Politicians conspired to use fear and fake news to scare people into Lockdowns.
Those called 'conspiracy theorists' have been proved right again. The risk from Covid was almost non existent, and the government conspired to use fear and fake stories as weapons to impose Lockdowns.
The Telegraph have continued to release some 55,000 Whatsapp messages from Matt Hancock's phone with today's revelations being the most damning yet.
Matt Hancock, the then health secretary, is seen in the messages wanting to use fear to scare the public into compliance.
“We frighten the pants off everyone,”
He demanded during one WhatsApp message with his media adviser.
Hancock was not alone in his desire to scare the public into compliance. The WhatsApp messages seen by The Telegraph show how several members of Hancock’s team engaged in a kind of “Project Fear”, in which they spoke of how to utilise “fear and guilt” to make people obey lockdown.
There was no danger. An Imperial College survey of Covid infections in the community – called the React programme and led by the eminent professor Lord Darzi showed in May of 2020 (when the Pandemic was supposedly at its height) the reproductive number was just 0.57. The study was in line with an Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey.
With recorded Covid cases now down to just 689 and the Government should have been reopening pubs, restaurants and hairdressing salons, but on June 30 2020, Leicester had just gone into a local lockdown. In a WhatsApp group called “Local Action Committee”, Emma Dean, Mr Hancock’s special adviser on policy, reported back to the group a rumour that Milton Keynes may be the next town plunged into a local lockdown. Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, Mr Hancock’s media adviser, replied that it would not be “unhelpful” for the public to think they could be next.
Ms Dean appeared to start the conversation by forwarding messages sent to her about the Milton Keynes rumour. Baroness Harding, who ran the Test and Trace scheme, replied.
The Government had started publishing a so-called “watchlist” of the worst-affected areas in the country, not least to justify and explain to the public the 'need' for local lockdowns. But on Oct 7 2020, ministers scrapped the list’s publication – the thinking seemingly being that the numbers were increasing and that it would cause residents and politicians in places like Leicester to question why they had been singled out for local lockdowns.
In a WhatsApp group called “MH Top Team” that involved a number of advisers and civil
civil servant, Damon Poole, Mr Hancock’s media adviser, said that failing to publish the data can be turned to their advantage because it “helps the narrative that things are really bad” when things clearly weren't.
Boris Johnson, then prime minister, had promised that families would be reunited at Christmas but this was used as a 'carrot' for people to co – the first since the pandemic struck in early 2020. He said foregoing long-awaited reunions “would be inhuman and against the instincts of many people in this country”.
But behind the scenes, his ministers and officials were increasingly aware that the public faced grave disappointment, that this was an empty promise as another Lockdown was being planned, and that the Johnson administration would take the blame for their frustration.
The solution in December was “to frighten the pants off everyone” with a declaration of a new strain of Covid-19, known as the Alpha or Kent variant.
In a conversation between Hancock and Poole on Dec 13, the pair discussed how to survive the coming backlash and storm. On the day, there were 18,409 supposed cases of Covid recorded and 410 deaths. Five days later, on Dec 18, Mr Johnson would scrap his planned five-day Christmas amnesty in an about turn. (amnesty?).
The conversation started with a discussion about a fear that Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, could attack the Government for plunging the capital into its own lockdown - just as Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, had waged a battle in his city a few months earlier.
The pair discussed a withering leader in the Mail on Sunday, before Mr Hancock seemingly expressed a worry that bad news on the new variant might be knocked off the top of the agenda by wrangles over Brexit.
That led them into a discussion about when to “deploy” the new variant, although Mr Hancock was seemingly wary that it could have led to closing schools.
In Jan 2021, Britain is in a third national lockdown, with schools shut and people told to work from home. Four days later, on Jan 10, Mr Hancock and Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary and therefore the country’s most powerful civil servant, discussed more stringent measures that they could introduce. They agreed that minor adjustments, such as banning angling, would be “parodied galore” - so decided that “fear” and/or “guilt” were vital tools in ensuring compliance.
They discussed making mask-wearing mandatory in “all settings” because it had a “very visible impact”.
Note that they didn't discuss the efficacy of masks, or if they stopped the spread, merely the 'visual impact'.
This wasn't a conspiracy theory, this was a conspiracy.