A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic Read online

  ‘A State of Fear is dark and compelling, and yet woven throughout with the determination – the heartfelt need – to get beyond these dreadful days. When governments sow fear they must reap a bitter crop. From the beginning of lockdown I have been worried to death about the certain and unavoidable consequences of making and keeping an entire population frightened. Already we see that too many people regard their fellow citizens – even family and friends – as the enemy, petri dishes swimming with contagion. As a population and a society we are atomised as never before. I can scarcely imagine how the damage done might be undone. Most of all I fear what all of this has done – and will continue to do – to compromise the futures of our children. All of these concerns and many more besides are given a desperately needed airing between the pages of this book. This is a timely piece of work, shot through with the voices of frightened people. Those voices must be heard and properly listened to. Altogether this is a fascinating consideration of how fear has been used again and again throughout history and in one civilisation after another, so that governments and others in authority might get their own way. A State of Fear is an affecting and troubling read.’

  Neil Oliver, writer and broadcaster

  ‘This is an important book. The use of fear as a tool of political management is a major challenge to democracy which everyone should reflect upon, whatever their view about lockdowns and Covid-19.’

  Lord Sumption

  ‘This book is a thoroughly researched account of the amplification of public fear throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. It asks vital questions about the science and ethics of behavioural interventions. These have gone beyond “nudging” to undermine democratic values and the rule of law. UK citizens will suffer from the consequences for many years to come.’

  Robert Dingwall, Professor of Sociology, Nottingham Trent University

  ‘A chilling post-mortem of 2020’s silent epidemic - fear - and how it was used by a behavioural science apparat to terrify us into submission. It’s a thorough, fascinating and important book which I absolutely loved – I couldn’t put it down!’

  Patrick Fagan, behavioural scientist

  ‘Laura Dodsworth slices open the culture of fear we have been deliberately manipulated to experience in this pandemic crisis with a journalistic forensic scalpel. The role of behavioural science in instilling fear in the UK population is explored through the lens of those involved in developing policies, ‘outlier academics’, experts and researchers who have questioned the dominant ‘fear-based’ policy narrative. Analysis of events and expert testimony is interspersed with heart-breaking vignettes of the real-life experiences of fear that people lived with during the pandemic. The events and experiences of this past year will take considerable time for us to unpack and comprehend, and A State of Fear is an excellent early analysis of one of the most concerning elements of government policy in this crisis. I was gripped by it and devoured it in one sitting. There is no doubt that our collective ‘cognitive roadmap’ in relation to fear and risk perception has been completely obliterated in the past year. Naming and acknowledging what has happened is an important first step to recovery. Books like this will help us get there and heal.’

  Professor Ellen Townsend,

  Professor of Psychology, University of Nottingham

  ‘Laura Dodsworth has a rare and beautiful talent to observe a situation, process its many layers and present it to the world in exquisite, thought-provoking detail. Without hysteria or anger, she has studied and distilled the forces at work throughout the Covid pandemic so that we may see the world more clearly. This is a vital, eye-opening book which provides balance to an otherwise one-sided story.’

  Beverley Turner, writer and broadcaster

  ‘What speaks so powerfully in this work are the voices of those affected by the extraordinary social experiment that lockdown has been. Dodsworth draws out their experiences and puts them centre stage, while taking the reader through the techniques and strategies through which fear was made the most potent weapon in obtaining submission. A stimulating and often disturbing read.’

  Francis Hoar, barrister

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Laura Dodsworth is an author, journalist, photographer and filmmaker. Her books Bare Reality: 100 women, their breasts, their stories, Manhood: The Bare Reality and Womanhood: The Bare Reality have attracted worldwide media coverage and excellent reviews. Laura and the creation of Womanhood were the subject of a documentary for Channel 4, 100 Vaginas, which has been broadcast around the world.

  A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic

  First published in the UK by Pinter & Martin Ltd 2021

  Copyright © Laura Dodsworth 2021

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-1-78066-720-1

  Also available as an ebook and audiobook

  The right of Laura Dodsworth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act of 1988

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade and otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  Printed in the UK by Martins the Printers Ltd.

  This book has been printed on paper that is sourced and harvested from sustainable forests and is FSC accredited

  Pinter & Martin Ltd

  6 Effra Parade

  London SW2 1PS

  pinterandmartin.com

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  1. Fright night

  2. Fear spreads in the media like an airborne virus

  3. Frightful headlines

  4. Fear is a page of the government playbook

  5. The business of fear and the unelected psychocrats

  6. The SPI-B advisors

  7. The tools of the trade

  8. Controlled spontaneity and propaganda

  9. Coercion

  10. The metrics of fear

  11. Counting the dead

  12. The illusion of control

  13. The climate of fear

  14. Cults, conspiracy and psychic epidemics

  15. Tyranny

  16. Terrifying impacts

  17. Why fear should not be weaponised

  18. Happy endings are not written in the language of coercive control

  19. Making sure it never happens again

  20. The end, or is it a prequel?

  Appendix 1: Data

  Appendix 2: Lockdowns don’t work

  Appendix 3: Fight back against the nudge

  Acknowledgements

  References

  Index

  INTERVIEWS

  Darren, 64

  Sarah, 85, by her daughter

  Susan, 15, by her grandmother

  Jane, 68

  Austin, 75

  Anonymous

  Dave, hospital doctor

  Mavis, 35

  Emily, 45, nurse

  Rosie, 13, by her mother

  Mark, 44

  Jimmy, 32, by his mother

  Joseph, 60, counsellor

  Sam, 30, paramedic

  Ella, 47

  Names have been changed to protect anonymity.

&
nbsp; ‘The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.’

  From Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures, by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B), 22 March 2020.

  INTRODUCTION

  This is a book about fear. Fear of a virus. Fear of death. Fear of change, fear of the unknown. Fear of ulterior motives, agenda and conspiracy. Fear for the rule of law, democracy, the western liberal way of life. Fear of loss: losing our jobs, our culture, our connections, our health, our minds. It’s also about how the government weaponised our fear against us – supposedly in our best interests – until we were one of the most frightened countries in the world.

  In one of the most extraordinary documents ever revealed to the British public, the behavioural scientists advising the UK government recommended that we needed to be frightened. The Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) said in their report Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures,1 dated 22 March 2020, that ‘a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group, although levels of concern may be rising’. As a result they recommended that ‘the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging’. In essence, the government was advised to frighten the British public to encourage adherence to the emergency lockdown regulations.

  And frighten us they did. This book explores why the government used fear, the specific tactics, the people behind them, and the impacts of fear, including stories from people who were undone by fear during the epidemic. Most of all, this book asks you to think about the ethics of using fear to manage people.

  Fear is the most powerful of emotions and, as emotions are stronger than thoughts, fear can overpower the clearest of minds. We shouldn’t feel bad about being frightened. From an evolutionary perspective, it is key to our survival: it protects us from danger. And that is precisely what makes fear one of the most powerful tools in behavioural psychology.

  This exploration of fear led me to interview people who have been too frightened to leave their homes all year, ‘conspiracy theorists’, psychologists, some of the behavioural scientists who advised government, scientists, politicians, doctors, pandemic planners and journalists.

  By the end of March 2021, Covid had been involved in the deaths of 2.8 million2 people globally. The disease will continue to kill more, even though hopefully the biggest waves are behind us in the UK. The aim of this book is not to refute that Covid-19 is a serious disease that has killed people, most particularly the elderly and those with certain underlying health conditions, especially dementia, Alzheimer’s, obesity, diabetes and hypertensive diseases, among others.3 The aim of this book is to explore our fear response and whether it was ethical and wise for the government to deliberately frighten the population. Was the government’s response proportional? Wouldn’t people have cautiously tempered their behaviour during an epidemic in the interests of self-preservation and community spirit? What are the unintended consequences of frightening a population? In the years and inquiries to follow, the management of this epidemic must be forensically and honestly examined. A State of Fear asks that we also interrogate the behavioural science approach to managing people’s emotions and behaviour.

  Covid-19 has become another of the many endemic viruses we have to live with. It was known from the beginning to be a ‘very mild illness’4 for nearly all of us. The UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Patrick Vallance, stated this publicly on 13 March 2020. Experience has proven that correct; Covid was not lethal or dangerous to the vast majority. Vaccines and treatments were developed at miraculous speed to protect the vulnerable. So what are we still afraid of? The third wave, a fourth wave – a fifth wave? – winter recurrences, mutations, future viruses and the unknown haunt us.

  From roadside signs telling us to ‘Stay Alert’, the incessantly doom-laden media commentary, to masks literally keeping the fear in our face, we’ve become afraid of each other. Humans are now vectors of transmission, agents of disease. We have become afraid of our own judgement about how to manage the minutiae of our lives, from who to hug to whether to share a serving spoon. Apparently, we even need guidance about whether we can sit next to a friend on a bench. But perhaps we need to be more afraid of how easily manipulated we can be.

  Some will believe that leveraging our fear can be justified, if it is in our best interests. If you agree that ‘Covid-19 is the biggest threat this country has faced in peacetime history’, as the government asserted in its consultation document Changes to Human Medicine Regulations to support the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, you might think it was not only acceptable but desirable to scare the British public into complying with regulations that resulted in the greatest imposition on our liberty in peacetime. If you obtained all your information about the epidemic from Number 10 press briefings that might be your mindset.

  Tactics to quell debate and censor dissent mean that information presented in this book may feel new, even challenging. It can be psychologically uncomfortable to encounter contradictory information. We don’t like to believe we can be manipulated, let alone that we have been manipulated – this book may hurt.

  People vastly over-estimated the spread and deadliness of Covid-19. One survey5 in July 2020 showed that the British public thought 6–7% of the population had died from coronavirus – around 100 times the actual death rate at the time based on official figures. That would have been about 4,500,000 bodies – we’d have noticed, don’t you think?

  It was reported in January 2021 that the Covid epidemic caused excess deaths (to November) to rise to their highest level in the UK since the Second World War. This was headline news throughout the UK media. However, once the age and size of the population were taken into account, excess deaths were at their worst since just 2008.6 That is very significant, and showed that just over a decade of public health improvements had been undone, but less hyperbolic than the headlines.

  In September 2020, the British people were also more concerned about the spread of the virus than people in Sweden, the US, France, Germany and Japan – 83% of us thought there would be a second wave, while only 21% of us thought the government was well-prepared to deal with it.7 An international study of public attitudes across Europe, America and Asia found that people in the UK had the highest overall levels of concern about Covid.8 And yet another study reported that Britons were the least likely to believe that the economy and businesses should open if Covid was not ‘fully contained’.9 We were the most frightened population in the world.

  By February 2021 we had one of the most rapid and comprehensive vaccination programmes in the world, yet also the most stringent lockdown in the developed world.10

  People are notoriously bad at judging risk and numbers, but we substantially over-estimated the dangers. And this wasn’t helped by the daily reports from the government and media. We heard about new cases, but never recoveries. Hospital admissions but not discharges were reported. We were given numbers of daily deaths, but largely without the context that about 1,600 people die every day in the UK anyway.

  By the end of March 2021, just 689 people under the age of 60 with no co-morbidities had died from Covid in England and Wales according to NHS England.11 The average age of death with Covid is 82.3 years12 – one year more than the average life expectancy in Britain. Of course, all the deaths associated with Covid count, but if these facts had been widely reported and people had realised it was a disease which was primarily dangerous to the elderly and otherwise unwell, then ‘a substantial number of people’ would probably not ‘feel sufficiently personally threatened’.

  One government report said that lockdown could cause 200,000 people to die as a result of delays in healthcare and economic effects, also equating to one million years of life
lost.13 Another study at Bristol University14 estimated an average 560,000 lives lost caused by the reduced economic activity during lockdown, due to the well-understood link between wealth and health. Quite simply, people in rich nations live longer.

  The government, public health bodies and the media used alarmist language throughout the epidemic. Big numbers, steep red lines on graphs, the use of selective information, careful psychological messaging and emotive advertising created a blitzkrieg of daily fear bombs.

  This is a book about fear, not a book about data. Nevertheless, some additional data will be required to help you contextualise the threat of the disease with the policies for managing it, and you will find that in Appendix 1.

  A few facts and figures assist with framing the scale and dangers of Covid, and subsequently with assessing whether escalating our fear was appropriate, or not. It is partly an issue of proportion and entirely an issue of ideology. But the numbers risk ignoring the more poignant, human costs of the use of fear. I interviewed people who were driven by fear, anxiety and isolation to develop agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorders, panic attacks, started self-harming and even attempted suicide. How do we weigh the potential life saved from Covid-19 with a life deliberately ended by overdose in a hotel room or a jump from a bridge? Can we justify protecting someone from physical sickness, fever and fatigue, if the methods of protection caused someone else to develop a fear of leaving their house, or made them waken sick with dread each day?

  Epidemics will come and go. Our basic psychology is here to stay. The pressing issue is whether and how we permit behavioural psychologists, the government and the media to manipulate our psychology.

  At times, the experience of the pandemic has felt like a story, or like living in a movie. Not a fun one. While the virus was the plot device in our fantastical reality, the motivating force for many of the characters was fear.

  The best macabre fairy tales are also cautionary tales. If you can identify the Big Bad Wolf and understand what he represents and wants, you can find your way through the dark woods and be free. We don’t know how this will end. But rather than wait till it’s all over to tell the terrible story of when the world stopped and humanity was paralysed with fear, I would like to invite you to decide how the story ends. There is still time for us to craft the happy ending of our choice. Shouldn’t we be the authors of our own stories?