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

partly because they are ‘a symbolic reminder that people are dangerous, the world is dangerous, and you might feel safer at home. They create a sense of threat and danger, and that social interaction might be something to be anxious about. So mandating masks can feed the fear.’ He agreed that there was little ‘scientific basis’ for masks and that, in his view, they were designed to ‘make people compliant’. I asked about the ethics of that tactic and he retorted that ‘the ethics of it stink. The BPS [British Psychological Society] should be taking a look at it. I’m disappointed that the psychologists have not taken this up.’ Well, the problem is that at least some of the psychologists wanted us in masks precisely because of the fear signal…

A recent large-scale randomised controlled trial in Denmark, Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers,27 found no conclusive evidence that masks protect the wearer, although the study was not designed to test whether others could be protected.

A doctor wrote about the sobering reality of caring for critically-ill Covid patients for news website Unherd. What she said about masks leapt out at me: ‘I then put on my PPE (FFP3 mask, hairnet, long-sleeved gown, gloves, visor) and enter the bay to examine the patients. I feel lucky to have this level of protection – my colleagues outside of the HDU only have surgical masks, which offer little protection against an airborne virus.’28 And there is the acknowledgement – from a doctor – that a surgical mask (also known as a ‘spit-stopper’) does little to protect against viruses.

I also quizzed Shotton about masks. Even though he is a behavioural psychologist and understands how the subliminal pressure operates, he admitted that ‘if I walked into a shop wearing a mask and no one else was, I’d be embarrassed. If I wasn’t wearing a mask and everyone else was, I’d feel embarrassed.’ It’s difficult to be deviant.

People who are obeying the rules often don’t like to see others break them. There have been harrowing accounts of people with PTSD or disabilities feeling unable to go about their lives in public unmasked because of aggressive questioning, or the fear that it will happen, despite their legal exemption. Halpern referred to the desirability of this citizen policing when he commented that, ‘Most of the heavy-lifting is done by the public, frowning at people who aren’t wearing masks. The British are particularly good at doing this.’ The nudgers want us to monitor each other. In an astonishing public admission, Metropolitan Police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said she hoped that people would be shamed into complying by other members of the public.29 She hoped we would shame each other, even though no one can know by looking at another, what their reason is for not wearing a mask.

In addition to face masks there are other visible symbols in public which do their part to help prevent transmission, but also prime our behaviour in a broader way. Shotton brought up the example of the dots in the supermarket. He told me he likes the dots, ‘because they remove the social ambiguity. You follow prearranged signs.’ I told him I dislike the dots, and I don’t enjoy abundant signage telling me what to do. It feels infantilising and bossy. ‘Behavioural science doesn’t measure whether we like the dots or not, just whether we follow them,’ he said. I had another one of my breakthroughs: behavioural science isn’t about how we feel, it’s not about making us happy, it’s not about our attitude, it’s about behaviour. The clue was in the name all along.

LIES, DAMNED LIES AND STATISTICS

Numbers, data, statistics and graphs can all, if done well, appeal to ‘salience’. They catch our attention if relevant to our personal circumstances and concerns. Simplicity is important because our attention is much more likely to be drawn to things that we can understand.

An example of doing this well was when NHS Chief Executive, Simon Stevens, revealed that the UK’s health service had prepared the equivalent of 50 hospitals to be ready for people suffering severely from the epidemic.30 It conveyed scale in a relatable (and reassuring) way.

But Simon Stevens doesn’t always use this relatable and salient way of helping us visualise the scale of infection. Nosocomial Covid infections (hospital-acquired infections) have been a problem for the NHS and care homes during the epidemic. Hospitals are built like little cities, a far cry from the fever hospitals of yore, and an infectious respiratory disease can spread easily. The NHS has not been transparent about the scale of hospital-acquired infections. I had access to privileged information in mid-January 2021 and wrote for the Daily Mail31 that since the start of the the second wave alone, 25,000 patients had caught Covid while in hospital. That is a staggering number. It’s the equivalent of 50 hospitals worth of people.

Deaths, hospitalisations and cases were the main metrics discussed in press briefings and in the media. These were not placed in context with recoveries and discharges. Without providing that balance, the overall impression would be that you catch Covid and die, creating more fear.

There is so much to say about the use of numbers, percentages and steep-lined graphs that there is a whole chapter devoted to them: Chapter 10, ‘The metrics of fear’.

THE NEW VARIANT, U-TURNS AND THE CHRISTMAS THAT NEVER WAS

Professor Hugh Pennington of the University of Aberdeen accused the Government of waging a ‘propaganda campaign’ to get the public scared enough to follow lockdown measures. He said: ‘It is all very frustrating. In my heart of hearts I believe there is a propaganda campaign to get the public very scared.’32

In mid-December 2020 Matt Hancock warned that the new variant was 70% more infectious and behind a surge in cases in London and the south-east. Various scientists urged calm, reiterated that viruses do mutate, and that there was no evidence yet that this particular variant was more