In March 2023, the BMJ published an article by professors Stephen Reicher, John Drury, Susan Michie and Robert West entitled ‘The U.K. Government’s attempt to frighten people into Covid protective behaviours was at odds with its scientific advice‘. You will note in the declaration of competing interests that they were all Government scientific advisors. All four sat on SPI-B (the U.K. Government’s Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours) and two were also part of ‘Indie SAGE’.
In essence, the article claims that the idea of using fear to induce compliance with lockdown and NPIs did not come from the Government conspiring with behavioural scientists in SPI-B, but rather from ignoring them. Not only that, they say fear is an ineffective way to persuade people engage in ‘health protective behaviours’.
This article stuck in the craw after the extensive research I had undertaken for my book A State of Fear: How the U.K. Government weaponised fear during the COVID-19 pandemic. I don’t deny the Government’s own agency in using fear but to claim it was at odds with official scientific advice is patently untrue.
The article opens with the shocking leaked Government WhatsApp messages in which the former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock openly proposed using fear — “we must frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain” — and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case agreed that “the fear/guilt factor vital”, offering lurid insight into their base and disrespectful attitude towards the British people.
But was it right for Reicher et al. to claim the Government acted against its own scientific advice? Or did these embarrassing leaks happen to offer an excellent opportunity for SPI-B members to distance themselves from the egregious use of fear?
The professors’ article then went on to use a hard-hitting article which appeared in the Telegraph in May 2021 to further back up the idea that it was the Government which aimed to control the public through fear. Well, I have a little insight into that article, since every single quote came from the anonymous interviews I conducted with government advisers, including some of their colleagues on SPI-B. One told me that “the way we have used fear is dystopian”. Another crowed that “without a vaccine, psychology is your main weapon… Psychology has had a really good epidemic, actually”. And yet another adviser told me that he was “stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology”. These were Reicher et al.’s contemporaries and colleagues — not the Government — breaking cover to express their discomfort and concerns.
If my first concern with this article was the flagrant denial of the advice contained within the infamous SPI-B document ‘Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures‘ published on March 22nd 2020 to increase the level of personal threat felt by the complacent, my second significant concern was the astonishing idea that the authors could “leave aside the ethical and political dimensions of this argument”. How can psychologists leave aside the ethical dimensions of using fear, whether for an article or advising Government and drafting the plans in the first place?
Professor Ellen Townsend and I decided to write a response to challenge these claims. We could not write a rapid response in the BMJ since we would have been limited to 600 words. Hence, 13 months later, a more substantive peer-reviewed article — a form of ‘response’ — has been published in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy with co-authors Professors Gemma Ahearne, Robert Dingwall, Lucy Easthope and Michael Riordan, ‘The Three Rs of Fear Messaging in a Global Pandemic: Recommendations, Ramifications and Remediation‘.
In our paper we lay out the evidence that SPI-B did support the use of fear messaging, contrary to existing psychological and disaster planning literature. Furthermore, it was never possible to simply target the ‘complacent’, who were not defined and were in fact doing a reasonable job of assessing their own risk. Consequently, the entire population was subject to fear messaging, with all of its damaging consequences.
SPI-B did recommend the use of fear. Not only that, even if it had not recommended fear, note that it did not criticise the Government’s campaign of fear in any of its members’ frequent turns in the media spotlight. The committee lay the ethical dimensions to one side. Psychologists actively proposing the use of fear should not leave aside ethics. Indeed, they are bound by ethical codes of conduct. If they disagreed with such fear messaging they had many opportunities — as well as arguably moral and professional obligations — to object on public record to the mass evocation of fear and the ensuing harms. This is, in fact, why some SPI-B advisers broke cover to speak with me for my book research.
On January 6th 2021, retired NHS psychologist Dr. Gary Sidley wrote to the British Psychological Society (BPS) about the unethical use of strategies to gain mass compliance, including fear, scapegoating and covert nudging.
One of the ‘Statement of Values’ in the BPS Code of Ethics & Conduct (2018) (12), stipulates:
3.1 Psychologists value the dignity and worth of all persons, with sensitivity to the dynamics of perceived authority or influence over persons and peoples and with particular regard to people’s rights.
In applying these values, Psychologists should consider: … consent … self-determination.
3.3 Psychologists value their responsibilities … to the general public … including the avoidance of harm and the prevention of misuse or abuse of their contribution to society.
The use of fear causes harms. Even if lives are potentially saved by calibrating the risk of death where people have underestimated risk, there are harms to mental and physical health by amplifying fear. Furthermore, the British public had an exaggerated understanding of the risks. One survey in July 2020 found that the British public thought 6-7% of the population had died from coronavirus, which was around 100 times the actual death rate.
So, given the negative ramifications, issues with effectiveness and ethical concerns, why did the SPI-B advisors recommend raising the perceived threat among the ‘complacent’? This is not addressed in the article by Reicher et al.
Among many reasons, realistically, one could be that the fears felt by psychologists themselves advising the Government affected the quality of professional advice. One SPI-B advisor told me under cover of anonymity for A State of Fear that “psychologists tend to be more on the neurotic end of the spectrum”.
Sometimes this was all too obvious. Implying that Boris Johnson should delay the road map, SPI-B’s Professor Stephen Reicher tweeted in the run-up to the original Freedom Day of June 21st:
What sort of sign does he want? The Thames turned to blood? A plague of frogs? Writing on the wall that spells out ‘we are all doomed if you don’t stop your dithering’? But seriously, what sort of sign does he want?
No Biblical scale event followed Freedom Day.
Also in June 2021, Professor Susan Michie argued on Channel 5 that face coverings and social distancing measures should continue “forever”, comparing the behaviours to routine ones such as wearing seat belts and picking up dog poo. Face coverings make little to no difference to the spread of respiratory flu-like illnesses and COVID-19 according to this Cochrane review. The idea that we might wear them forever despite the many harms, but for little to no benefit is deranged.
Later in December 2021, amidst calls that another lockdown was needed, Professor Robert West, tweeted:
It is now a near certainty that the U.K. will be seeing a hospitalisation rate that massively exceeds the capacity of the NHS. Many thousands of people have been condemned to death by the Conservative Government.
In fact, the U.K. never came close to SAGE’s projected deaths of 600 to 6,000 a day, or exceeding NHS capacity.
These professors should not be singled out for experiencing fear during the pandemic, nor for performing something of a volte face about the strategies deployed to combat COVID-19. Incidences such as these are now coming hard and fast. Just this week, in a notably mind-blowing example of amnesia, presenter Susanne Reid confessed on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, “Looking back I think we failed our children during the pandemic”. (This was in response to the news that school closures during COVID-19 mean that GCSE results will be poorer in England well into the 2030s. The impact on education and as well as mental health was predicted by experts at the time.) Yet at the time, GMB asked viewers a number of times whether schools should lock down, posing polls on Twitter, and interviewing Zero Covid fanatics who pushed this totally destructive idea. (Remember we don’t have Zero Covid now, and we never will. If they had had their way, we’d still be locked down, masked up, and schools closed.)
Over the coming years, expect to hear many more people say they never supported Zero Covid, lockdowns, the Rule of Six, school closures, tiers, cancelling Christmas or face coverings.
During the period of the COVID-19 Inquiry, no one should be immune from self-reflection. Those involved in advising Government should consider their ethics, biases and cognitive dissonance.
This article was first published on Laura’s Substack page the Free Mind. Subscribe here.
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I’m sure this dangerous psychopath has another one up his sleeve, and will tell us all about it once Gates gives him the go-ahead.
Just a short delay while they find a new lab. Another from the Wuhan Lab would be too suspicious and the next one planned for release from the Ukrainian labs has been unavoidably disrupted. I predict somewhere in South America.
I thought they did that a couple of years back with Zika?
China announces Bird Flu case in child …Gates rubs his hands?
Fascinating how you have focussed on a few people to demonise.
They do happen to be ‘leaders’ and public health officials – who all joined in together and went along with crazy measures. All incapable of individual thought. Not one wants to shoulder any responsibility, yet this is what they get their enormous salaries for. I say again, leaders…
You should get help.
“And what’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take.”
You think?
So why are people being coerced/forced to take “for emergency use only” experimental vaccines?
Well quite. surely they should now rescind the EUAs? If there is no emergency
After the greatest ever clinical trial, we can assume permanent approved.
You will need to get over the anti vaxx tendency and accept reality.
“greatest ever clinical trial”
”accept reality”
I think you need to lay off the cheap lager and stop watching the BBC.
Have you read the Pfizer trial data yet?
Clearly you haven’t.
Reported that the US Navy have now stopped punishing the vax free among their ranks. It’s going in the right way, however not fast enough
Forced? Really.
You didn’t hear about Austria then?
Fines or imprisonment without a vaccine, well that is until they dropped the whole facade, I assume they didn’t want to be associated with their second most famous national.
No idiot, not Arnold, the one with the funny moustache, and the Hugo boss outfit.
Doesn’t mean very much when you can change the definition at a moment’s notice. Fauci and his ilk are dead men walking and I thnik they feel this in their bones. Like the ancient Chinaman said, sit by the river long enough and you will see the heads of your enemies come floating by.
I don’t care if they all change their minds on it. They can back peddle all they like. I hope everyone doesn’t forget what these evil people did to us all!
And how much money they stole. Most people don’t want acknowledgements, they don’t want apologies, sackings even are too sparing. There needs to be financial armageddon for those who wrecked economies.
It is not minds that have changed. It is the phase of the pandemic, which is due to immunity and lower death rates.
Which is due to vaccination.
So let’s say thank you to the vaccines.
Surprising then that all cause mortality has gone up not down. The vaccines are so good that the more shots you have the better chance you get of being infected or reinfected. That is patently obvious. What is more insidious is the myth that they prevent you getting seriously ill. There is no evidence to that, and it’s unlikely there ever will be. Let’s say thank you to the vaccines that were patented a day after the virus was, in 2017. Yeah good idea.
There is no mention of the slow march into neurological tissue and destruction of the brain. Of course nobody wants to look at that. This disease contains many sinister realities, I have seen them in the deterioration of older members of my own family. There is no putting humpty dumpty back together again just like there is no going back to our cognitive level of ten years ago. And pricks like this one are entirely responsible.
I too have seen what you describe – in elderly relatives, for which I will never forgive what has been done to them and the people who have played their part in it, but also in younger vaccinated too. I think it was at worst deliberate and intentional, and at best, possibly accidental or a known risk that TPTB were happy to take.
What’s Fauci up to?
Something new will be appearing shortly that’s an absolute cert.
He is an object lesson in shamelessness.
..like all the ‘objects’ over here….the Cabinet, SAGE, MHRA, Ferguson and modellers of the same ilk. Never will they know lives reduced, in straitened circumstances, as they were all/ are seduced by money and power and flattered ego.
That’s exactly it – the “lives reduced”; for billions by now. They have no idea and no capacity to care.
Who is protecting him?
Perhaps it’s what he knows as well as who he knows?
Get a grip.
Get a grip
This corrupt and criminal’s latest sidestep is well-described and taunted in elgatomalo’s latest post. I wonder when his fellow recidivists, liars, Big Pharma placemen and others in the UK start singing from the Fauci hymnsheet.
Perhaps “Cloudy Crystal Balls” Ferguson could produce, for once, an accurate Recantation Model?
The differential has already occurred. The fact that a vaxxed person who might exert themself physically will possibly induce a heart attack, as if physical exertion sets up a system of knives and daggers within the vascular system. The fittest and the best are those who will be struck down first. There is already evidence for this. These people will have fewer and fewer defenders as time goes by.
You are being silly. You have taken your miniscule knowledge level and applied poor reasoning skills to come up with nonsense.
Then you found 23 similar idiots to like your post.
PLANdemic phase of covid19 is over. Moving on to the next new phase
the scientific basis for making this announcement is that the data shows even erstwhile mask wearing Democrats have started ignoring him.
They’ll be launching the next bioweapon soon then. Can’t deprive Billy boy of Clot Shots version 2, eh?
Some people in other countries were quite impressed and inspired by the resistance in this country. You shouldn’t forget that. The reistance we mount counts for a lot. Our enemies can’t possibly win our job is to limit the damage. You might think that your contribution is ineffectual but it really does keep the bastards in check.
Kamala Harris seems to have failed to become a dead end for SARS2
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/yes-the-vaccines-were-supposed-to
Emphasis on the “Dead” of course.
Isn’t that a daisy? The nonexistent pandemic is ‘over’. Would you Adam and Eve it? Don’t hold your George, the next nonexistent scare cannot be far off.
In other noos, your writer’s nearest ‘CofE’ church has stopped flying the Ukrainian flag and is once again flying the English flag. You know, the flag of the land it is alleged to represent. I suppose, unlike the regime, she wasn’t in it for the long haul. But you’ll nonetheless forgive the deviation of the church, she has long since deviated from her traditional/theological roots.
More at Ten.
Ever considered the evidence behind religion, since you care what a church does.
Go on be sceptical.
No, Gumbo, I’ve never considered such things.
Yes, as a Christian I am instructed to test everything and hold fast to what is good and to abstain from all evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 ESV)
Now, twiggy, what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’?
Now Elon is in charge of Twitter, there’s no chance of covering-up publicly exposed emails so no doubt Dr Faucinstein is teaching himself how to use Tor and is, through an encrypted tunnel, commissioning Gain of Function part II as we speak.
I’m not on the Musk bandwagon. I don’t think he’s going to be the saviour of freedom of expression that everyone on the right and moderate left believes. I can’t quite articulate why I’m sceptical, but it has something to do with Musk himself/his own world view combined with the lunatic establishment making life difficult for him.
I hope I’m wrong.
I share your scepticism.
You don’t mean scepticism. You should look up what it means.
I don’t see searching questions on this site. Just stupid rants.
Fuck off and post elsewhere then?
It’s going to be much easier to blackmail one Mr. Musk than everyone on board of a public company. In fact, Mr. Musk should be very concerned about his personal safety now – unless of course he is already a puppet duly playing his role.
Anyone who has a girlfriend called ‘Grimes’ is not normal.
I agree. People are in for a surprise if they hold Elon Musk up as a saviour of free speech and bastion of capitalism. He is neither.
ONS: there were 46,202 deaths registered in England in March 2022. This was 640 more deaths than in March 2021 and 1,141 more deaths (2.5%) than the five-year average (2016 to 2019, and 2021). It doesn’t sound like a pandemic.
How about 2020 and 2021?
You may have noticed the death rate fell significant after the vaccination campaign.
I know it is an inconvenient fact, but you need to accept reality.
I don’t know where you get your “facts” from but –
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/06/global-covid-deaths-2021-have-topped-all-last-years
“COVID-19 deaths in 2021 worldwide have surpassed the total number of COVID-19 deaths in all of 2020, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins data yesterday. As of Jun 10, 1,884,146 people have died of COVID-19 in 2021, compared with the 1,880,510 in 2020.”
Now explain why countries with a low or no vaccine programme are also seeing death rates fall this year.
Natural immunity by any chance?
Pfizer knew about that in their own trials –
https://phmpt.org/
Keep back peddling you Fraud.
It seems like almost on a daily basis now, our suspicions and “theories” are being proven correct.
Add this to the recent court case in the UK, where the decision to deport the elderly back to care homes was found unlawful.
Their whole system of lies is crumbling, one rotten piece at a time.
There is a rumbling amongst the masses, they still don’t understand the gravity of the situation, the deceptive media are still trying to steer the conversation away from the truth.
But people are at least now starting to get uneasy with the narrative.
The penny might just drop for some of them.
Expected next panic.
There will be a close fly-by of a comet in 2026. Some time ago calculations suggested that it might hit, but more recent ones suggest a close passage.
I suspect that we will be being treated to an ‘Outer Space Panic’ before too long…
My money’s on hoaxed alien landing.
Is the crook Fauci not in prison yet then?
What is his crime?
Specifically.
You mean apart from lying to Congress and funding research that was banned under US regulations?
Do I need to mention his involvement in the HIV scandal, or is that enough?
How is this egregious fraud still in place?
The world has gone mad, with the US in the van.
They will go to any lengths to keep this schtum. I even read an article recently which claimed that the civil service was adopting a lazy manana attitude as part of some new cultural drive. Believe me if a new manana attitude is starting to prevail it is because of the physical and spiritual weakening of the particpiants, We are talking about a great diminution of our energies and we shouldn’t just brush this aside. But people will, the line of least resistance is always the most attractive,
The public sector has always had a manana attitude, it matters not whether they sit at a desk in an office or in their pyjamas at home. The fact is they are unaccountable and hence the motivation to succeed and deliver value is absent.
The sight and/or sound of Fauci makes my skin crawl. I really hope that he dies a slow, agonising death. The evil little cnut.
Read your own post and wonder who is a nasty piece of work.
Fauci is up there with Ferguson – wouldn’t trust them one inch.
I’m sure neither seeks the approval of the residents of this institution.
Somefink gotta be dun abaht them Fauscists.
Get an education
Hang on a minute!
The most significant global event in mankind’s history and it took a journalist to ask a question which dragged out a casual admission from, perhaps, the principle actor in this whole event, that the pandemic is over?
No global, or even national announcement in the USA, that we are all out of the woods and covid is now merely endemic?
Nothing splurged across the broadsheets and red tops, no grand announcements on radio or TV? No celebrations in parliaments across the world?
Nothing to demonstrate to the Chinese, torturing their population once again, that the west has had enough and we are damn well getting back to normal.
No! Just Fauci treating the public with his usual contempt and doing a Joe Biden whisper into the mic. that will slowly dribble around the western world.
It seems, by his attitude, that we stupid public should all have known this already.
Stop Press: Vice-President Kamala Harris has tested positive for Covid in spite of being quadruple jabbed.
It’s OK because vaccinated people are a ‘dead end for coronavirus’; she can freely mix with others knowing that it’s impossible for her to pass it on. Thus spake Fauci before it was universally recognised that the vaccines were less than useless.
I think it’s fair to assume that the Vice Courtesan in Chief has been jabbed far more than four times.
Fekin brave men!
What I find absolutely sickening about this statement from Fauci and the legal judgement about care home admissions is the almost zero acknowledgement from the average citizen and the media of their parts in this. For over two years they ran the psyop and were willing participants in the mindless evil that took place and in places still is.
Over 50% of the population should feel ashamed of itself, but it doesn’t its too busy cheering on some country that a few months ago could have been outer mongolia.
I am ashamed to be human quite often these days.
The best I get from these cretins is “it’s time we moved on”
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/as-vaccine-failure-becomes-more-and
What we are about to see is another full frontal attack on the critical thinkers. They have only one out, to press down with their boot.
So Fauci says the pandemic is over.
Surely the obvious question, even for a mainstream journalist is: given that the current lower level of cases and deaths is not much different to patterns seen in both 2020 and 2021, why was it a pandemic then and not now?
Except the pattern of deaths is vastly different now wet 20 and 21.
Writing something doesn’t make it true. So stop talking nonsense.
I know – glaring isn’t it?
Which means that the fact that they don’t ask it gives the lie to their role over the last 2 years – nothing more than govt propagandists
Therefore the Emergency Use Authorisation for the novel gene therapies is now defunct?
Stop publishing ‘bad taste’ picture of the Devil and reporting his drivelings!
There never was a pandemic. Just seasonal ‘flu and now a cold.
This man is a demented liar.