Dominic Cummings contacted the world-leading mathematician Prof Sir Tim Gowers in March last year when the prime minister’s then chief adviser said

A look at Prof Gowers’ herd immunity document sent to Dominic Cummings

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2021-05-28 17:30:07

Dominic Cummings contacted the world-leading mathematician Prof Sir Tim Gowers in March last year when the prime minister’s then chief adviser said he was agonising over whether the government should impose a lockdown.

Gowers told him he thought it was necessary to move urgently to implement “extreme containment measures”. He also drew up a document, called Questions about Coronavirus Policy”, in which he explained the maths behind the argument against a policy of “herd immunity”.

The government has denied claims it pursued a herd immunity policy early in the pandemic, though Cummings insisted this was the original plan. It was also cited at the time by chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, who said herd immunity could be built up if 60% of the population caught the virus.

Among possible criticisms of a policy of herd immunity “We do not have the resources to implement the policy in a non-disastrous way. The most serious problem with the herd immunity policy, it seems to me, is that we can’t infect 60% of the population in a matter of months without overwhelming the hospitals and having to let a very large number of people die untreated.”

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