at the time an adviser to the Board of Trade.

The watchdog also highlighted lucrative PPE contracts awarded outside of usual procurement methods, including a "high-priority lane" for companies referred by government officials, ministers' offices, MPs and peers.

Such companies were 10 times more likely to have obtained contracts than suppliers who pitched through ordinary channels, the NAO found. A person close to the report said there were "no rules" for using the high-priority referrals system, which meant there was "a risk of it being open to abuse or inconsistency".

In one case, PestFix, a pest control supplies company in Littlehampton, Sussex, was "added to the high-priority lane in error without a referral", the NAO said. This resulted in PestFix, which has net assets of £18,000, being awarded a contract to supply PPE worth £350m to the NHS.

The NAO report detailed a string of poor procurement practices, such as companies being granted work without a formal contract. In one case, a £3m contract with consultancy firm Deloitte to support the procurement of PPE was not signed until four months after the work had begun."

The PPE that cost £252 million – awarded to a tax have in Mauritaus with connections to MP Liz Truss – was never used as it was not fir for purpose. The government also bought 400000 surgical gowns from Turkey which were never used as they didn't meet safety standards. The thing is – it was known that they didn't meet these standards before the order was placed. The landlord of Health Secretary Matt Hancock's favourite pub somehow managed to get a £30 million contract to make test tubes. Tory donor James Dyson was given a huge contract to make ventilators – something that he had never done before as his primary field is vacuum cleaners. Actual ventilator manufacturers were turned down by the UK Government.

Anyway – I digress – back to the timeline.

By the 27^th of February Cummings and his mate Ben Warner (of VoteLeave) were advising the SAGE scientists on the strategy of achieving herd immunity:

"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".

On the 3^rd March 2020 Boris Johnson proudly announced that he had been to a hospital with Covid patients and had been shaking hands with everyone.

On 5 March 2020 briefed by No.10 – Robert Peston of the Spectator – owned by Tory donors the Barclay brothers- revealed the UK Government strategy was to "allow the virus to pass through the entire population".

Also on March 5^th Boris Johnson appeared on This Morning to tell Phillip Schofield that: "One of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go..."

On 5th March, the SAGE minutes confirm that the Government decided to adopt this approach. The meeting during which this was cemented was attended by Cummings, Warner and David Halpern, head of the Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team (known as the 'nudge unit').

in March 2020 - before the first lockdown started - PR firm Topham Guerin was given a no bid £3million contract - paid for by the tax payer - to provide an information campaign for the UK public. What was the purpose of the campaign? They encouraged people to not wear masks.

The campaign was called "Enjoy Summer Safely" it was tied into the "eat out to help out" campaign and it spread the rumours - communicated by the government that masks were not required, were ineffective and could even cause the disease to spread further. This morphed into all sorts of nonsense internet rumours claiming that masks trap the disease against your face making you even more ill. This was then expanded to include utter made up rubbish about masks causing hypoxia due to reduced intake of oxygen.

The campaign was called "Enjoy Summer Safely" it was tied into the "eat out to help out" campaign and it spread the rumours - communicated by the government that masks were not required, were ineffective and could even cause the spreading about masks and trapping the disease and all that utter rubbish. This was then expanded to include nonsense about masks causing hypoxia etc.

On March 11^th David Halpern of the Nudge Unit appeared on BBC radio saying that the plan was to cocoon the vulnerable and allow the rest of the population to achieve herd immunity.

11 March - the day the WHO declared COVID19 a pandemic- Jenny Harries Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England said public outdoor events are safe & that "we don't want to disrupt people lives".

That week, Liverpool played Atletico Madrid & 250,000 people went to the

Cheltenham Festival. Matt Hancock mysteriously received a payment of £370000 from the organisers if the Cheltenham Festival. By massive coincidence Dido Harding, who oversaw the spending of £37 billion on a useless track and trace system, is married to a board member of the Jockey Club – the owners of the Cheltenham Festival.

Also on March 11^th Patrick Whitty announced that the government were not going to test anyone unless they were already in hospital.

On March 13^th Patrick Vallance (also of the Nudge Unit) appeared on TV to defend the Governments Herd Immunity strategy

Also on 13^th March in the INews newspaper, Patrick Vallance again proposed that Herd Immunity was the best strategy.

Government Advisor Nick Phin also appeared on Channel 4 to discuss Herd Immunity saying: "Well, herd immunity is the situation where you get so many people in the population to develop an immunity to a disease that there is no opportunity for the disease to actually become established and spread to lots of people," said Nick Phin, deputy director of the National Infection Service.

"Normally we do that with a vaccine," he said. "You can do that naturally, of course, if a disease that's not been introduced before affects a large number of people, and that's really how herd immunity in the U.K. would develop."

Also on 13^th March Boris Johnson spoke to the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte that the UK's strategy was to achieve herd Immunity. This was confirmed by the Italian health minister Pierpaolo Sileri.

With lockdown looming Boris Johnson refused to order the pubs to close. Instead he advised them to close. He gave no indication of what the coming plan might be. Fearing imminent closure thousand flocked to their favourite watering holes.

Lockdown started on 23^rd March. Notes from the minutes of SAGE meetings show that the herd immunity strategy was still in place until mid April.

"A series of meeting minutes from this period show that SAGE belatedly conceded that there was "no evidence pointing to high levels of population immunity in this stage in the pandemic"; that it was unclear how long immunity lasted; and that therefore the idea of opening up the economy via mass distributing of immunity passports for people recovered from the Coronavirus was premature."

On 24^th March the financial Times science editor Clive Cookson, suggested that the country "had already acquired substantial herd immunity through the unrecognised spread of COVID-19 over more than two months". If true, this would vindicate the Government's "unofficial herd immunity strategy – allowing controlled spread of infection," he stated. This was based on a paper that had recently been released that suggested that half the population of the Uk was already immune to covid and therefore very little needed to be done to combat the spread. This became known as the Oxford paper – but strangely it didn't come from Oxford University and it escaped the usual peer review process.

The paper was authored by scientist Sunetra Gupta and strongly promoted herd immunity as a strategy. But this concept had been promoted and presented by a group called Sugrue Communications who just so happen to be the PR arm of the UK's Nudge Unit and works with the MOD DSTL lab.

On 24^th March the financial Times science editor Clive Cookson, suggested that the country "had already acquired substantial herd immunity through the unrecognised spread of COVID-19 over more than two months". If true, this would vindicate the Government's "unofficial herd immunity strategy – allowing controlled spread of infection," he stated. This became known as the Oxford paper – but strangely it didn't come from Oxford University and it escaped the usual peer review process.

This concept had been formulated and presented by a group called Sugrue Communications – the PR arm of the UK's Nudge Unit and works with the MOD DSTL lab.

The article in the FT stated: "Although some experts have shed doubt on the strength and length of the human immune response to the virus, Prof Gupta said the emerging evidence made her confident that humanity would build up herd immunity against COVID-19." Sunetra Gupta would become a prominent voice in covid denial – claiming we achieved herd immunity in March 2020.

Sunetra Gupta also received money directly from a donor to the Conservative party – namely Georg Von Opel – in return for promoting herd immunity.

On April 15^th the first anti Lockdown protest is held in Michigan USA – it transpires that this was arranged by Koch industries, the Devos family and the Heritage Foundation. Simultaneously there is a campaign called filmthehospitals that is started by Council for National Policy member Jason Jones. All of these people are connected in some manner to the Conservative party as donors. The anti lockdown protests were billed as helping the working man. This is patently ridiculous – Koch industries have done more to lower the quality of the working man's life than almost any other company. They haven't suddenly started caring. What they did was reduce the conversation to a binary position – stay at home and starve or go to work and risk getting ill. Hence they undermined the severity of symptoms and gave rise to this idea that Covid is just the flu. Why did they do this? Well money. You see there is another option – the Government could do its fucking job. It could support people who can't work, it should provide cover for medical facilities that are overwhelmed and it could help people struggling mentally during the crisis. But that's a right pain in the arse isn't it – and did I mention the money – all this costs money you know – and the attitude of the Governments and their donors was- "Yeah – fuck you guys where's my money"

At the end of April the oil industry shuddered as oil went into negative pricing – this meant that the oil industry – for a time –was paying people to take their oil. Due to the slowing of international and domestic travel the industries profits were hit heavily. This was the first time in history that this happened. Why did this happen? Well because people were isolating, not going to work and not travelling internationally. What does this have to do with anything? Well did I mention that those donors – particularly those connected to the Kochs, Heritage Foundation and CNP – they are in the oil, petrochemical and refinery business? I know this sounds monstrous and monstrously simple – but in essence the Tory donors wanted Herd Immunity as opposed to a slow measured response because they wanted people still using their products, they didn't want to lose money and they definitely didn't want to spend any money.

SAGE notes from May 1^st show that the government had spent the entire period of the lockdown arguing that the measures implemented to help combat the virus should be reversed.

In Early May Simon Dolan – multi millionaire tax exile who lives in Monaco and just so happens to be hard Brexit – got hard Brexit lawyer – connected with the VoteLeave campaign – Dominic Hoar to fight the legality of the lockdown. Dolan had previously been trying to win a contract to supply the government with masks. His contract was turned down and he suddenly became a hard core anti masker and critic of the lockdown and down-player of Covid. Reports are that he is often seen in Monaco wearing a mask. Anyway – this multi millionaire crowd funded his spurious case against the lockdown. Obviously this case was thrown out – but not before Francis Hoar had pocketed nearly £70000 of people's money. Dolan produces films for Ickonic.

On 22^nd May it was reported that Dominic Cummings had breached the lockdown and had driven to Durham. The result of this was a total undermining of the policy and we saw huge amounts of people flock to parks and beaches for May Bank Holiday. It later turns out that Cummings shopped himself to the police and newspapers – almost as if he wanted to undermine the lockdown. This actually became known as the Cummings effect.

"Public confidence in the UK Government's ability to handle the Covid-19 pandemic dropped sharply following the news that Dominic Cummings, senior aide to the Prime Minister, had seemingly broken lockdown rules, finds new analysis by UCL researchers."

In August and September 2020 several anti lockdown protests were put on in Trafalgar Square – these were arranged with the help of John Mappin of Turning Point UK – Koch industries, The English Democrats – racist hard Brexit group that contains Vernon Coleman – and the Church of Scientology – heavy supporters of Trump and the right wing nexus. Pro Brexiteers such as Andrew Tice and Simon Dolan also got involved.

As an interesting aside – you need to get permission from the government to protest in Trafalgar Square. This was arranged by a chap called John Carlton – a Scientologist who works with at least two other Scientologists on a 5G ran home automation project. One of these is a member of the UK House of Lords named Lord McNair – or as he is known in the tabloids – Lord Scientology. He is also friends with John Mappin the head of Turning Point UK and a prominent Qanon promoter – who also runs Camelot TV – a media outlet that denies covid exists. Mappin somehow knew the infamous paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Why are the Church of Scientology involved? Can you guess? That's right – Money. You see they got a huge tax break from Trump and so they are returning the favour for him and his party. The same can be said for all the Brexit types floating about. Put simply they are running interference in the hope of being rewarded later. Simply if they can undermine belief in Covid, say its just the flu or even that it doesn't exist – then all those people didn't die from covid – which means there is nothing to criticise Trump for in that regard. The same in the UK – if people don't focus on the dead – then Johnson is responsible for those deaths. People have been trained to whinge about minor inconveniences in their own lives rather than to focus on the big picture and hold people to account. It's difficult to hold the Government to account for allowing hundreds of thousands to die from a virus when twats are telling people that viruses themselves don't exist.

In September, against the advice of the SAGE Scientists, university students were sent back to campus. Cases soared and these students were isolated in their halls of residence. Only remote lessons were possible but at least the university's got their rent. Strangely schools like Eton resisted the return of students.

In September the government released a letter published by a group of scientists including Sunetra Gupta, Carl Heneghen, Karol Sikora, Michael Yeadon and others. They had been pushing for herd immunity since March – Gupta, Yeadon and Sikora repeating several times the lie that this had already been achieved and argued that lockdowns were more detrimental than the virus. On the surface this seemed critical of the government – arguing that lockdowns were draconian. However it soon became clear that this line of thought came directly from the UK Treasury – specifically a think tank called Economic Insight. These scientists were working alongside the treasury focusing on costs not health. Furthermore it was revealed that Gupta, Heneghen, Yeadon et al were also being promoted by the UK Behavioural Insight Group – The Nudge Unit. Specifically the PR firm Sugrue Communications (the PR arm of the Nudge Unit) promoted these herd immunity anti lockdown tropes.

When shown to epidemiologists -The Economic Insight paper on COVID-19 deaths was described as "pseudoscience" as the "model or the premise doesn't even stand up to basic scientific scrutiny".

This was quite clever tactics by the UK Government. They promoted, with television, media and radio interviews, a series of Scientists who were on the surface very critical of the Governments strategy. The clever thing was that what these Scientists recommended – herd immunity – was what the Government was doing anyway on the sly. This does three things – it makes it look like the Government are responding to the public mood and not just being immovable in their decisions. Secondly it brings the public round to their original – unannounced plan – "yeah why aren't we doing that – these Scientists know what they are talking about – that option sounds much less intrusive in my life". Thirdly – it means that whatever the Government does and whatever happens – they have a group of advisors and Scientists that they can blame.

Also in September Gupta, Sikora, Heneghen and the Swedish Anders Tegnell spoke at Downing Street to promote herd immunity. After this meeting against the advice of SAGE the autumn circuit break lockdown was rejected.

Around this time – for no apparent reason – Anders Tegnall warned the UK that herd immunity wouldn't work – not that he had been doing that in Sweden obviously – perish the thought.

Following this Boris Johnson repeatedly refused to impose measures on London.

In October 2020 the Koch Industries financed AEIR promoted the Great Barrington Declaration – a conference and paper that promoted the idea of herd immunity. The Great Barrington Declaration, after the town in which it was created, was drafted by Gupta with two other top US scientists, Professor Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University and Stanford Fellow Jay Bhattacharya.

Patrick Fagan who worked for Cambridge Analytica is for some reason part of the Great Barrington Declaration.

Alongside Gupta you have Dr Carl Heneghen also playing it down - he is financed by this couple called the Willets who are friends with that Chris Burnham of the Trump transition team and Mary Jacobi who worked directly with the Reagan and Bush administrations - so Pro Trump

Heneghen ends his posts: "… the article has not been peer-reviewed; it should not replace individual clinical judgement and the sources cited should be checked… The views are not a substitute for professional medical advice".

His stuff is published by the Spectator - Barclay brothers

and then there is Dr Karol Sikora who is up to his tits in the IEA (Koch Industries/Brexit) and surprise surprise wants to privatise the NHS – says it is communism – works for Astra Zeneca – lied about being connected to Imperial College for some reason. He was the Lockerbie bombers Dr – who lied about his cancer; he once gave a 14 year old boy a mercy killing lethal injection.

But he does have an illustrious record of lobbying on behalf of the Conservative Party. For instance, he founded the Doctors for Reform group – a free-market pressure group which was accused in 2004 of being "supported by the Conservative Party", according to the British Medical Journal. In 2009, he was paid to appear in US adverts for the Republican Party created by a lobby group, Conservatives for Patient Rights, which attacked the NHS.

Oh yeah that's another thing I haven't mentioned – these donors – specifically the ones connected to the IEA, Kochs, Turning Point UK and Brexit – they want to privatise the NHS – they aren't even shy about doing it. So Herd immunity allows them to overwhelm the NHS and ensure operation backlogs grow and grow. What solution might they offer? Well colour me shocked if they don't offer American private businesses up to take up some of the slack from the bedraggled NHS.

During this time PCRClaims came about – another group with Michael Yeadon as their figurehead. The point of this group is to criticise the PCR test – mostly with the idea that they give 90% false positives – they don't they actually give 30% false negatives. This is easily disproven – if they gave 90% false positives – then we would see uniform levels of infection everywhere. Indeed if they gave 90% false positives we would never have any area where there was zero covid – but we do hence Yeadon is a liar. He was also exposed as being a horrible old racist as loads of old tweets surfaced with him being a sad nasty old bigot. Patrick Fagan of Cambridge Analytica fame is also involved in PCR Claims.

The Great Barrington Declaration was also overseen by an advisory board called PANDA. On the board of PANDA were – Patrick Fagan, Martin Kulldorf and Donald Trump's former Covid advisor Scott Atlas. PANDA is heavily opposed to vaccines and backed the discredited work of anti vax doctor Denis Rancourt.

In December 2020 – having been kicked off twitter – Michael Yeadon started a Facebook "news" channel denying covid and the pcr tests called Unlocked United Kingdom. Yeadon was helped in this endeavour by Patrick Fagan. Unlocked's chairman and co-director of ULUK Limited is former Conservative Party donor-turned-Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib – who had previously backed Yeadon's social media career.

At Christmas against the advice of the SAGE group Boris Johnson suggested Christmas bubbles allowing different groups to meet and mix. Following this thousand died.

In may 2021 Johnson refused to stop passengers from India coming to the UK via plane. This was against the advice of SAGE who put India as a red list country due to the new Indian variant. This was partly because Johnson was trying to finalise a trade deal with Modi of India. Modi was also brought to power by Cambridge Analytica. As part of the trade deal – there will be freedom of movement between India and the UK.

During the entire debacle we have seen a series of media outlets pouring scorn on the severity of the virus, picking at figures, suggesting that tests don't work and that hospitals aren't stretched. These include Talk Radio (Murdoch), The Times (Murdoch) Telegraph and Spectator (Barclay Brothers), The Mail (Northcliffe), The Lockdown Sceptics (Toby Young), Sky News Australia (Murdoch) Fox News (Murdoch). By massive coincidence these are all owned by people who donate to the Conservative party and want you to go to work and earn them money. The anti lockdown protests in the UK were put on by the Church of Scientology – backers of Trump and Turning Point UK – Koch Industries.

You see in April 2020 for the first time oil went into negative – meaning that due to a lack of demand you had to pay to get rid of it – as opposed to the normal profit on each barrel. The same people who just so happen to finance the Republicans in the USA and the Conservatives in the UK also have ties to the petrochemical industry.

That's why they resisted lockdown for four weeks. That's why they undermined it and finished it in May. That's why they sent the students back. That's why they introduced tiers, and then changed the rules. That's why they pretended to oppose the government policy. It's all about money.

That's why we never closed the borders or provided adequate facilities at airports.

And to explain why the government is actually behind a series of media nodes and personalities that seem to be undermining the figures, tests, severity etc – well it's quite simple. If you doubt that the figure of 150000 dead is inaccurate – then the government didn't do quite as bad as you thought. This is why the nudge unit has tricked people into providing the government with an alibi – when you should be holding them to task for their failures.

Since then on the 19^th May 2021 – Dominic Cummings revealed before a select committee that herd Immunity was definitely the UK Governments strategy.

Matt Hancock has been exposed as having lied about testing for covid patients in care homes – which ensured that covid ripped through the facilities.

Boris Johnson refused to stop travel from India to the UK despite the country being on the red list – with a new variant prevalent there. This is because he is hoping for a trade deal with the Modi government. Modi was – like Bolsanaro, Trump and Johnson – elected with help from Cambridge Analytica.

It was recently revealed that excess deaths in India for the year 2020 were over 4 million. The official death toll for Covid in India is ten times less than this. This is due to the way that deaths are recorded – a positive test and death in certain places such as hospitals is required to be added to the stats. Sadly millions of people died in India of something – the lack of tests means that the true toll can only be estimated but reports seem to indicate the majority of those who died suffered from covid prior to death.

It was also revealed in court hearings held at the end of May that the government of Brazil also went for a policy of herd immunity. In an interview, Senator Renan Calheiros said it is too early to say if Bolsonaro had committed any criminal offense in his management of the public health crisis, and that more investigation is required.

"I think everything points in that direction," Calheiros said, regarding Bolsonaro's preference for herd immunity.

"The president first denied the disease, called it a flu, and then argued against social isolation and lockdown. Then he played down the use of masks and encouraged crowds to gather," Calheiros said.

"Why is that? Because of herd immunity, the natural immunity ... you have to encourage crowds and the spread of the virus," Calheiros added.

Bolsanaro had also repeatedly stated on television and in the press that he believed that vaccines would turn people into lizards – thus far this side effect has not been reported.

In July 2021 with cases averaging 25000 a day the government announced all safety measures to be dropped on July 19^th – this was against the advice of the SAGE scientists – they also stopped all requirements for masks and social distancing, even in crowded public places.

On 7^th July the Daily Mail quietly printed an article saying that the UK Government had decided to attempt to go for herd immunity in school children. This plan is for children to acquire "natural immunity" which involves about 7 million children becoming infected. The need for entire classes to isolate in case of covid was also scrapped. This is literally experimenting on children – hoping they will catch it en masse and then waiting to see what happens. Not to mention the risks to teachers, public transport, local businesses and the families of the children themselves. The Headline was "Herd immunity strategy is back".

The media outlet Byline Times had been warning this seemed to be the plan for a few days having seen minutes from SAGE meetings explaining that the strategy was to attain "natural immunity" in school children. This was detailed in their article "The Ghost of Herd Immunity Still Haunts Boris Johnson's Roadmap Out of Lockdown".

Also on the 7^th another story in the Daily Mail explained that the decision to drop masks was not taken by scientists but because they felt that masks indicated danger and this put the public off from gathering, shopping and going to large events such as sporting events and nightclubs. To reiterate – they stopped masks because they felt it would harm the economy. The Headline read "Ministers scrapped masks to save the economy".

On 19^th July – Freedom day Yeah! – Robert Dingwall a social scientist from the University of Nottingham – went on Newsnight to explain his theory that long covid was psychosomatic. This totally goes against all the known scientific evidence that shows long term organ damage.

It transpires that Dingwall – who advises the government, is a proponent of – you guessed it – herd immunity. See below.

In his proposals his language is oddly similar to the Prime Minister and Health secretary – "if not now then when?" – The answer is either when cases fall/are eradicated or when vaccines have shown to provide adequate protection.

On the 20^th of July Dominic Cummings was interviewed on the BBC. I have written a longer piece on this which can be found on my website. But here are the main points that were revealed.

LAURA KUENSSBERG: So let's come onto Covid then. What was it like in Downing Street when you started to realise how serious this could be?

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: Well it was, it was obviously extremely frightening and also pretty surreal as well because you feel like you're, it feels sort of like you're in a disaster movie, but it's not a disaster movie. It's actually real and you're looking around the room at the different people who are in key positions and thinking: "They're not the people that should be in charge of this sort of thing."

LAURA KUENSSBERG: As it's my job to talk to people on all sides of the political divide, I remember talking to you late February and you mentioned the government was starting to make serious plans. At that point it didn't seem that the prime minister was particularly involved in this.

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: No, at that point he still, I remember even in, you know, the first week of March he was saying, you know, "business as usual" and whatnot, he just, he didn't take it, he didn't take it seriously.

LAURA KUENSSBERG: And what was the atmosphere like then in Downing Street, he didn't take it seriously at all?

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: Um no… he didn't take it, he, he didn't take it seriously. His view was "this is just like swine flu, I've seen these kind of scares over and over again, they're always nonsense." Um and his, his priorities and his concern were elsewhere.

LAURA KUENSSBERG: But there was then a, a crystallisation when one of your team said: "Actually the numbers look much worse than we think." Basically the government's scientists' projections were wrong, what was that like?

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: A very, very smart physicist who was helping the NHS with data came to me and said: "it doesn't seem to me this plan's been thought out, like has this really been properly checked? Um this whole herd immunity plan, it's like a massive call and, er, um you know, are you okay if I go around and look for some, talk to people and, and, and, and think about this and look for plan B?'. I said: "Yeah, definitely do", um.

As the days ticked on from there it was increasingly clear that, um, that the official plan was going to be a disaster… and… it was me and a few other people, essentially it was me saying to the prime minister: "Vital elements of the system have got this totally wrong, there is some kind of terrible bureaucratic fog and confusion which means that people are not looking at the right numbers"… essentially we'd, we'd said to him: "The official plan is a disaster and we can't do it and it could kill half a million people".

The main thing to take away from this is that the UK Government, as early as February 2020, had already decided – against the advice of the Science – to go for a strategy of Herd Immunity – that is to allow people to acquire natural immunity from getting the disease.

LAURA KUENSSBERG: Let's talk now about then the, the next phase of the pandemic. So through the summer the country was very significantly opened up, cases had gone down again and then at the start of the autumn through September they started to tick up again, it appeared that the virus wasn't done with us. What was your attitude at the time to what was going on?

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: Well a fundamental problem was that in the summer, the prime minister's attitude was that er, essentially the, the first lockdown was a disaster, we should never have done it.

LAURA KUENSSBERG: He thought we should never have done the first lockdown?

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: He said we should never have done the first lockdown, he said that repeatedly in meetings in Number 10… After the, the first wave passed and after he came back to work, initially his view was essentially thank goodness we did do that, but very quickly as the Telegraph and various parts of the media and Tory Party started screaming, he then basically reverted and said: "Actually the whole thing was a disaster, we should never have done it, I was right in February, we should basically just ignore it and just let the thing wash through the country and not destroy the economy and move on.

Aside from the herd immunity angle the important take away is that Johnson reacted to the Telegraph (more on that later) – he has no long term plan – he is simply trying to appease the donors to his party. The Telegraph is not only owned by donors to the party – but is a representation of their values. And you know what they find the most value in – money.

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: When you get to the week of around about 15 to 19 September, by that point the data was clear about what was happening and Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty came to Downing Street and said: "Erm, it's clear where this is going, er, we think that you should consider hitting it hard and early." The prime minister said: "No, no, no, no, no, I'm not doing it."

LAURA KUENSSBERG: But to be completely clear about what you're saying: that by the middle of September, you, Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance, other people in the government are trying to push Boris Johnson to bring back restrictions and you're saying he was refusing?

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: Essentially yes it was, but it was because, a combination of er, Starmer had said it should happen and therefore the prime minister felt it would be politically disastrous just for him to suddenly admit that Starmer had been right. Secondly he had a bunch of Tory MPs screaming at him, remember some of those Tory MPs similar to the ones on Brexit had lost their minds and were saying all kinds of complete fake news about Covid. And third he had the Telegraph who he always referred to as his quote my real boss unquote. So he had those three things all saying, pushing him not to act.

LAURA KUENSSBERG: Sorry, the prime minister calls The Telegraph his real boss, you've just said? What evidence do you have for this?

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: Yes… And the Telegraph was, of course, was extremely hostile to, to doing anything.

LAURA KUENSSBERG: So are you suggesting that the prime minister of this country calls the Telegraph newspaper, that he used to be a columnist for, he calls them his real boss?

This again is the clearest indication of the reality of the situation – it wasn't about lockdowns, or some grandiose plan to put micro chips in people, it wasn't about faking a virus – it was about money. Johnson is right to call the Telegraph his real boss. It is on two levels – as I said before it is owned by Tory donors but more importantly reflects the attitudes of Tory donors and the architects of the party. He had no plan, there is no grand plot – there is just a corrupt government who didn't want to upset their donors and didn't care what happened to the rest of us. Simple.

When forced into a four week lockdown in November – which was then diluted by zones, before being eventually lifted and then hastily re enforced over Christmas – Johnson swore that this would be the last time that he declared such actions. Was this because he was concerned with the effects of the lockdown on the population? No, not even close. it was all about appeasing his donors. Johnson was reported to have said, "no more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands"

LAURA KUENSSBERG: Do you think Boris Johnson was therefore putting politics ahead of people's lives?

DOMINIC CUMMINGS: Certainly he did. He put his own political interests ahead of people's lives for sure.