By Jamie Spratt
Early on in March of 2020, there were a series of decisions behind closed doors that led to an agreement: infection must be slowed by any means necessary, and we must frighten people to make them comply with these restrictions:
‘A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened…
…the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging’ [1]
With the help of the BBC and other mainstream media outlets, we were subject to constant, daily propaganda.
To me, the leveraging of social disapproval is the one area that makes my skin crawl:
‘Social disapproval from one’s community can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour’.
Within the space of two weeks, the state-citizen relationship in the UK had shifted to such a point that it was deemed acceptable & necessary for the state to utilise behavioural science to drive a wedge between families, communities, and individuals, for the greater good of infection control. If the atomisation of individuals is the fertile ground for a totalitarian society, we certainly came close during the recent period.
Fear is well known to affect decision-making. As brain activity moves from the prefrontal cortex down towards the limbic and reptilian systems, we move into survival mode. It is the fight, flight or freeze response, and it has kept us safe for thousands of years. More research is coming to light on the relationship between the immune system and stress, but it is almost undisputed: higher stress leads to a weaker immune system. You would have thought, in a health emergency, the sensible thing to do would be to remain calm, collected, and rational. The UK decision makers opted for a different approach: deliberately raise the level of fear in the population, to make them more compliant and thus more malleable to top-down diktat. Don’t take my word for it: the minutes [1 again] here clearly show this was discussed and presented to ministers. ‘A State of Fear’ documents in great detail the specific tactics that were used on an unwitting British Public. They included but were not limited to:
Daily death counts with zero context.
Discouragement of dissent
Daily press conferences with bright danger warning signals
Coercive control
Emotional manipulation and heightening of fear
One Study found that people at the time estimated that 6-7% of people had died from Coronavirus infection [2] – at least 100 times the actual death rate.
The COVID Inquiry has the ostensible purpose of learning lessons so that we are better prepared for the next pandemic. So far, Hugo Keith KC appears more interested in name-calling by civil servants and politicians rather than tackling the basic tenets of the policies we were subjected to. A legitimate inquiry in my opinion would at the very least start with these questions:
Why was the initial data from China treated as valid? Why did the UK Public Health bureaucracy adopt an unquestioning approach to information coming out of China?
Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR manufacturing technique, is reported to have said it was for research purposes only and not medical diagnosis [3]. Why was this controversial method suddenly turned into the gold standard metric of infection and thus the perceived deadliness of the pandemic?
Asymptomatic transmission, where an infected person could pass on a virus without showing any symptoms, was the basis for state-wide shutdowns. Where is the real-world data that shows this is a common phenomenon? If this is fundamentally incorrect, does this mean the shutdowns were all for nothing?
Why was no impact assessment done on shutting down movement, business and making socialising illegal? For such a drastic and impactful tool, why was there no debate as to the long term political and legal implications?
What psychological techniques were used on the British public? Were there any ethical deliberations over the tactic of raising fear levels?
The way in which the narrative is currently being framed is entirely predictable given the evidence from the past 3 and a half years. There is still no inward reflection from the likes of BBC News editors about the assumptions they are, wittingly or unwittingly, choosing to promulgate: there was a ‘once in a generation’ virus circulating the globe circa 2020, that infection control is both possible and the top priority above all else, and that the government scientists operated above the level of biases and conflicted interests. If, at the very least, these assumptions are not questioned and interrogated in open court, this inquiry will only serve to further entrench these assumptions, and accountability will be years still down the line.
The COVID inquiry doesn’t leave me with high hopes so far. It is a delicate task to expose institutional groupthink, when most business and political interests have every reason to look the other way due to their complicity. If history looks back accurately on this period as the madness that it was, it will show that every check and balance in this country failed. The courts failed to uphold civil liberties. The politicians failed to look out for the best interests of the people they represent. The media failed in its duty to investigate and hold power to account. The schools failed in their duty to protect children. Unless these realities are acknowledged, no lessons will be learned. The COVID orthodoxy will remain as the party line, and top down diktat will solidify its place in emergency planning and inevitably seep into more of our day to day lives. When the next emergency happens, whether it’s another ‘pandemic’ or a cyber-attack, this inquiry is already hinting at the solution – further centralised power, perhaps this time to a supranational organisation such as the WHO.
Sources:
[2] https://www.kekstcnc.com/media/2793/kekstcnc_research_covid-19_opinion_tracker_wave-4.pdf (page 6)Â
IMAGE: Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street