THREAD: Seeing a lot of debate about a “herd immunity” strategy proposed by the likes of Sunestra Gupta and Carl Heneghan to fight Covid.
Not only is this policy wrong (below @chrischirp explains why) - it’s also deeply unpopular with the public. politics.co.uk/comment-analys… 1/9
There's very consistent polling across the summer from @OpiniumResearch showing that only a small minority (10-12%) thought we were moving out of lockdown too quickly.
50% of respondents believed the government was ending lockdown too quickly. 2/9
@OpiniumResearch polling on 23rd Sept found the new restrictions introduced last week are also popular, only 16% think they are too strict
The polling also showed:
76% - are quite worried or very worried about Covid
23% - are not that worried or not worried about Covid
3/9
This translates into behaviour. Excluding those who never go to bars or restaurants, nearly three quarters are visiting them less than they did before the Covid crisis. 4/9
There was also a lot of fuss about wearing masks.
Yet on 2nd-3rd Sept @YouGov found:
Only 6% unwilling to wear a mask when shopping
10% unwilling to wear a mask on public transport
11% unwilling to wear a mask in a taxi/Uber
5/9
And opinions about lockdown etc don’t really fall into a “culture war” narrative, as has happened in America. It’s true that Leave voters are more likely to think that the government is over-reacting to Covid, but an overwhelming majority of Leavers *don't* think this. 6/9
This isn’t surprising given that Leave voters tend to be older than Remain voters. People aged 65+ are (not surprisingly) more worried about Covid and less likely to think the government is over-reacting than younger people. (Data from @OpiniumResearch ) 7/9
So given that the overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion argues against a “herd immunity” strategy and the vast majority of the public support current measures or think they aren’t going far enough, it’s depressing that Gupta, Heneghan et al get so much attention. 8/9
Ultimately it’s because a small, unrepresentative elite in the right-wing media, *and* a significant number of Tory MPs happen to like their libertarian, laissez-faire philosophy. But let’s remember that neither the vast majority of scientists, nor the general public agree. 9/9
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