They referred to people who disagreed with them as needing to be “educated”: “deniers”, “right-wingers”, “conspiracy theorists”, or, perhaps lowest of all, “herd immunity apologists”. But there was a mood - a unanimity of world view - that was unsettling a fusion of overt progressive-Left politics with an ironclad certainty about their interpretation of the science. Many of them are young, telegenic and skilled communicators. The campaigners are, for the most part, an impressive, sincere and eloquent group. Judging by last week’s conference, it is easy to see why. Google search results in the UK and US for “ZeroCovid” are at an all-time high. Meanwhile, influential Tory MPs like Jeremy Hunt advocate a strategy of “zero infections and elimination of the disease” and routinely refer to the Asian model. There’s a UK ZeroCovid chapter, which last month hosted its own well-attended online conference the Scottish government is committed to their campaign, alongside Independent SAGE, British trade unions and Labour MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott.

Their advocates are among the most regular faces in broadcast media Professor Devi Sridhar, one of its most outspoken advocates, has appeared on Channel 4 News 21 times during the pandemic - more than any other expert. For make no mistake: this is no fringe movement. In the coming weeks, I suspect this is a question we will all be forced to answer. More from this author We need Scepticism more than ever More often at the event, held over Zoom and organised by American scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam, speakers preferred to refer to ZeroCovid as an “elimination strategy”. In her introductory remarks, the moderator confirmed to the more than 600 registrants and speakers from across the world that “we are here to end Covid through ZeroCovid and CovidZero policies”. Perhaps that’s why, when leading members of the global ZeroCovid movement met for a three-day international conference last Wednesday, it had a far more innocuous title: the “ Covid Community Action Summit”.īut even though this increasingly popular school of thought - which holds that we must not return to normal until the virus is completely eliminated within a country - wasn’t explicitly on the billing, its presence was made clear from the outset. “ZeroCovid” is, after all, a term that elicits confusion and, sometimes, outright hostility. As I discovered last week, the first rule of ZeroCovid Club is: do not talk about ZeroCovid Club.

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