Simon Thornley, Sunetra Gupta, & a minority advocating for "herd immunity" while shielding high risk groups claim they've been silenced. But Gupta claimed in July that areas like London may already have reached herd immunity - this is demonstrably wrong /1 https://reaction.life/we-may-already-have-herd-immunity-an-interview-with-professor-sunetra-gupta/

No matter what anyone says, if a lot of community transmission is occurring, herd immunity has NOT (by very definition) been achieved. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/05/europes-second-wave-anger-in-italy-as-covid-restrictions-bite-across-continent /2

A problem with trying to achieve herd immunity by infection, rather than by vaccination, is that shielding is imperfect and hospital overwhelm may result, necessitating lockdowns which then slow the build up of immunity. The cycle will repeat over and over again/ 3

Another problem is that the herd itself is not static. There will always be a reservoir for community transmission amongst (a) the shielded elderly and high risk groups >20%; and (b) young children who have not yet been infected. /4

Thornley and Gupta and others will claim they are "silenced" and ask for more "nuanced" debate. The reality is that their ideas have failed to convince many of their peers, they have produced no modelling for workable herd immunity; and predictions have been proved wrong. /end

Addendum! The first tweet's graph of current daily COVID-19 cases in London was truncated by twitter - here it is; link is: https://www.london.gov.uk/coronavirus/coronavirus-covid-19-numbers-london

(This is NOT herd immunity)