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Britain Has “Practised the Drill” for Lockdown and is Ready for Future Pandemics, Says Nudge Unit Chief

by Will Jones
6 July 2023 11:00 AM

Britain has been drilled to comply with lockdown under a future pandemic through wearing face masks and working from home, the Chief Executive of the Government ‘nudge unit’ has said. The Telegraph has the story.

Professor David Halpern told the Telegraph that the country had “practised the drill” of wearing face masks and working from home and “could redo it” in a future crisis.

Last Tuesday, Matt Hancock told the public inquiry that Britain must be ready to combat future disease outbreaks with wider, earlier and more stringent lockdowns.

Speaking on the Lockdown Files podcast, the Government adviser Prof. Halpern predicted that the country would comply with another ‘stay at home’ order because they “kind of know what the drill is”.

In an interview given before Mr. Hancock’s testimony, the leading behavioural scientist even suggested that the nation’s prior experience made it “much easier to now imagine” the population would accept future local restrictions.

Prof. Halpern said that while fear-based messaging in general is not effective, he defended its use in extreme circumstances. 

“There are times when you do need to cut through… particularly if you think people are wrongly calibrated,” he said.

The suggestion that Britain might be primed to accept further social-distancing restrictions is likely to alarm lockdown-sceptics concerned by the collateral damage such measures cause.

When the pandemic hit, Mr Hancock’s department enlisted the professor’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) – better known as the ‘nudge unit’ – to provide them with “frictionless access to behavioural expertise”, according to a £1 million contract.

BIT used earworm slogans such as ‘hands, face, space’ to maximise compliance with Covid rules.

In his most wide-ranging interview since March 2020, Prof Halpern explained that his unit’s campaigns were devised to help reinforce new behaviours.

He said their posters acted as visual prompts so that “when you go into a shop or somewhere else, it re-reminds you, it cues, it acts as a trigger for the behaviour”.

The professor said that this messaging encouraged mask-wearing, meaning people felt “naked” when they forgot to put one on.  

“Put it this way,” he said. “You would feel like, ‘Oh my God, I haven’t got my mask’. You feel naked, right?”

Once the public has learnt a new behaviour, Prof. Halpern said: “In principle, you can switch it back on.”

“You’ve got the beginning, particularly, of what is called a habit loop: if this has happened, then you should do that,” he said.

Major disasters “leave this enduring trace on society”, he explained. As well as knowing the drill, this “quasi-evolutionary” impact is a strong indicator of future behaviour, he claimed.

Faced with another contagious disease, the professor predicted that the British public would start wearing masks again “relatively rapidly if they were persuaded”.

“They might protest, ‘do we really have to do it?’ [Showing] good healthy scepticism. But once you’ve exercised those muscles, they’re more likely to be reused again,” he said.

As a result, the British public – having learnt to work from home – would be more likely, he believed, to accept stay-at-home measures being used to clamp down on local outbreaks.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: COVID-19LockdownNudge UnitProject FearPropagandaPsychology

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84 Comments
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zebedee
zebedee
1 year ago

Flattening the curve means extending the duration of the epidemic and reducing acquired immunity so that when you unlock you get another wave.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4kWbYlopN4

78
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  zebedee

I seem to remember the UK’s lockdowns were so effective that they caused “cases” of “covid” to plummet in Sweden.

70
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

“What will it take to dispel that deadly myth?”

A few generations. Very few people have anything to gain by public recognition of the truth, including a large proportion of the general public. I tend to think most people must have known it was bollocks from at least the time of scotch eggs.

115
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wokeman
wokeman
1 year ago

Actually Belarus did precisely f all wet to Rona and had a comparable result to everywhere else in western Europe, this is the true control group. Football matches continued there and nothing was shut. Sweden is still an example of medical tyranny just not as bad as the rest of the west, Belarus is the true model of liberty. For defending liberty the hateful CIA tried to start a revolution in Belarus in August 2020, remarkably the large crowds didn’t cause mass deaths. Go figure.

Last edited 1 year ago by wokeman
115
-3
Monro
Monro
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

What evidence do you have that the CIA tried to start a revolution in Belarus in August 2020?

‘In a long speech to top officials, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko ranted against the alleged U.S.-led plan to destabilize the country and claimed that American allies in Europe have participated in the effort that took years to prepare, part of his attempts to cast the opposition as Western stooges.

Lukashenko didn’t provide evidence to back his claim that the U.S. had any involvement in the demonstrations.

His main challenger in the election, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, dismissed his comments as an attempt to divert public attention from rigging the vote and the violent crackdown on protests.

“There is just one reason behind the protests in Belarus and it’s known to everyone: Lukashenko has lost the vote, but he doesn’t want to step down,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press in a written comment. “People have denied Lukashenko their trust and support and demand that he leave.”

Ah! That would be none at all, then………..

Last edited 1 year ago by Monro
4
-11
AlexJ08
AlexJ08
1 year ago
Reply to  wokeman

Yes it was utterly ridiculous that football continued while the rest of us were locked away and restrained. And we all know why: because the greedy useless men in governments around the world LOVE football and the NBA etc.

What a clown world we live in, and we absolutely deserve the chaotic mess we currently find ourselves in. We get the governments and media that we deserve, for sure

13
0
Free Lemming
Free Lemming
1 year ago

Every time I see Spiked, or the DT, or w*nkers like Piers Morgan, or any of that previously lockdown-loving, ‘vaccine’ promoting, antivax-shaming, democracy-destroying ilk, spout their sudden wisdom, I feel physically sick. The whole lot should be hanging from a tree somewhere as far as I’m concerned. I’ll never forgive, I’ll never forget.

122
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Solentviews
Solentviews
1 year ago
Reply to  Free Lemming

Brendan O’Neil was pretty solid from the beginning and couldn’t see the point of Lockdowns. Unfortunately others like Fraser ‘vax everyone’ Myers was an absolute disgrace and gave Piers Morgan a run for his money. I can’t ever look at Spiked in the same way now.

16
0
RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago
Reply to  Solentviews

Myers, and his tyrannical enforced vax everyone policy, is the reason I no longer subscribe to Spiked!

8
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

Come on Will, how often are we going to repeat this?

10
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
1 year ago

It was always a reflection of the neurosis of the country that succumbed to such measures and so the Swedes demonstrated themselves to be especially level-headed especially given the trends over the rest of the globe. And then you get examples of very nasty totalitarianism in places like New Zealand, erstwhile the most innocuous country in the world perhaps. And then beautiful anomalies like Belarus. And those valiant African leaders who tried to warn the world but who were shortly dispatched. If you meditate on that period you will see that it was a time when the psyche of the nation was laid bare in stark relief.

31
0
Safedthinker
Safedthinker
1 year ago

‘What will it take to dispel that deadly myth?’
The words ‘The Diamond Princess’.

6
0

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