In this episode of Trigonometry, Francis Foster and Constantine Kissing are joined by Dan Wooden, a columnist on MailOnline and presenter on the BBC's Breakfast Programme, to discuss the impact of the government's COID lockdown on the UK.
00:06:34.700You know, Peter Hitchens in terms of the mainstream media was the first.
00:06:38.040And it was fascinating because when he wrote his column in the Mail on Sunday, the sort of first big mainstream column about lockdown,
00:06:45.320the newspaper felt they had to make it very clear that this is our columnist's view.
00:06:51.560But as a newspaper, we disagree because there was so much heat on anyone who was speaking out against the government message at that time.
00:06:59.700And from that moment in April 2020, I very quickly started to realise that back in that first lockdown was a massive mistake because those freedoms that were taken away, we know now, were never easily going to come back.
00:07:19.120And so, you know, I never defined what I was. Other people then defined me as a lockdown sceptic, but I never viewed myself that way. I don't mind people calling it that way. But for me, I was just calling it as I saw it and actually asking questions and asking for evidence. And there was so little of that forthcoming.
00:07:40.840When was the moment, Dan, that you just thought, hang on a minute?
00:07:43.800It was actually in April when I was walking home from work because I was going into the office every day.
00:07:52.680So I'd had COVID. I'd had my, you know, 10 days or whatever locked in the house.
00:07:59.060And I was walking home because I would walk every day home from the studio in London Bridge, which is where Talk Radio is based.
00:08:07.840And I got to the Millennium Bridge, which is the bridge in London, which leads over to St. Paul's.
00:08:13.800and literally there was not a soul and I actually took that photo and The Sun published it large
00:08:22.240with my first so-called anti-lockdown column and I was just so disturbed I just it was so
00:08:29.980dystopian it's like this is 7.15 in what is usually the South Bank of London one of the
00:08:37.760busiest parts of the world and there's not a soul and what's happened what's happened what does this
00:08:44.940mean what is the impact going to be on society and I walked across the bridge and a woman who
00:08:50.940I was walking past literally jumped to the other side of the bridge to get away from me and I just
00:08:59.980couldn't I saw then what the government messaging was already doing to people and and how
00:09:05.360how damaging it was going to be and i think it's that's absolutely proven to be the case
00:09:11.420and what would you say to people go look you know this is a pandemic this is a disease which you
00:09:16.300know is deadly for a large percentage of the population the elderly the currently the
00:09:20.880vulnerable comorbidities all of that we need to do this to protect them well i later on so i think
00:09:30.680in October, I then became a signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, which is the document
00:09:37.340put together by Dr. J. Bhattacharya and Suneetra Gupta from Oxford University, brilliant, huge,
00:09:44.680you know, medical brains, who came up with a plan to say there's a better way, there's a better way
00:09:50.980that we can protect the vulnerable, which was all about focused protection of them in order for
00:09:56.540society to keep going. And then we would have got to herd immunity. And by now, a lot of this would
00:10:03.360be over. I'm not saying it would be gone. COVID is never going to be gone, is it? It's going to
00:10:06.880be with us for our lifetimes, but the restrictions would be gone. So to the people who say that,
00:10:12.300I would say it doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense to shut society down in the way that we
00:10:19.360did for so many reasons. And also, the collateral damage from lockdown is going to be significant
00:10:25.860and huge for years to come. And I've been so disturbed at the lack of focus from the media
00:10:32.900on the collateral damage. I mean, you only have to look at the figures of people who died in their
00:10:37.540homes over that first lockdown in 2020, from heart attacks, from strokes. I was speaking to doctors
00:10:46.600because I've spoken to a lot of people in the NHS over the course of the past year who can't speak
00:10:51.640on the record but are so disturbed with what happened in the NHS and the shutdown that
00:10:57.300happened I was literally speaking to doctors who who were talking to patients having a stroke they
00:11:03.500knew they were having a stroke and they would not come into the hospital because they were too scared
00:11:08.760of contracting COVID and obviously that was because of the messaging so there's never been
00:11:14.660a proper cost benefit analysis done of lockdowns I am convinced the collateral damage is going to
00:11:21.280be significant and huge for years to come. And we needed to have a different approach. And look,
00:11:27.720you look at other countries that are targeting a zero COVID approach, like Australia and New
00:11:33.820Zealand, obviously, I've got a lot of relatives there. And I think they'll end up realising that
00:11:39.760the collateral damage that they've done to their society, even though they've avoided COVID,
00:11:44.380will also be very significant. So Dan, what's going on then? Because here we are three smart
00:11:49.060guys you'd like to think we talk to other smart people you've interviewed a bunch of people we've
00:11:53.280interviewed a bunch of people doctors as you say every time we talk about lockdown my twitter inbox
00:11:59.660is flooded with messages from doctors nurses people in nhs who are saying this you know a lot
00:12:04.840of the official narrative is not true we not everyone in nhs supports everything that's
00:12:10.640happening this doesn't seem to be about protecting nhs anymore so if if we're all so clever and we're
00:12:16.700also right, how is it that we're seeing these polling numbers where the majority of the public
00:12:21.740will support seemingly anything, including beheading, just to, you know, keep things safe?
00:12:26.880Well, I mean, look, clearly, if you spend hundreds of millions of pounds on propaganda, and that's a
00:12:33.980very loaded word, and I don't use it lightly, but the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern,
00:12:39.660is on the record describing the government's public health messaging around COVID as
00:12:45.580propaganda you can see it in a video and that is what a lot of the messaging is about
00:12:51.860and it's been everywhere and then it's been everywhere in the mainstream media all day
00:12:58.040every day on the BBC on ITV news on Sky News and the reality is that is still where the vast
00:13:06.120amount of people get their information and consume their information every ad break on every radio
00:13:14.120station has been pumping out terrifying messages about COVID and the damage of COVID. And
00:13:21.000when the government felt and they still feel like they've lost young people, okay, what can we do?
00:13:28.440We're going to try and terrify young people about long COVID. And at the moment, the jury is out
00:13:34.120on long COVID. There's actually, clearly it exists in some way, but come on, these days they're
00:13:42.680saying if you have erectile dysfunction it's linked to long COVID. Shrinking penis. Shrinking
00:13:48.040penis man. Yeah come on. If you've got a small willy it's COVID. Everything has been blamed on
00:13:54.080long COVID all of a sudden so I understand how it's happening. A lot of men in the 80s have had
00:13:57.520long COVID for a very long time. And when people try and go down a conspiracy theory
00:14:05.260because that's something I'm very opposed to and I speak to intelligent people who
00:14:10.700are saying look this has to be a conspiracy theory there's there's no other way you know it's it's
00:14:15.860well I'm not even going to repeat what what they think but I'm like look this is Hanlon's razor you
00:14:21.820know this is about incompetence and stupidity and complete fear that has led to a complete
00:14:29.740clusterfuck that's what this is it's I mean no government could have planned this I mean
00:14:38.920that that's just extraordinary and and ridiculous it's about fear it's about the media it's all
00:14:45.480played into each other and it's become a snowball effect because look you know you look back patrick
00:14:50.960valance was on the record last march saying that the government was trying to pursue a uh a herd
00:14:58.100immunity strategy and that would have been sensible because what did he say he literally
00:15:03.120said on the record i mean this was on the today program on the bbc patrick valance if we do not
00:15:08.600pursue a herd immunity strategy now. That was in March. Yes, we're going to try and slow the spread,
00:15:13.860but we're not going to try and completely compress the spread of COVID-19 because it's okay if young
00:15:19.380people get it. That was his messaging. If we don't do that, we will end up with a catastrophic second
00:15:25.580wave over the winter. What happened? We abandoned the herd immunity strategy. We went for government
00:15:32.560mandated laws to control our behaviour. And what did we have? A catastrophic second wave
00:15:39.540over the winter. Now, yeah, it was bad in Sweden too. It wasn't as bad. And they didn't lose their
00:15:47.080civil liberties and freedoms. And they also voluntarily were able to change their behaviour
00:15:55.020in order to compress the spread and actually what that means is they have had far less economic
00:16:03.400damage than we have and we can never forget that poverty leads to death as well and people losing
00:16:10.220their jobs and losing their businesses leads to deaths as well so yeah it's it's it's been
00:16:17.180difficult it's been difficult to be on my side of the argument it it really has uh because you know
00:16:24.060the moment that you start talking about some of these difficult issues you're accused of being a
00:16:29.820murderer or not caring about 80 year olds dying of COVID and I do I mean my great auntie died of
00:16:35.520COVID in a care home but she died with COVID from dementia and the most horrific thing about that
00:16:44.720is that none of us could see her in the months before she died she had no understanding of why
00:16:51.120her family were unable to see her for months and months before she died and to me that is
00:16:58.380unforgivable it's tragic it's it's awful it's awful that she spent the last few months of her
00:17:05.460life isolated from the people who who love her the most yeah and she and you know she goes down as a
00:17:13.160as a death from COVID. She died of dementia, very, very serious dementia with COVID. And
00:17:21.420we've never got our head around how we can talk about that, how we can break the statistics
00:17:28.140down. You know, Dominic Cummings leaked text messages that Boris Johnson had sent to him
00:17:33.720at some point during the summer or late summer of 2020, where he was trying to have these
00:17:40.060discussions with Dominic Cummings. Look, the average age from COVID death in the UK is 82.
00:17:46.480The average life expectancy in the UK is 81. And Dominic Cummings has released these text
00:17:52.100messages to try and prove that Boris Johnson is some sort of pensioner killer and he doesn't care
00:17:57.020about old people dying. And that's absolutely not the case. He's trying to make the point that
00:18:03.940a lot of these people were going to die because people die and it's absolutely tragic and it's
00:18:10.880absolutely devastating uh my auntie was over 82 and the the huge tragedy with her death is the
00:18:21.380fact that we couldn't say goodbye we couldn't give her a proper send-off we couldn't have a proper
00:18:25.700funeral and what that's putting people through on on a daily basis to me is just so wrong and
00:18:33.240And the issue is that the media, this is what I have tried not to do, has shut down discussion about these things.
00:18:39.780So it's shut down discussion about the age of people who die from COVID.
00:18:44.180It's shut down discussion about the efficacy of masks.
00:18:47.960It's shut down discussion about whether the virus leaked from the lab in Wuhan.
00:18:53.200And it's just been so shocking for me to come back to your very original question, to live through this time and see how the media is just not reporting or is ignoring so many absolutely crucial parts of the story.
00:19:10.940Because, yes, the NHS is a crucial part of the story and the NHS not being overwhelmed is a crucial part of the story.
00:19:16.940There's lots of other critical parts of the story as well, and they should all be covered equally.
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00:21:17.300Fear sells, and it was a very successful strategy for them.
00:21:21.320Number two, Ofcom, because there were really an Ofcom for people overseas
00:21:27.040is the UK regulator of the broadcast media,
00:21:30.860and they put in, I would say, very draconian guidelines and rules about how COVID could be
00:21:38.980reported. And I think a lot of the broadcasters took it very literally, which meant that they
00:21:43.580followed almost slavishly the government's guidelines, public health messaging. And
00:21:49.940then the third thing I would say is politics, because the media in the US absolutely hated
00:21:57.960Donald Trump and they wanted him out. So what was the best way to get Donald Trump out? A pandemic
00:22:02.820where they ramped up the fear and blamed it all on him. And in the UK, too. I mean, the media has
00:22:09.400a loathing of Boris Johnson and had a loathing of Dominic Cummings. And so I think those three,
00:22:15.700you know, if I can sum it up very quickly, those three factors combined.
00:22:20.460And you say it's those three factors combined. Well, it seems as if the shoe's on the other
00:22:25.000foot now because Boris and his cronies are trying to shut down the media and its ability to report
00:22:31.660on them yeah well I think I think a couple of things happened because Boris Johnson and the
00:22:40.540government soon realized very early on I mean it was was around the time of the first lockdown in
00:22:45.940March we have to go with the media consensus on this because if we don't go with the media
00:22:52.680consensus on this we are going to be slaughtered on a daily basis and we are going to be blamed for
00:23:00.700every single covid death in this country and the only way we're not going to be blamed for a covid
00:23:06.580death is is if we is if we lock down and we lock down hard so that's the first thing and then the
00:23:12.420second thing is yeah i mean look i've worked in senior positions in newspapers in the uk the idea
00:23:18.360that the UK has a free media is just absolutely ridiculous. We don't. You're incredibly constrained
00:23:25.180as a journalist here. And I presume you're referring to the proposed changes to the
00:23:29.900Official Secrets Act, which will make it even easier for journalists here to be prosecuted.
00:23:36.000And there is no public interest defence. And of course, we have no First Amendment like the US.
00:23:41.240And I think it's a really bad time to be a journalist in the UK.
00:23:45.200Dan, you said having worked in senior positions in newspapers in this country, which you have, journalists are not free here. Why?
00:23:53.620Why? Because of the law. So it's very easy to sue in this country. And people will probably be very familiar with a case where Johnny Depp sued me for something that I said about him in the Sun newspaper, in my column in the Sun newspaper.
00:24:12.640and it i was dragged through the courts you know i was lucky that the sun and news uk decided to
00:24:20.220to back me in the case but if we'd lost it would have cost millions and millions of pounds so a lot
00:24:27.200of news organizations simply cannot afford that so so that's the first thing there's lots of libel
00:24:31.760tourism here there's no first amendment there's very limited protection for journalists based on
00:24:36.780freedom of speech and it's really worrying you would you would be shocked if you knew the number
00:24:43.720of stories that are simply not reported because newspapers just cannot even fathom the idea of
00:24:51.500taking the legal risk and you know there's qcs that are involved there's lots of legal regulation
00:25:00.160Clearly, after the phone hacking scandal in 2011, there needed to be a tightening within newspapers of the internal processes.
00:25:10.140But, you know, it's got worse and worse and worse.
00:25:13.640And there's obviously been landmark privacy rulings in this country as well, which mean that internationally you're able to read reports about certain celebrities and their private lives, for example, and in the UK, UK organisations are not able to publish them.
00:25:35.460I mean that's already worrying but let's talk a little bit about the legislation that the
00:25:42.440government is trying to push through at the moment can you explain what is it and why is
00:25:47.160it so dangerous to journalists well it's so dangerous to journalists because this reform
00:25:51.860to the official secret act and the government says look we have to reform it because it hasn't
00:25:56.300been changed since 1989 and the entire world has changed and don't worry this isn't aimed and
00:26:01.940targeted at journalists but it's all well and good for the government to say that but the the problem
00:26:08.680is is that there's no public interest defense included as part of this and without a public
00:26:13.920interest defense there's actually no way that a journalist can say yes we did obtain uh private
00:26:22.360security footage of matt hancock breaking the law by snogging his publicly paid for
00:26:30.780staff member breaking COVID restrictions in his Ministry of Health office. And we did obtain it
00:26:37.420via a contact. And maybe we even paid that contact. I have no idea if the Sun paid that contact or not.
00:26:44.300But we did do this. And there are legal question marks around that. But we did it because we
00:26:51.240believed the story was absolutely in the public interest to publish. And this law does not include
00:26:58.920a public interest offence. So that's the concern. Dan, and what, you know, coming back to the sort
00:27:05.240of conspiracy stuff, very much in this vein, you sort of, you mentioned Boris Johnson being
00:27:10.420quote unquote, for people listening, I've got both my hands up doing the quote marks,
00:27:14.880libertarian. What's happened to Boris Johnson in the last 18 months?
00:27:19.420Well, look, Boris Johnson is somebody who wants to be popular, he wants to stay in power,
00:27:22.760he's easily influenced I think it's fair to say and sadly I think he's proven that he's not a
00:27:31.440libertarian he was a libertarian when it suited him and that was in opposition and especially
00:27:36.200when he was opposing Tony Blair's ID card proposals and now that he's in power he's out
00:27:43.800the window you know and uh look I because I do always try and look at situations fairly and I
00:27:51.160actually am not a Boris Johnson hater at all. You know, I think in some ways, he's been a brilliant
00:27:58.440prime minister. In some ways, I absolutely love his style. And I love the way that he is very nimble.
00:28:06.240And look, he's he's done incredibly well. You know, he's done incredibly well when you when
00:28:10.940you compare the absolutely catastrophic chaos and carnage that surrounded Theresa May's government.
00:28:19.480You know, the new Margaret Thatcher, she had everything going for her and she just couldn't do it.
00:28:24.820So I am not an out and out hater of Boris Johnson.
00:28:29.040And I do understand that there were certain things during the pandemic that it probably would have been politically impossible for him not to have done.
00:28:39.700For example, to lock down the first time in March 2020.
00:28:46.020Yeah, there is a but coming. You know, ID papers, health papers. I mean, this was the man that said he would eat his own ID card if any iteration of the state ever asked him to produce it. And now he's trying to coerce young people into being vaccinated or you're not going to be able to go to a nightclub.
00:29:09.100I mean, it's nuts. And at some point, surely you have to, even in power, actually just take a step back and think, what is right? You know, Nadeem Zahawi, the vaccines minister, I interviewed him when I was on talk radio, and I could see vaccine passports coming. And this was, you know, December 2020. But I got him on video to give a cast iron guarantee that they would not be introduced. And he did.
00:29:37.280But he actually went further than that. He described vaccine passports as discriminatory and wrong. They were his words. And now here he is in Parliament saying they're inevitable almost. I mean, it's worrying. It's worrying. And the thing is, at some point, you have to lean back on your principles, don't you? You just have to.
00:29:59.780And so I want to be able to support Boris Johnson. I think most of the media want to do the opposite. You know, they want to not support him, even though he's now doing what much of the liberal media are desperate for him to have done, if that makes sense.
00:30:13.940but at some point he's going to have to stand up against sage and the scientific uh sort of
00:30:22.820monolithic view uh who because that they're starting to control how we live that this body
00:30:30.540sage of scientists it's nuts and why look why are vaccine passports such a bad idea there's a lot
00:30:38.620of people going look dan we're in a global pandemic you know there's people that's going
00:30:43.100to die from this. You know, vaccines stop people from dying. They protect people. What is wrong
00:30:49.960with coercing people during a global pandemic to take a vaccine with minimal risk? It's just
00:30:57.140about the slippery slope towards a biosecurity state, in my honest opinion, that that's where
00:31:04.300we're heading. We see how the Chinese government controls its population, the social credit scheme,
00:31:09.760And it's not that far from that, is it? If you're saying to a perfectly healthy young person, because you won't inject something into your body, which I completely agree is low risk, but there is a risk attached.
00:31:24.480And arguably, there's a bigger risk attached than COVID-19, which is why certain regulators around the world, in Australia, for example, they've banned the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine for anyone under 40.