Hundreds protested against the US-Israel attacks on Iran in Parliament Square on Saturday, fearing a wider conflagration and horrified by the targeting of young schoolchildren, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
“NEVER believe anything until it’s officially denied.” Seldom has Daily Worker journalist Claude Cockburn’s famous dictum been more apt.
Speaking on BBC Any Questions earlier this month, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said: “I do take issue with this idea that at any stage herd immunity was part of the [government’s] plan. It wasn’t.”
His claim reiterated Matt Hancock’s denial in the Sunday Telegraph on March 15. “Herd immunity is not a part of” the government’s plan to deal with coronavirus, the Health Secretary asserted. “That is a scientific concept, not a goal or a strategy.”
A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT



