'Herd immunity is a myth in the context of Covid,' James O'Brien warns caller

14 October 2020, 14:50

This the moment a caller and James O'Brien disagreed over the concept of "herd immunity" as the UK continues to face the Covid crisis.

David from Paddington called LBC a day after Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called for a two to three-week "circuit break" national lockdown in response to the Prime Minister rejecting the request from his top scientists.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has introduced a new three tier lockdown system in a bid to tackle local outbreaks of coronavirus.

"We must get a herd immunity, surely," David told LBC's James O'Brien.

However, James disagreed with the caller and responded: "There's no such thing. We haven't even got herd immunity for the flu."

He added: "Herd immunity is a myth in the context of coronavirus and Covid. We're just hearing about people dying, having been infected for a second time in today's news. There [are] too many unknowns."

James then told David that it would have been preferable if the phrase "herd immunity" had "never entered the public vocabulary" in the context of the Covid crisis.

"You can't endorse something unless you can prove it exists," he said.

Although David said the Prime Minister's current response to the pandemic was "relatively measured", James made clear his dissatisfaction with the Government's latest proposals.

James said: "The current proposals are less than the lockdown which, for all its myriad faults, did take a massive chunk out of the speed and the spread of infection.

"So we're going to do less than we were doing when it was over 1,000 [deaths] a day and hope that it goes better."