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Could children have been our secret weapon against coronavirus?

Pupils on the first day back to school at Charles Dickens Primary School in London, as schools in England reopen to pupils following the coronavirus lockdown. Approximately 40% of schools are expected to welcome back students for the start of the autumn term today, despite concerns being raised about their ability to reopen safely. PA Photo. Picture date: Tuesday September 1, 2020. More than a quarter of parents said they were not planning to send their child back to school at the start of term, while a further 20% remained undecided, according to a poll by the charity Parentkind. See PA story EDUCATION Schools. Photo credit should read: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter
Coronavirus Article Bar with counter

It is almost seven months since Boris Johnson insisted we must ‘squash the sombrero’ of coronavirus cases to avoid a deadly second wave.

The original strategy was to keep infections at a lowish level to allow some herd immunity to build and avoid a deadly second wave.

Speaking at a press conference on March 12, Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government’s chief scientific advisor, said it is impossible to stop widespread infection – and also, not desirable.

“We need to have immunity to protect ourselves in the future,” he said.

Yet after Imperial College published a paper a few days later suggesting that 500,000 lives could be lost and the NHS overwhelmed, the Government altered its masterplan (see video below) to complete suppression, and imposed countrywide lockdown measures.

It is now becoming clear that they should have held their nerve.

Imposing lockdown on an entire population has not just decimated the economy, but may cost more lives in the long term, if a vaccine is not found quickly.

Buried in the now infamous ‘Report 9’ Imperial College modelling paper, was a warning that closing schools and asking everyone to socially distance would be deadly.

It might seem counterintuitive, but the virus is virtually harmless for children, and usually mild for younger people, so allowing them to catch the disease would have built widespread immunity and prevented vulnerable people dying in the second wave.

Now we are coming into the winter flu season with extremely low levels of population-wide immunity (perhaps just six per cent) and growing signs that this wave will be far more deadly than the first.

Re-analysis of the Imperial Model by Edinburgh University suggests that more than quarter of a million people could die during the lifetime of the epidemic because herd immunity is not being allowed to build.

The model is based on an uncontrolled second wave, without any restrictions in place, and so numbers are unlikely to reach that high, but it does highlight how effective herd immunity can be.

Prof Graeme Ackland, of the University of Edinburgh, who re-analysed the Imperial model, found that preventing immunity building in young healthy people could be immensely damaging in the longer term.

“If you could engineer it so the people who contributed to herd immunity were all younger people then you wouldn’t have anywhere near as many deaths,” he said.

“And this is not a new thing. I am old enough to remember that when I was six my mum took me to a measles party to get the measle. I didn’t die, whereas if I got it now it would be very serious, so this is not a genius new idea, our parents knew about this.

“It’s basically the same idea, you get it out the way, with younger people. That analogy slightly breaks down because it’s not clear whether it’s going to be long-term immunity, such as when you have the measles.

“But what they’ve done in locking down everybody has been kind of disastrous, because you fail to concentrate on what really matters.”

The downside of the herd immunity policy is that older and vulnerable people do not operate in an age-appropriate bubble. They generally have carers and younger family members.

“Social distancing of the over-70s (a much talked about policy) is extremely difficult,” said Prof Matt Keeling, Professor of Populations and Disease, of the University of Warwick.

“Many of the most vulnerable require the care of other members of the population; while it is easy to switch off this component in a model, achieving this is practice is far more difficult.”

However, the epidemic is undoubtedly having a disproportionately damaging impact on young people in comparison to their risk.

Watch: Asymptomatic Kids Are 'Silent Spreaders' of Coronavirus, Study Finds

More than 4,000 scientists and medics have now signed the Great Barrington Declaration, suggesting that ‘focussed protection’ should be given to vulnerable groups while younger groups are freed from restrictions

“The conclusion of this paper, that closing schools would slow the epidemic but increase the number of deaths among older adults in a second wave, is consistent with the general theme of focused protection advocated in the Great Barrington Declaration,” said Paul McKeigue, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Statistical Genetics, at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study.

“Unless a vaccine became available, the only deaths that would be prevented by lockdowns would be the extra deaths resulting from the predicted overload of the health service.”

What is clear, is that government scientists were warned in March that suppressing the virus could have catastrophic effects in a second wave.

Back then, it also looked like a vaccine would be available by the end of the year, which may have coloured their thinking, and increased the desire to keep cases down in the short term.

This week, the head of the Government's vaccine taskforce, Kate Bingham, said that only half of the population may need to be vaccinated, and children are unlikely to get the jab.

If that is the case, then it is a tacit admission that it is safe to allow children to build up herd immunity.

How many lives would have been saved had this been adopted earlier will never be known.