TRIGGERnometry - Dan Wootton - Why I'm Against Vaccine Passports

00:00:00.000 Boris Johnson and the government soon realised very early on,

00:00:04.760 I mean, it was around the time of the first lockdown in March,

00:00:08.560 we have to go with the media consensus on this

00:00:12.520 because if we don't go with the media consensus on this,

00:00:15.740 we are going to be slaughtered on a daily basis

00:00:19.960 and we are going to be blamed for every single COVID death in this country.

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:35.760 I'm Constantine Kissing.

00:00:36.800 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:42.080 Our brilliant guest today is a male online columnist and a presenter on GB News, Dan Wooden.

00:00:47.120 Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:48.140 Hello.

00:00:49.040 It's so good to have you on the show, man.

00:00:50.960 The roles are reversed because usually I do your show on Thursdays.

00:00:54.060 You're here today. It's great to have you on.

00:00:55.640 You're asking the questions. This is terrifying.

00:00:57.780 dear in headlights moment for you but listen it's so great to have you on the show we've got lots

00:01:03.040 of questions for you but before we get to them tell everybody about your background who are you

00:01:07.540 how are you where you are what's been your journey through life that brings you sitting here talking

00:01:11.040 to us the journey word the journey word uh well i guess my my background is quite unusual maybe in

00:01:17.620 terms of where i ended up because uh i was born in new zealand so i'm a dual british new zealand

00:01:24.540 citizen because my grandparents, well, my parents were actually born here. My mum was born in Essex.

00:01:30.700 My dad was born on an army base in Malta, a British army base in Malta. But they were part

00:01:36.780 of the wave of 10 pound Poms who emigrated to New Zealand after World War II to start a new life

00:01:44.420 away from rationing and all of that sort of thing. So I was born in New Zealand first generation

00:01:49.520 and moved here when I was 21 years old

00:01:54.900 with no money in my pocket.

00:01:58.060 I didn't know a soul.

00:02:00.380 So I guess I was a genuine outsider to this world

00:02:05.060 and the world of the media in the UK.

00:02:07.220 But I had a lot of ambition

00:02:08.680 and I really wanted to succeed on Fleet Street as a journalist.

00:02:14.480 And that's what I really put everything into.

00:02:17.020 so I started working in financial journalism actually when I came over that was my first job

00:02:22.240 once I was finally able to get a job having absolutely no money whatsoever but I was just

00:02:28.960 so determined I want a job in journalism no matter what it is so I worked for a news editor called

00:02:33.740 Futures and Options Week it was about the derivatives market I knew absolutely nothing

00:02:37.260 about and I hated it but it was like my route into journalism and then I worked for Broadcast

00:02:44.580 magazine, which was a big trade magazine for the TV industry, and that still exists today.

00:02:49.980 And from there, I went on to News of the World, which I guess was my big break in journalism in

00:02:57.480 the UK. And since then, I've worked for The Sun, I've worked for The Mail Online, The Daily Mail

00:03:05.600 as well. And I worked for 10 years at ITV Daytime as well. So that has led me to where I am now.

00:03:14.580 which is as a presenter on gb news the new british um 24-hour news channel and a columnist

00:03:22.900 on mail online or if you're from america or australiadailymail.com which is obviously

00:03:28.760 the biggest and best most brilliant news website in the world in my humble opinion yeah no one

00:03:34.920 would disagree uh some might but dan one of the things that one of the reasons we were really

00:03:39.560 keen to get you on particularly i think since the the emergence of gb news is it was

00:03:44.300 so refreshing to see somebody on mainstream television putting articulately and intelligently

00:03:51.240 without hyperbole without overreacting without going into conspiracy the case against some of

00:03:57.600 the measures that the government is taking on on covid on lockdown etc and it was so refreshing

00:04:02.640 and one of the things that we wanted to ask you is actually both francis and i come from sort of

00:04:06.820 authoritarian countries and so we are hyper vigilant when government starts going too far

00:04:12.220 what what first before we get into your views exactly what is it that drives you to be such

00:04:17.640 a strong opponent on some of these restrictions that are that we are seeing well to be honest I

00:04:22.240 didn't mention it actually when I was just talking about my little career history but I guess it was

00:04:26.180 very important to note that I was on air on on talk radio hosting the drive time show there

00:04:32.760 throughout the entire pandemic I actually only took over the show from Eamon Holmes in February

00:04:39.420 2020. So literally with the spectre of COVID-19 looming large. And obviously, it was an incredible

00:04:47.840 opportunity professionally to be on air at such a historic time. And so many people were listening

00:04:53.540 to radio because it was a lifeline for people stuck in their homes, terrified. And I remember

00:05:00.700 in March 2020. And later I went back and looked just to make sure that my views had been consistent.

00:05:10.780 But I remember saying at the start of March 2020, in a democratic country like the UK,

00:05:16.260 there's absolutely no way that we will go down the path of authoritarian China and that all of 0.94

00:05:22.940 these measures should be voluntary. And clearly we have to change our behaviour. I was never denying

00:05:28.620 that there was a pandemic or that we shouldn't stay home a bit more

00:05:32.280 or that certain things had to change.

00:05:34.240 But I was so convinced, especially with a libertarian

00:05:36.980 or a so-called libertarian prime minister,

00:05:38.860 that we would not go down that path.

00:05:41.720 And obviously how naive I was.

00:05:44.660 But like most of the country, you know, I reluctantly,

00:05:49.560 very reluctantly, and obviously this is all documented

00:05:52.280 because I was on live for three hours a day

00:05:54.740 apart from the time when I contracted COVID,

00:05:56.800 which was just at the same time that Boris Johnson did actually but I was very consistent in the fact

00:06:03.620 that I'm not keen on this but okay three weeks to save the NHS fine let's do it so I backed that

00:06:13.540 first lockdown I wrote my first column against lockdown in April 2020 so after about a month

00:06:24.260 And obviously that was at a time when the media was still absolutely enthralled with the idea that restrictions needed to continue.

00:06:31.620 So I certainly wasn't the first.

00:06:34.700 You know, Peter Hitchens in terms of the mainstream media was the first.

00:06:38.040 And it was fascinating because when he wrote his column in the Mail on Sunday, the sort of first big mainstream column about lockdown,

00:06:45.320 the newspaper felt they had to make it very clear that this is our columnist's view.

00:06:51.560 But as a newspaper, we disagree because there was so much heat on anyone who was speaking out against the government message at that time.

00:06:59.700 And 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.

00:07:19.120 And 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.

00:07:40.840 When was the moment, Dan, that you just thought, hang on a minute?

00:07:43.800 It was actually in April when I was walking home from work because I was going into the office every day.

00:07:52.680 So I'd had COVID. I'd had my, you know, 10 days or whatever locked in the house.

00:07:56.840 And I got back out, got back to work.

00:07:59.060 And I was walking home because I would walk every day home from the studio in London Bridge, which is where Talk Radio is based.

00:08:07.840 And I got to the Millennium Bridge, which is the bridge in London, which leads over to St. Paul's.

00:08:13.800 and literally there was not a soul and I actually took that photo and The Sun published it large

00:08:22.240 with my first so-called anti-lockdown column and I was just so disturbed I just it was so

00:08:29.980 dystopian it's like this is 7.15 in what is usually the South Bank of London one of the

00:08:37.760 busiest parts of the world and there's not a soul and what's happened what's happened what does this

00:08:44.940 mean what is the impact going to be on society and I walked across the bridge and a woman who

00:08:50.940 I was walking past literally jumped to the other side of the bridge to get away from me and I just

00:08:59.980 couldn't I saw then what the government messaging was already doing to people and and how

00:09:05.360 how damaging it was going to be and i think it's that's absolutely proven to be the case

00:09:11.420 and what would you say to people go look you know this is a pandemic this is a disease which you

00:09:16.300 know is deadly for a large percentage of the population the elderly the currently the

00:09:20.880 vulnerable comorbidities all of that we need to do this to protect them well i later on so i think

00:09:30.680 in October, I then became a signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, which is the document

00:09:37.340 put together by Dr. J. Bhattacharya and Suneetra Gupta from Oxford University, brilliant, huge,

00:09:44.680 you know, medical brains, who came up with a plan to say there's a better way, there's a better way

00:09:50.980 that we can protect the vulnerable, which was all about focused protection of them in order for

00:09:56.540 society to keep going. And then we would have got to herd immunity. And by now, a lot of this would

00:10:03.360 be over. I'm not saying it would be gone. COVID is never going to be gone, is it? It's going to

00:10:06.880 be with us for our lifetimes, but the restrictions would be gone. So to the people who say that,

00:10:12.300 I would say it doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense to shut society down in the way that we

00:10:19.360 did for so many reasons. And also, the collateral damage from lockdown is going to be significant

00:10:25.860 and huge for years to come. And I've been so disturbed at the lack of focus from the media

00:10:32.900 on the collateral damage. I mean, you only have to look at the figures of people who died in their

00:10:37.540 homes over that first lockdown in 2020, from heart attacks, from strokes. I was speaking to doctors

00:10:46.600 because I've spoken to a lot of people in the NHS over the course of the past year who can't speak

00:10:51.640 on the record but are so disturbed with what happened in the NHS and the shutdown that

00:10:57.300 happened I was literally speaking to doctors who who were talking to patients having a stroke they

00:11:03.500 knew they were having a stroke and they would not come into the hospital because they were too scared

00:11:08.760 of contracting COVID and obviously that was because of the messaging so there's never been

00:11:14.660 a proper cost benefit analysis done of lockdowns I am convinced the collateral damage is going to

00:11:21.280 be significant and huge for years to come. And we needed to have a different approach. And look,

00:11:27.720 you look at other countries that are targeting a zero COVID approach, like Australia and New

00:11:33.820 Zealand, obviously, I've got a lot of relatives there. And I think they'll end up realising that

00:11:39.760 the collateral damage that they've done to their society, even though they've avoided COVID,

00:11:44.380 will also be very significant. So Dan, what's going on then? Because here we are three smart

00:11:49.060 guys you'd like to think we talk to other smart people you've interviewed a bunch of people we've

00:11:53.280 interviewed a bunch of people doctors as you say every time we talk about lockdown my twitter inbox

00:11:59.660 is flooded with messages from doctors nurses people in nhs who are saying this you know a lot

00:12:04.840 of the official narrative is not true we not everyone in nhs supports everything that's

00:12:10.640 happening this doesn't seem to be about protecting nhs anymore so if if we're all so clever and we're

00:12:16.700 also right, how is it that we're seeing these polling numbers where the majority of the public

00:12:21.740 will support seemingly anything, including beheading, just to, you know, keep things safe?

00:12:26.880 Well, I mean, look, clearly, if you spend hundreds of millions of pounds on propaganda, and that's a

00:12:33.980 very loaded word, and I don't use it lightly, but the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern,

00:12:39.660 is on the record describing the government's public health messaging around COVID as

00:12:45.580 propaganda you can see it in a video and that is what a lot of the messaging is about

00:12:51.860 and it's been everywhere and then it's been everywhere in the mainstream media all day

00:12:58.040 every day on the BBC on ITV news on Sky News and the reality is that is still where the vast

00:13:06.120 amount of people get their information and consume their information every ad break on every radio

00:13:14.120 station has been pumping out terrifying messages about COVID and the damage of COVID. And

00:13:21.000 when the government felt and they still feel like they've lost young people, okay, what can we do?

00:13:28.440 We're going to try and terrify young people about long COVID. And at the moment, the jury is out

00:13:34.120 on long COVID. There's actually, clearly it exists in some way, but come on, these days they're

00:13:42.680 saying if you have erectile dysfunction it's linked to long COVID. Shrinking penis. Shrinking 0.99

00:13:48.040 penis man. Yeah come on. If you've got a small willy it's COVID. Everything has been blamed on 1.00

00:13:54.080 long COVID all of a sudden so I understand how it's happening. A lot of men in the 80s have had

00:13:57.520 long COVID for a very long time. And when people try and go down a conspiracy theory

00:14:05.260 because that's something I'm very opposed to and I speak to intelligent people who

00:14:10.700 are saying look this has to be a conspiracy theory there's there's no other way you know it's it's

00:14:15.860 well I'm not even going to repeat what what they think but I'm like look this is Hanlon's razor you 1.00

00:14:21.820 know this is about incompetence and stupidity and complete fear that has led to a complete 0.99

00:14:29.740 clusterfuck that's what this is it's I mean no government could have planned this I mean 1.00

00:14:38.920 that that's just extraordinary and and ridiculous it's about fear it's about the media it's all 0.98

00:14:45.480 played into each other and it's become a snowball effect because look you know you look back patrick

00:14:50.960 valance was on the record last march saying that the government was trying to pursue a uh a herd

00:14:58.100 immunity strategy and that would have been sensible because what did he say he literally

00:15:03.120 said on the record i mean this was on the today program on the bbc patrick valance if we do not

00:15:08.600 pursue a herd immunity strategy now. That was in March. Yes, we're going to try and slow the spread,

00:15:13.860 but we're not going to try and completely compress the spread of COVID-19 because it's okay if young

00:15:19.380 people get it. That was his messaging. If we don't do that, we will end up with a catastrophic second

00:15:25.580 wave over the winter. What happened? We abandoned the herd immunity strategy. We went for government

00:15:32.560 mandated laws to control our behaviour. And what did we have? A catastrophic second wave

00:15:39.540 over the winter. Now, yeah, it was bad in Sweden too. It wasn't as bad. And they didn't lose their

00:15:47.080 civil liberties and freedoms. And they also voluntarily were able to change their behaviour

00:15:55.020 in order to compress the spread and actually what that means is they have had far less economic

00:16:03.400 damage than we have and we can never forget that poverty leads to death as well and people losing

00:16:10.220 their jobs and losing their businesses leads to deaths as well so yeah it's it's it's been

00:16:17.180 difficult it's been difficult to be on my side of the argument it it really has uh because you know

00:16:24.060 the moment that you start talking about some of these difficult issues you're accused of being a

00:16:29.820 murderer or not caring about 80 year olds dying of COVID and I do I mean my great auntie died of

00:16:35.520 COVID in a care home but she died with COVID from dementia and the most horrific thing about that

00:16:44.720 is that none of us could see her in the months before she died she had no understanding of why

00:16:51.120 her family were unable to see her for months and months before she died and to me that is

00:16:58.380 unforgivable it's tragic it's it's awful it's awful that she spent the last few months of her

00:17:05.460 life isolated from the people who who love her the most yeah and she and you know she goes down as a

00:17:13.160 as a death from COVID. She died of dementia, very, very serious dementia with COVID. And

00:17:21.420 we've never got our head around how we can talk about that, how we can break the statistics

00:17:28.140 down. You know, Dominic Cummings leaked text messages that Boris Johnson had sent to him

00:17:33.720 at some point during the summer or late summer of 2020, where he was trying to have these

00:17:40.060 discussions with Dominic Cummings. Look, the average age from COVID death in the UK is 82.

00:17:46.480 The average life expectancy in the UK is 81. And Dominic Cummings has released these text

00:17:52.100 messages to try and prove that Boris Johnson is some sort of pensioner killer and he doesn't care

00:17:57.020 about old people dying. And that's absolutely not the case. He's trying to make the point that

00:18:03.940 a lot of these people were going to die because people die and it's absolutely tragic and it's

00:18:10.880 absolutely devastating uh my auntie was over 82 and the the huge tragedy with her death is the

00:18:21.380 fact that we couldn't say goodbye we couldn't give her a proper send-off we couldn't have a proper

00:18:25.700 funeral and what that's putting people through on on a daily basis to me is just so wrong and

00:18:33.240 And the issue is that the media, this is what I have tried not to do, has shut down discussion about these things.

00:18:39.780 So it's shut down discussion about the age of people who die from COVID.

00:18:44.180 It's shut down discussion about the efficacy of masks.

00:18:47.960 It's shut down discussion about whether the virus leaked from the lab in Wuhan.

00:18:53.200 And 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.

00:19:10.940 Because, yes, the NHS is a crucial part of the story and the NHS not being overwhelmed is a crucial part of the story.

00:19:16.940 There's lots of other critical parts of the story as well, and they should all be covered equally.

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00:20:45.860 Dan, so you and I are probably on the same page

00:20:49.800 in terms of conspiracy.

00:20:50.900 I'm not into it.

00:20:52.280 I'm, you know, I started the pandemic

00:20:54.340 being at 0% interested in conspiracy theories.

00:20:57.300 Half a year in, I went to like 0.1%.

00:20:59.420 I think I'm about 1% now.

00:21:01.600 But let me ask you this about the media

00:21:03.260 because you've explained,

00:21:04.120 and I think you're absolutely right in what you say

00:21:06.440 and that the media are shutting down discussion of certain issues.

00:21:09.840 Why?

00:21:11.160 Well, number one, the media operates very well on fear.

00:21:16.040 So that's the first thing.

00:21:17.300 Fear sells, and it was a very successful strategy for them.

00:21:21.320 Number two, Ofcom, because there were really an Ofcom for people overseas

00:21:27.040 is the UK regulator of the broadcast media,

00:21:30.860 and they put in, I would say, very draconian guidelines and rules about how COVID could be

00:21:38.980 reported. And I think a lot of the broadcasters took it very literally, which meant that they

00:21:43.580 followed almost slavishly the government's guidelines, public health messaging. And

00:21:49.940 then the third thing I would say is politics, because the media in the US absolutely hated

00:21:57.960 Donald Trump and they wanted him out. So what was the best way to get Donald Trump out? A pandemic

00:22:02.820 where they ramped up the fear and blamed it all on him. And in the UK, too. I mean, the media has

00:22:09.400 a loathing of Boris Johnson and had a loathing of Dominic Cummings. And so I think those three,

00:22:15.700 you know, if I can sum it up very quickly, those three factors combined.

00:22:20.460 And you say it's those three factors combined. Well, it seems as if the shoe's on the other

00:22:25.000 foot now because Boris and his cronies are trying to shut down the media and its ability to report

00:22:31.660 on them yeah well I think I think a couple of things happened because Boris Johnson and the

00:22:40.540 government soon realized very early on I mean it was was around the time of the first lockdown in

00:22:45.940 March we have to go with the media consensus on this because if we don't go with the media

00:22:52.680 consensus on this we are going to be slaughtered on a daily basis and we are going to be blamed for

00:23:00.700 every single covid death in this country and the only way we're not going to be blamed for a covid

00:23:06.580 death is is if we is if we lock down and we lock down hard so that's the first thing and then the

00:23:12.420 second thing is yeah i mean look i've worked in senior positions in newspapers in the uk the idea 0.63

00:23:18.360 that the UK has a free media is just absolutely ridiculous. We don't. You're incredibly constrained

00:23:25.180 as a journalist here. And I presume you're referring to the proposed changes to the

00:23:29.900 Official Secrets Act, which will make it even easier for journalists here to be prosecuted.

00:23:36.000 And there is no public interest defence. And of course, we have no First Amendment like the US.

00:23:41.240 And I think it's a really bad time to be a journalist in the UK.

00:23:45.200 Dan, you said having worked in senior positions in newspapers in this country, which you have, journalists are not free here. Why?

00:23:53.620 Why? 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.

00:24:12.640 and it i was dragged through the courts you know i was lucky that the sun and news uk decided to

00:24:20.220 to back me in the case but if we'd lost it would have cost millions and millions of pounds so a lot

00:24:27.200 of news organizations simply cannot afford that so so that's the first thing there's lots of libel

00:24:31.760 tourism here there's no first amendment there's very limited protection for journalists based on

00:24:36.780 freedom of speech and it's really worrying you would you would be shocked if you knew the number

00:24:43.720 of stories that are simply not reported because newspapers just cannot even fathom the idea of

00:24:51.500 taking the legal risk and you know there's qcs that are involved there's lots of legal regulation

00:25:00.160 Clearly, after the phone hacking scandal in 2011, there needed to be a tightening within newspapers of the internal processes.

00:25:10.140 But, you know, it's got worse and worse and worse.

00:25:13.640 And 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.

00:25:35.460 I mean that's already worrying but let's talk a little bit about the legislation that the

00:25:42.440 government is trying to push through at the moment can you explain what is it and why is

00:25:47.160 it so dangerous to journalists well it's so dangerous to journalists because this reform

00:25:51.860 to the official secret act and the government says look we have to reform it because it hasn't

00:25:56.300 been changed since 1989 and the entire world has changed and don't worry this isn't aimed and

00:26:01.940 targeted at journalists but it's all well and good for the government to say that but the the problem

00:26:08.680 is is that there's no public interest defense included as part of this and without a public

00:26:13.920 interest defense there's actually no way that a journalist can say yes we did obtain uh private

00:26:22.360 security footage of matt hancock breaking the law by snogging his publicly paid for

00:26:30.780 staff member breaking COVID restrictions in his Ministry of Health office. And we did obtain it

00:26:37.420 via a contact. And maybe we even paid that contact. I have no idea if the Sun paid that contact or not.

00:26:44.300 But we did do this. And there are legal question marks around that. But we did it because we

00:26:51.240 believed the story was absolutely in the public interest to publish. And this law does not include

00:26:58.920 a public interest offence. So that's the concern. Dan, and what, you know, coming back to the sort

00:27:05.240 of conspiracy stuff, very much in this vein, you sort of, you mentioned Boris Johnson being

00:27:10.420 quote unquote, for people listening, I've got both my hands up doing the quote marks,

00:27:14.880 libertarian. What's happened to Boris Johnson in the last 18 months?

00:27:19.420 Well, look, Boris Johnson is somebody who wants to be popular, he wants to stay in power,

00:27:22.760 he's easily influenced I think it's fair to say and sadly I think he's proven that he's not a

00:27:31.440 libertarian he was a libertarian when it suited him and that was in opposition and especially

00:27:36.200 when he was opposing Tony Blair's ID card proposals and now that he's in power he's out

00:27:43.800 the window you know and uh look I because I do always try and look at situations fairly and I

00:27:51.160 actually am not a Boris Johnson hater at all. You know, I think in some ways, he's been a brilliant

00:27:58.440 prime minister. In some ways, I absolutely love his style. And I love the way that he is very nimble.

00:28:06.240 And look, he's he's done incredibly well. You know, he's done incredibly well when you when

00:28:10.940 you compare the absolutely catastrophic chaos and carnage that surrounded Theresa May's government.

00:28:17.060 And wow, what a letdown she was. 1.00

00:28:19.480 You know, the new Margaret Thatcher, she had everything going for her and she just couldn't do it.

00:28:24.820 So I am not an out and out hater of Boris Johnson.

00:28:29.040 And 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.

00:28:39.700 For example, to lock down the first time in March 2020.

00:28:44.040 But I knew that was coming.

00:28:46.020 Yeah, 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.

00:29:09.100 I 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.

00:29:37.280 But 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.

00:29:59.780 And 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.

00:30:13.940 but at some point he's going to have to stand up against sage and the scientific uh sort of

00:30:22.820 monolithic view uh who because that they're starting to control how we live that this body

00:30:30.540 sage of scientists it's nuts and why look why are vaccine passports such a bad idea there's a lot

00:30:38.620 of people going look dan we're in a global pandemic you know there's people that's going

00:30:43.100 to die from this. You know, vaccines stop people from dying. They protect people. What is wrong

00:30:49.960 with coercing people during a global pandemic to take a vaccine with minimal risk? It's just

00:30:57.140 about the slippery slope towards a biosecurity state, in my honest opinion, that that's where

00:31:04.300 we're heading. We see how the Chinese government controls its population, the social credit scheme,

00:31:09.760 And 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.

00:31:24.480 And 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.

00:31:41.340 And obviously, we did, too.

00:31:45.300 So, you know, it's about the slippery slope of where this is going.

00:31:50.860 and you know I'm personally I'm very pro-medicine and I'm very pro-vaccine and I have no issues

00:31:56.380 personally with trying experimental medical products I never have right so my personal

00:32:03.020 view is very different to the view of lots of other people who feel the same way as I do about

00:32:07.520 vaccine passports but I just really fundamentally believe that that has to be everyone's personal

00:32:13.140 decision doesn't it what they what they put in their body it's it's a personal choice I have

00:32:18.580 I guess quite uh I'm quite into risk do you know what I mean I'm prepared to take a medical risk

00:32:26.240 because I think there's going to be lots of benefits but I fully appreciate that is everyone's

00:32:32.700 right to make that decision themselves yeah I mean do you think that they're going to go ahead

00:32:38.020 or do you think whether Tories are going to capitulate I know it's an unfair question no I

00:32:42.260 just I just think it feels inevitable I think all of this feels inevitable I think another lockdown

00:32:47.500 over winter feels inevitable. I think the reintroduction of mandatory masks feels

00:32:53.580 inevitable. I think the reintroduction of social distancing feels inevitable. I think the

00:32:58.420 reintroduction of curfews feels inevitable. I think the closing of nightclubs and concerts 1.00

00:33:02.820 at some point over winter feels inevitable. I think all of this feels inevitable now.

00:33:07.160 Now, obviously, I hope I'm wrong. And I'm actually genuinely desperate to be proved wrong.

00:33:13.260 um but you know throughout the course of last year I didn't express some of this stuff publicly

00:33:19.760 because I didn't want to add into the the the fair and I wanted to trust Boris when he said

00:33:28.320 no we're going to be okay for Christmas and you know but deep down I always knew and I expressed

00:33:34.340 privately that we would spend all winter in lockdown and that was one of the reasons I was

00:33:38.640 railing against it so much. So this year I'm at a very different place and I want to call it out

00:33:45.300 because if we don't, and if we don't start standing up against this, because fundamentally

00:33:49.400 the one thing that will end up changing Boris Johnson's and the government's position in this

00:33:54.120 is public opinion. It's the one thing that will change it. So I'm heartened to see polls now

00:34:01.060 that say actually people are fed up with the NHS app and are starting to delete it or are

00:34:07.000 considering deleted i'm heartened by that because again it's very difficult when you're regulated by

00:34:12.100 ofcom you can never encourage anyone to break the law or you'll be taken off air but the nhs app

00:34:19.820 is voluntary you know the government might recommend it but there's absolutely nothing

00:34:24.780 compelling you at this point for now for now but it's a great way if you don't want to go to work

00:34:32.120 Well, of course.

00:34:33.120 Half a million people.

00:34:34.120 Of course.

00:34:35.120 Great.

00:34:36.120 Of course.

00:34:37.120 10 days off.

00:34:38.120 Totally.

00:34:39.120 Totally.

00:34:40.120 And I understand that.

TRIGGERnometry - August 04, 2021

Dan Wootton - Why I'm Against Vaccine Passports

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