TRIGGERnometry - Fear and Spin： Government Manipulation on COVID-19

00:00:00.000 Something that just chilled my blood was when I spoke to one of the psychologists who sits on that advisory panel to ask if they'd been tasked with thinking about how to get the British population back to normal.

00:00:14.400 And he seemed shocked that I asked.

00:00:17.200 And if I could paraphrase something like normal, what normal?

00:00:21.880 You know, we're now facing climate change and we've made great gains on carbon emissions and we can't go back to normal.

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

00:00:40.800 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:45.920 Our brilliant guest today is the author of this book, A State of Fear, Laura Dosworth.

00:00:50.020 Welcome to Trigonometry. Hi, thank you for having me.

00:00:52.120 It's great to have you on the show. We're going to talk about the book in a second, but before we do,

00:00:55.800 just tell everybody a little bit about who are you how are you where you are what has been the

00:01:00.700 journey that leads you to be sitting here talking to us oh my goodness there's quite a lot in there

00:01:05.080 let's say oh let's break it down the I suppose the reason I'm here right now is the book is

00:01:10.420 I suppose in essence it's quite reactionary we've just been living through an absolutely

00:01:15.720 extraordinary time in British life and politics and I didn't um I didn't have a plan to write a

00:01:22.960 book like that. But I just had to react to what was going on around me in the world. And then

00:01:29.300 before that, I've been a writer and a photographer for some years. I think of myself as a creative

00:01:34.500 and a storyteller. Well, it's a story that needs to be told. This book is about how the government

00:01:40.920 has used essentially psychology to scare people into responding to the pandemic and to the lockdown

00:01:47.740 and to the restrictions in the way that they've wanted. And I wanted to open with a quote that

00:01:52.300 you give from the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on behavior, which was in March of 2020,

00:02:00.980 which is, they say, the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among

00:02:06.860 those who are complacent using hard-hitting emotional messaging. Is that what this is all

00:02:13.920 about in the last year, that we've had a pandemic and the government has sought to shape our

00:02:20.720 response to it through hard-hitting emotional messaging. Is that why we're seeing polling

00:02:27.500 results now that boggle the mind in terms of the number of people who support curfews,

00:02:33.580 permanent restrictions, permanent wearing of masks? I mean, you can go down the list

00:02:37.680 in terms of the stuff that people believe. People, when polled, believe that I think like 10% of the

00:02:43.240 public have died from COVID if asked on the street. So is that how we're here?

00:02:47.920 Yes, I'd say so. So first of all, to kind of add an annoying caveat that I feel like I have to say

00:02:55.700 at the beginning, which is this book doesn't refute that COVID is a serious disease and

00:02:59.960 people have died and that we've been in a pandemic, not at all. But as one of the psychologists I

00:03:05.540 interviewed said to me, in the absence of a vaccine, the tool you have is psychology. That's

00:03:11.280 their opinion. They're a psychologist, they would say that. They also said to me that psychology

00:03:15.440 has had a very good epidemic. So the government decided to go the route of imposing lockdowns

00:03:23.340 and very strict regulations to control behaviour, to limit transmission and to protect the NHS.

00:03:30.100 I know that goalposts have moved lots of times, but if you remember the original goalpost,

00:03:35.320 it was flatten the curve to protect the NHS. And that minute from an extraordinary document

00:03:44.440 which was produced by SPI-B that's the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour which

00:03:50.760 reports into SAGE and into the government is answering a question and the question is how do

00:03:55.560 we make people comply with lockdown rules? So there's a whole host of options in the document

00:04:01.500 and one of them sets out very clearly in black and white that the British public should be frightened

00:04:06.900 into complying. So that is exhibit A in the thesis that the government has used fear to control

00:04:12.540 behaviour during the epidemic. And I think we can still see it happening now in lots of ways. We

00:04:18.440 could, you know, we could talk about things that are going on now, like nudges maybe to increase

00:04:24.280 vaccination uptake by constantly dangling the threat of COVID passes. And as a result, for some

00:04:31.140 people, perhaps their fear and anxiety is out of scale with the severity of the threats that we're

00:04:36.240 currently experiencing. And that could be why people are very supportive still of restrictive

00:04:43.180 measures and overestimate the threat of the disease when they're asked in polls.

00:04:49.300 But Laura, hang on a second. So let's go back to that first lockdown. We didn't know what was

00:04:53.420 happening. We didn't know how virulent the virus was. We didn't know a lot about it. Wasn't the

00:04:59.640 first lockdown and quite a tough advertising campaign the way to deal with this virus?

00:05:06.240 There are quite a few things to separate out there. First of all, you could accept the

00:05:11.280 premise that a lockdown was a sensible precaution. It doesn't necessarily mean that it needed

00:05:17.720 advertising that would exaggerate the threat of the disease. It was understood right from

00:05:23.700 the beginning that COVID is very age stratified and it's also a risk to people with particular

00:05:29.600 identifiable clinical conditions. So telling everybody they were equally at risk wouldn't

00:05:34.900 necessarily be the only way to enforce a lockdown. I can see how some people think it would. And I

00:05:41.300 think when all this is done and dusted, it will be really important to have a debate about what

00:05:44.680 sort of messaging is appropriate. But I can see how some people would say in the teeth of the

00:05:49.340 crisis, any means justified the end. The ends justify the means. Wrong way. Wrong way round.

00:05:55.720 You know what I mean. But the book also isn't about whether lockdowns are a good idea. But I

00:06:02.020 I have to say it became difficult in the course of writing a book to completely extricate lockdowns and fear messaging.

00:06:10.500 And to that end, there's an appendix and it's called Lockdowns Don't Work.

00:06:14.100 So you'll see where I'm coming from with that.

00:06:16.700 But actually, lockdowns were never used before March 2020.

00:06:21.040 They don't feature in pandemic plans.

00:06:22.780 In fact, they were contraindicated because they're not based on strong evidence.

00:06:26.820 They're based on simulations, which the World Health Organization's warned against before.

00:06:31.600 They're known to be very harmful and they're not known to necessarily impact transmission.

00:06:37.460 I think you'll find here that anybody that's supported lockdowns, including the people who enacted the policies,

00:06:42.360 are going to try and tell us that lockdowns are effective.

00:06:44.140 But there are lots of empirical studies and other countries around the world that I think shake that idea.

00:06:50.560 So you said that lockdowns are very harmful. Let's just touch on that before moving on onwards.

00:06:55.020 Because there's a lot of people in this country, I think the majority of the population, are in favour of lockdowns.

00:07:00.540 how are lockdowns harmful? There's so much collateral damage already from lockdowns,

00:07:06.940 and I think it's still too early for people to perceive all of the impacts. And I think it's

00:07:11.400 fair to say that the jury is still out. I never really thought it made sense from day one.

00:07:18.620 And I know that puts me in a real outlier position, because I think telling people they can't go out

00:07:23.660 to work when they're completely healthy and not necessarily infectious is just an extraordinary

00:07:29.180 thing to do to a family. I mean, that was me. My work just stopped. And I was shocked I wouldn't

00:07:36.840 be able to go out and earn a living. And there would have been lots of people in that position,

00:07:39.680 you know, they were told to put their relationships on hold. So it damages relationships.

00:07:44.560 Not everybody could work from home or got the eventual furlough, so it stopped income.

00:07:50.840 I think probably most worryingly of all, we see in the NHS waiting list now how many people were

00:07:56.120 probably too frightened to go to hospital. I interviewed a disaster and recovery planner

00:08:01.880 who's one of the foremost experts in this country and in the world and she says you just don't lock

00:08:06.800 down for a coronavirus. She said in any pandemic you bluntly you power through and she's involved

00:08:12.700 in planning mortuary capacity and death planning and she said that for every one COVID death they

00:08:19.200 were planning another four deaths as a result of lockdown and associated risks over the coming

00:08:23.660 years. So this isn't just my idea. Let's move on from lockdown, because your book really isn't

00:08:28.220 about that. It's really not about lockdown. So let's move on from that. I wouldn't want anyone

00:08:32.240 watching this to watch this from a pro-anti-lockdown perspective. I think the important

00:08:38.340 conversation is about the methodology that's been used to publicise and promote whatever has been

00:08:43.540 happening. That's a much more important conversation. The locked and pro-anti-lockdown

00:08:48.020 argument has been had, including on our show, many times. True, but you see you brought it up

00:08:51.980 Because it is actually quite difficult to extricate them because people will say, well, anything's justified if it kept people in their homes, if it made them follow the lockdown rules.

00:08:59.240 And that's why you can't completely separate them.

00:09:01.440 Right. So let's just for the sake of argument say that lockdowns do work.

00:09:05.780 And in fact, they're extremely effective at stopping a pandemic.

00:09:08.740 and those of us like you and me who are deeply concerned about the impact of lockdowns

00:09:15.220 on health, on cancer, on heart disease, etc., etc., on mental well-being, on suicides, etc.

00:09:22.100 Let's say that we're misguided.

00:09:23.860 One of the arguments, for example, is that all of that would have happened anyway

00:09:27.940 because if we didn't lock down, the NHS would have collapsed and you'd still have a massive backlog.

00:09:32.640 Let's say, for the sake of argument, all of that is true.

00:09:36.020 Is it not then ethical for the government to use fear in the way that they have

00:09:40.100 to get people to comply with the rules that they believe are necessary to protect the public?

00:09:45.580 I think it's a really thorny debate.

00:09:48.400 In the course of researching the book, I've come to a very sceptical position on that.

00:09:54.080 But I accept there'd be different opinions.

00:09:56.040 And I think that actually, that in the inevitable inquiry,

00:09:59.580 it's going to be really important to tackle the fear messaging specifically.

00:10:03.340 You know, you've got to remember that the Advertising Standards Authority codifies against this for a reason.

00:10:12.240 There were specific campaigns which misled on the risk.

00:10:17.300 There was a government campaign that had to be withdrawn, was found against by the Advertising Standards Authority.

00:10:22.820 And there are others that just exaggerated the risks for the wrong group's people.

00:10:27.680 There's one I remember that was a group of teenage boys sitting in a park and it said COVID kills.

00:10:33.900 Well, COVID hasn't really killed teenage boys, especially outdoors in a park.

00:10:37.540 So was that the way to make them stay indoors and observe lockdown rules?

00:10:43.420 Well, if you think that people won't behave unless they're frightened, maybe you'd think that.

00:10:48.380 But what about a more honest campaign about who's at risk and what we all need to do to protect those people?

00:10:54.900 The argument would be, it's not an argument that I particularly support,

00:10:58.400 But I want to put the fully fledged counterpoint here because I think that's the point of having the conversation would be, well, teenage boys are not being killed by COVID, but they're picking if they were to catch it by socializing outdoors when COVID is rampant in March and April of 2020, they go home, spread it to their parents.

00:11:17.580 Their parents might be fine as well.

00:11:19.140 Their parents go and visit granny or whatever because they deliver some shopping.

00:11:22.940 And then we killed granny by that.

00:11:25.800 So what is the argument against scaring teenagers into not going out when arguably those teenagers are potentially spreading COVID to people who are vulnerable?

00:11:40.240 I think that at the beginning, probably government politicians and advisors acted maybe in a panic and they didn't think about the end result.

00:11:52.660 what's the end result of a pandemic we want everyone to be healthy you know as many people

00:11:57.840 survive as possible and society to go back to normal if you want to get to that end point you

00:12:03.480 don't terrify people we went into this without an exit strategy so one of the problems with the

00:12:09.180 tactic of frightening people who are not in a risk category is that everybody's fear is amplified to

00:12:17.700 a degree that we can't get it back down. So a psychologist has identified a syndrome now

00:12:22.960 called COVID anxiety syndrome, whereby 20% of people are engaging in overly obsessive hygiene

00:12:28.540 or they don't want to go outside. We know from ONS figures that half of the people who were

00:12:32.900 clinically shielding are still shielding, even though they don't need to be because they're

00:12:36.920 vaccinated. We know from polls, there were some really extraordinary figures I read last week,

00:12:42.220 that I think 71% of people, according to YouGov,

00:12:47.220 want people to carry and wear masks on public transport.

00:12:51.700 This is an even better one.

00:12:53.400 It was reported in the FT that 19% of people

00:12:55.800 want there to be a 10pm curfew beyond COVID.

00:13:00.220 I don't know who these people are.

00:13:01.860 They walk among us. Who are they?

00:13:03.680 Maybe they don't. Maybe they're just in duals.

00:13:07.560 So one of the problems with the fear messaging

00:13:10.160 is that it's hard for people to get back to normal fear makes recovery harder there's also

00:13:16.000 been an impact on some people's mental health you know people have developed OCDs agoraphobia

00:13:21.120 people develop depression there have been various ONS studies showing that people developed

00:13:27.560 depression in lockdown and it's difficult to extricate how much will have come from fearful

00:13:33.640 messaging how much will come from lockdown how much will have come from a natural fear of the

00:13:37.640 epidemic, but there's a lot going on. Another problem with that type of advertising, and

00:13:43.840 advertising is only one tool to frighten people, but it's a big one, and it was costly as well.

00:13:48.260 It's a lot of money. A lot of our taxpayers' money has been spent on this. Another problem is it

00:13:53.300 deflects criticism. So it doesn't just frighten people, it puts people into groups. Are you good?

00:13:58.420 Are you a COVID hero? Or are you a COVID idiot and a granny killer? And it encourages ill will

00:14:03.420 and blame and finger pointing between people do you remember the ad campaign look him in the eyes

00:14:08.140 and tell him you never bend the rules so presumably matt hancock is somebody who would have signed off

00:14:13.120 on that so first of all let's just get that in it's a bit hypocritical doing a lot of bending

00:14:17.540 well you might have seen something i haven't seen i've just seen a little a little bit of footage

00:14:23.100 in the sun my eyes um but it also creates finger pointing among people so instead of going well

00:14:31.320 hang on, should we point the finger at policies, at politicians, at the big issues about nosocomial

00:14:37.940 infection? People move from hospitals to care homes. The PPE scandal, we're pointing the finger

00:14:46.140 at rule breakers. So instead of the kind of solidarity that you want in people in an epidemic,

00:14:53.100 we're divided into the good guys and the bad guys. And of course, what that does creates kind of like

00:14:57.480 herd mentality and othering and dehumanising of other people. Also, you're talking about the

00:15:04.980 young people. Is that really fair to put that responsibility onto them? A granny killer is

00:15:10.080 one of the most unedifying things I've ever heard. One of my sons was shouted at in a corridor at

00:15:16.820 school when he wasn't wearing his mask correctly. And the teacher shouted, you're killing people.

00:15:22.720 Well, you know, if he was literally killing people, that would be a police matter, wasn't it?

00:15:26.120 But his mask was a half-mast in a school corridor.

00:15:30.180 So what's the impact on teenagers and children of being told

00:15:35.380 they can literally kill their grandparents and the elderly?

00:15:38.640 It's an enormous responsibility.

00:15:40.380 And let's not forget, at the beginning of the epidemic,

00:15:42.340 it was acknowledged that a lot of people that would die

00:15:44.320 were people who would die at some point in the coming year or so anyway

00:15:49.140 because the elderly were most at risk.

00:15:52.440 I think it was Professor Neil Ferguson who said that

00:15:54.420 in quite an early press briefing.

00:15:56.120 So to put that blame onto young people, I just think is really disproportionate and unfair.

00:16:01.580 We're not the only country that did that.

00:16:03.140 In Germany, what's now known as the panic papers, which are reported on in Welt am Sontag, involved leaked emails between politicians and scientists asking them to basically exaggerate the risks of the disease and use fear messaging in order to encourage compliance with the rules.

00:16:23.320 quite similar but they went into more lurid detail than the the spy bee minute that you

00:16:28.300 quote from my book and one example that they give is that children shouldn't be allowed to think it's

00:16:34.480 safe to go out and play outside and you should plan the guilt that they'll feel if they go and

00:16:38.980 play outside and then they infect people in their household and and their family dies I just think

00:16:43.660 that's a cruel thing to do to a child and there's different ways of doing it there's different ways

00:16:47.780 a communicating risk does it have to be frightening hey francis think about all the times you've used

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00:18:44.020 It's an incredibly good point that you make

00:18:49.020 Do you not worry that the government has used this tool

00:18:52.140 And it's proved surprisingly effective

00:18:54.140 It's now in their toolkit forever

00:18:56.380 They can take this out at whatever point they want again

00:18:59.860 or do you think it's a one-off thing? Nervous giggle. I would love to think it's a one-off

00:19:07.600 thing but I don't really see why it would be. I've got no reason to believe that. It is of

00:19:13.480 course incredibly effective. I just wrote a feature for the Telegraph about the nudges we'll see

00:19:18.260 during the rest of the epidemic and I checked in with one of my anonymous sources who advises in

00:19:23.960 government who told me that there is skipping in Whitehall and they're skipping through the

00:19:28.800 corridors. They've had a very good epidemic. And one of the big learnings is that the British

00:19:32.860 people have been sheepish and there's lots more nudge coming. It's worked. Why would they not do

00:19:37.340 it again? If you've read the book, guys, if you've read the book, you might remember how the chapter

00:19:43.400 on Spy B starts. And something that just chilled my blood was when I spoke to one of the psychologists

00:19:51.080 who sits on that advisory panel to ask if they'd been tasked with thinking about how to get the

00:19:58.300 British population back to normal? And he seemed shocked that I asked. And if I could paraphrase

00:20:04.200 it's something like normal, what normal? You know, we're now facing climate change and we've made

00:20:10.780 great gains on carbon emissions and we can't go back to normal. And I think you can already see

00:20:16.460 a segue into using some of the same tools to perhaps encourage behaviour change that will

00:20:23.740 be needed to meet net zero targets. I've seen a very scary ad produced by Net Zero Scotland

00:20:28.000 already well the something francis and i talked about we did an episode where him and i were

00:20:33.960 talking about this and uh the the fact that this is now part of the toolbox uh that can be produced

00:20:41.260 for other perceived threats is something that people should be very worried about i think

00:20:46.420 but um in terms of the the methodology tell everybody you use you reference nudge which

00:20:54.080 most of us understand, but some people may be less familiar with. What is nudge theory and how has it

00:20:59.880 been used in particular for this pandemic, but also previously, because I think it was Cameron

00:21:03.560 who really first started talking about it. Maybe it was even used before. Tell everybody a little

00:21:08.540 bit about that. Yeah, sure. So the nudge unit is the colloquial term for the behavioural insights

00:21:13.620 team, which was set up under the David Cameron government. And that's now legally and operationally

00:21:20.120 separate to the government, it's a limited company. Britain's terribly good at behavioural

00:21:24.280 psychology, we actually, or behavioural science, we export it all around the world. They have

00:21:28.480 offices in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others. So a nudge is implicit, which means you

00:21:37.800 won't really be aware of it. It affects your choices without being a mandate. A nudge is just

00:21:42.200 one tool in the behavioural science toolbox. So there's the behavioural insights team, and they've

00:21:48.000 been doing some things that look kind of innocuous in terms of making people pay their tax returns

00:21:52.000 on time or um plastic bags i don't know if they work on that but that that might be the that's

00:21:58.220 the kind of five people plastic bags yeah yeah exactly it's choice architecture it's giving you

00:22:03.060 a choice and trying to nudge you into the the right one the one that makes you a model citizen

00:22:07.120 the one that somewhere some clever people in a clever room have decided that you not so clever

00:22:11.440 people should be doing um there isn't just the paper insights team there's spy b which we've

00:22:17.560 already referred to. Now that's a voluntary group of advisors and they don't just work on the COVID

00:22:23.980 epidemic, they also advise the government on other risks and other things on the National Risk

00:22:27.660 Register. But what I found fascinating but a bit disturbing in the course of researching the book

00:22:33.740 was how many brick walls I hit when I was trying to find out more about behavioural science and

00:22:40.100 government. But what became clear to me is how much the government does rely on behavioural

00:22:43.940 science. There are behavioural scientists in, I think, probably every government department,

00:22:48.420 also within the NHS, also within Public Health England. There are also units which are set up

00:22:55.620 to manage the flow of information, manage counter disinformation. You might call some

00:23:01.220 of it propaganda. You might call some of it behavioural psychology. What they do is a

00:23:05.240 little bit opaque. There's the counter disinformation unit and there's the research

00:23:08.580 Information Communication Unit, there's GCHQ, there's the 77th Brigade, which is part of the

00:23:14.900 army. And haven't you been surprised at how easily manipulated it seems the British public have been?

00:23:22.960 I certainly have. I found it shocking. I don't know. I've gone through all kinds of different

00:23:28.160 emotions about it. The thing is, epidemics are really frightening. I might not have thought

00:23:35.200 lockdown was a good idea but I was also frightened about the epidemic at the beginning I remember

00:23:39.640 stocking up on tinned food in case I got in and my kids would have to cook on their own you know

00:23:44.660 it's normal it's hard baked into us to be frightened I think fear was an open door

00:23:51.760 and that's that's the point it was really easy for the government to leverage it because fear

00:23:55.480 was already there and behavioural science works I mean it's advertising it's the bakery in the

00:24:02.620 supermarket. It's all around us all the time. I don't know if the British people have been

00:24:08.540 especially sheepish. That's what the advisor's view was. I quoted them in this Telegraph feature.

00:24:15.020 I don't know because I haven't done enough comparison of attitudes in different countries

00:24:20.660 to be sure. It might just be that it was wielded a lot more heavily on us. But surely when you have

00:24:27.620 access to facts because we all have the internet, doesn't that mean that you're able to challenge

00:24:33.540 the government's propaganda far more effectively and think for yourself?

00:24:38.600 Well, it depends what you rely on for your news sources. That's the thing. I was looking up

00:24:45.060 infection fatality rates at the beginning, but a lot of people, if they're relying on the Downing

00:24:50.080 street press briefings or just mainstream news stories which are more what's the word

00:24:59.220 fear-mongering at the beginning um not everybody goes off and researches alternate sources of

00:25:04.640 information to to get that balance not all media's been equal in this time i think it's been a bit of

00:25:10.280 a mixed bag one one of the experiences has really struck me particularly over the last few months

00:25:15.660 As COVID has become far less dangerous, we've got the vaccine program, which has been a huge success.

00:25:22.100 Far fewer people are being infected.

00:25:23.960 Far fewer people are in hospital.

00:25:26.560 Far fewer people are dying.

00:25:28.420 And every time there's a conversation, whether it's on television or in the papers or whatever,

00:25:34.560 when I am saying, well, look, we've got more hospitals in England than people with COVID in hospital.

00:25:42.020 This is, at the time the government delayed the Freedom Day last time, that was the case.

00:25:47.520 I'm saying, look, the average number of deaths from COVID, with COVID, not from COVID, is like in low 20s, let's say.

00:25:54.640 So very few people are dying from COVID out of a daily death toll of about 1,400.

00:25:59.120 Or, you know, you are not a threat if you are under the age of 18.

00:26:03.700 These obvious facts that everybody, including the scientists, will accept.

00:26:08.380 And yet the response from the public to that information,

00:26:12.460 if it's reaching them at all, is just so disproportionate.

00:26:16.800 And that's where, you know, we started to go,

00:26:20.220 well, we need to talk to Laura about this

00:26:21.660 because I feel like in the book you've got the explanation

00:26:25.340 of that disconnect between the facts on the one hand

00:26:28.520 and the public response on the other.

00:26:30.960 Do you think that the rational way that some people are reacting

00:26:34.500 to what's happening is a product of that fear?

00:26:37.360 or do you think it was always going to happen

00:26:38.760 because people just are irrational anyway?

00:26:41.540 Oh, I don't know.

00:26:42.580 I don't have the in-depth answer

00:26:44.060 to whether people are irrational anyway.

00:26:45.800 I mean, I've seen information from people

00:26:48.460 not being generally very good

00:26:49.940 at understanding risk and numbers, and I get that.

00:26:52.520 And I think the first hit hurts the most.

00:26:54.680 So the thing is, you see the scary ads.

00:26:56.880 I mean, right at the beginning,

00:26:57.760 I remember one which showed somebody on a gurney,

00:27:00.440 but their head was just kind of conveniently out of frame.

00:27:04.500 These things were very subtle,

00:27:05.820 gives you the impression that they don't have a head.

00:27:07.360 of course you know they have a head but it looks a bit scary and health workers with big masks on

00:27:13.660 and it looked like something out of a horror film and you know the language is very dramatic.

00:27:20.180 You see that, that's what gets you. Not later on doing a bit of research into infection fatality

00:27:25.560 rates. I talked to a broadsheet journalist anonymously for the chapter in the media

00:27:30.780 and you know they were explaining that sometimes it's just a race to get the news out, you know,

00:27:35.380 You want to be first.

00:27:36.620 So if you remember the witty and valance shock and awe

00:27:41.260 presentation, I call it the shock and awe presentation,

00:27:43.600 last autumn, and when they were talking,

00:27:46.060 do you remember the steep, red, scary lines?

00:27:49.000 Then afterwards, they kind of had their knuckles

00:27:50.380 wrapped a little bit by Theresa May and the National Statistics

00:27:53.760 Authority.

00:27:56.980 Obviously, newspapers reported on that straight away

00:27:59.260 because the figures were shocking.

00:28:00.880 And then later on, you get the pieces

00:28:02.600 that go into more granular detail and say, well, it's not really going to be as bad as all that.

00:28:08.120 But what hits people the most? It's the first story. It's the steep red line. It's the big,

00:28:12.220 scary number. And what would you say to people who go, look, we've always had a history of doing

00:28:17.300 this in a pandemic. Look at the AIDS campaign in the mid 80s. Don't die of ignorance with the

00:28:22.020 tombstone literally falling and then making that huge sound. What would you say to those people?

00:28:28.500 What are those people saying exactly?

00:28:30.220 So I know what to say about it.

00:28:30.840 Oh, right.

00:28:31.720 So essentially, you know, we've always done this in pandemics.

00:28:35.260 Look at the HIV AIDS pandemic, the very famous advertisement with the gravestone falling,

00:28:39.920 and then John Hurt's narration with the words, don't die of ignorance.

00:28:45.460 Well, that is a good comparison because it was frightening.

00:28:49.680 There are quite a few differences and quite a few similarities.

00:28:52.420 um somebody interviewed for the book um professor knut batowski um talked about that from when he

00:28:59.540 was in germany and he said he really struggled at the time because he knew this wasn't a virus

00:29:04.500 that was going to affect children but for instance messaging at the time was children shouldn't touch

00:29:08.280 each other's toys they'll catch aids you know the risks were perhaps not very well understood right

00:29:13.900 at the beginning and then exaggerated and some of the early aids campaigning told gay men not to

00:29:20.400 have sex well that just goes completely against human nature don't be silly and then it moves to

00:29:24.940 safe sex and people go back and look at that campaign and assume it was really successful

00:29:30.620 but I think that it might be a bit modelled up with people wanting to say it was successful and

00:29:36.800 ignoring the impacts of grassroots work at the time you know needle exchanges and other things

00:29:43.180 you might be younger than me but I remember that campaign and I didn't really know what it was

00:29:48.840 about except that it was to do something very very scary called sex and it was it just really

00:29:54.840 it had an impact on me but I didn't really know why I was scared not sure that I needed that um

00:30:01.900 I don't don't feel it's particularly emotionally scarred or anything it's fine I guess the core

00:30:06.960 of France's question and this is something I wanted to ask you about anyway is is it not

00:30:11.920 appropriate for the government sometimes to exaggerate the threat in order to get people

00:30:16.980 to pay attention to something and to follow rules.

00:30:20.200 So, for example, in a time of war,

00:30:21.920 the government wouldn't be releasing the day-to-day information

00:30:25.900 about what's happening because there's a reason for that.

00:30:29.320 Now, in war, it's obviously so the enemy doesn't find out what's going on,

00:30:32.960 but there are situations in which it's okay for the government

00:30:36.940 not to be telling the full truth about what's going on.

00:30:39.480 That's, I guess, the core of the argument.

00:30:41.900 What do you make of that in this context?

00:30:44.580 I don't know.

00:30:45.880 I think it's a debate. I'm not going to appoint myself benign dictator of the world and think

00:30:52.420 that I know best. I think it really needs to be scrutinised with expert witnesses in a

00:30:59.960 consultation. I don't like the lack of honesty and I don't like the lack of transparency.

00:31:05.120 I mean, you're right, in a war, some information would be withheld. But in fact, we had the

00:31:09.820 opposite. We were flooded with gloomy numbers and we were the fallen. You know, we've been

00:31:14.900 subjected to frightening metrics all the way through, but there's been a slight lack of honesty

00:31:19.580 sometimes about what they mean and a lack of context, which has created a disproportionate

00:31:26.060 level of fear, which has brought its own host of collateral damages, like an increase in alcohol

00:31:31.580 abuse, an increase in opiate addictions, an increase in mental health problems, people being

00:31:36.400 too scared to go to the hospital and then dying at home, people going too late for heart conditions

00:31:41.660 and now it's too late for effective treatment.

00:31:43.560 I mean, there's just so much collateral damage

00:31:45.460 from frightening people disproportionately.

00:31:48.920 I mean, we were told about deaths, but never recoveries.

00:31:52.480 Why give one figure but not the other?

00:31:56.000 The hospital admissions number has always been quite

00:31:58.560 one of the prominent numbers on the government COVID dashboard,

00:32:01.300 but it doesn't tell you what you think it does.

00:32:03.940 You might think it means how many people were admitted

00:32:05.760 to hospital with COVID.

00:32:07.020 Well, it includes those people.

00:32:09.060 It also includes people who went to hospital routinely

00:32:11.480 for something else, and then they were diagnosed with COVID. And it also includes people who caught

00:32:16.120 COVID in hospital. That's more than you think. So that's an important number. And when you're

00:32:20.520 planning how far apart beds need to be spaced and staffing, it's a really important number,

00:32:24.800 but it's not the number people thought it was. So I think there's a whole chapter on the metrics

00:32:30.380 of fear in the book. There's lots of ways in which numbers were presented in ways that inflated

00:32:35.300 alarm and amplified fear. And it's so interesting you say that because what these numbers did is

00:32:42.360 it unleashed a petty authoritarianism across the country, not only from newspapers, but also people

00:32:49.440 being encouraged to snitch on their neighbours. It felt like we were living out of something from

00:32:54.800 the Soviet Union. Yeah, don't talk badly about my people. Well, it has had a bit of a whiff of

00:33:00.760 community block policing about it. I remember the first time I heard about a snitch line,

00:33:04.540 I was really depressed. I thought, no, don't do this. It was just awful. And even as we've been

00:33:12.780 coming into recovery, some of the messaging has been really just depressing. One minister said,

00:33:18.500 yeah, tell people that you'll report them if you see them hugging. It's just tell on Matt Hancock.

00:33:26.500 It's just really depressing. And that's what I meant before about dividing people. It's not just

00:33:31.880 about creating fear. It's also about creating groups and dehumanising and snitching on the

00:33:38.500 naughty ones. I mean, there've been some very unedifying moments. Do you remember two teenagers,

00:33:43.460 two students, where they might not be teenagers, but students who are fined £10,000 each for

00:33:48.600 organising a snowball fight in January? Good. Really? No, I'm joking. I'm miserable. I've got

00:33:55.560 back pain. But no, but you're serious. Even though we knew the science at the time, that was

00:34:01.340 highly unlikely for people to catch COVID outside. Even though we knew that. And these fines are

00:34:08.940 literally the worst fines since the time of the Sheriff of Nottingham. I mean, really,

00:34:13.320 they're the worst fines. You have to go back to the dark ages. And that's what we've done to,

00:34:18.620 because that makes you then terrified to break the rules. And some people might say, good,

00:34:22.480 you know, don't do the time, don't do the crime. But it's a pretty steep fine for students.

00:34:28.220 Well, and to add to that the fact that I don't think there's been a single prosecution under the rules that were brought in that actually got upheld in court.

00:34:36.720 They were all challenged and all overturned.

00:34:39.520 So people are scared not to break rules, but when those rules are actually tested, those rules are unenforceable by their very nature in some instances.

00:34:49.500 Can I just jump in and say something?

00:34:51.040 Is that right?

00:34:51.640 Because you said before we started I was allowed to jump in, so I've got something I want to jump in on.

00:34:55.440 You jump in as much as you want.

00:34:57.560 Because I think you asking me, well, is it OK to use fear is good.

00:35:01.920 You should be challenging me.

00:35:02.960 I don't mind a challenging interview.

00:35:04.580 And I would say I've got my own views.

00:35:07.080 I'm quite opinionated, but it needs public consultation.

00:35:10.960 That's really important.

00:35:12.020 But I just want to say that some of the most damning indictments

00:35:14.420 come from psychologists that I interviewed and government advisors.

00:35:18.620 And that's part of the spine of the book, to be honest.

00:35:22.660 You know, I spoke to one longstanding government advisor

00:35:25.140 who told me that they're stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology.

00:35:29.640 And I spoke to a psychologist who is on Spy Bee,

00:35:33.400 who said that they wake up at 3am with the fear of what they've done

00:35:38.800 and this dystopia that's being created.

00:35:40.740 So this isn't just some mad rambling thesis of mine.

00:35:45.080 I've interviewed a multitude of professionals and academics

00:35:48.820 who not only share these concerns, they voice them more clearly than me.

00:35:53.200 and you say dystopia i mean that's a pretty strong word to use what do you mean by the

00:35:57.580 is it look around my friend well look i mean the people would say oh come on but we're not living

00:36:03.480 you know you're not getting carted off we don't have gulags we don't have concentration camps

00:36:08.380 that's a true meaning of a dystopia you set a high standard there great as long as we're not

00:36:13.280 there we're fine okay yeah i'll be the first in the re-education gulag probably embroidering face

00:36:19.200 masks or something, I don't know. It's not me who called it a dystopia, but I think there's

00:36:24.220 aspects of this year that have felt dystopian. I think there's been a lot of fear in the air,

00:36:29.640 and you caught it one way or the other, and whatever dystopia means to you, it's probably

00:36:34.760 felt dystopian one way or another to a lot of people. It has felt dystopian. To me, the moment

00:36:40.740 where I started to lose faith in the government was the issue of masks, where at the start they

00:36:47.320 said, oh, no, you shouldn't wear masks. There's no evidence. You know, the evidence is weak

00:36:51.420 surrounding masks. And isn't the evidence weak surrounding masks anyway? But it seems that we've

00:36:57.040 now been turned against each other. Yeah, this is a kind of a classic example of where the thesis

00:37:04.920 of my book takes you. But it's still so controversial to talk about because people are largely in

00:37:10.600 favour. And they're largely in favour because they've been told by their government that their

00:37:14.960 mask protects other people. The government's own website, not the kind of like the basic

00:37:20.600 advice bit, go into their policy papers, says that the evidence is weak and it's limited.

00:37:27.120 There isn't good hard evidence in favour of masks. Flyweight would be fair. There's one

00:37:32.720 randomised controlled trial into mask use, the Dan Mask study. I interviewed one of the authors

00:37:37.680 for the book. And to be fair, that study was about whether your mask protects you. That's

00:37:44.180 what they chose to investigate at the time. And they say it may be that the study's statistically

00:37:48.720 underpowered, but they can't find a statistical significant improvement from wearing a mask.

00:37:55.340 So that's the best study that we've got now about wearing masks in the community.

00:37:59.780 It's very mixed. And I spoke to an MP who told me anonymously that masks were

00:38:04.440 brought in, he hasn't good authority, they were brought in because the economic bounce back wasn't

00:38:10.580 good enough after the first lockdown and then the behavioural scientists realise that they are a good

00:38:17.140 signal because when you see people in masks you're reminded that there's an epidemic it's dangerous

00:38:22.020 out there we become walking billboards for danger and epidemic a virus and fear so it might encourage

00:38:28.120 people to follow the rules they also represent solidarity apparently according to some of the

00:38:33.820 spy bee advisors they love words like solidarity and collectivism they love the idea that we're

00:38:37.760 all in it together in our masks. Sounds very familiar from my car. Yeah, so the evidence

00:38:45.400 isn't good, but people now firmly believe it is because that's what they've been told. And I just

00:38:50.080 think it's a really shocking thing to have done to a population. It is. And I've seen it happen

00:38:56.520 because you talk about masks. I was just talking to a friend of a friend who I remember at the

00:39:03.500 At the beginning of the pandemic, she's a vet.

00:39:05.940 And she was saying, we don't need to wear masks.

00:39:08.400 I wear a mask when I'm doing surgery on an animal

00:39:10.900 to prevent my saliva from going into the wound.

00:39:14.180 But apart from that, just wash your hands.

00:39:16.320 Don't hug strangers, whatever, for the moment.

00:39:19.340 But you don't need to wear a mask.

00:39:21.020 Fast forward eight months later, this person is saying

00:39:23.260 they will never stop wearing a mask for the rest of their life.

00:39:28.260 And that has happened to someone who's a medical professional

00:39:32.200 in the space of eight months.

00:39:34.100 So how that has affected people

00:39:37.160 who don't even have that medical knowledge,

00:39:39.300 I only dare to think, really.

00:39:43.100 I think if we're not careful, they're going to stay around.

00:39:46.220 Did you see, it's one of the Williams sisters,

00:39:48.160 I can't remember which one, maybe because I couldn't see her face,

00:39:50.660 but she was wearing this dress that has this cowl neck

00:39:53.140 that doubles up as a mask.

00:39:55.640 Serena.

00:39:56.400 Is it Serena?

00:39:57.040 Yeah.

00:39:57.180 Okay.

00:39:58.040 And I saw that, I was like, oh no, please God, no,

00:40:00.480 don't incorporate it into dresses I'm not buying one of those but also do you know do we really

00:40:05.820 think that virus labs around the world are going to adopt that as their as their PPE no but Laura

00:40:12.900 the question I wanted to ask you is is about what's happening now because we're now at a point

00:40:19.060 where we're approaching the lifting of restrictions here in the UK the despite the fact that basically

00:40:25.260 most of the public don't seem to want it to happen. And we seem to be in a position now where

00:40:30.880 the government you alluded to earlier, they believe that they are entitled to threaten people

00:40:37.000 with taking away their rights, which up until this point in human civilization have always been

00:40:43.840 considered absolute and unrestrictable by government, which is your right to meet people,

00:40:49.940 your right of association, your right to be outdoors, etc. They are now saying that if you're

00:40:54.820 not vaccinated you will not be able to enjoy those rights like going into a pub or whatever

00:41:00.680 even though I don't think they believe that the restrictions themselves are necessary so in other

00:41:05.640 words they're scaring people with taking away rights that don't need to be taken away just to

00:41:11.200 force young people in this instance to take the vaccine. I mean why is no one saying that that's

00:41:17.140 unethical other than like three of us? Well I think there are more than that it's quite a difficult

00:41:22.720 conversation to have and I think that some of the media are running scared because it's difficult

00:41:27.060 to talk about it without sounding critical of the vaccine program or critical of the vaccine and

00:41:32.600 god forbid you'd want to be on the anti-vax team and I'm going to do another caveat here

00:41:37.080 I'm not an anti-vaxxer I've had childhood vaccinations travel vaccinations blah blah blah

00:41:42.140 but Laura just to interrupt you there isn't that the problem can you not be critical of this

00:41:47.000 vaccine and say look I'm worried about it a lot of it uses new technology I'm not sure if I want

00:41:52.000 to be exposed to this new technology automatically boom anti-vaxxer those are two completely

00:41:57.660 different positions surely well they should be they should be but they've but they're not at

00:42:02.580 the moment and the term refusenik was used it kind of floated up all at once and then it went away

00:42:07.700 because people said it wasn't appropriate refusenik is actually a positive term if someone refuses to

00:42:11.980 comply with government diktat but anyway let's not get but it wasn't used like that here was it

00:42:16.660 So there's a lot of nudging going on. And I agree with you. I think that the threat of the COVID

00:42:23.360 pass is to encourage young people to have the vaccine. Now, do we believe that Parliament can

00:42:28.420 do a good job when allowed to follow parliamentary process? I believe it. I love this country. I love

00:42:33.260 democracy. I love politics. There was a select committee into the use of COVID passes and it

00:42:40.520 found against them. So there's no scientific justification. So that's the result of a select

00:42:45.540 committee into the COVID pass. And yet they're being threatened. And I think it is to encourage

00:42:53.520 the young to get vaccinated. But informed consent shouldn't work that way. It shouldn't be based on

00:42:59.160 a threat or creating a two-tier checkpoint society. Your choice to have any medical

00:43:04.720 intervention, including a vaccine, should be simple benefit, harm, calculus. And if you're

00:43:11.140 not sure it's right for you, the best thing for you to do is to talk to your doctor. I think if

00:43:15.880 you're not sure, then threatening somebody that they won't be able to go to a football stadium

00:43:19.780 or a bar isn't the right way to reassure them. It's a threat. The other thing that's happening

00:43:24.960 at the moment is incentives. And this is completely new to this country. So the Mayor of London's

00:43:29.300 office was giving away tickets to watch the final in Trafalgar Square and also one pair of tickets

00:43:34.580 to watch it live. And Charlton Athletic gave away a thousand tickets to the first thousand to be

00:43:40.500 vaccinated in the stadium. And I wanted to write about this in this piece I just wrote about

00:43:45.080 nudges. And neither Charlton nor the mayor's office would come back to me on the issue

00:43:49.880 of whether an incentive affects informed consent. But of course it does.

00:43:55.140 That's the point of the incentive.

00:43:56.480 That's the point. And I spoke to a public health specialist who's a very keen vaccine advocate

00:44:00.580 who said she's very concerned about the impact on informed consent. We've never done this before.

00:44:06.360 I think we have to be really, really careful that in racing, racing to get to the finish line, the happy ending of this horrible story of a pandemic, we don't cross Rubicons.

00:44:16.660 And I think we are crossing Rubicons at the moment.

00:44:20.220 Now, if you're somebody who's resistant to the idea of a vaccine, I really don't see how the incentive or the threat will really make you have it.

00:44:27.300 What you need is to look at the risk and the harm for your personal circumstances and talk to a doctor.

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00:45:40.920 And Laura, doesn't it also show a complete contempt for ordinary working people?

00:45:44.900 Because we saw in America as well, they were giving out lotto tickets.

00:45:48.400 You could get a burger and fries.

00:45:50.600 Do they really think?

00:45:51.320 That's when you got excited, mate.

00:45:52.200 Yeah, it was actually.

00:45:53.040 That's when I thought, right, I'm jumping on a plane to America.

00:45:55.600 But in all seriousness, doesn't that show a complete contempt

00:45:58.440 of ordinary people that they can be so easily manipulated

00:46:01.560 bar from tickets to watch Charlton Athletic,

00:46:04.440 who, let's be fair, are shit?

00:46:05.780 And yes, there are probably three Charlton fans watching this,

00:46:07.780 and you are.

00:46:09.540 I think it's...

00:46:10.940 The diplomatic arm with which Laura started her answer.

00:46:13.860 I'm not going to talk about Charlton Athletic,

00:46:15.940 because, you know, my football watching is just like England in the Euros.

00:46:20.300 I don't watch specific teams.

00:46:21.940 I'm so sorry, Charlton.

00:46:22.900 I bet they're great, though, you pig.

00:46:24.840 No, they're really not.

00:46:26.300 Well, I mean, the incentives in the US are much worse than that.

00:46:29.680 I mean, they're really the Wild West of incentives.

00:46:32.200 Oh, my God.

00:46:32.960 So I wrote about this for Spectator World, their US edition.

00:46:35.900 They've had jabs for joints.

00:46:38.060 I mean, seriously, take a vaccine and have drugs that here would be illegal.

00:46:43.160 This one's quite funny.

00:46:44.640 Lap dances for a year if you get vaccinated.

00:46:47.260 What?

00:46:47.700 I know.

00:46:48.500 Now he's excited.

00:46:49.460 I thought it was the burgers that was going to do it.

00:46:51.220 Krispy Kreme doughnuts every day if you get vaccinated.

00:46:54.380 And I find that one actually really incongruous

00:46:57.700 because one of the really key comorbidities with COVID

00:47:02.460 that no one's talking about is obesity.

00:47:05.040 So the idea of eating a donut every day to,

00:47:07.440 you're not going to eat your way into optimum health that way, are you?

00:47:11.780 Free beer, I think it was Budweiser said

00:47:13.920 if 70% of the US population got vaccinated by 4th of July,

00:47:17.780 they'd do a free beer for everyone.

00:47:19.460 I don't know if they hit that target.

00:47:21.420 But they've been doing some really significant cash lotteries as well,

00:47:25.720 free flights and raffles, and I think most, you know,

00:47:28.240 worst of all, college education raffles as well,

00:47:31.240 because that's a big incentive.

00:47:32.260 So if you're 18 or 17 when they apply for college,

00:47:36.260 the risk calculus for the benefit of the vaccine is looking...

00:47:42.400 I'm not going to comment, God, science, people will get really angry with me.

00:47:45.820 I think you're on shaky ground to convince me

00:47:49.260 that a 17-year-old needs the vaccine.

00:47:50.880 Let's phrase it like this, Laura.

00:47:52.500 Let's phrase it like this.

00:47:53.520 If you're in your 80s and you've got comorbidities,

00:47:56.140 the risk-reward is very different

00:47:58.060 to if you're in your 20s and you've got no comorbidities.

00:48:00.780 Let's just phrase it like that.

00:48:01.840 And I'm talking about 17 and 18-year-olds.

00:48:03.800 But the idea of a free college education

00:48:06.160 is a massive draw.

00:48:07.800 That is a big carrot.

00:48:09.240 So we don't want to be like the United States, do we?

00:48:13.560 Also, they actually don't have very high uptake

00:48:16.400 to vaccinations for a lot of their programs.

00:48:19.260 And the British are, you know, we have a very high uptake.

00:48:22.400 We don't have COVID passes because most people just duly go and get vaccinated.

00:48:26.740 I mean, this array of incentives may end up, and threats may end up backfiring.

00:48:31.780 It may make people feel more resistant because people don't really like being told what to do.

00:48:35.940 A vaccine really interferes with your idea of personhood and state.

00:48:40.920 Yeah, and it does.

00:48:42.920 Do you not, and we've been skirting around this issue as we've talked over numerous topics.

00:48:48.360 Is what we're seeing a glorified form of divide and conquer?

00:48:52.440 I think there's been lots of divide and conquer.

00:48:55.120 We've seen small ways from snitch lines,

00:48:57.480 being told to report on your neighbours for having a party

00:48:59.900 or going out more than once a day in the lockdown.

00:49:04.260 You know, really nasty stuff.

00:49:05.920 Just at a time when people should be pulling together

00:49:07.460 and supporting each other in an epidemic to,

00:49:10.500 oh, what was it I saw today?

00:49:13.360 the vulnerable being told not to mix with the unvaccinated which I found quite depressing it's

00:49:20.980 very othering so somebody might be unvaccinated but they might have COVID and have immunity from

00:49:26.600 that and somebody can be vaccinated and still transmit COVID it's not it's not completely

00:49:31.460 clear-cut and binary so I feel like that's another it's another tactic it's another nudge

00:49:37.040 to say the vaccinated are clean and safe and the unvaccinated are the unclean and the unsafe and I

00:49:43.700 think we have to be really careful about language that dehumanises a whole group of people who might

00:49:49.460 be unable or choosing not to have a vaccine now I won't say why but I can't have the vaccine I'm

00:49:55.120 medically exempt I'm one of those people that others are being told not to mix with or that I

00:49:59.400 might not be able to go into bars and restaurants and it's it's amazing you know that you say that

00:50:05.240 because the whole point of our governmental system

00:50:09.140 is that you have an opposition.

00:50:11.000 The opposition is meant to challenge.

00:50:12.780 They're meant to push back on the government.

00:50:14.480 If anything, this law are more for authoritarian.

00:50:16.660 Yeah, they're pushing back on the government

00:50:18.040 and they want them to be more, you know,

00:50:19.880 do more of what they're doing.

00:50:21.460 Yeah, the oppositional comes from within the framework.

00:50:24.060 It's not don't do that.

00:50:26.080 It's do more of it, do it harder, do it longer,

00:50:28.080 do it earlier, just do more.

00:50:30.500 It's not pull a different lever.

00:50:32.040 It's pull that lever harder.

00:50:33.560 And so it's not really an opposition.

00:50:35.540 It's not.

00:50:36.720 Your position's coming from within the Conservative Party.

00:50:39.120 Yes, it is.

00:50:39.660 From the COVID recovery group MPs.

00:50:42.220 Yeah, it is.

00:50:43.240 And I was obviously joking earlier.

00:50:45.160 I'm disappointed with how Labour have handled this.

00:50:47.040 Of course I am.

00:50:48.240 Really?

00:50:48.880 Didn't you expect it all?

00:50:51.340 No, I didn't know how they'd react.

00:50:52.900 But anyway, look, let's move on a little bit.

00:50:56.060 Let me ask the tinfoil hat question,

00:50:59.360 which our producer and I were sitting here the other day

00:51:03.100 talking about this.

00:51:03.880 like at the beginning of the pandemic, when people started banging on about various conspiracy

00:51:08.600 theories, I was like, zero chance, not even entertaining this. And as it's progressed,

00:51:13.780 it's gone from like 0% to 0.1% to like 1% now. Are you growing exponentially? Is your

00:51:20.540 conspiracy theory growing exponentially? Yeah, I think I've got an internal pandemic of the mind

00:51:24.220 going on. But why is all of this happening? I really don't know. I really don't know. I remain

00:51:32.460 very open-minded and that's something about me I'm a really really open-minded person and my book is

00:51:38.020 not why it's how because I don't think we know the why at the moment it could just be that and I'm

00:51:44.860 going to go back to what the book is about about how the UK government weaponized fear during the

00:51:48.840 pandemic it could simply be they wanted people to follow the rules and they knew the rules they

00:51:53.060 were imposing were a huge form of potentially necessary or unnecessary social engineering

00:52:00.360 It could be that they panicked about the virus themselves, you know, the teeth of the crisis and they panicked.

00:52:06.860 So they threw away all the old pandemic plans and did something brand new, copying China.

00:52:12.460 It can also be that there could be vested interests at play.

00:52:15.580 I mean, maybe it serves some people's interests.

00:52:18.280 You know, there's been some scrutiny about contracts that haven't gone through the correct tendering process.

00:52:24.420 You know, you could have a coalescence here of cock up

00:52:27.180 and the road to hell being paved with the good intentions

00:52:32.140 and conspiracy theory terrain.

00:52:35.840 I don't really know.

00:52:37.240 I don't really know.

00:52:38.620 But we just have to watch and see.

00:52:41.800 You know, someone gave me a good analogy.

00:52:43.420 While the house is on fire, you don't know what started it.

00:52:46.000 You have to wait for the ashes to cool.

00:52:48.080 And our fire's still pretty hot at the moment.

00:52:50.900 So we don't know.

00:52:52.560 Do you think we're ever going to get back to normal,

00:52:54.340 as in the old normal, as in where we used to be in 2019?

00:52:58.280 Why don't we just normalise calling it normal?

00:53:00.900 Yeah.

00:53:01.720 But isn't this another example of just the way

00:53:05.140 that we've been collectively brainwashed?

00:53:07.100 The fact that I'm referring to normality as the old normal.

00:53:10.980 Well, it's really interesting that.

00:53:12.060 I mean, I'm quite interested in the term the new normal.

00:53:15.260 I'd quite like to do, I'd like somebody to pay me

00:53:17.240 to do a really good study into this actually about how it spread.

00:53:19.980 How did it spread?

00:53:20.760 Was it a form of linguistic contagion? Was there some pandemic plan that was secretly passed around

00:53:25.540 governments? Why did they all start saying new normal so early? I put the date in my book,

00:53:31.380 I can't remember off the top of my head, but Dominic Raab used the term the new normal within

00:53:34.360 a few weeks of the first lockdown. Now I'm very alert to language and at the time I thought,

00:53:38.660 well why would you say that? This sounds horrific, what do you mean? What new normal? I want to go

00:53:42.960 back to real normal and I didn't understand then and I still don't why you'd use a term that implies

00:53:49.760 that a whole way of being has passed. You don't use the new normal unless it's to signify some

00:53:55.020 new epoch. So I don't know what that means. That would be an interesting thing to explore. I'm

00:53:59.900 open-minded. But I don't want old normal back, actually. I know. I shot you. I don't. Because

00:54:06.660 I don't think it was good enough. It wasn't robust enough. Something that I've sort of grieved over

00:54:12.280 a little bit is not the freedoms that were taken away. It's the fact that I really didn't have

00:54:17.700 freedom if it could be taken away so easily and I think that we should be looking at a sort of a

00:54:25.080 bigger picture about how we make people cherish freedom and democracy and parliamentary process

00:54:31.640 and we need much much better more robust systems in place for future pandemics or crises

00:54:39.280 I don't think old normal was quite doing the job if it's gone so easily and it's still not back

00:54:45.700 I think we need something better.

00:54:47.700 I quite agree with you because when they can abolish

00:54:50.500 or outlaw protests and there doesn't seem to be a murmur about it

00:54:55.100 and then you had the Women's March

00:54:56.940 and then you saw those awful footage of police officers

00:55:01.240 kneeling on women's back, that was the only time it seemed

00:55:04.440 that the people started to wake up as to what was happening.

00:55:07.660 And it wasn't a lockdown protest,

00:55:10.040 so it garnered a different level of sympathy

00:55:11.880 because of the nature of it and that's good.

00:55:13.940 I mean, it's not good that it happened.

00:55:15.480 It's horrific, but it's good that at least people started talking about the right to protest.

00:55:20.380 There are a lot of really essential basic human rights that were withheld from people.

00:55:25.500 And you could argue that was necessary during a pandemic or not.

00:55:28.360 But it's how fragile our relationship to those rights appears.

00:55:32.200 So worship, education, protest, even elections, you know, the local elections were cancelled, which was shocking, I thought.

00:55:42.120 It was. It was. And what do you, are you optimistic about the future?

00:55:45.360 where is this all going? Because the concern you've just articulated is my biggest concern

00:55:50.580 about all of this. We've opened not one and not two and not five and not even 10 different Pandora's

00:55:59.520 boxes. Every aspect of the relationship between the citizen and our representatives has been

00:56:07.360 completely and dramatically changed in a very short period of time without any democratic

00:56:12.880 scrutiny whatsoever and so the question for me we started with this but the question for me going

00:56:19.380 forward is are you optimistic that we're not just going to live in a completely different era now

00:56:25.360 in which everything we used to believe about representative democracy about government about

00:56:30.980 our rights and freedoms it's just not going to be the same anymore are you optimistic that

00:56:34.980 that we'll make it through this to a better normal i don't know i oscillate and i don't pretend to

00:56:41.640 have a crystal ball for me july 19th isn't freedom day i've got no expectation of freedom

00:56:46.700 on july 19th i still i think we'll see a return of some privileges you know the privilege to go

00:56:53.180 to a restaurant or to a bar or to gather at someone else's house in greater numbers than

00:56:57.280 whatever it is i actually can't keep the rules in my head anymore because they've changed so much

00:57:01.200 i get i get lost on the numbers but i think we'll see the return of some uh privileges because

00:57:06.480 they're not freedom if you have to buy them, negotiate, plead, exchange. It's a stepping

00:57:12.400 stone to just move towards a better version of freedom. The thing that I think we need

00:57:18.200 is public consultation on the use of behavioural science, because it's behavioural science

00:57:22.340 that made people so frightened, it made them comply with the rules, and it accounts for

00:57:27.220 where we are right now, where people are, you know, the anxiety about the 19th and some

00:57:31.540 restrictions being lifted is palpable and that is not proportionate to the deaths or to the

00:57:38.340 hospitalisations. I mean cases are a function of the amount of testing and shouldn't be the measure

00:57:45.440 but they are. It's a big number isn't it? The big numbers are the scary ones. So what I think we

00:57:51.880 need as well as the inevitable Covid inquiry is a public consultation and inquiry into the

00:57:56.540 government's reliance on behavioural science. There have been various calls in the past for

00:58:00.500 consultation and they haven't happened and perhaps nobody thought it mattered while they were just

00:58:05.940 you know quietly making cigarette packaging plain or encouraging us to pay our tax returns on time

00:58:12.280 or making us lock up the biscuit tin but this time we were locked up and so it matters I think it's

00:58:17.760 time to to look at what they're doing. I think it is time to look at what they're doing do you think

00:58:23.200 it was quite sinister that Boris Johnson in that particular press conference talked about personal

00:58:28.340 responsibility, almost as a way that if things do go wrong, the fault is not on the government,

00:58:33.940 it's on the individual or the general public. I liked him talking about personal responsibility.

00:58:39.580 I think that the British public should have been trusted all along. You know, the alternative to

00:58:43.920 scaring people witless to encourage a lockdown would be to say, well, there are certain things,

00:58:48.320 like really big gatherings, stadia, we need to apply some sensible measures, but

00:58:53.000 there's this really dangerous disease. It's particularly dangerous to these categories

00:58:57.820 of people and we would like to ask you to be mindful of this, this and this, would we not

00:59:02.580 have done it? I would have done. I think most people would have been, should have been trusted

00:59:08.120 with honesty and with personal responsibility. What I thought was quite something in that speech

00:59:15.060 was he said, we're changing the tools to control human behaviour. That's the bit that woke me up.

00:59:22.380 Tools to control human behaviour. It's just out there in the open. They just talk about it quite

00:59:25.960 quite openly now. And what do you think he means by that? Well, he specifically said away from

00:59:31.140 legal restrictions and towards personal responsibility, which is going in the right

00:59:34.440 direction. But it's an honest labelling of tools to control human behaviour. What are all the tools?

00:59:39.380 I mean, they're in my book. Let's talk about them. Let's get some expert witnesses talking

00:59:43.080 about them. Let's gather better evidence. Let's find out who behind these tools. How much does

00:59:47.520 it cost us, the taxpayer? What are we spending on behavioural science in each government department

00:59:51.380 and on marketing campaigns why is it not in manifestos and what's the collateral damage

00:59:57.120 which you've talked about there's another bit of this before we wrap up that i find very interesting

01:00:02.200 you've alluded to it and it's a conversation that's uh certainly unhaveable on television or

01:00:07.500 in in the newspapers but the reality of this virus this this has been acknowledged it obviously

01:00:13.080 is particularly deadly to the elderly but in terms of things that you yourself can control

01:00:17.900 the one well not the one but a couple of things we know is obesity and your overall immune system

01:00:26.180 are two things that can provide either very very bad outcomes or very good outcomes depending on

01:00:33.220 whether those are things that are under control and I we have seen a tremendous amount of messaging

01:00:38.560 of the negative type we I don't think I've ever seen an ad from the government about what I can do

01:00:45.880 to protect myself from COVID other than stay at home.

01:00:50.820 No one has told me to exercise.

01:00:52.260 No one's told me to eat better.

01:00:53.480 No one's told me to take vitamins.

01:00:55.560 No one has told me to get fresh air.

01:00:57.900 No one's told me to get the sun.

01:00:59.420 No one's said any of these things.

01:01:01.000 Yet we know that of the things that you can control,

01:01:03.340 which is probably what all of us want to know about,

01:01:07.100 those are the things that you actually can do

01:01:09.060 to improve your survivability,

01:01:11.540 to improve your likelihood of transmission,

01:01:13.240 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:01:14.180 so in terms of the interview you've done many interviews for the book was that ever discussed

01:01:19.200 and and what are your thoughts on why that's never happened i don't know it's baffling um

01:01:24.340 isn't it it is baffling and it's it's something that's grated on me since the beginning of the

01:01:28.560 epidemic so there's been discussion about whether vitamin d helps not but we know it helps with

01:01:33.860 other respiratory diseases obviously good nutrition exercise sleep um and it's been known

01:01:41.720 since very early that obesity appears to be a comorbidity, diabetes, hypertensive disorder.

01:01:48.620 So there's a lot of things that people could do to improve their overall health. And we could

01:01:52.760 be working on that before this winter. So I don't really know. I don't know why that hasn't been the

01:01:59.000 focus. But it's worse than that, of course, because fear and stress have psychopathological

01:02:05.960 outcomes. You know, it affects the immune system and it can affect overall physical health.

01:02:09.980 so frightening people could have also made people sicker literally physically sicker not just affect

01:02:16.860 mental health it's very true uh laura we could talk about this for a very long time and probably

01:02:23.100 just get more and more depressed as we do uh but listen we're going to ask you some questions for

01:02:27.080 our locals but before we do we've got one final question for you which is always what's the one

01:02:31.000 thing we're not talking about but we really should be well we're going on holiday this summer

01:02:36.000 No, I'm kidding.

01:02:39.000 No, that's what we should be talking about, shouldn't we?

01:02:42.260 We really should.

01:02:43.620 That's a good point.

01:02:44.200 Well, Francis and I have both been on holiday already.

01:02:46.300 Have you?

01:02:46.820 Yeah.

01:02:47.280 Where did you go?

01:02:48.240 I went to Ibiza.

01:02:50.500 Nice.

01:02:51.260 Wow, you swung that nicely in time.

01:02:53.360 Some little window of restrictions.

01:02:55.980 Did you really?

01:02:56.880 Yeah, I did.

01:02:57.440 The moment it looks as if it was going to open,

01:03:00.360 I said to the girlfriend, I went, right,

01:03:02.180 the moment the door opens, we're going for it

01:03:04.480 because I don't know when it's going to shut again.

01:03:06.440 We both need a holiday.

01:03:07.580 And we just went.

01:03:08.340 The moment open, we went.

01:03:10.700 Nice, good.

01:03:11.560 There's a good little bit of information for you.

01:03:13.520 That's what you tuned in.

01:03:14.560 Anyway, Laura, thank you so much for coming on.

01:03:16.880 The book is called A State of Fear.

01:03:18.420 I recommend people get it and check it out for themselves.

01:03:21.240 Where else can people find your work online?

01:03:23.940 My website is lauradodsworth.com.

01:03:26.460 I'm a writer and photographer.

01:03:28.240 And on Twitter and Instagram, I'm at Bear Reality.

01:03:31.280 Not Bear, the grizzly bear, bear, naked bear.

01:03:33.840 fantastic thank you so much for coming on the show thank you all for watching we're going to

01:03:38.200 do our locals questions in a second but take care we'll see you very soon with another fabulous

01:03:42.640 episode or a live stream all of them go out 7 p.m uk time we hope you've enjoyed this incredible

01:03:50.580 interview remember to subscribe and hit the bell button so that you never miss another fantastic

01:03:56.580 episode and if you believe that the work we do here at trigonometry is important support us by

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TRIGGERnometry - July 21, 2021

Fear and Spin： Government Manipulation on COVID-19

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