by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
Private WhatsApp messages shared with The Telegraph reveal how U.K. health officials, including former health secretary Matt Hancock, made COVID-19 policy decisions based on political expediency rather than science, as health officials claimed publicly.
Private WhatsApp messages released in recent days detail how U.K. health officials, including former health secretary Matt Hancock, made COVID-19 policy decisions based on political expediency rather than science, as health officials publicly claimed.
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The messages “raise vital new questions about the handling of the pandemic ahead of a public inquiry into the response to COVID-19” and reveal “devastating details about the pandemic response that had until now remained secret,” according to The Telegraph, which obtained the archive of more than 100,000 messages from — dubbed “The Lockdown Files” — from journalist Isabel Oakeshott.
Oakeshott is co-author of Hancock’s book, “Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against COVID.”
Hancock was the first member of the U.K. government to announce a lockdown, in statements made March 16, 2020, based on advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). The lockdown officially began a week later.
The messages expose how officials informally made decisions about lockdowns, mask mandates, social distancing and isolation, quarantines, vaccine distribution and a host of other COVID-19-related issues, and how the decisions were politically motivated.
The Telegraph described the content of the leaked messages as “a case study in groupthink”:
“With other Cabinet members, too, often enjoying a limited ability to question the moves of the main decision-makers, restrictions that abridged the liberty of millions appear to have been taken on a gut feeling — not necessarily about what would work but sometimes about what was politically easiest.
“Without having to explain themselves to Parliament, ministers would say that they were ‘following the best scientific advice.’”
Fear and guilt ‘vital tools’ to ensure compliance
One of the key revelations is how Hancock and other key U.K. government figures and advisers ensured public compliance with repeated lockdowns and other strict measures.
On Dec. 13, 2020, facing opposition within the ranks of his own Conservative Party over the prospect of a new lockdown and worries that Brexit talks would overshadow the COVID-19 narrative, one of Hancock’s media advisers, Damon Poole, suggested to Hancock, “We can roll pitch with the new strain” — referring to the recently identified Alpha variant of COVID-19.
Hancock responded, “We frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain,” to which Poole replied, “Yep that’s what will get proper bahviour [sic] change.”
In another message, Hancock asked his adviser, “When do we deploy the new variant?”
Discussions that followed after Christmas between Hancock and cabinet secretary Simon Case sought to identify ways to sell the strictest possible measures to the public.
A surge in reported cases followed, and the government subsequently withdrew a five-day easing of measures that had been planned for Christmas on Dec. 18, 2020.
“Fear” and “guilt” were identified as “vital tools in ensuring compliance,” according to The Telegraph, as was mandatory mask wearing in “all settings,” because it had a “very visible impact.”
Those methods strongly resemble “nudging,” a behavioral psychology technique that seeks to change people’s behavior to attain desired outcomes. Hancock employed the methods, for instance, when he told young people in the U.K. to abide by government restrictions so you “don’t kill your gran.”
The Behavioural Insights Team advised the U.K. government during the pandemic. The team shared members with the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, a subgroup of SAGE — which strongly encouraged the use of “nudging.”
Previously, in summer 2020, with reported COVID-19 cases at low levels in the U.K. and dining set to reopen, Hancock and his advisers believed the threat of localized lockdowns would not be “unhelpful” to maintain a level of fear amongst the public, to which Hancock responded, “that’s no bad thing.”
Vaccines: ‘purely a comms/political thing’
“The Lockdown Files” also revealed that a host of COVID-19 policy decisions were made with political expediency, public image and future career prospects in mind — though the public was told that those decisions were based on “science.”
Early in the pandemic, on Jan. 29, 2020, Hancock sent a long message to an aide explaining to him how he could use “a crisis of this scale to propel [himself] into the next league.”
By mid-April 2020, just weeks into the first lockdown but months away from the release of the first COVID-19 vaccines, Hancock and media adviser Jamie Njoku-Goodwin discussed how “pushing on vaccine” and being “first out of the blocks on vaccine” would be “the most politically beneficial thing they do.”
Far from being based on “science,” this strategy was described as “purely a comms/political thing.”
During the second lockdown in 2020, Hancock angled to link his name to a government plan to supply Vitamin D to the vulnerable, telling Poole to “base it on ‘new evidence emerged and I’ve acted fast’ … swift & decisive.”
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