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

The government imposed many restrictions on the population to control the spread of Covid and used fear, among other tactics, to encourage compliance. Yet one of the chief ways people caught Covid was in hospitals, which is beyond the responsibility of the population. A SAGE paper14 claimed that a staggering 40.5% of Covid infections in the first wave were caught in hospital. Between the beginning of the ‘second wave’ in September 2020 and 13 January 2021, over 25,000 people15 caught Covid while in hospital, but this may be an underestimate due to the limitations of the data available. The NHS was resolutely tight-lipped about hospital-acquired infections.

Many people would have been discharged before receiving a diagnosis (I anecdotally heard of a number through interviews with nurses and doctors) who would then have spread Covid among their families and the community. We don’t know the scale of nosocomial and the respective secondary infections, but the NHS’s withholding of the data most likely speaks to the volume of it.

In January 2021, Keir Starmer called for tougher measures including the closure of zoos.16 All the animals in the zoos, the visitors, the staff, the very notion of fun itself, were scapegoated while hospital-acquired infections were ignored, to save the hallowed NHS from being criticised. Of course, if you believe that legally mandated restrictions and lockdowns are the way to go, you might as well throw in zoos, I’m not making a special point about them, except that the idea they are a big problem is farcical. But still, none of this addresses hospital-acquired infections, about which we heard very little from the Minister of Health, NHS spokespeople, or the media.

Nosocomial infections are higher when community prevalence is higher, probably because of increased ‘traffic’ in hospitals,17 so lockdowns do make some sense in helping to suppress hospital-acquired infections. But otherwise, creating fear in the population and locking everyone down did nothing about the problem of nosocomial infection. There also wasn’t enough PPE (personal protective equipment) at the outset of the epidemic. Did we all have to carry the sins of an inadequately prepared government and ill-equipped NHS? Instead of being ‘cast out’ into the desert, did our scapegoating take the form of restrictions and confinement?

The ultimate scapegoats in the Covid epidemic and lockdown might have been children and the young. As Ellen Townsend told me, ‘Their needs were subjugated. The legacy that we are creating for the young people of this country is horrendous. There are austere times ahead for them. They lived through a time when they were virtually ignored. In all actions people in power should be doing things for the benefit of children. Why are we not putting them first in everything?’

Scapegoating is an enduring human practice. Imagine trying to explain to the Mayans that they did not need to throw live children to their watery graves in Cenotes in order to ensure the rain fell? Perhaps our children were Covid’s sacrificial lambs.

JIMMY, 32, BY HIS MOTHER

I found my son after he tried to kill himself.

We normally message a lot as a family. One day he left a message saying ‘I bloody love you lot.’ He told us he’d changed his phone number and then he left the group. Twenty-four hours later I still hadn’t heard anything else, which is not like him. I messaged his girlfriend and she said she thought he was with us because he’d said he needed a few days away. So I knew something was wrong. We found him at a hotel. His voice was very flat when I spoke to him. Then I got a very strange message saying ‘Don’t ring me.’

We rushed there and the hotel had to help us break into his room because the chain was on the door. He’d tried to kill himself. We called an ambulance.

We’ve talked a lot since he’s been at home. Before lockdown I think we could have helped before things got this bad because we’d have been seeing him in person. Life’s been harder without the normal things you can do in life like going out, going to the gym, even just sitting on a bench if you take a walk with someone. There’s no joy in life anymore and there’s nothing to look forward to. There’s no end point to this lockdown.

When he first came round he didn’t know where he was or why he was there. He said all he could see was people in masks and it looked like they were all angry. Normally you’d have seen the nurse’s face and they would probably say everything will be OK, but he said they looked like robots and he couldn’t see any kindness or concern. He said it freaked him out. You’d have thought they would know when he came round he would be like that.

He has said he’s sorry, but the last thing I want is for him to feel guilt. I don’t want anyone who has thought about killing themselves to feel guilty if they read this. People can’t help it. A lot of us are feeling very bleak.

I have a rage bubbling away. I am so angry about the way we have had this fear-mongering going on for such a long time. People think the BBC would never lie and the government wouldn’t be trying to frighten us, but it’s all about trying to scare people and all the time they are doing this, it is impacting people’s stress and health.

14. CULTS, CONSPIRACY AND PSYCHIC EPIDEMICS

‘I want to touch you, move you and inspire you’ said a friend to me during an out-of-the-blue phone call, over a decade ago. He told me about an incredible self-development course he was taking and asked me to come along and see what it was about for myself. Inquisitive, I asked questions about why he thought this course would be good for me. Was he telling everyone about it or