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

Episode Date: July 21, 2021

Laura Dodsworth is the author of A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic. Available here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-state-of-fear/laura-dodsworth/9781780667201 Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.PayPal.me/triggerpod https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry 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

Thanks, yours too. What does RAV stand for anyway? To me, it's the remarkably advanced vehicle. Really? To me, it's the runway approved vehicle for its amazing style. What about remarkably adaptable vehicle because of its versatile cargo space? Or really admired vehicle? Oh, or really awesome vehicle. It really is the recreational activity vehicle.

The stylish 2026 Toyota RAV4 Limited. What's your RAV for? 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. And he seemed shocked that I asked. And if I could paraphrase it's something like normal, what normal? 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. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissing. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

Our brilliant guest today is the author of this book, A State of Fear. Laura Doesworth, welcome to Trigonometry. Hi, thank you for having me. It's great to have you on the show. We're going to talk about the book in a second. But before we do, just tell everybody a little bit about who are you, how are you, where you are, what has been the journey that leads you to be sitting here talking to us. Oh my goodness. There's quite a lot in this. there. Let's say, oh, let's break it down. I suppose the reason I'm here right now is the book is,

I suppose, in essence, it's quite reactionary. We've just been living through an absolutely extraordinary time in British life and politics. And I didn't ever plan to write a book like that, but I just had to wrap what was going on around me in the world. And then before that, I've been a writer and a photographer for some years. I think of myself as a creative and a storyteller. Well, it's a story that needs to be told. This book is about how the government has used essentially psychology to scare people into responding to the pandemic and to the lockdown and to the restrictions in the way that they've wanted. And I wanted to open with a quote that you give from the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on behavior, which was in March of 2020,

which is, they say, the perceived level of personal threat, needs to be increased among those who are complacent using hard-hitting emotional messaging. Is that what this is all about in the last year? That we've had a pandemic and the government has sought to shape our response to it through hard-hitting emotional messaging? Is that why we're seeing polling results now that boggle the mind in terms of the number of people who support curfews, permanent restrictions permanent wearing of masks.

I mean, you can go down the list in terms of the stuff that people believe. People, when polled, believe that I think like 10% of the public have died from COVID if asked on the street. So is that how we're here? Yes, I'd say so. So first of all, to kind of add an annoying caveat

that I feel like I have to say at the beginning, which is this book doesn't refute that COVID is a serious disease and people have died and that we've been in a pandemic, not at all. But as one of the psychology, I interviewed, said to me, in the absence of a vaccine, the tool you have is psychology. That's their opinion. They're a psychologist. They would say that. They also said to me that psychology has had a very

good epidemic. So the government decided to go the route of imposing lockdowns and very strict regulations to control behaviour to limit transmission and to protect the NHS. I know that goalposts have moved lots of times. But if you remember, the original goalpost it was flatten the curve to protect the NHS. And that minute from an extraordinary document which was produced by Spybee, that's the scientific pandemic influenza group on behaviour, which reports into SAGE and into the government, is answering a question. And the question is, how do we make people comply with lockdown rules? So there's a whole host of options in the document and one of them sets out very clearly in black and white that the British public should

be frightened into complying. So that is exhibit A in the thesis that the government has used fear to control behaviour during the epidemic. And I think we can still see it happening now in lots of ways. We could talk about things that are going on now like nudges maybe to increase vaccination uptake by constantly dangling the threat of COVID passes. And as a result, for some people, perhaps their fear and anxiety is out of scale with the severity of the threat that we're currently experiencing. And that could be why people are very supportive still, of restrictive measures and overestimate the threat of the disease when they're asked in polls. But Laura, hang on a second. So let's go back to that first lockdown. We didn't know what was

happening. We didn't know how virulent the virus was. We didn't know a lot about it. Wasn't the first lockdown and quite a tough advertising campaign the way to deal with this virus? There are quite few things to separate out there. First of all, you could accept the premise that a lockdown was a sensible precaution. It doesn't necessarily mean that it needed advertising that would exaggerate the threat of the disease. It was understood right from the beginning that COVID is very age stratified and it's also a risk to people with particular. identifiable clinical conditions. So telling everybody they were equally at risk

wouldn't necessarily be the only way to enforce a lockdown. I can see how some people think it would. And I think when all this is done and dusted, it will be really important to have a debate about what sort of messaging is appropriate. But I can see how some people would say, in the teeth of the crisis, any means justified the end.

The end is justified the means. Wrong way, wrong way around. Do you know what I mean? But the book, also isn't about whether lockdowns are a good idea. But I have to say it became difficult in the course of writing a book to completely extricate lockdowns and fear messaging. And to that end, there's an appendix and it's called lockdowns don't work.

So you'll see where I'm coming from with that. But actually, lockdowns were never used before March 2020. They don't feature in pandemic plans. In fact, they were contraindicated because they're not based on strong evidence. They're based on simulations, which the World Health Organisation, warned against before, they're known to be very harmful, and they're not known to necessarily impact transmission. I think you'll find here that anybody that supported lockdowns,

including the people who enacted the policies, are going to try and tell us that lockdowns are effective. But there are lots of empirical studies and other countries around the world that I think shake that idea. So you said that lockdowns are very harmful. Let's just touch on that before moving onwards. Because there's a lot of people in this country, I think the majority of the population,

are in favour of lockdowns. How are lockdowns harmful? There's so much collateral damage already from lockdowns and I think it's still too early for people to perceive all of the impacts. And I think it's fair to say that the jury is still out. I never really thought it made sense from day one and I know that puts me in a real outlier position because I think telling people they can't go out to work

when they're completely healthy and not necessarily infectious is just an. extraordinary thing to do to a family. I mean, that was me. My work just stopped and I was shocked. I wouldn't be able to go out and earn a living and there would have been lots of people in that position. They were told to put their relationships on hold so it damages relationships. Not everybody could work from home or got the eventual furlough, so it stopped income. I think probably most worryingly of all, we see in the NHS waiting list now how many people were probably too frightened to go to hospital.

I interviewed a disaster and recovery planner who's one of the foremost experts in this country and in the world, and she says you just don't lock down for a coronavirus. She said in any pandemic, bluntly, you power through. And she's involved in planning mortuary, capacity and death planning. And she said that for every one COVID death, they were planning another four deaths as a result of lockdown and associated risks over the coming years.

So this isn't just my idea. Let's move on from lockdown, because your book really isn't about that. It's really not about lockdown. So let's move on from that. I wouldn't want anyone watching this to watch this from a pro-ante-lockdown perspective. I think the important conversation is about the methodology that's been used to publicize and promote whatever has been happening. That's a much more important conversation. The locked and pro-and-a-and-lokdown argument has been had, including on our show many times.

True, but you see you brought it up because it is actually quite difficult to extricate them. people will say, well, anything's justified if it kept people in their homes, if it made them follow the lockdown rules. And that's why you can't completely separate them. Right. So let's just for the sake of argument say that lockdowns do work. And in fact, they're extremely effective at stopping a pandemic. And those of us like you and me who are deeply concerned about the impact of lockdowns on health, on cancer, on heart disease, et cetera, et cetera, on mental well-being, on suicides, et cetera. Let's say that we're misguided. One of the arguments, for example, is that all of that would have happened anyway

because if we didn't lock down, the NHS would have collapsed and you'd still have a massive backlog. Let's say for the sake of argument, all of that is true. Is it not then ethical for the government to use fear in the way that they have to get people to comply with rules that they believe are necessary to protect the public? I think it's a really thorny debate. In the course of researching the book, I've come to a very skeptical position on that. But I accept there'd be different opinions. And I think that actually, that in the inevitable inquiry,

it's going to be really important to tackle the fear messaging specifically. You know, you've got to remember that the Advertising Standards Authority codifies against this for a reason. There were specific campaigns which misled on the risk. There was a government campaign that had to be withdrawn, was found against by the Advertising Standards Authority. And there were others that just exaggerated the risks for the wrong groups of people. There's one I remember that was a group of teenage boys sitting in a park and it said COVID kills. Well, COVID hasn't really killed teenage boys, especially outdoors in a park.

So was that the way to make them stay indoors and observe lockdown rules? Well, if you think that people won't behave unless they're frightened, maybe you'd think that. But what about a more honest campaign about who's at risk and what we? all need to do to protect those people. The argument would be, it's not an argument that I particularly support, 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 it, 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. Their parents might be fine as well. Their parents go and visit Granny or whatever because they deliver some shopping and then we killed Granny by that. 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? 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. What's the end result of a pandemic? We want everyone to be healthy,

you know, as many people survive as possible, and society to go back to normal. If you want to get to that end point, you don't terrify people. We went into this without an exit strategy. So one of the problems with the tactic of frightening people who are not in a risk category is that everybody's fear is amplified to a degree

that we can't get it back down. So a psychologist, The psychologist has identified a syndrome now called COVID anxiety syndrome, whereby 20% of people are engaging in overly obsessive hygiene or they don't want to go outside. We know from O&S figures that half of the people who were clinically shielding are still shielding, even though they don't need to be because they're vaccinated. We know from polls. There were some really extraordinary figures I read last week that I think it's, I think,

71% of people according to you gov, want people to carry away masks on public transport. This isn't even better one. It was reported in the FT that 19% of people want there to be a 10pm curfew beyond COVID. I don't know who these people are. They walk among us. Who are they? Maybe they don't. They don't.

They just do. They're doing. So one of the problems with the fear messaging is that it's hard for people to get back to normal. Fear makes recovery harder. There's also been an impact on some people's mental health. You know, people have developed OCDs, agoraphobia. people develop depression. There have been various ONS studies showing that people developed depression in lockdown.

And it's difficult to extricate how much will have come from fearful messaging, how much will have come from lockdown, how much will have come from a natural fear of the epidemic. But there's a lot going on. Another problem with that type of advertising, advertising is only one tool to frighten people, but it's a big one, and it was costly as well. There's a lot of monies, a lot of our taxpayers' money's been spent on this. Another problem is it deflects criticism. So it doesn't just frighten people, puts people into groups.

Are you good? Are you a COVID hero? Or are you a COVID idiot and a granny killer? And it encourages ill will and blame and finger pointing between people. Do you remember the ad campaign? Look him in the eyes and tell him you never bend the rules. So presumably Matt Hancock is somebody who would have signed off on that. So first of all, let's just get that in.

It's a bit hypocritical. He was doing a lot of bending. Well, you might have seen something I haven't seen. I've just seen a little bit of footage in the sun. My eyes. But it also creates finger pointing among people. So instead of going, well, you know, hang on, should we point the finger at policies, at politicians,

at the big issues, about no sarcomial infection. People move from care homes, from hospitals to care homes. The PPE scandal, we're pointing the finger at rule breakers. So instead of the kind of solidarity that you want in people, in an epidemic. We're divided into the good guys and the bad guys.

And of course, what that does creates kind of like herd mentality and othering and dehumanising of other people. Also, you're talking about the young people. Is that really fair to put that responsibility onto them? Granny killer is one of the most unedifying things I've ever heard. One of my sons was shouted out in a corridor at school when he wasn't wearing his mask correctly. And the teacher shouted,

you're killing people. Well, you know, if he was literally killing people, that would be a police matter, wasn't it? But his mask was a half-mast in a school corridor. So what's the impact on teenagers and children of being told they can literally kill their grandparents and the elderly? It's an enormous responsibility. And let's not forget, at the beginning of the epidemic,

it was acknowledged that a lot of people that would die were people who would die at some point in the coming year or so anyway, because the elderly were most at risk. I think it was Professor Neil Ferguson who said that in quite an early press briefing. So to put that blame onto young people, I just think is really disproportionate and unfair. We're not the only country that did that.

In Germany, what's now known as the panic papers, which are reported on in Veltam-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. Quite similar, but they went into more lurid detail than the Spy B minute that you quote from my book. And one example that they give is that children shouldn't be allowed to think it's safe

to go out and play outside, and you should play on the guilt that they'll feel if they go and play outside and then they infect people in their household and their family dies. I just think that's a cruel thing to do to a child. And there's different ways of doing it. There's different ways of communicating risk. does it have to be frightening? Hey Francis, think about all the times you've used Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, a hotel, or even at your parents' house.

Hmm, happy memories. Well, without ExpressVPN, every site you visit could be locked by the admin of that network. And that's still true, even when you're in incognito mode. Even when you're in incognito mode, still happy memories? What? What's more, your home internet provider, I'm talking Comcast, AT&T, whatever, can also see and record your... browsing data and they are legally allowed to sell it on to others.

I'm so screwed. You are. Trigonometry is now going to be a solo project and that is why I use ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is an app that encrypts all of your network data and re-routes it through a network of secure servers so that your private online activity stays just that. Private. But Chris, oh, unfortunately so. Sadly, every site you visit, every video you watch or message you send gets tracked and datamined. When you run ExpressVPN on your device, the software hides your IP address, so ExpressVPN makes your activity harder to trace and sell to advertisers.

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That's EXPR-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash trigger. Go to ExpressVPN.com slash trigger to learn more. It's an incredibly good point that you make. Do you not worry that the government has used this? tool and it's proved surprisingly effective. It's now in their toolkit forever. They can take this out at whatever point they want again. Or do you think it's a one-off thing? Nervous Giggle. I would love to think it's a one-off thing, but I don't really see why it would be. I've got no reason to believe that. It is, of course, incredibly effective. I just wrote a feature

for The Telegraph about the nudges we'll see during the rest of the epidemic. And I checked in with one of my anonymous sources who advises in government who told me that there is skipping in Whitehall and they're skipping through the corridors, they've had a very good epidemic. And one of the big learnings is that the British people have been sheepish and there's lots more nudge coming. It's worked. Why would they not do it again? If you've read the book, guys, if you've read the book, you might remember how the chapter on Spy Bee starts. And 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.

And he seemed shocked that I asked. And if I could paraphrase it's something like normal, what normal? 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. And I think you can already see a section, a segue into using some of the same tools to perhaps encourage behavior change that will be needed to meet net zero targets. I've seen a very scary ad produced by Net Zero Scotland already. Well, it's something Francis and I talked about, we did an episode where him and I were talking about this,

and the fact that this is now part of the toolbox that can be produced for other perceived threats is something that people should be very worried about, I think. But in terms of the methodology, tell everybody you referenced Nudge, which most of us understand, but some people may be less familiar with. What is Nudge theory and how has it been used in particular for this pandemic, but also previously, because I think it was Cameron who really first started talking about it. Maybe it was even used before.

Tell everybody a little bit about that. Yeah, sure. So the Nudge unit is the colloquial term for the Behavioural Insights team, which was set up under the David Cameron government. and that's now legally and operationally separate to the government. It's a limited company. Britain's terribly good at behavioural psychology. We actually, all behavioural science, we export it all around the world.

They have offices in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others. So a nudge is implicit, which means you won't really be aware of it. It affects your choices without being a mandate. A nudge is just one tool in the behavioural science toolbox. So there's the Pavey for Insights team, and they've been doing some things that look kind of innocuous in terms of making people pay their tax returns on time or... Plastic bags. I don't know if they work on that, but that might be the... That's the kind of thing.

Five people, plastic bags. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a choice architecture. It's giving you a choice and trying to nudge you into the right one, the one that makes you a model citizen. The one that somewhere some clever people in a clever room have decided that you're not so clever people should be doing. there isn't just the behavioral insights team there's spy b which we've already referred to now that's a voluntary group of advisors and they don't just work on the COVID epidemic they also advise the government on other risks on other things are on the national risk register but what what i found

fascinating but a bit disturbing in the course of researching the book was how many brick walls i hit when i was trying to find out more about behavioral science and government but what became clear to me is how much the government does rely on behavioural science. There are behavioural scientists in, I think, probably every government department, also within the NHS, also within Public Health, England. There are also units which are set up to manage the flow of information, manage counter disinformation. You might call some of it propaganda, you might call some of it behavioural psychology. What they do is a little bit opaque. There's the counter disinformation unit and there's the research information communication unit. There's GC.

HQ, there's the 77th Brigade, which is part of the army. And haven't you been surprised at how easily manipulated, it seems, a British public have been? I certainly have. I've found it shocking. I don't know. I've gone through all kinds of different emotions about it. The thing is epidemics are really frightening. I might not have thought lockdown was a good idea, but I was also frightened about the epidemic at the beginning. I remember stocking up on tinned food in case I called. and my kids would have to cook on their own, you know.

It's normal. It's hard baked into us to be frightened. I think fear was an open door, and that's the point. It was really easy for the government to leverage it because fear was already there. And behavioral science works. I mean, it's advertising. It's the bakery and the supermarket. It's all around us all the time.

I don't know if the British people have been especially sheepish. That's what the advice is. view was, I quoted them in this telegraph feature. I don't know because I haven't done enough comparison of attitudes in different countries to be sure. It might just be that it was wielded a lot more heavily on us. But surely, when you have access to facts because we all have the internet, doesn't that mean that you're able to challenge the government's propaganda far more effectively and think for yourself? Well, it depends what you rely on for your news, sources, that's the thing. I was looking up infection fatality rates at the beginning, but a lot of

people, if they're relying on the Downing Street press briefings or just mainstream news stories, which are more, what's the word, fear mongering at the beginning. Not everybody goes off and researchers will turn it sources of information to get that balance. Not all media's been equal in this time. I think it's been a bit of a mixed bag. One of the experiences has really struck me, particularly over the last few months, as COVID has become far less dangerous, we've got the vaccine program, which has been a huge success, far fewer people are being infected, far fewer people are being, are in hospital, far fewer people are dying.

And every time there's a conversation, whether it's on television or any or in papers or whatever, when I am saying, well, look, we've got more people, more hospitals in England than people with COVID and hospital. At the time the government delayed the Freedom Day last time, that was the case. I'm saying, look, the average number of deaths from COVID, with COVID, not from COVID, is like in low

20s, let's say. So very few people are dying from COVID out of a daily death toll of about 1,400. Or, you know, you are not a threat if you are under the age of 18. These obvious facts that everybody including the scientist will accept. And yet

the response from the public, to that information, if it's reaching them at all, is just so disproportionate. And that's where, you know, we started to go, well, we need to talk to Laura about this, because I feel like in the book you've got the explanation of that disconnect between the facts on the one hand and the public response on the other. Do you think that the irrational way that some people are reacting to what's happening is a product of that fear, or do you think it was always going to happen because people just are irrational anyway?

Oh, I don't know. I don't have the in-depth answer to whether people are irrational anyway. I mean, I've seen information for people not being generally very good at understanding risk and numbers, and I get that. And I think the first hit hurts the most. So the thing is, you see the scary ads. I mean, right at the beginning, I remember one which showed somebody on a gurney, but their head was just kind of conveniently out of frame. These things were very subtle, gives you the impression that they don't have a head. Of course, you know, you know they have a head, but it looks a bit scary. and health workers with big masks on.

And it looked like something out of a horror film. And, you know, the language is very dramatic. You see that, that's what gets you. Not later on doing a bit of research into infection, fatality rates. I talked to a broadsheet journalist anonymously for the chat from the media. And, you know, they were explaining that sometimes it's just a race to get the news out. You know, you want to be first. So if you remember the witty and valence, shock.

and all presentation I call it the shock and all presentation last autumn and when they were talking at you remember the the steep red scary lines and after us they kind of had their knuckles wrapped a little bit by by Theresa May and the National Statistics Authority obviously newspapers reported on that straightway because the figures were shocking and then later on you get the pieces that go into more granular detail and say well it's not really going to be as bad as all that but what what hits people the most it's the story. It's the steep red line. It's the big scary number. And what would you say to people who go, look, we've always had a history of doing this in a pandemic. Look at the AIDS campaign in the

mid-80s. Don't die of ignorance with the tombstone literally falling and then making that huge sound. What would you say to those people? What are those people saying exactly? So I know what to say about. So essentially, you know, we've always done this in pandemics. Look at the HIV AIDS pandemic. the very famous advertisement with the gravestone falling, and then John the journal Hertz narration with the words don't die of ignorance. Well, that is a good comparison because it was frightening. There are quite a few differences and quite a few similarities. Somebody interviewed for the book, Professor Knutwitwitowski talked about that

from when he was in Germany, and he said he really struggled at the time because he knew this wasn't a virus that was going to affect children, but, for instance, messaging at the time was children shouldn't touch each other's toys, they'll catch AIDS. You know, the risks were perhaps not very well understood right at the beginning and then exaggerated. And some of the early AIDS campaigning told gay men not to have sex. Well, that just goes completely against human nature. Don't be silly. And then it moves to safe sex.

And people go back and look at that campaign and assume it was really successful. But I think that it might be a bit modelled up with people wanting to say. say it was successful and ignoring the impacts of grassroots work at the time. You know, needle exchanges and other things. You might be younger than me, but I remember that campaign. And I didn't really know what it was about except that it was to do something very, very scary called sex. And it just really, it had an impact on me, but I didn't really know why I was scared. I'm not sure that I needed that. I don't feel it's particularly emotionally scarborough or anything. It's fine.

I guess the core of France's question, and this is something I wanted to ask you about anyway, is it not appropriate for the government sometimes to exaggerate the threat in order to get people to pay attention to something and to follow rules? So, for example, in a time of war, the government wouldn't be releasing the day-to-day information about what's happening because there's a reason for that. Now, in war, it's obviously so the enemy doesn't find out what's going on. but there are situations in which it's okay for the government not to be telling the full truth about what's going on. That's, I guess, the core of the argument. What do you make of that in this context? I don't know. I think it's a debate. I'm not going to appoint myself benign dictator of the world and think that I know best. I think it really needs to be scrutinized with expert witnesses in a consultation. I don't like the lack of honesty. And I don't like the lack of honesty.

don't like the lack of transparency. I mean, you're right. In a war, some information would be withheld, but in fact, we had the opposite. We were flooded with gloomy numbers, and we were the fallen. You know, we've been subjected to frightening metrics all the way through, but there's been a slight lack of honesty sometimes about what they mean and a lack of context, which has created a disproportionate level of fear, which has brought its own host of collateral damages, like an increase in alcohol abuse, and an increase in opiate. addictions and increase in mental health problems, people being too scared to go to the hospital and then dying at home, people going too late for heart conditions and now it's too late for

effective treatment. I mean, there's just so much collateral damage from frightening people disproportionately. I mean, we were told about deaths, but never recoveries. Why, why give one figure, but not the other? The hospital admissions number's always been quite one of the prominent numbers on the government COVID dashboard, but it doesn't tell you what you think. it does. You might think it means how many people were admitted to hospital with COVID. Well, it includes those people. It also includes people who went to hospital routinely for something else and then they were diagnosed with COVID and it also includes people who caught COVID in hospital. That's more than you think. So that's an important number and when you're planning how

far apart beds need to be spaced and staffing. It's a really important number, but it's not the number people thought it was. So there's, I think there's a whole chapter on the metrics of fear in the book. There's lots of ways in which numbers were presented in ways that inflated alarm and amplified fear. And it's so interesting you say that because what these numbers did is it unleashed a petty authoritarianism across the country, not only from newspapers, but also people being encouraged to snitch on their neighbours. It felt like we were living out of something from the Soviet Union. Yeah. Don't talk badly about my people. Well, it has had a bit of a whiff of community block policing about it. I remember the first time I heard about a snitch line.

I was really depressed. I thought, no, don't do this. It was just awful. And even, you know, as we've been coming into recovery, some of the messaging has been really just depressing. One minister said, yeah, you know, tell people that you'll report them if you see them hugging. It's just tell on Matt Hancock. It's just really depressing. And that's what I meant before about providing people. It's not just about creating fear, it's also about hating groups and dehumanising and snitching on the naughty ones. I mean, there have been some very unedifying moments. Do you remember two teenagers, two students were, there might not be teenagers, but students, so I find 10,000 pounds each for organising a snowball fight in January. Good. Really? No, I'm joking. I'm miserable.

I've got back pain. But no, but you're serious. 10 things, even though we knew the science at the time that was highly unlikely for people to catch COVID outside. Even though we knew that. And these fines are literally the worst fines since the time of the sheriff of Nottingham. I mean, really, they're the worst fines. You have to go back to the dark ages. And that's what we've done to, because that makes you then terrified to break the rules. And some people might say, good, you know, don't want to do the time, don't do the crime.

But it's a pretty steep fine for students. Well, and add to that the fact that there's, I don't think there's been a single prosecution under the rules that were brought in that actually got upheld in court. They were all challenged and all overturned. 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. Can I just jump in and say something? Is that right? Because you said before we started, I was allowed to jump in, so I've got something on a jump in on. You jump in as much as you want.

Because I think you asking me, well, is it okay to use fear? It's good. You should be challenging me. I don't mind a challenging interview. And I would say I've got my own views. I'm quite opinionated, but it needs public consultation. That's really important. But I just want to say that some of the most damning indictments come from psychologists that I interviewed and government advisors. And that's part of the spine of the book, to be honest. You know, I spoke to one longstanding government advisor who told me that they're stunned by. the weaponisation of behavioural psychology. And I spoke to a psychologist who is on SpyB, who said that they wake up at 3am with the fear of what they've done and there's dystopia that's being created. So this isn't just some mad, rambling thesis of mine. I've interviewed a multitude of professionals and academics who not only share these concerns, they voice them more clearly than me. And you say dystopia, I mean, that's a pretty strong word to you. What do you mean by the time? Is it?

Look around, my friend. Well, look, I mean, people would say, oh, come on, but we're not living, you know, you're not getting carted off. We don't have gulags. We don't have concentration camps. That's a true meaning of a dystopian. You set a high standard there, great. As long as we're not there, we're fine, okay.

Yeah, I'll be the first in the re-education gulag, probably, embroidering face masks or something, I don't know. It's not me who called it a dystopia, but I think there's aspects of this year that have felt dystopian. You know, whatever, I think there's been a lot of fear in the air, and you caught it one way or the other, and whatever dystopia means to you, it's probably felt dystopian one way or another to a lot of people. It has felt dystopian. To me, the moment where I started to lose faith in the government was the issue of masks, where at the start, they said, oh, no, you shouldn't wear masks, there's no evidence. You know, the evidence is weak surrounding masks. And isn't the evidence weak surrounding mask anyway? it seems that we've now been turned against each other. Yeah, this is a kind of a classic example of where the thesis of my book takes you,

but it's still so controversial to talk about because people are largely in favour. And they're largely in favour because they've been told by their government that their mask protects other people. The government's own website, not the kind of like the basic advice bit, go into their policy papers, says that the evidence is weak, limited. There isn't good hard evidence in favour of masks. Flyweight would be fair. There's one randomised controlled trial into mask use. The Dan Mask study, I interviewed one of the authors for the book. And to be fair, that study was about whether your mask protects you.

That's what they chose to investigate the time. And they say it may be that the study is statistically underpowered, but they can't find a statistical, significant improvement from wearing a mask. So that's the best. study that we've got now about wearing masks in the community. It's very mixed. And I spoke to an MP who told me anonymously that masks were brought in, he has on good authority, they were brought in because the economic bounceback wasn't good enough after the first lockdown. And then the behaviour scientists realise that they are a good signal because when you see people in masks, you're reminded that there's an epidemic. It's dangerous out there. We become walking billboards for danger and

epidemic, a virus and fear. So it might encourage people to follow the rules. They also represent solidarity, apparently, according to some of the SpyB advisors. They love words like solidarity and collectivism. They love the idea that we're all in it together in our masks. So... Sounds very familiar from my car. Anyway. Yeah. So the evidence isn't good, but people now firmly believe it is because that's what they've been told. And I just think it's a really shocking thing to have done to population. It is, and I've seen it happen because you talk about masks. I was just talking to a friend of a friend who I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, she's a vet, and she was saying, we don't need to wear masks. I wear a mask when I'm doing surgery on an animal to prevent my

saliva from going into the wound. But apart from that, just wash your hands. Don't, you know, hug strangers, whatever for the moment, but you don't need to wear a mask. Fast forward eight months later, are saying they will never stop wearing a mask for the rest of their life. And that has happened to someone who's a medical professional in the space of eight months. So how that has affected people who don't even have that medical knowledge, I only dare to think, really. I think if we're not careful, they're going to stay around. Did you see, it's one of the Williams sisters.

I can't remember which one, maybe because I couldn't see her face, but she was wearing this dress that has this cow neck that doubles up as a mask. Right. That's got a hook. Serena. Is it Serena? Yeah. And I saw that.

I was like, oh no, please God, no, don't incorporate it into dresses. I'm not buying one of those. But also, do you know, do we really think that virus labs around the world are going to adopt that as their PPE? No. But, Laura, the question I wanted to ask you is about what's happening now, because we're now at a point where we're approaching the lifting of restrictions here and the the, despite the fact that basically most of the public don't seem to want it to happen. And we seem to be in a position now where the government you alluded to earlier,

they believe that they are entitled to threaten people with taking away their rights, which up until this point in human civilization have always been considered absolute and unrestrictable by government, which is your right to meet people, your right of association, your right to be outdoors, et cetera. They are now saying that if you're not vaccinated, you will not be able to enjoy those rights, like going into a pub or whatever, even though I don't think they believe

that the restrictions themselves are necessary. So in other words, they're scaring people with taking away rights that don't need to be taken away just to force young people in this instance to take the vaccine. I mean, why is no one saying that that's unethical other than like three of us? Well, I think there are more than that. It's quite a difficult conversation to have.

And I think that some of the media are running scared because it's difficult to talk about it without sounding critical of the vaccine program or critical of the vaccine. And God forbid, you'd want to be on the anti-vax team and I'm going to do another caveat here. I'm not an anti-vaxer. I've had childhood vaccinations, travel vaccinations, blah, blah, blah.

But Laura, just to interrupt you there, isn't that the problem? Can you not be critical of this vaccine and say, look, I'm worried about it. A lot of it uses new technology. I'm not sure if I want to be exposed to this new technology, automatically, boom, anti-vaxxer. Those are two completely different positions, surely. They should be. They should be, but they're not at the moment. And the time Refusnik was used, it kind of floated up all at once, and then it went away because people said it wasn't appropriate. Well, Refusnik is actually a positive term, and someone refuses to comply with government dicta.

But anyway, let's not get into that. But it wasn't used like that here, was it? So there's a lot of nudging going on. And I agree with you. I think that the threat of the COVID pass is to encourage young people to have the vaccine. Now, do we believe that Parliament can do a good job when allowed to follow parliamentary process? I believe it. I love this country. I love democracy.

I love politics. There was a select committee into the use of COVID passes. And it found against them. So there's no scientific justification. So that's the result of a select committee into the COVID pass. And yet they're being threatened. And I think it is to encourage the young to get vaccinated. Right.

But informed consent shouldn't work that way. It shouldn't be based on a threat or creating a two-tier checkpoint society. Your choice to have any medical intervention, including a vaccine, should be simple, benefit, harm, calculus. And if you're not sure it's right for you, the best thing for you to do is to talk to your doctor. I think if you're not sure, then threatening somebody that they won't be able to go to a football stadium or a bar isn't the right way to reassure them. It's a threat. The other thing that's happening at the moment is incentives. And this is completely new to this country.

So the mayor of London's office was giving away tickets to watch the final Intrafaga Square and also one pair of tickets to watch it live. And Charlton Athletic gave away a thousand tickets to the first thousand to be vaccinated in the stadium. And I wanted to write about this in this piece I just wrote. about nudges. And neither Charlton nor the mayor's office would come back to me on the issue of whether an incentive affects informed consent. But of course it does. That's the point of the incentive. That's the point. And I spoke to a public health specialist who's a very keen vaccine advocate who said she's very concerned about the impact on informed consent. We've never done this before. 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. And I think we are crossing Rubicons at the moment. 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. What you need is to look at the risk and the harm for your personal circumstances and talk to a doctor. Do you have a website or do you plan to have a website? Well, if you do, then easy DNS are the company for you.

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that tells you everything you need to know about technology, privacy and censorship. And Laura, doesn't it also show a complete contempt for ordinary working people because we saw in America as well they were giving out lotto tickets you could get a burger and fries do they really think

That's when you got excited man Yeah it was actually That's when I thought right I'm jumping on a plane to America But in all seriousness Doesn't that show a complete contempt of ordinary people that they can be so easily manipulated

bar from tickets to watch Charlton Athletic Who let's be fair a shit And yes there are probably three Charlton fans watching this and you are I think it's The diplomatic arm with which Laura started her out I'm not going to talk about Charlton Athletic because you know that my football watching is just like England in the Euro. So I don't watch specific teams. I'm so sorry Charlton. I bet they're great though you pig.

No, they're really not. Well, I mean, the incentives in the US are much worse than that. I mean, they're really the wild waste of incentives. Oh my God. So I wrote about this for Spectator World, their US edition. They've had jabs for joints. I mean, seriously, take a vaccine and have drugs that here would be illegal. This one's quite funny.

Lap dances for a year if you get vaccinated. What? I know. Now he's excited. I thought it was the burgers that was going to do. Krispy cream donuts every day if you get vaccinated. I'm a big fan of the Krispy Kri-Ree. I find that one actually really incongruous because one of the really key comorbidities with COVID that no one's talking about is obesity.

So the idea of eating a donut every day to, you're not going to eat your way into optimum health that way, are you? Free beer, I think it was Budweiser said, if 70% of the US population got vaccinated by 4th July, they'd do a free beer for everyone. I don't know if they hit that target. But they've been doing some really significant cash lotteries as well, free flights and raffles. And I think most, you know,

worst of all, college education raffles as well, because that's a big incentive. So if you're 18 or 17 when they apply for college, yeah, the risk calculus for the benefit, you know, the benefit of the vaccine is looking, I'm not going to comment, God, science, people will get really angry with me. I think you're on shaky ground to convince me that a 17-year-old needs the vaccine. Let's phrase it like this, Lord.

Let's phrase it like this. If you're in your 80s and you've got comorbidities, the risk-reward is very different to if you're in your 20s and you've got no comorbidate. Let's just phrase it like that. And I'm talking about 17 and 18-year-olds. But the idea of a free college education is a massive draw. That is a big carrot. Right.

So we don't want to be like the United States, do we? Also, they actually don't have very high uptake to vaccinations for a lot of their programs. And the British are, you know, we have a very high uptake. We don't have COVID passes because most people just duly go and get vaccinated. I mean, this array of incentives and threats may end up backfiring. It may make people feel more resistant because people don't really like being told what to do. A vaccine really interferes with your idea of personhood and state. date.

Yeah, and it does. Do you not, and we've been skirting around this issue as we've talked over numerous topics, is what we're seeing, a glorified form of divide and conquer? I think there's been lots of divide and conquer. We've seen small ways from snitch lines being told to report on your neighbours for having a party or going out more than once a day in the lockdown. You know, really nasty stuff just at a time when people should be pulling together and supporting each other in an epidemic to, oh, what was it I saw today, the vulnerable being told not to mix

with the unvaccinated, which I found quite depressing. It's very othering. So somebody might be unvaccinated, but they might have have COVID and have immunity from that. And somebody can be vaccinated and still transmit COVID. It's not completely clear-cut and binary. So I feel like that's another, it's another tactic. It's another nudge to say the vaccine. are clean and safe, and the unvaccinated are the unclean and the unsafe. And I think we have to be really careful about language that dehumanises a whole group of people who might be unable or choosing not to have a vaccine. Now, I won't say why, but I can't have the vaccine. I'm medically exempt. I'm one of those people that others are being told not to mix with or that I might not be able to

go into bars and restaurants. And it's amazing that you say that because the whole point of our governmental system is that you have an opposition. The opposition is meant to challenge. They're meant to push back on the government. If anything, this law are more authoritarian. Yeah, they're pushing back on the government and they want them to be more, you know, do more of what they're doing. Yeah, the oppositional comes from within the framework. It's not, don't do that. It's do more of it, do it harder, do it longer, do it earlier, just do more. It's not pull a different lever. It's pull that lever harder. And so it's not really an opposition. It's not. The opposition's coming from within the,

Conservative Party. Yes, it is. From the COVID recovery group MPs. Yeah, it is. And I was obviously joking earlier. I'm disappointed with how Labor have handled this. Of course I am. Really?

Didn't you expect it all that? No, I didn't know how they'd react. But anyway, look, let's move on a little bit. Let me ask the tinfoil hack question, which our producer and I was sitting here the other day talking about this. Like, at the beginning of the pandemic, when people started banging on about various conspiracy theories. I was like zero chance, not even entertaining this. And as it's progressed, it's gone from like 0.1% to 0.1% to like 1% now. Are you growing exponentially? It's your

conspiracy theory. Yeah, I think I've got an internal pandemic of the mind going on. But why is all of this happening? I really don't know. I really don't know. I remain very open-minded. And that's something about me. I'm a really, really open-minded person. And my book is 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 going to go back to what the book is about, about how the UK government weaponised fear during the pandemic. It could simply be they wanted people to follow the rules and they knew the rules they were imposing were a huge form of potentially necessary or unnecessary social engineering. It could be that they panicked about the virus themselves, you know, the teeth of

crisis and they panicked. So they threw away all the old. pandemic plans and did something brand new copying China. It can also be that there could be vested interests at play. I mean, maybe it serves some people's interests. You know, we, there's been some scrutiny about contracts that haven't gone through the correct tendering process. You know, you could have a coalescence here of cock up and the road to hell being paved with the good intentions and conspiracy theory terrain. I don't really know. I don't really know. I don't really know. but we just have to watch and see. You know, someone gave me a good analogy.

While the house is on fire, you don't know what started it. You have to wait for the ashes to cool. And our fire is still pretty hot at the moment. So we don't know. Do you think we're ever going to get back to normal, as in the old normal, as in where we used to be in 2019? Why don't we just normalize calling it normal? Yeah.

But isn't this another example of just the way that we've been collectively brainwashed? the fact I'm referring to normality as the old normal. Well, it's really interesting that. I mean, I'm quite interested in the term the new normal. I'd quite like to do. I'd like somebody to pay me to do a really good study into this, actually, about how it spread. How did it spread?

Was it a form of linguistic contagion? Was there some pandemic plan that was secretly passed around governments? Why did they all start saying new normal? So early. I put the date in my book. I can't remember the top of my head, but Dominic Raab used the term, the new normal, within a few weeks of the first lockdown.

Now I'm very alert to language and at the time I thought, well, why would you say that? This sounds horrific. What do you mean? What new normal? I want to go back to real normal. And I didn't understand then and I still don't why you'd use a term that implies that a whole way of being has passed. You don't use the new normal unless it's to signify some new epoch. So I don't know what that means. That would be an interesting thing to explore. I'm open-minded. But I don't want old normal back actually. I don't, I know, I shot you. I don't, because I don't think it was good enough. It wasn't robust enough.

Something that I've sort of grieved over a little bit is not the freedoms that were taken away. It's the fact that I really didn't have freedom if it could be taken away so easily. And I think that we should be looking at sort of a bigger picture about how we make people cherish freedom and democracy and parliamentary process. and we need much, much better, more robust systems in place for future pandemics or crises. I don't think old normal was quite doing the job if it's gone so easily and it's still not back. I think we need something better. I quite agree with you because when they can abolish or outlaw protest and there doesn't seem to be a murmur about it, and then you had the women's march, and then you saw those awful footage of police officers nearly

on women's back. That was the only time it seemed that the people started to wake up as to what was happening. And it wasn't a lockdown protest. So it garnered a different level of sympathy because the nature of it. And that's good. I mean, it's not good that it happened. It's horrific. But it's good that at least people started talking about the right to protest. There were a lot of really essential basic human rights that were withheld from people. And you could argue that was necessary during a pandemic or not. But it's how fragile our relationship to those rights appear. so worship, education, protest, even elections, you know, the local elections were cancelled, which were shocking, I thought.

It was, it was. And what do you, are you optimistic about the future? Where is this all going? Because the concern you've just articulated is my biggest concern about all of this. We've opened not one and not two and not five and not even ten different Pandora's boxes. every aspect of the relationship between the citizen and our representatives has been completely and dramatically changed in a very short period of time without any democratic scrutiny whatsoever.

And so the question for me, we started with this, but the question for me going forward is, are you optimistic that we're not just going to live in a completely different era now in which everything we used to believe about representative democracy, about government, about our rights and freedoms, is just not going to be the same anymore. Are you optimistic that we'll make it through this to a better normal? I don't know.

I oscillate and I don't pretend to have a crystal ball. For me, July 19th isn't Freedom Day. I've got no expectation of freedom on July 19th. I think we'll see a return of some privileges, you know, the privilege to go to a restaurant or to a bar or to gather at someone else's house in greater numbers than whatever it is. you can't keep the rules in my head anymore because they've changed so much. I get lost on the numbers, but I think we'll see the return of some privileges

because they're not freedom if you have to buy them, negotiate, plead, exchange. It's a stepping stone to just move towards a better version of freedom. The thing that I think we need is public consultation on the use of behavioural science because it's behavioural science that made people so frightened, it made them comply with the rules, and it accounts for where we are right now, where people are, you know, the anxiety about the 19th and some restrictions being lifted is palpable. And that is not proportionate to the deaths or to the hospitalisations.

I mean, cases are a function of the amount of testing and shouldn't be the measure, but they are. It's a big number, isn't it? The big numbers are the scary ones. So what I think we need, as well as the inevitable COVID inquiry, is a public consultation and inquiry into the government's reliance on behavioural science. There have been various calls in the past for consultation and they haven't happened. And perhaps nobody thought it mattered while they were just, you know, quietly making cigarette packaging plane or encouraging us to pay our tax returns on time or making us lock up the biscuit tin. But this time we were locked up and so it matters.

I think it's time to look at what they're doing. I think it is time to look at what they're doing. Do you think it was quite sinister that Boris Johnson in that particular press conference talked about personal? personal responsibility, almost as a way that if things do go wrong, the thought is not on the government, it's on the individual or the general public. I liked him talking about personal responsibility. I think that the British public should have been trusted all along. You know, the alternative to scaring people witless to encourage a lockdown would be to say, well, there are certain things, you know, like really big gatherings, stadia, you know, we need to apply some sensible measures,

but there's this really dangerous disease. It's particularly dangerous to these categories of and we would like to ask you to be mindful of this, this and this, would we not have done it? I would have done. I think most people would have been, should have been trusted with honesty and with personal responsibility. What I thought was quite something in that speech was he said, we're changing the tools to control human behaviour. That's the bit that woke me up. Tools to control human behaviour. It's just out there in the open. They just talk about it quite quite openly now. And what do you think he means by that? Well, he specifically said away from legal restrictions and towards personal responsibility, which is going in the right direction, but it's an

honest labelling of tools to control human behaviour. What are all the tools? I mean, they're in my book. Let's talk about them. Let's get some expert witnesses talking about them. Let's gather better evidence. Let's find out who behind these tools. How much does it cost us, the taxpayer? What are we spending on behavioural science in each government department and on marketing campaigns? Why is it not in manifestos? And what's the collateral damage, which you've talked about? There's another bit of this before we wrap up that I find very interesting. You've alluded to it, and it's a conversation that's certainly unhavable on television or in the newspapers. But the reality of this virus, this has been acknowledged.

Obviously, it's particularly deadly to the elderly. But in terms of things that you yourself can control, the one, well, not the one, but a couple of things we know is obesity, and you're over. immune system are two things that can provide either very, very bad outcomes or very good outcomes depending on whether those are things that are under control. And we have seen a tremendous amount of messaging of the negative type. I don't think I've ever seen an ad from the government about what I can do to protect myself from COVID other than stay at home.

No one has told me to exercise. No one's told me to eat better. no one's told me to take vitamins. No one has told me to get fresh air. No one's told me to get the sun. No one has said any of these things, yet we know that of the things that you can control, which is probably what all of us want to know about,

those are the things that you actually can do to improve your survivability, to improve your likelihood of transmission, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So in terms of the interview, you've done many interviews for the book, was that ever discussed? And what are your thoughts on why that's never happened? I don't know.

It's baffling. Isn't it? It is baffling. And it's something that's grated on me since the beginning of the epidemic. So there's been discussion about whether vitamin D helps not, but we know it helps with other respiratory diseases. Obviously, good nutrition, exercise, sleep. And it's been known since very early that obesity appears to be a comorbidity, diabetes, hypertension disorder.

So there's a lot of things that people could do to improve their overall health. and we could have been working on that before this winter. So I don't really know. I don't know why. That hasn't been the focus. But it's worse than that, of course, because fear and stress have psychopathological outcomes, you know, it affects the immune system and it can affect overall physical health. So frightening people could have also made people sicker, literally, physically sicker, not just affect mental health. It's very true, Laura, we can talk about this for a very long time and probably just get more and more depressed as we do. But listen, we're going to ask you some questions for our locals, but before we do, we've got one final question for you.

Which is always what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be. Where we're going on holiday this summer? I'm kidding. No, that's what we should be talking about, shouldn't we? We really should. That's a good point. Well, Francis and I have both been on holiday already. Have you? Yeah. Where did you go? I went to Ibiza. Nice. Wow. You swung that nicely in time, some little window of restrictions. Did you really? Yeah, I did. The moment it looks as if it was going to open, I said to the girlfriend, I went, right.

The moment the door opens, we're going for it because I don't know when it's going to shut again. We both need a holiday. And we just went. The moment open, we went. Nice, good. There's a good little bit of information for you. That's what you tuned in. Anyway, Laura, thank you so much for coming on.

The book is called A State of Fear. I recommend people get it and check it out for themselves. Where else can people find your work online? My website is laura dodsworth.com. I'm a writer and photographer. And on Twitter and Instagram, I'm at Bear Reality, not Bear the Grizzly Bear, Bear, Naked Bear. Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

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