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

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Dan Wootton is a GB News host and columnist at Daily Mail Online. Get TICKETS to TRIGGERnometry Live with Andrew Doyle here: https://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873619472 Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/​​​  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/trigger... https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod​​​ Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Boris Johnson and the government soon realized very early on. I mean, it was around the time of the first lockdown in March. We have to go with the media consensus on this, because if we don't go with the media consensus on this, we are going to be slaughtered on a daily basis, and we are going to be blamed for every single COVID death in this country. Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Bosh.

I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a male online columnist and a presenter on GB News. Dan Wooden, welcome to Chigin-a-N-Roy. Hello. It's so good to have you on the show, man. The roles are reversed because usually I do your show on Thursdays. You're here today. It's great to have you on.

You're asking the questions. This is terrified. Dear and Headlights moment for you. But listen, it's so great to have you on the show. We've got lots of questions for you. But before we get to them, Tell everybody about your background. Who are you, how are you where you are, what's been your journey through life that brings you sitting here talking to us? The journey word, the journey word. Well, I guess my background is quite unusual maybe in terms of where I ended up because I was born in New Zealand.

So I'm a dual British New Zealand citizen because my grandparents, well, my parents were actually born here. My mom was born in Essex. My dad was born on an army base in Malta, a British army base in Malta. but they were part of the wave of 10-pound POMs who emigrated to New Zealand after World War II to start a new life away from rationing and all of that sort of thing. So I was born in New Zealand first generation and moved here when I was 21 years old with no money in my pocket, didn't know a soul. So I guess I was a genuine outsider to this world. and the world of the media in the UK.

But I had a lot of ambition and I really wanted to succeed on Fleet Street as a journalist. And that's what I really put everything into. So I started working in financial journalism actually when I came over. That was my first job once I was finally able to get a job, having absolutely no money whatsoever. But I was just so determined I want a job in journalism no matter what it is. So I worked for a news that are called Futures and Options Week. Futures and Options Week, and it was about the derivatives market, and I knew absolutely nothing about, and I hated it. But it was like my route into journalism.

And then I worked for Broadcast Magazine, which was a big trade magazine for the TV industry, and that still exists today. And from there, I went on to News of the World, which I guess was my big break in journalism in the UK. And since then, I've worked for the song. I've worked for the Mail Online, the Daily Mail as well. And I worked for 10 years at ITV daytime as well. So that has led me to where I am now, which is as a presenter on GB News, the new British 24-hour news channel

and a columnist on Mail Online, or if you're from America or Australia Daily Mail.com, which is obviously the biggest and best most brilliant news website in the world, in my humble opinion. Yeah, no one would disagree. Some might. Dan, one of the reasons we were really keen to get you on, particularly I think since the emergence of G.B. News is it was so refreshing to see somebody on mainstream television putting articulately and intelligently without hyperbole, without overreacting,

without going into conspiracy, the case against some of the measures. that the government is taking on COVID, on lockdown, etc. And it was so refreshing. And one of the things that we wanted to ask you is actually both Francis and I come from sort of authoritarian countries. And so we are hypervigilant when government starts going too far. First, before we get into your views exactly, what is it that drives you to be such a strong opponent

on some of these restrictions that we are seeing? Well, to be honest, I didn't mention it actually when I was just talking about my little career history, but I guess it was very important to know that I was on air on talk radio hosting the drive time show there throughout the entire pandemic. I actually only took over the show from Aymn Holmes in February 2020, so literally with the specter of COVID-19 looming large. And obviously it was an incredible opportunity professionally to be on air at such a historic time.

And so many people were listening to radio because it was a lifeline for people stuck in their homes terrified. And I remember in March 2020, and later I went back and looked just to make sure that, you know, that my views had been consistent. But I remember saying at the start of March 2020, in a democratic country like the UK, there's absolutely no way that we will go down the path of authoritarian China and that all of these measures should be voluntary. And clearly, we have to change our behaviour. I was never denying that there was a pandemic or that we shouldn't stay home a bit more

or that certain things had to change. But I was so convinced, especially with a libertarian or a so-called libertarian Prime Minister, that we would not go down that path. And obviously, how naive I was. But like most of the country, you know, I reluctantly, very reluctantly, and obviously this is all documented

because I was on live for three hours a day apart from the time when I contracted COVID, which was just at the same time that Boris Johnson did, actually. But I was very consistent in the fact that I'm not keen on this, but, okay, three weeks to save the NHS, fine, let's do it. So I backed that first lockdown. I wrote my first column against lockdown in April 2020.

So after about a month. And obviously that was at a time when the media was still absolutely enthralled with the idea that restrictions needed to continue. So I certainly wasn't the first. You know, Peter Hitchens in terms of the mainstream media was the first, and it was fascinating. Because when he wrote his column in The Mail on Sunday, the sort of first big mainstream column about lockdown, the newspaper felt they had to make it very clear that this is our columnist's view. But as a newspaper, we disagree because there was. so much heat on anyone who was speaking out against the government message at that time.

And from that moment in April 2020, I very quickly started to realize that back in that first lockdown was a massive mistake because those freedoms that were taken away, we know now, were never easily going to come back. And so, you know, I never defined what I was. Other people, then defined me as a lockdown sceptic, but I never viewed myself that way. I don't mind people calling it that way, but for me, I was just calling it as I saw it and actually asking questions and asking for evidence. And there was so little of that forthcoming. When was a moment, Dan, that you just thought, hang on a minute. It was actually in April when I was walking home from work because I was going into the office every day.

So I'd had COVID. I'd had my, you know, 10 days or whatever locked in the house. And I got back out, got back to work. And I was walking home because I would walk every day home from the studio in London Bridge, which is where talk radio is based. And I got to the Millennium Bridge, which is the bridge in London,

which leads over to St. Paul's. And literally, there was not a soul. And I actually took that photo. and the Sun published it large with my first so-called anti-lockdown column. And I was just so disturbed. It was so dystopian. It's like this is 715 in what is usually the South Bank of London, one of the busiest parts of the world,

and there's not a soul. And what's happened? What's happened? What does this mean? What is the impact going to be on society? And then I walked across the bridge and a woman who I was walking past literally jumped to the other side of the bridge to get away from me. And I just couldn't, I saw then what the government messaging was already doing to people and how damaging it was going to be. And I think that's absolutely proven to be the case.

And what would you say to people who go, look, you know, this is a pandemic, this is a disease, which, you know, is deadly. for a large percentage of the population, the elderly, the vulnerable, comorbidities, all of that. We need to do this to protect them. Well, I later on, so I think in October, I then became a signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, which is the document put together by Dr. J. Batichariah and Sinaitra Gupta from Oxford University, brilliant, huge, medical brains. who came up with a plan to say there's a better way. There's a better way that we can protect the vulnerable,

which was all about focused protection of them in order for society to keep going. And then we would have got to herd immunity. And by now, a lot of this would be over. I'm not saying it would be gone. COVID's never going to be gone, is it? It's going to be with us for our lifetimes, but the restrictions would be gone.

So to the people who say that, I would say it doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense. to shut society down in the way that we did for so many reasons. And also, the clashful damage from lockdown is going to be significant and huge for years to come. And I've been so disturbed at the lack of focus from the media on the collageable damage.

I mean, you only have to look at the figures of people who died in their homes over that first lockdown in 2020, from heart attacks, from strokes. I was speaking to doctors because I've spoken to a lot of people in the NHS over the course of the past year who can't speak on the record, but are so disturbed with what happened in the NHS and the shutdown that happened. I was literally speaking to doctors who were talking to patients having a stroke. They knew they were having a stroke and they would not come into the hospital because they were too scared of contracting COVID. And obviously that was because of the messaging.

So there's never been a proper cost benefit analysis done of lockdowns. I am convinced the collateral damage is going to be significant and huge for years to come. And we need to have a different approach. And look, you look at other countries that are targeting a zero COVID approach like Australia and New Zealand. Obviously, I've got a lot of relatives there. And I think they'll end up realizing that the collasional damage that they've done to their society, even though they've avoided COVID, will also be very significant.

So, Dan, what's going on then? Because here we are, three smart guys you'd like to think. We talk to other smart people. You've interviewed a bunch of people. We've interviewed a bunch of people. Doctors, as you say, every time we talk about lockdown, my Twitter inbox is flooded with messages from doctors, nurses, people in the NHS who are saying this, you know,

a lot of the official narrative is not true. We, not everyone in their chest supports everything that's happening. this doesn't seem to be about protecting the NHS anymore. So if we're also clever and we're also right, how is it that we're seeing these polling numbers where the majority of the public will support seemingly anything, including beheading, just to, you know, keep things safe? Well, I mean, look, clearly if you spend hundreds of millions of pounds on propaganda,

and that's a very loaded word, and I don't use it lightly, but the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardurne, is on the record, describing the government's public health messaging around COVID as propaganda. You can see it in a video, and that is what a lot of the messaging is about, and it's been everywhere, and then it's been everywhere in the mainstream media, all day, every day on the BBC, on ITV news, on Sky News. And the reality is that is still where the vast amount of people get their information and consume their information.

Every ad break on every radio station has been pumping out terrifying messages about COVID and the damage of COVID. And, you know, when the government felt and they still feel like they've lost young people, okay, what can we do? We're going to try and terrify young people about long COVID. And at the moment, the jury is out on long COVID. There's actually, clearly it exists in. some way. But, you know, come on. These days they're saying, if you have erectile dysfunction, it's linked to long COVID. Shrinking penis, man. Come on. If you've got a small willie is COVID.

Everything has been blamed on long COVID all of a sudden. So I understand how it happened. There's a lot of men in the 80s have had long COVID for a very long time, isn't it? And when people try and go down a conspiracy theory past because that's something I'm very opposed to, And I speak to intelligent people who are saying, look, this has to be a conspiracy theory. There's no other way. You know, it's, well, I'm not even going to repeat what they think. But I'm like, look, this is Hanlon's razor. You know, this is about incompetence and stupidity and complete fear that has led to a complete cluster fuck.

That's what this is. It's, I mean, no government could have planned this. I mean, that's just extraordinary and ridiculous. It's about fear. It's about the media. It's all played into each other. And it's become a snowball effect. Because look, you know, you look back.

Patrick Valance was on the record last March saying that the government was trying to pursue a herd immunity strategy. And that would have been sensible because what did he say? He literally said on the record. I mean, this was on the Today program, on the BBC. Patrick Valence, if we do not. pursue a herd immunity strategy now. That was in March. Yes, we're going to try and slow the spread, but we're not going to try and completely compress the spread of COVID-19 because it's okay if young people get it. That was his messaging. If we don't do that, we will end up with a

catastrophic second wave over the winter. What happened? We abandoned the herd immunity strategy. We went for government mandated laws to control our behavior. And what did we have? A catastrophic second wave over the winter. Now, yeah, it was bad in Sweden too. It wasn't as bad. And they didn't lose their civil liberties and freedoms. And they also voluntarily were able to change their behaviour in order to compress the spread. And actually, what that means is they have had far less economic damage than we have. And we can never forget that poverty leads to death as well. And people losing their jobs and losing their businesses leads to death as well. So, yeah, it's, it's been difficult. It's been difficult to be on my side of the argument. It really has

because, you know, the moment that you start talking about some of these difficult issues, you're accused of being a murderer or not caring about 80-year-olds dying of COVID. And I do. I mean, my great-a-a-a-a-cour-old died of COVID in a care home. But she, She died with COVID from dementia. And the most horrific thing about that is that none of us could see her in the months before she died. She had no understanding of why her family were unable to see her for months and months before she died. And to me, that is unforgivable. It's tragic.

It's awful. It's awful that she spent the last few months of her life isolated from the people who, love her the most. Yeah, and she, and, you know, she goes down as a, as a death from COVID. She died of dementia, very, very serious dementia with COVID. And we've never got our head around how we can talk about that, how we can break the statistics down. You know, Dominic Cummings leaked text messages that Boris Johnson had sent to him at some point during the summer or late summer of 2020, where he was trying to have these discussions with Dominic Cummings. Look, the average age from COVID death in the UK is 82. The average life expectancy in the UK is 81. And Dominic

Cummings has released these text messages to try and prove that Boris Johnson is some sort of pensioner killer and he doesn't care about old people dying. And that's absolutely not the case. He's trying to make the point that a lot of these people were going. to die because people die and it's absolutely tragic and it's absolutely devastating. My auntie was over 82 and the huge tragedy with her death is the fact that we couldn't say goodbye, we couldn't give her a proper send off, we couldn't have a proper funeral and what that's putting people through on a daily basis to me is just so wrong and the issue is that in the media, this is what I have tried not to do, has shut down discussion about these things.

So it's shut down discussion about the age of people who die from COVID. It's shut down discussion about the efficacy of masks. It's shut down discussion about whether the virus leaked from the lab in Wuhan. And it's just been so shocking for me to come back to your very original question, to live through this time and see how the media is just not reporting. or is ignoring so many absolutely crucial parts of the story. Because yes, the NHS is a crucial part of the story and the NHS not being overwhelmed as a crucial part of the story.

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with free shipping at manscaped.com and use our code, which is, of course, Tricker to Zero. Your where boss will thank you. Excellent. Dan, so you and I are probably on the same page in terms of conspiracy. I'm not into it. I'm, you know, I started the pandemic being at zero percent interested in conspiracy theories. Half a year and I went to like 0.1%. I think I'm about 1% now.

But let me ask you this about the media, because you've, explained, and I think you're absolutely right in what you say and that the media are shutting down discussion of certain issues. Why? Well, number one, the media operates very well on fear. So that's the first thing. Fear sells and it was a very successful strategy for them. Number two, off-com, because there were really an off-com for people overseas is the UK regulator of the broadcast media. And they put in, I would say, very, very important. draconian guidelines and rules about how COVID could be reported. And I think a lot of the broadcasters took it very literally, which meant that they followed almost slavishly the government's guidelines,

public health messaging. And then the third thing, I would say, is politics, because the media in the US absolutely hated Donald Trump and they wanted them out. So what was the best way to get Donald Trump about a pandemic where they ramped up the fear and blamed it all on him. And in the UK too, I mean, the media has a loathing of Boris Johnson and had a loathing of Dominic Cummings. And so I think those three, you know, if I can sum it up very quickly, those three factors combined. And you say those three factors combined, well, it seems as if the shoe's on the other foot now because Boris and his cronies are trying to shut down the media and its ability to report on them. Yeah, well, I think, I think a couple of things happened because Boris Johnson and the government

soon realized very early on. I mean, it was around the time of the first lockdown in March. We have to go with the media consensus on this, because if we don't go with the media consensus on this, we are going to be slaughtered on a daily basis and we are going to be blamed for every single COVID death in this country. And the only way we're not going to be blamed for a COVID death is if we locked down and we locked down hard. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is, yeah, I mean, look, I've worked in senior positions and newspapers in the UK. The idea that the UK has a free media is just absolutely ridiculous. We don't. You're incredibly constrained as a journalist here. And I presume you're referring to the proposed changes to the Official Secrets Act,

which will make it even easier for journalists here to be prosecuted. And there is no public interest defence. And of course, we have no First Amendment like the US. And I think it's a really bad time to be a journalist in the UK. Dan, you said having worked in senior positions in newspapers in this country, which you have, journalists are not free here. Why? Because of the law.

So it's very easy to sue in the... this country and people will probably be very familiar with a case where Johnny Depp sued me for something that I said about him in the Sun newspaper in my column in the Sun newspaper. And I was dragged through the courts. You know, I was lucky that the Sun and News UK decided to back me in the case. But if we'd lost, it would have cost millions and millions of pounds. So a lot of news organizations simply cannot afford that. So that's the first thing. There's lots of libel tourism here. There's no First Amendment.

There's very limited protection for journalists based on freedom of speech. And it's really worrying. You would be shocked if you knew the number of stories that are simply not reported because newspapers just cannot even fathom the idea of taking the legal risk. And, you know, there's QCs that are involved. There's lots of legal regulation. clearly after the phone hacking scandal in 2011, there needed to be a tightening within newspapers of the internal processes.

But, you know, it's got worse and worse and worse. And there's obviously been landmark privacy rulings in this country as well, which mean that internationally you're able to read reports about certain celebrities and their private lives, for example, and in the UK, UK organisations are not able to publish them. I mean, that's already worrying. But let's talk a little bit about the legislation that the government is trying to push through at the moment.

Can you explain what is it and why is it so dangerous to journalists? Well, it's so dangerous to journalists because there's reformed to the official secret act and the government says, look, we have to reform it because it hasn't been changed since 1989 and the entire world has changed and don't worry, this isn't aimed and targeted at journalists.

But it's all well and good for the government to say that. But the problem is that there's no public interest defence included as part of this. And without a public interest defence, there's actually no way that a journalist can say yes, we did

obtain private security footage of Matt Hancock breaking the law by snogging his publicly paid-for staff member breaking COVID restrictions in his Ministry of Health Office. And we did obtain it via a contact and maybe we even paid that contact. I have no idea if the son paid that contact or not. But we did do this and there are legal question marks around that, but we did it because we believe the story was absolutely in the public interest to publish.

And this law does not include a public interest defense. So that's the concern. Dan, and what, you know, coming back to the sort of conspiracy stuff, very much in this vein, you sort of, you mentioned Boris Johnson being quote-unquote for people listening. I've got both my hands up doing the quote-marks libertarian. What's happened to Boris Johnson in the last 18 months? Well, look, Boris Johnson is somebody who wants to be popular. He wants to stay in power.

He's easily influenced. I think it's fair to say. And sadly, I think he's proven that he's not a libertarian. He was a libertarian when it suited him. And that was in opposition, and especially when he was opposing Tony Blair's ID card proposals. And now that he's in power, it's out the window, you know? And look, because I do always try and look at situations fairly,

and I actually am not a Boris Johnson hater at all, you know, know, I think in some ways he's been a brilliant Prime Minister. In some ways, I absolutely love his style, and I love the way that he is very nimble. And look, he's done incredibly well. You know, he's done incredibly well. When you compare the absolutely catastrophic chaos and carnage that surrounded Theresa May's government. And wow, what a letdown she was. You know, the new Margaret Thatcher, she had everything going for her and she just couldn't do it. So, I am not an out-and-out hater of Boris Johnson, and I do understand that there were certain things during the pandemic

that it probably would have been politically impossible for him not to have done, for example, to lockdown the first time in March 2020. But... I knew that was coming. Yeah, there is a butt coming. You know, ID papers, health papers. I mean, this was the man that said he would eat his own ID card. of any iteration of the state ever asked him to produce it. And now he's trying to coerce young people

into being vaccinated or you're not going to be able to go to a nightclub. I mean, it's nuts. And at some point, surely you have to even in power actually just take a step back and think, what is right. You know, Nadim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, I interviewed him, when I was on talk radio and I could see vaccine passports coming. And this was, you know, December 2020. But I got him on video to give a cast iron guarantee that they would not be introduced. And he did. But he actually went further than that. He described vaccine passports as discriminatory and wrong. They were his words. And now here he is in Parliament saying, they're inevitable almost. I mean, it's, it's worrying. It's worrying. And the thing is, at

some point you have to lean back on your principles, don't you? You just have to. And so I want to be able to support Boris Johnson. I think most of the media want to do the opposite. You know, they want to not support him, even though he's now doing what much of the liberal media are desperate for him to have done, if that makes sense. But at some point, he's going to have to stand up against Sage and the scientific, sort of monolithic view, because they're starting to control how we live, this body, Sage, of scientists, it's nuts. And why, look, why have vaccine passport such a bad idea?

There's a lot of people going, look, Dan, we're in a global pandemic. You know, there's people that's going to die from this. You know, vaccines stop people from dying. they protect people. What is wrong with coercing people during a global pandemic to take a vaccine with minimal risk? It's just about the slippery slope

towards a biosecurity state in my honest opinion. That's where we're heading. We see how the Chinese government controls its population, the social credit scheme, and it's not that far from that, is it? If you're saying to a perfectly healthy young person, because you won't inject something into your body, which I completely agree is low risk,

but there is a risk attached. And arguably there's a bigger risk attached than COVID-19, which is why certain regulators around the world, in Australia, for example, they've banned the Oxford Astrozenica vaccine for anyone under 40, and obviously we did too. So, you know, it's about the slippery slope of where this is going. And, you know, I'm personally, I'm very pro-medicine and I'm very pro-vaccine and I have no issues personally with trying experimental medical products. I never have, right? So my personal view is very different to the view of lots of other people who feel the same way as I do about vaccine passports. But I just really fundamentally believe that that has to be everyone's personal decision. doesn't it, what they put in their body? It's a personal choice. I have, I guess, quite, I'm quite into risk. Do you know what I mean? I'm prepared to take a medical risk because I think there's going to be lots of benefits, but I fully appreciate that is everyone's right to make that decision themselves. Yeah, I mean, do you think that they're going

to go ahead or do you think whether the Tories are going to capitulate? I know it's an unfair question. No, I just think it feels inevitable. I think all of this feels inevitable. I think another lockdown over winter feels inevitable. I think the reintroduction of mandatory masks feels inevitable. I think the reintroduction of social distancing feels inevitable. I think the reintroduction of curfews feels inevitable. I think the closing of nightclubs and concerts at some point over winter feels inevitable.

I think all of this feels inevitable now. Now, obviously, I hope I'm wrong and I'm actually genuinely desperate to be proved wrong. But, you know, throughout the course of last year, I didn't express some of this stuff publicly because I didn't want to add into the fair. And I wanted to trust Boris when he said, no, we're going to be okay for Christmas. And, you know, but deep down, I always knew, and I expressed privately that we would spend all winter in lockdown. And that was one of the reasons I was railing against it so much. So this year, I'm at a very different place. that I want to call it out because if we don't and if we don't start standing up against us up,

because fundamentally, look, the one thing that will end up changing Boris Johnson's in the government's position in this is public opinion. It's the one thing that will change it. So I'm heartened to see polls now that say actually people are fed up with the NHS app and are starting to delete it or considering deleted. I'm heartened by that because, again, it's very difficult when you're regulated by You can never encourage anyone to break the law or you'll be taken off air. But the NHS app is voluntary. You know, the government might recommend it, but there's absolutely nothing compelling you at this point to download this thing.

For now. For now. But it's a great way if you don't want to go to work. Well, of course. Half a million people. Of course. Great. Of course.

Ten days off. Totally. Totally. Totally. And I understand that.