Some things have been really bothering me with the handling of COVID19 so I'm going to ramble on a bit - aimed at no-one in particular. Herd Immunity - the bastardised term that supposedly smart people are touting as a reasonable solution to this pandemic.

First off - people shouldn't be using this term to describe people getting sick and fighting it off for a number of reasons, which I will outline below:

1. This is a novel coronavirus, an RNA virus that has mutated from an animal to attack the respiratory system of humans. Catching the virus once is no guarantee that you won't catch a different strain, which leads on to:

2. RNA viruses survive by mutating (evolving) into other strains - the more people that are infected, the more often mutations and new strains will occur - so giving 60% of the UK populace the virus will give it 39 million opportunities to jump between us, our pets & our food.

3. Herd immunity doesn't work for seasonal viruses like the flu - even with flu jabs and vaccines precisely because there are too many strains that differ substantially from the strains that are known.

That's a significant future danger of COVID-19 that we can't know yet.

4. Nipping the virus in the bud on day 1 was the best solution. That's gone now. Which is why lockdowns are needed to control the spread of the virus - any talk about returning to normal needs to understand that the only way normal happens is when this virus is gone.

5. Graham Medley - the scientific advisor who put forward the insane "Herd Immunity" idea is still pushing for this as a way out of lockdown. Doing so would undermine every effort made, every life lost and what he thinks he will gain in economic expediency, will be our downfall.

6. Keeping infections to a minimum will keep vulnerable people alive & prevent the evolution of the virus into something that could be much, much worse than what we are experiencing now. Think longer incubation times, airborne transmission, resistant to soaps. All possible.

7. This will continue to hurt the economy and people who expected to retire on a sizeable pension will find that pension a lot smaller. To them I can only ask, would you rather risk your life in catching this thing in the future or harm your wealth in the short term?

8. Because like it or not, the only people pushing for the end of the lockdown and a return to the "herd immunity" are the people losing out financially (usually right-wing). These people care nothing for the suffering of others beyond a glance at the front page of a tabloid.

9. So, my advice is ignore the herd immunity garbage. You're going to see a shit-ton of it as hedge funds and the like start losing money & lobbying Govts to change course.

Don't let them. The only way back to "normal" is without COVID-19 & that can't happen with Herd Immunity