The BBC rewriting history as it buries the fact that it was fully on-board with ‘the science’ and the lockdown…it and fellow media scaremongers drove the government to lockdown and campaigned to get schools shut, construction shut down and non-essential workers sent home….Barnett had to be informed and corrected live on air that she was spreading misinformation as she told us that only ‘essential workers’ were allowed to work…not true…anyone could work as long as they did so safely. The government was following its long prepared pandemic response plan of containment, track and trace, protecting the vulnerable, hygiene and social distancing until the media terrified them into changing course and the lockdown.
The government caved in the middle of March after relentless pressure with continuous scare stories on the BBC of how their approach was lethally wrong and was going to cost thousands of lives.
One example here…the ‘scientists’ being mostly mathematicians and students..
‘Coronavirus: Some scientists say UK virus strategy is ‘risking lives”
‘More than 200 scientists have written to the government urging them to introduce tougher measures to tackle the spread of Covid-19.’
And remember the assaults on the ‘herd immunity’ approach…
‘The World Health Organization questions UK response
The WHO spokeswoman, Margaret Harris, has cast doubt on the UK’s decision to take a herd immunity response to the coronavirus outbreak. Harris told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “We don’t know enough about the science of this virus, it hasn’t been in our population for long enough for us to know what it does in immunological terms.”’
And the final effect of that media pressure…
‘Coronavirus: UK changes course amid death toll fears’
‘Change course or a quarter of a million people will die in a “catastrophic epidemic” of coronavirus – warnings do not come much starker than that.
The message came from researchers modelling how the disease will spread, how the NHS would be overwhelmed and how many would die.
The situation has shifted dramatically and as a result we are now facing the most profound changes to our daily lives in peacetime.
This realisation has happened only in the past few days.
However, it is long after other scientists and the World Health Organization had warned of the risks of not going all-out to stop the virus.’
That ‘evidence’ [lol…now questioned by the BBC video above] came at a convenient time no? Just as the government was forced into changing its approach…thus it needed an excuse and so got ICL to come out with some scary figures to justify the government u-turn as it crumbled in the face of a barrage of media assaults.
We should be asking questions about the media’s role in all this and their responsibility for the economic devastation and the 8 million that suddenly found themselves jobless….whilst BBC journalists all working from home berated others for being greedy and immoral for daring to go to work.
Some quotes from more level-headed people…Prof. Dingwall and Fraser Nelson…
‘The Government’s coronavirus warnings have “effectively terrorised” Britons “into believing that this is a disease that is going to kill you” even though most those infected will not be hospitalised, one of its advisers has warned.
“Eighty per cent of the people who get this infection will never need to go near a hospital. The ones who do go to hospital because they are quite seriously ill most of them will come out alive – even those who go into intensive care.
“We have completely lost sight of that in the obsession with deaths, the human interest stories about deaths, the international comparisons about death rates, the opportunities for intrepid television journalists to put on lots of PPE and go into high tech where people are acutely ill….All of that helps to create this climate of fear.
There is a fair degree of consensus now among people who are more expert on these things than I am that outdoor transmission is negligible’… Professor Robert Dingwall
‘If lockdown is to continue, we should be trusted to know the real reasons why
‘So far, Britain has been engaged in what might be called black-box democracy: huge decisions being taken, on advice which is largely kept secret. We’re typically told that a policy is “guided by the best scientific understanding” but there’s not much chance to scrutinise it. A committee of scientific advisers comes up with research and options, passed documents to No 10 where decisions are taken. The advice might be emphatic, or full of caveats. It could be brilliant, or contain glaring omissions. There’s no real way of anyone outside No 10 knowing. s of 8am yesterday, 39 per cent of NHS beds were empty – about four times above what’s normal for this time of year.
A new University of East Anglia study surveys 30 European countries and finds, to the surprise of the authors, that stay-at-home orders might be the least effective tool. School closures emerge as the most effective. a New York study has found that, contrary to expectations, key workers going into the city every day are no more likely to be hospitalised by the virus. Most of the new patients say they’ve been staying at home. ‘ Fraser Nelson
An article in Spiked…
In the Lancet…
The invisible pandemic
‘It has become clear that a hard lockdown does not protect old and frail people living in care homes—a population the lockdown was designed to protect.
Neither does it decrease mortality from COVID-19, which is evident when comparing the UK’s experience with that of other European countries.’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31035-7/fulltext
