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

names with numbers, ‘egg’ profiles, and taking a ‘one note’ approach to certain issues. These trolls en masse create a sense of disapproval which the individual experiences on their timeline, as well as sending a signal to the rest of the world. The intention is clearly to discredit the individual, which can have real-world implications for their mental health, participation in social media and also for careers with public profiles.

If we’re talking about online harms, what about the harm caused by shady actors buying Twitter campaigns for covert purposes? Who amplifies tweet campaigns that coordinate with political debates and why? A transparent investigation is needed.

DAVE, HOSPITAL DOCTOR

I want to share three examples that illustrate the breadth of the impacts of our country’s response to Covid.

We treated a young man who had advanced cancer. He was scared to access healthcare last spring. When he did try and get help, he wasn’t able to see someone in person and he had a video appointment. He felt they didn’t take him as seriously as maybe they should have done. By the time we saw him, it was inoperable. We gave him palliative surgery and intervention. Might he have been saved? Almost certainly. He had a wife and a family. He is almost certainly now deceased.

We are treating a woman at the moment. She is younger than me and has children. She has made a very serious suicide attempt. Her life is still in the balance and she’s suffered irreversible brain damage. She had no previous history of mental ill-health and self-harm, but she is in financial ruin and couldn’t see a way out. She’s not the only one. We’ve seen many others. There is no way of recording this, no way of coding data that someone suffered extreme mental harm as a result of lockdown. It is intuitive the restrictions have caused harms, but how will this be measured?

A woman in her late 60s had been gradually deteriorating and suffering chest pains over many months. She didn’t want to make a fuss and overwhelm the health system, and she was scared of catching Covid in hospital. Eventually, she presented with end-stage heart failure. Had she not been fearful and gone to her GP, she could have had treatment and continued to care for her children.

9. COERCION

‘Those who consciously justify torture, and are not candid enough to state that they use it to defend their own power and privilege, rely essentially on the philosophic argument of a lesser evil for a greater good. They reinforce this with an appeal to the doctrine of necessity – the existential situation forces them to make a choice between two evils.’

From Report on Torture, Amnesty International, 1973

Social psychologist Albert Biderman investigated and reported on how Chinese and Korean interrogators ‘brainwashed’ prisoners of war in the 1956 paper Communist attempts to elicit false confessions from Air Force prisoners of war. His studies resulted in a framework, Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, which has since been used in other contexts, such as domestic abuse, to understand coercive techniques. While not as extreme, lockdown and social distancing measures bear more than a passing resemblance to the tactics featured in Biderman’s Chart of Coercion.

Dr Harrie Bunker-Smith, a psychologist, also compared some of the government’s tactics to psychological abuse. She told me that ‘there is a parallel with an abusive relationship, which I noticed because I am trained in domestic abuse. The phrases were the same. A few months in we saw that mistakes had been made. A paper came out that said lockdowns cause more harm than good in the summer. And fair enough, mistakes happen. But they kept on happening. Like people working in care homes could go in and out, but family couldn’t visit their loved ones. Social isolation can kill people, it’s a serious risk to be considered alongside infection with Covid. Abusers will say they won’t do something again but then they keep doing it. Abuse is not constant, it’s not bad all the time, you have periods of extreme abuse followed by the honeymoon period, where you get flowers and apologies and promises and then things deteriorate again.’

She told me she believes people are getting used to being controlled by the government in a similar way. We have gone between lockdown (the extreme abuse) and more freedom (the honeymoon period) but that freedom has become controlled and authorised. The control crept in and the goalposts were moved, again like domestic abuse: ‘Freedom becomes conditional. You wait to be told you are allowed it. And it can be removed from you. The British public are in a coercive control relationship with the government. Most people will say they are not; in fact they will defend the “relationship”. People in an abusive relationship can get very angry when they are called out, if they are not ready to hear what’s going on.’

See if you think Biderman’s Chart of Coercion can be applied to the government’s policies.

BIDERMAN’S CHART OF COERCION

TOOL

EFFECT

LOCKDOWN EFFECT

Isolation

Deprives victim of all social supports and of his ability to resist. Develops an intense concern with self. Makes victim dependent upon interrogator. Solitary confinement and isolation.

‘Stay at home orders’, self-isolation, social distancing, isolation from loved ones.

Monopolisation of perception

Fixes attention upon immediate predicament, fosters introspection. Eliminates stimuli competing with those controlled by captor. Frustrates all actions not consistent with compliance. Physical isolation. Darkness or bright light. Barren environment. Restricted movement. Monotonous food.

The monopolisation of the 24/7 news cycle, social media flooded with government and public health advertising and messaging, censorship of alternative viewpoints. The closure of social, cultural, artistic and leisure venues and events.

Induced debility and exhaustion

Weakens mental and physical ability to resist. Semi-starvation. Exposure. Exploitation of wounds. Induced illness. Sleep deprivation. Prolonged interrogation. Forced writing. Over-exertion.

Isolation and loneliness affect sleep and physical health. Being forced to stay at home and closure of sports affect fitness and health.

Threats

Cultivates anxiety and despair. Threats of death. Threats of non-return. Threats of endless interrogation