The UK’s lock down failures made vaccine resistant strains more likely.
By: Ian Robertson
Tags: B117, UK Politics, Covid 19, Vaccines, Pandemic

Those who promoted ‘herd immunity’ should accept their share of the blame.

Structure of COVID-19 spike protein (light grey) in complex with its cell-surface receptor (Blue) from PDB7A97. Changes found in the new UK strain B.1.1.7 are highlighted as red spheres and labelled on one of the three copies of spike protein. Individual spike unit shown as a black ribbon.

It’s been a long pandemic, but despite our collective suffering the mistakes of 2020 show little sign of being corrected and if we don’t demand change we may be doomed to repeat them.

Since last February I have been continuously horrified by our government’s failure to act decisively to stop this virus, and the corruptions, lies, and mistakes that have put people in harm’s way. I have also been horrified by the absolute failure of most journalists to properly inform the public about the science of this disease and the genuine risks they face. Most of all I have been horrified by the apparent acquiescence of the government’s scientific advisors, and how they have either enabled this disaster to unfold or stood meekly by while their advice has been ignored, allowing confusion and misinformation to spread practically unchecked.

My grim terror over the failure of UK science was particularly triggered at the start of the pandemic, where instead of locking down like the rest of the world, our government dithered. The UK’s chief medical officer Chris Witty did an interview in which he defended the policy, floating the idea of ‘herd immunity’ as justification. The idea of herd immunity in this context appeared to be letting ‘healthier’ people catch the virus so that the survivors would then be immune and we could go back to business as usual. Ministers have denied that letting the virus spread to build herd immunity has ever been official government policy, but it doesn’t take much scrutinising of their actions to see this idea lurking in the shadows.

I am not a virologist, epidemiologist or specialist in disease biology — to quote Nicolas Cage ‘I’m just a biochemist’ — but ‘herd immunity’ immediately struck me as a appalling and stupid idea. Even without getting into the callous way it treats human life, the simple fact is a herd-immunity strategy was always very unlikely to work. No evidence was provided — modelled or otherwise — that this strategy might work with covid, nor was there any clarity at the time whether recovered patients would even have the long lasting immunity required. Most significantly though, this strategy seemed to ignore the very simple fact that viruses change over time.

The constantly mutating nature of viruses is why humans have never evolved herd immunity to the thousands of strains of cold and flu that have dogged us throughout human history. Viruses often deliberately employ enzymes and error prone replication to boost their chances of evading whatever our immune systems throw at them. A herd-immunity strategy seemed to ignore this; by increasing the number of people infected it would have increased the size of virus reservoir ‘moving though the population’. This in turn increases the number of evolving strains in existence, and, by extension, the chances of a strain emerging that can evade the immune responses of those previously infected. The more strains there are out there the higher the chances one will be able to evade vaccine-stimulated immunity as well. Those who promoted herd immunity not only led a charge that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands, they have also partly undermined the power of vaccines to control this pandemic in the future.

This problem with herd immunity was never speculation, it has always been simple maths. Perhaps the only way a strategy could have protected us if the virus moved through the population incredibly fast, and infected literally everyone before it had time to mutate. This might have exhausted the supply of uninfected hosts so no one was left to be infected by any new strains. However, this would have killed hundreds of thousands of UK citizens, with no guarantees, particularly since reservoir populations of uninfected individuals, both inside and outside the UK, would always remain for new strains to emerge in.

There have always been many unknowns in the models of this disease, but I struggle to believe no one in SAGE thought to point out that a herd immunity strategy would increase the chances of new strains of virus emerging, and that could compromise future vaccines. I have no doubt that many scientists will have communicated the folly of herd immunity to the government, but for weeks it seemed that this life saving advice was either callously ignored or somehow undermined. I hope there will be an inquiry that will shed light on all of this some day, and that those whose decisions cost tens of thousands of lives, receive the justice they deserve.

I am not holding my breath.

Over 100,000 deaths later and there is no sign of any resignations or apologies from those who defended locking down late or easing restrictions early. Chris Witty is still the chief medical officer, and barely anyone high profile in SAGE has resigned in protest or shame except for Neil Ferguson, and he was the one person who seemed prepared to say publicly the good advice the government didn’t want to hear. He was chased out by a lurid tabloid smear of course, I wonder why his private life came under such close scrutiny all of a sudden?

When herd immunity was invoked to fatally delay the first lock down it rightfully received backlash from the scientific community. The beast should have been slain there and then, and yet somehow it stuck around. For a while it hid in between the threat-minimising lines parroted by journalists, but at the end of summer it raised its putrid head once again in the form of ‘The Great Barrington Declaration’. This was a clearly well financed and slick PR campaign backed by a number of esteemed scientists. Despite the slightly aloof name I read it eagerly, hoping a smart group of people had come together were taking the government to task. By the time I finished reading I felt a bit sick. This ‘Great Declaration’ was advocating that young people be free to move about and spread the virus between themselves to build up herd immunity, while those at risk of death stay safe by effectively hiding away. I wont get started on the multitude of ‘oversights’ in this proposal that made my blood boil, otherwise we’ll be stuck here for another few thousand words. Fortunately this declaration didn’t get the traction it seemed to be built for, and was rightfully scorned by many.

It still begs the question though of how did it happen in the first place? How has so-called ‘magical thinking’ become so infectious that it has spread from the government to infect supposed experts as well?

Now the UK is being ravaged by a new strain of COVID-19 dubbed B.1.1.7, (or less snappily ‘variant of concern (VOC) 202012/01’). This is an apparently homegrown strain of COVID-19 with seventeen amino acid changes, eight of which are in the spike protein. We are reassured by a generally pliant media that there is ‘no’ or ‘zero’ evidence this variant can evade the new vaccines. I would be more reassured if they were more upfront and said ‘we have no idea if it does or if it doesn’t, but we’ll start making a new vaccine just in case’.

Examining the new strains in detail is a topic for another day, but whether the vaccines will still work or not, what is beyond doubt is that B.1.1.7 has eight changes we’d rather it didn’t have.

The circumstances of B.1.1.7 emergence appear more unusual than the simple accumulation of mutations over time, with speculation it may have evolved in a single chronically infected patient. However, whatever the circumstances of its appearance, the UK government’s disregard for the virus’s initial spread created a more fertile incubator for this to happen.

This January lock down we find ourselves in is undoubtedly a grim one; I don’t have to tell you that. There is still a light at the end of the tunnel; the vaccines currently being rolled out will undoubtedly make a big difference. However, if we want to make absolutely sure we slay this monster, as well as protect ourselves from whatever beasts might next emerge, we need leaders who will listen to real science, not just the science they want to hear. We also need scientists who are empowered, both by a media that pays attention to what they say, genuinely representing the scientific consensus, and scientific funding system that can shield those who speak truth to power.

I believe that if we really and truly listen to the actual science, combined with with global cooperation, vigilance, and a proactive outlook, then we have both the technology and the resources to make pandemics a thing of the past. If we truly want to get to that place though we must never forget how we found ourselves here.