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Covid fear is now a bigger threat than thevirus itselfOnce upon a time we were Blighty not Frighty. It's time to get a grip or there will beirreversible damage to our national healthALLISON PEARSON8 September 2020 • 7:00pmIdespair I really do. The powers of the wretched Coronabeast are waning fast. “It hasburnt through the dry grass, mainly those who would have died anyway in the nextfew months, and now it is infecting younger age groups but not harming them,” saysa scientist friend. Admissions are only a fraction of the level compared to peak of thepandemic despite warnings of a second wave rolling across Europe. “Covid has gonefrom our wards, has been for weeks” reports the head nurse at one of the UK’s largesthospitals, “I can’t understand what the Government are going on about.”Boy, are they going on. And on. England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer ProfessorJonathan Van Tam-a Chieftain tank in human form-was deployed this weektowarn that the public has “relaxed too much”. Relaxed? How much generalisedanxiety, cyclists wearing masks, children instructed not to turn around inclassrooms, empty trains, cancelled holidays, people solemnly washing groceries inCovid-free areas and all the other pointless pantomime of panic would be sufficientfor the Professor? The nation’s a complete basket case and he wants us to keepweaving.And then there’sMatt Hancock. Like Private Frazer in Dad’s Army, our Secretary ofState for Health has a lip-smacking relish for doom. As children settle back in theclassroom after almost six months without friends or lessons and young peopleprepare for university, Matthad a few uplifting wordsto give them the confidencethey so desperately need: “Don’t kill your gran!”I can’t believe he actually said that. Either Hancock doesn’t understand the science orhe is wilfully misinterpreting the data to keep the population as terrified as possible.Yes,there were almost 3,000 new “cases”on two successive days this week. But PCRtests, like all medical tests, are not perfect and can be unreliable. Covid “cases” soundalarming, but a case can be anyone with a few remnants of virus on a swabtest whopresents zero risk. ICUs are still, in the main, eerie ghost towns. Corona deaths aredown to a handful a day out of a population of 66 million. Basically, I have morechance of marrying Brad Pitt than you have of dying from Covid19.As Dr Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine atOxford University, protests, “The norms of clinical reasoning are going out of thewindow. A PRC test does not equal Covid19, but in some definitions it does.” TheOffice for National Statistics has resorted to paying people a staggering £450 to havea series of nasal swabs. Those volunteers were never ill. They are among the silent
millions who probably had corona without noticing and have boosted communityimmunity, making us all safer.This news should be a cause for cautious celebration. Just a small glass of Harvey’sBristol, Marjorie. Yet the remorseless campaign of fear to which the British peoplehave been subjected since March refuses to let up. However infectious Covid19 maybe, itis a mere amateur compared to the contagion of dread which has insinuated itsway into our lives like a noxious gas. According to a recent poll, the British publicbelieves the death toll from the virus is 100 times higher than it actually is. ForgetKeepCalm and Carry On. That defiantly bloody-minded, worse-things-happen-at-sea, cheer-up-love-it-may-never-happen nation we all felt glad to belong to is now anunrecognisable land of paranoia and paralysis.I asked my followers on Twitter a question: “How many people do you know whohave been so scared by government behavioural psychologists that they are unlikelyto resume a normal life even as Covid recedes?” The replies came thick and furious:•Sebastian: “My mother-in-law–70, ex mayor of her town, strongwoman, willhardly leave the house now. Her friends are the same and all their social groups havedisbanded.”•Lisa: "My sister still requires her husband to strip off at the door after work and getstraight in the shower"•Sara: “I know someone whose mother even sleeps with her mask and gloves on. Herblood pressure went to 240. She’s killing herself!”•Valerie: “Friends don’t read the Sunday papers until Wednesday. And all post andparcels are left for 3 days before opening.”•Elsa: “My neighbour goes to herown shed in her own garden with mask and gloveson. I wish I were joking.”•Danny: “My mother is panic-stricken. So much so my father has bought a treadmillfor the house so she can have some kind of walk.”•Hannah:“I’ve not seen my mum in over six months. She only leaves the house atnight.”•Jason: “My in-laws won’t come out of theirhouse. My boys have all but given up onever seeing them again. They sit and await a vaccine that is never coming.” Barrie: “Iknow people in their twenties who haven’t left their house since March.”•Alex: “My mum is still washing everything, not hugged mydaughter since the end ofFebruary until Thursday when I made her. She may have held her breath for theentire 5 seconds non-face-to-face hug.”What the hell have Hancock and the shroud-wavers on SAGE done to us? I reallyidentified with Josiah who joked,“I spent the first month of lockdown persuading myparents to take Covid seriously. And the last 3 months trying to persuade them not totake it seriously!”That’s it, exactly. Fear, like a coffee stain on a cream sofa, is a bugger to get out.Those of uswho try to do what Matt Hancock should be doing-offering encouragingfacts, persuading needlessly timid people it’s OK to venture out, are often met withincomprehension, even hostility. So successful is the psychological warfare thatvictims don’t evenrealise they’ve been brainwashed. Yet was this horrifying obsessivebehaviour planned deliberately?
On the 22nd of March, theScientific Advisory Group for Emergencies(SAGE)produced a paper for the Government which must rank as one of the most successfuland most damaging documents in our history. Options for Increasing Adherence toSocial Distancing Measures laid out ways of bringing about behavioural change inthe public to get us to comply with Covid19 restrictions.The Number 1 recommendation was “Provide clear, precise, credible guidance aboutspecific behaviours’’. You can’t argue with that. It was at Number 2 that things beganto take a darker turn. “Use media to increase sense of personal threat,” it said. WhenI first read that sentence I reeled back. It felt entirely un-English, more akin toStalinism.But that’s exactly what those behavioural experts did. Instead of relying on people’sgood sense and altruism (which proved to be remarkably strong) SAGE said: “Theperceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who arecomplacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.”Scaremongering headlines of a notably apocalyptic natureduly began to appear.“Coronavirus: I’m digging graves for people who are still living,” ran the ghoulishcaption under a photograph of parallel muddy trenches in a field in east London. OnTV, Government adverts thundered “everyone is equally at risk”. (Yet, we alreadyknew that the average age of the fatalities in Italy was 82.5).Tactics that a nation would use against its enemies were turned against our ownfamilies and friends. In a hard-hitting interview for this week’sPlanet Normalpodcast, the former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption told me that somemembers of SAGE have since admitted “this was perhaps overdone” but the use offear was deliberate policy.“What you have to remember is that when societies lose their liberty it is not becauseliberty has been crushed under the boot of some tyrant, it’s usually because they’vebeen frightened into giving it up voluntarily. And that is what happened. Fear is thenumber one instrument of everydespot. I dare say the intentions of this Governmentare benign. But their methods have not been.”Who can doubt the good lord’s judgment in this case? Or the malign effect of Matt“We’re doomed!” Hancock, our very own tinpot dictator who accentuates thenegative to keep people in mortal fear and achieve what exactly? What’s the strategy,Matt? The destruction of our economy is pretty much guaranteed if you continue tolock down entire regions at the first Atchoo! Other countries are not in the grip ofthis existential madness. They view the hysterical spasms of our previouslyphlegmatic nation with amused disbelief.Once upon a time we were Blighty not Frighty. We have to get a grip and summonthat spirit again or there will be damage without end. If you know someone who isstill really scared please let me know. People are going to need help to be unafraid. Alot of help. The Government’s behavioural scientists must put into reverse thedisproportionate campaign with which they stole the people’s reason. Here’s oneidea: “Use the media to increase the sense of personal safety.”
I’ll go first. The contagion of fear now poses a far bigger threat to our national healththan Covid-19. You probably won’t kill your gran if you see her, but not seeing hermight just kill her. In my view, you are safe to resume your life. While it is reasonableto be scared of the dark; it’s a tragedy to be afraid of the light.Read Allison Pearson attelegraph.co.ukevery Tuesday, from 7pm,andlisten to Planet Normal, her podcast with fellow Telegraph colu
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