Maybe I'll consider that it's true you can use a words in a sentence without it being policy. WIll you consider the difference between the name of a policy used by a politician and declared to be "official" and a description of what that policy actually is? Good link. Let's excerpt.
>At the start of the pandemic, the government's chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, spoke about "herd immunity" - the idea that once enough of a population had been exposed to the virus, they would build up natural immunity to it.
This was when the virus spread really kicked off. There was a press conference I saw with disbelief where people were encouraged to attend football games because on average a positive case will infect 5 others so attending football games is fine.
>"Our aim," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that morning, is to "try and reduce the peak - not suppress it completely, also because most people get a mild illness, to build up some degree of herd immunity whilst protecting the most vulnerable".
"to build up some degree of herd immunity" is not a herd immunity policy.
See you could call that policy "isolate, trace and contain" and that name does not make any difference to what the policy actually was.
That particular knight of the realm was clearly speaking so badly out of term about the UK following a policy that was not being followed that he was of course immediately fired. I just can't find the link. Maybe it didn't happen and I just assumed you'd have to be fired if you literally lied about government policy in a pandemic and that has been confusing.
>in a BBC interview on 11 March with Dr David Halpern, chief executive of the government-owned Behavioural Insights Team, known as the "nudge unit", and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).
He told the BBC: "You'll want to protect those at-risk groups so that they basically don't catch the disease and by the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity's been achieved in the rest of the population."
Let's call the policy "Geoffrey" and between us declare that name official to this discussion. That doesn't change anything either.
As long as we can treat this:
>"In a statement, a government spokesman said the emails "make clear… herd immunity has never been a policy aim".
With at least some of the utter contempt mustered by the bbc journalist in that piece.
I hope my another repitition of my rejection of what has "been pointed out" is now sufficiently clear to you. The policy was followed the aim of spreading the virus achieved the hoped for payoff for that strategy has been elusive. Or perhaps they just stumbled into following a herd immunity policy by accident while talking about it. The distinction is not important to me.