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

After Hitler’s defeat, Jung concluded, ‘The phenomenon we have witnessed in Germany was nothing less than the first outbreak of epidemic insanity, an eruption of the unconscious into what seemed to be a tolerably well-ordered world.’ The role of the government should be to moderate and contain a psychic epidemic and mass delusion, not to exaggerate and multiply it. If fear was an open door in spring 2020, the UK government did not allow us to walk through it, but used a battering ram to knock it down.

JOSEPH, 60, COUNSELLOR

I am working with a lot of clients who are struggling with guilt and fear.

One client feels guilty about not getting into an ambulance with their loved one who later died. They tried to get in the ambulance but were told the police could be involved if they carried on. They feel guilty that they didn’t try hard enough. The deep sense of letting people down creates a serious trauma. If you are grieving normally, someone would hug you or hold your hand. There is less of that now. We aren’t dealing with grief in the normal ways, and the grief and trauma are greater.

I also have clients who have felt marginalised and ignored, when their relatives died and the diagnosis switched from something to Covid. Some have relatives with dementia in care homes who are frightened and confused about the changes and not seeing their families.

This is a time of judgement. People are frightened to break rules and hug people and do all the things that are normal.

A lady who lives locally to me has a lot of co-morbidities. I went to see if she was alright. She was terrified to come out of the house and spoke to me through the window.

The problems she already had were compounded by terror, because she would religiously watch the Number 10 press briefings. The politicians on podiums told us to be terrified – so it’s not any wonder that some people were terrified!

When the rules relaxed and the time came to leave her front door, she couldn’t do it. It was like Stockholm syndrome. I started going round to help her by walking with her, but staying 20 feet away, just to keep her company. These were not therapeutic exchanges, she was a neighbour who needed help. She is much better now.

I think the nation has been bullied and gaslit. This was supposed to be about protecting us, but it hasn’t protected us. It’s disgraceful that the government tried to frighten us. This is a crime against the people. I can’t understand why the official bodies like the British Psychological Society aren’t talking about the ethics of what has happened. It’s like people are turning a blind eye to what’s happening.

15. TYRANNY

‘When tyrannies take over it is because people volunteer their liberty voluntarily.’

Lord Sumption

A bold pronouncement, but what we came to expect from Lord Sumption, former Supreme Court judge, in his campaign to defend civil liberties under lockdown.

What could persuade people to volunteer their liberty? Fear, in a word. Emergency situations called for emergency measures. The government responded swiftly and the emergency regulations were nodded through Parliament to applause rather than opposition. But were the UK’s emergency laws and regulations proportionate, the least intrusive available, strictly necessary and based on scientific evidence?

Lockdown was enforced under the Public Health Act, originally designed to immobilise and treat people who are infectious, not the entire population. During a House of Lords debate on the imposition of the Regulations, several peers expressed their concern that the Regulations were ultra vires, that is exceeding the legal powers of the UK government.

What made Covid the first disease to ever merit quarantining an entire population of the healthy? It was feared that the NHS would be overwhelmed. Other countries had already locked down under emergency legislation, setting a ‘template’. I asked Sumption about this striking authoritarian template, which surprisingly became a norm across the liberal democratic countries of Europe: ‘There is a herd instinct in governments and it gave them political cover. Sometimes the best thing is to do nothing.’ It’s an important point. The media and the public wanted government to act, when sometimes leadership in a crisis involves waiting, or less dramatic and less visible action.

The government reviewed emergency legislation behind closed doors, leaving MPs and the public in the dark about the evidence for the emergency regulations and their proportionality. Repeated requests for a cost-benefit analysis to determine the proportionality were ignored until an attempt to quantify the impacts of lockdown and restrictions was finally published on 30 November, in the report Analysis of the health, economic and social effects of COVID-19 and the approach to tiering.1 ‘Vague’ might be a good descriptor for this report. It doesn’t even mention QALYs – quality-adjusted life years – which are the routine way that the government and NHS quantify the value of a life saved. Presumably this value was not included in the report because it would definitively show that the ‘cure’ has been worse than the disease.

The lockdown imposed by the government to contain Covid was enforced mainly through the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020, known as the ‘Lockdown Regulations’, imposed under powers delegated by the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 (‘the 1984 Act’). In addition, the Coronavirus Act 2020 contains the notorious Schedule 21 which allows for you to be forcibly detained, tested, treated and quarantined.

The strict lockdown laws meant that various basic liberties were curtailed, including: the right to protest, worship, maintain relationships, vote (elections were cancelled), the right to education was affected as many pupils had haphazard online provision for months, and you could not leave your house except for a non-exhaustive list of exemptions. These are not trifling privileges, but basic liberties.

On 23 March the Prime Minister ordered people to stay at home. The next day Matt Hancock underscored that