Scientists accuse UK government of using covert psychological strategies to increase covid-19 fear and drive compliance with lockdowns.
By: Tyler S. Farley
Tags: Masks, Lockdown, Covid 19

Scientists accuse UK government of using covert psychological strategies to increase covid-19 fear and drive compliance with lockdowns. Tyler S. Farley Apr 12·5 min read

In a bombshell report written by Gordon Rayner and published by The Telegraph , several psychologists have filed a formal complaint with the UK government over what they call “covert psychological tactics” used to increase fear among the British public.

Many of these accusations are based on a piece of evidence from the very beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020.

In a document prepared for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) in March, there is wording that suggests the public was not fearful enough, and this represented a problem for the UK government.

From the document:

“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 … the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.”

The same document presented a grid of 14 options for increasing compliance which included “use media to increase sense of personal threat”, a tactic which was seen as having a “high” effectiveness though spill-over effects “could be negative”.

According to the report, one regular Sage attendee said: “The British people have been subjected to an unevaluated psychological experiment without being told that is what’s happening.”

“All of this is about trying to steer behavior in the direction an elite has decided, rather than deciding if it is the right thing or the ethical thing to do.”

Gary Sidley, a retired NHS consultant and clinical psychologist has also raised the notion that there is now a billion dollar pandemic management industry. This industry fights to maintain itself and refuses outside or contrarian voices.

Sidley and 46 of his colleagues wrote to the British Psychological Society to voice their “concerns about the activities of government-employed psychologists … in their mission to gain the public’s mass compliance with the ongoing coronavirus restrictions”.

Other experts have brought up similar issues with how statistics are presented to the public in such a way to create maximum fear. For example, the total number of covid-19 hospitalizations are released daily, but the number of people who have recovered and been released are not disclosed. This creates a “one-way” flow of information where the data is mostly negative and seemingly never improving.

The same holds true for dire predictions which were a hallmark of the government’s pandemic response. Predictions were always the worst case numbers, and often delivered as fact and not simply a worst case scenario.

According to the reporting by The Telegraph, it now appears as though these mistakes were not mistakes at all. In fact, they were deliberate attempts to use covert psychological tactics to maximize fear to increase compliance to lockdowns, which themselves were unproven to be effective.

So in reality, there were two widespread social experiments taking place at the same time. One was a marriage between the media and government to maximize fear among the public. The second experiment was that of lockdowns, which to this day are not proven to slow or prevent the spread of covid-19 since many areas with no lockdowns had the same outcomes or even better outcomes as areas with strict lockdowns.

The Telegraph also reported a statement from Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, who said:

“The idea that you need to increase people’s personal threat disproportionately to the threat they face is a problem. It sets a very dangerous precedent — weaponizing fear is the phrase that people use. “Once the fear has been stoked you can’t diminish it. It’s not like turning a tap on and off — you can’t turn the fear off. “We have focused narrowly on mortality rates and case rates, but I’m pretty certain that the public would understand placing the deaths in the context of five-year averages. “There has been such a missed opportunity for communicating risk. Rather than just saying a hundred people have died today from Covid, the Government could say what proportion of deaths that accounts for, and whether or not that translates to excess deaths. “That may be a more sustainable conversation to have with the public, rather than ‘be scared and stay scared’.”

At this point, people from the United States most likely are discovering their experience here in America over the last year was very similar to what was shown in The Telegraph report.

The media here in America was obsessed with portraying every negative metric they could in 2020. Some outlets like CNN even went so far as having a “death counter” on screen 24 hours a day that went on for nearly a year.

U.S. health officials also followed the same playbook as the UK, with constant dire predictions that never came to reality. Such as labeling every upcoming holiday as a “super spreader” event that would lead to a surge in deaths and overrun the hospitals.

None of these predictions ever came true, and now we are seeing they were intentionally false to try to drive fear and compliance with mandates.

America’s Dr. Fauci even admitted to using these tactics early on in his now infamous flip-flopping on masks. First telling people to not wear masks, then months later admitting he only said that to prevent people from stockpiling masks. A perfect example of how health officials are never honest with the public and instead try to use manipulative tactics to steer behavior.

Iconic author Fredrick Forsyth summed it up best in his response to The Telegraph bombshell report.

“Congratulations to the Telegraph and Gordon Rayner for revealing that the campaign of mass fear that reduced a once brave nation to trembling terror was deliberately organized to secure obedience to the policy of lockdown,” wrote Forsyth.

“I have only once before seen anything like it. This was when I was posted to East Germany in 1962. Such a brainwashing tactic was employed to frighten East Berliners into believing that the Berlin Wall was a defensive measure to protect them from tiny West Berlin, and that the Stasi was their guardian. The wall was of course an instrument of enslavement.”

“I never thought that the government of a country whose uniform I once wore with such pride would sink so low. Those responsible should be identified without delay and ousted from all office over us.”