Scientists face death threats for herd advice

THE scientists working to steer Britain out of the coronavirus crisis are being targeted with death threats.

Members of the public have turned on experts on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), the publicly funded organisation that advises government at times of crisis.

A Sage source said: “There are already all number of death threats being sent to people involved. In the last few weeks, some of the people who have been involved have received abuse in the street.” Many of the attacks are from people furious that the group endorsed a “herd immunity” strategy before the lockdown was imposed.

Sir Patrick Vallance, chairman of Sage and chief scientific adviser, said two weeks ago that 40million people in the UK could need to catch the coronavirus to build up “herd immunity”.

At the time, the government strategy was telling people to self-isolate for seven days if they got the disease, but was not yet advising whole households to stay at home if one member had coronavirus symptoms.

Sir Patrick said that the plan was designed to slow the spread of the disease but would not stop the virus completely. “What we don’t want is everybody to end up getting it in a short period of time so we swamp and overwhelm NHS services – that’s the flattening of the peak,” he said at the time.

A Government spokesman said: “We are concerned by any reports of threats and abuse being made towards scientists who are working tirelessly to provide the Government with the best possible advice.

In these unprecedented times we are more reliant than ever upon the collective expertise of our world-class scientific community.”