A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura Dodsworth [the two towers ebook .txt] 📗

people may have) not an individualistic, consumer-oriented, profit-driven society badly damaged by 20 years of failed neoliberal economic policies. #LearnLessons’

I’m not sure the people who were welded into their apartments in China would agree with this rose-tinted view of collectivism, or the Uygurs, or those who are blacklisted (‘once discredited, everywhere restricted’) using China’s government surveillance social credit system.

‘It’s interesting how people’s personal politics sit with this,’ said SPI One. ‘Susan Michie, who I think’s been outstanding, is a member of the Communist Party, yes. I’m not sure how helpful her criticisms of the government are. The attack on neo-liberalism and the whole culture of individuality is rooted in the collective, the ‘we’, group identity – this is powerful psychology at the moment. In general, the pandemic hasn’t exactly always brought the best out in people and the science/politics interface is both very interesting and problematic.’ I asked if personal politics interfere with the quality of advice. SPI One turned it round, saying that they believed the more right-wing and populist governments had not managed the epidemic as well.

As The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science notes, ‘Some of the groupthink afflicting scientific research is political. Numerous studies have shown that the majority of academics are liberals and progressives, with relatively few moderates and scarcely any conservatives among their ranks’. Politicised groupthink can bias scientific and social-scientific research in any field that acquires a political coloration.

SPI One warned me that ‘people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise.’ They were concerned about some of the policies the government were enacting, possibly using Covid as a proxy: ‘We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in.’

They told me that there was a more pressing problem with science and politics. The advice might depend on who pays the advisors. (Frankly, I was surprised there was not more of a clamour to understand the financial interests and funding behind the various advisors to government during the epidemic.) More interestingly, they observed that ‘psychologists tend to be more on the neurotic end of the spectrum. I personally have been taking Covid very seriously. I go in shops, but I don’t go in cafes. There is a madness in psychology at the moment. Suddenly every psychologist and undergraduate in the country is at looking this. And that is partly an anxiety management thing.’ Perhaps the strategy to frighten the country was ignited in the crucible of the psychologists’ own anxieties.

I asked my standard question: had it been ethical to frighten people ‘for the greater good’? ‘You need to frighten people,’ they affirmed, ‘there is something frightening about pandemics. The number of deaths in Italy meant it was responsible for the public to be informed about how dangerous it was, for their own safety. Young people, particularly people under 55, seem to be quite safe. How do you alert people to the fact there is a serious life-threatening illness they can get without putting the fear of God into them? We live with the knowledge we are going to die but we don’t normally think the person we are going to shake hands with could kill us.’

This seemed at the heart of the issue ethically – is it acceptable to implement a campaign of fear when the threat does not apply equally to everyone? One SPI-B paper spelled out clearly that ‘the messaging should be transparent about uncertainty where present, in order to earn trust,’6 but this had not been reflected in ministers’ speeches, or in scientific briefings, or in advertising. As an example, one government advertisement, targeted at the young, showed teenage lads sitting in a park, with the message, ‘Don’t meet up with mates. Hanging out in parks could kill.’ Providing tabulations of relative risk in advertisements wouldn’t work, obviously, but does over-stating risk to people who are clearly not in the risk category engender trust? It doesn’t take long for young people to suss out they aren’t at risk, so what was to be gained long term by pretending they were? The government tried to democratise the risk of Covid, when in fact it was highly patterned and age-stratified. I thought of how Jane (p76) said she wouldn’t trust the government again if there was another epidemic. She was just one example of how simple messaging – which may have the best intentions – can backfire if not honest.

I mentioned Jane to SPI One and said she suffered panic attacks every morning for weeks, and scoured the news for stories of hope. Had SPI-B ever been commissioned to give people hope? Apparently not.

Another call for transparency came from SPI-B member Gavin Morgan, an educational psychologist. With his educational focus, he worried about the impact of school closures on children’s mental health and learning, especially ‘the more needy kids’ with mental health issues and behavioural problems. He said that the longer lockdown went on, ‘the more kids will be affected. The more broken pieces there will be to pick up.’

He did a lot of work with SPI-B to get schools in a position where they could reopen in the summer, but he found the willingness was not there. The government had created so much fear that there was ‘a lot of misplaced concern’ from parents and teachers about the risk level. In his view, ‘This stems from the government’s concern that people wouldn’t follow lockdown rules. They went overboard with the scary message to get compliance. They were pushing at an open door, because there was already fear. Effectively, locking down schools was easy and unlocking was very difficult because of fear. The government’s campaign was too effective.’

I asked if a more honest and transparent communication of risk might not have reduced the difficulties with schools. He agreed, and used the term ‘co-creation’ again. In his opinion, the Department for Education, teachers and parents should have jointly developed plans, which would have led to more honesty, a better understanding of risk, and ultimately they