‘Lockdown Files’: U.K. Health Officials Used ‘Guilt’ and ‘Fear’ — Not Science — to Control Public Behavior

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Private WhatsApp messages shared with The Telegraph reveal how U.K. health officials, including former health secretary Matt Hancock, made COVID-19 policy decisions based on political expediency rather than science, as health officials claimed publicly.

The messages “raise vital new questions about the handling of the pandemic ahead of a public inquiry into the response to COVID-19” and reveal “devastating details about the pandemic response that had until now remained secret,” according to The Telegraph, which obtained the archive of more than 100,000 messages from — dubbed “The Lockdown Files” — from journalist Isabel Oakeshott.

Oakeshott is co-author of Hancock’s book, “Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against COVID.”

Hancock was the first member of the U.K. government to announce a lockdown, in statements made March 16, 2020, based on advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). The lockdown officially began a week later.

The messages expose how officials informally made decisions about lockdowns, mask mandates, social distancing and isolation, quarantines, vaccine distribution and a host of other COVID-19-related issues, and how the decisions were politically motivated.

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Fear and guilt ‘vital tools’ to ensure compliance

One of the key revelations is how Hancock and other key U.K. government figures and advisers ensured public compliance with repeated lockdowns and other strict measures.

On Dec. 13, 2020, facing opposition within the ranks of his own Conservative Party over the prospect of a new lockdown and worries that Brexit talks would overshadow the COVID-19 narrative, one of Hancock’s media advisers, Damon Poole, suggested to Hancock, “We can roll pitch with the new strain” — referring to the recently identified Alpha variant of COVID-19.

Hancock responded, “We frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain,” to which Poole replied, “Yep that’s what will get proper bahviour [sic] change.”

In another message, Hancock asked his adviser, “When do we deploy the new variant?”

Discussions that followed after Christmas between Hancock and cabinet secretary Simon Case sought to identify ways to sell the strictest possible measures to the public.

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“Fear” and “guilt” were identified as “vital tools in ensuring compliance,” according to The Telegraph, as was mandatory mask wearing in “all settings,” because it had a “very visible impact.”

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The Behavioural Insights Team advised the U.K. government during the pandemic. The team shared members with the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, a subgroup of SAGE — which strongly encouraged the use of “nudging.”

Previously, in summer 2020, with reported COVID-19 cases at low levels in the U.K. and dining set to reopen, Hancock and his advisers believed the threat of localized lockdowns would not be “unhelpful” to maintain a level of fear amongst the public, to which Hancock responded, “that’s no bad thing.”

Vaccines: ‘purely a comms/political thing’

“The Lockdown Files” also revealed that a host of COVID-19 policy decisions were made with political expediency, public image and future career prospects in mind — though the public was told that those decisions were based on “science.”

Early in the pandemic, on Jan. 29, 2020, Hancock sent a long message to an aide explaining to him how he could use “a crisis of this scale to propel [himself] into the next league.”

By mid-April 2020, just weeks into the first lockdown but months away from the release of the first COVID-19 vaccines, Hancock and media adviser Jamie Njoku-Goodwin discussed how “pushing on vaccine” and being “first out of the blocks on vaccine” would be “the most politically beneficial thing they do.”

Far from being based on “science,” this strategy was described as “purely a comms/political thing.”

During the second lockdown in 2020, Hancock angled to link his name to a government plan to supply Vitamin D to the vulnerable, telling Poole to “base it on ‘new evidence emerged and I’ve acted fast’ … swift & decisive.”

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‘We are going to own the exit’ from lockdowns

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In December 2020, as the first COVID-19 vaccines were about to roll out, Hancock and his advisers discussed how the government could come out ahead in the public eye. Hancock told Poole, “We are going to own the exit [from lockdowns]. That is the strategic imperative.”

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When U.K. government vaccines tsar Dame Kate Bingham suggested in October 2020 that COVID-19 vaccination of the entire population was “not going to happen” and that only “everyone at risk” would receive the jab, Hancock described her as “wacky” and “totally unreliable” in messages to his advisers.

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Many of the leaked messages pertain to the lockdowns themselves, revealing that Hancock and other cabinet members and advisers informally sought ways to garner support for such a measure — and often resorted to threats against the party’s own members and key scientists in order to ram through policies.

In March 2020, on the cusp of the U.K.’s first lockdown, Australian political strategist Isaac Levido met with Hancock and other members of the cabinet to discuss how to overcome opposition to lockdowns within the party’s ranks on the basis that they would be unpopular with the public.

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According to The Telegraph, these conversations occurred even as the public was told “ministers insisted all decisions were taken according to the science and on the advice of England’s two most senior advisers, Prof Sir Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance,” adding that “it is unclear” which polls Hancock had been referring to.

Other messages revealed that Johnson wanted to end the first lockdown early, allowing dining to reopen ahead of the scheduled July 4, 2020, “freedom day,” but he was thwarted by two media strategists, Lee Cain and James Slack, with no scientific background. They said that this would be “too far ahead of public opinion.”

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Mask policy appeared to be based on similar considerations. On June 1, 2020, Cummings suggested introducing compulsory mask-wearing on public transport, as “It’s free, buys us some R, no real downside.” The policy was enacted three days later.

The leaks also revealed that in October 2020, Hancock and Baroness Dido Harding, the head of the U.K.’s Test and Trace program, sought to solidify government support for a second lockdown by developing a “do nothing death toll” — a projected number of COVID-19 deaths if the U.K. government took no measures.

Three weeks later, this resulted in modeling “projecting” 4,000 deaths. According to The Telegraph, this raises “questions about whether Mr Hancock was hoping to push the country into a second lockdown,” while Johnson himself, and other scientists, soon questioned the outdated data upon which the model — and lockdown — were based.

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Power politics also were employed against other politicians. In November 2020, on the cusp of the U.K.’s second lockdown, Hancock told Department of Health and Social Care special adviser Allan Nixon to warn a Conservative member of parliament intending to vote against the lockdown that funding for a new center for disabled children in his district would be withdrawn if he did so.

Other leaked messages revealed Hancock demanded the expulsion of Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the SAGE committee and director of the Wellcome Trust, for being openly critical of government policies such as Test and Trace.

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And on Dec. 18, 2020, with plans for the lockdown to be expanded past the holidays, Sunak suggested to Hancock that it should be ended by February, based on advice from SAGE.

But Hancock said, “This is not a SAGE call — it’s a political call,” telling Sunak that by February, only those in their late 70s and over will have been vaccinated.

Optics: social distancing, isolation, quarantine maintained despite the ‘science’

“The Lockdown Files” reveal that before the second U.K. lockdown, then-education secretary Sir Gavin Williamson was pressing to keep schools open, but Hancock fought to keep them shut.

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And despite being told by Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty that there were “no very strong reasons” for requiring school children to wear masks, Johnson opted for the advice of Cain and Case.

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Schools also maintained lateral flow tests for COVID-19 as the basis for keeping students in 10-day quarantine despite a reported high number of false positive results — often exceeding 50-60%, “The Lockdown Files” showed.

Hancock was warned of this “incredibly worrying” issue but opted against “unpicking” this policy. The government instead told the public the lateral flow tests were “99.9% accurate.”

The U.K. government also maintained “the rule of six,” which prevented gatherings of more than six people, despite knowing there was no “robust rationale” for it. Hancock was informed of this but replied that the government “[doesn’t] want to go there on this [and] also on curfew — they don’t want to shift an inch.”

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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/lockdown-files-united-kingdom-covid-pandemic-response/