A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic - Laura Dodsworth (the first e reader .txt) 📗

many weeks and, one way or another, we lived under restrictions for over a year by the time of publication. Currently we are in a lockdown which has no guaranteed end date or exit strategy. Whether through bumbling incompetence and lack of planning, or through a covert foot in the door agenda, or combination of all of it, the fact is that a three-week lockdown was the seed for a much longer-term and more drastic arrangement.

We were told that masks didn’t work, and that they were even a bad idea, because you ‘trap’ the virus and breathe it in, and that they can also increase transmission.17 We were told they would not be introduced. But even saying that we wouldn’t have to wear masks planted the seed of an idea about mask-wearing. Then, despite no new conclusive evidence in their favour, masks were mandated on public transport, then in shops. Just before this mandate there were seemingly coordinated (or oddly coincidental?) calls from politicians and scientists. The Royal Society issued a report18 and press release urging the adoption of masks, although it concentrated on behavioural psychology and messaging rather than hard evidence. In fact, it had to note that uptake had been depressed by a lack of evidence-based medicine in favour of masks. Sadiq Khan asked for masks to be legally required. Once mandated, Matt Hancock said the mask policy would be rolled out ‘in chunks’.19 This was a rare explicit glimpse of the government’s considered foot in the door strategising.

The prospect of vaccine passports was also floated, withdrawn, and mentioned again. On 12 January 2021, the Vaccine Minister, Nadhim Zahawi, pledged that there were no plans to introduce vaccine passports. Yet on 24 January the Daily Mail20 reported that eight companies were in receipt of government funding to develop vaccine passports. Has a seed been planted? What will happen to the ministerial promise? Let’s see what grows.

KEEPING FEAR IN OUR FACES

Face coverings, or masks, appeal to ‘norms’ and social conformity. The behavioural psychologists love masks. They absolutely love them. They believe they promote collectivism, the feeling that we are all ‘in it together’. This attitude, clearly gleaned from my interviews with the SPI-B advisors, was confirmed when David Halpern answered MPs’ questions and said, ‘It took a long time to get people in masks. Our view early on was that masks are effective, not least because of the signal they create and of course the underlying evidence.’ So, he believed there was evidence in favour of masks, but note that ‘signal’ comes before ‘evidence’. Behavioural scientists pushed for masks because they create a ‘signal’, when in fact not a single Randomised controlled trial can demonstrate the value of mask-wearing outside clinical settings.

How does the signal work? Normative pressure is enhanced and sustained when we wear masks in public. They are a visible indicator that there is danger present all around, in the air we breathe and in the people we meet. Masked faces prime you to think of danger. We become walking billboards for disease and danger. They keep fear in our faces. Literally. They also distinguish the compliant from the rebels, although of course there are many valid reasons, and non-exhaustive legal exemptions, for not wearing a mask.

And what of the evidence? At the beginning of the epidemic, politicians and public health leaders around the world told us masks were not effective in the community. England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, said, ‘In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that.’21 In the US, Dr Anthony Fauci was clear on 8 March 2020 that ‘People should not be walking around with masks.’22 He went on to say that a mask might make people feel better and it might even prevent ‘a droplet’, but doesn’t give the protection people think and can even increase transmission. But although there was no new hard evidence, policies changed country by country. In England, masks were legally mandated on public transport on 15 June 2020 and then on 24 July in shops, in Scotland on public transport on 22 June and in shops on 10 July, Wales on public transport on 27 July and in shops on 14 September.

In a speech on 3 August 2020 WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said ‘the mask has come to represent solidarity’. What he did not mention was any new evidence behind the policy change. In fact, the WHO’s guide, Mask use in the context of Covid-19,23 published on 1 December 2020, said, ‘At present there is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.’ The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) concurs that ‘evidence regarding the effectiveness of non-medical face masks for the prevention of COVID-19 is scarce’.24 Matt Hancock said that masks ‘give people more confidence to shop safely and enhance protections for those who work in shops’.25 The UK government website does not offer the facts and figures behind the ‘science’, it just says that the ‘best available scientific evidence’ is that face coverings ‘may reduce the spread of coronavirus droplets in certain circumstances, helping to protect others’.26

An MP told me off the record that the Health Minister had told him that masks were introduced because the economic bounce-back was not strong enough after the first lockdown in 2020. It was felt that masks would make people feel safe enough to go shopping. Masks were supposed to serve as an economic stimulus. However, once we were wearing masks it became about social control, because it turned out they reinforced a feeling of abnormal threat and stimulated fear. The reason for wearing masks became inverted.

When I spoke to Robert Dingwall (a Professor of Sociology who advises the government) he told me he was convinced that masks had been introduced