Scared stiff: how fear was used to make us behave during Covid-19 pandemic

Or do we?

As we wait to be allowed to inch back towards something even vaguely approaching normal existence, it sure as heck doesn’t look like it.

Since March 2020, we have been subjected to a relentless daily barrage of scary statistics, death counts and dire warnings of doom.

This was deliberate. The Government wanted to terrify us into submission, so that we would do what we were told, and comply with the China-inspired lockdown order.

Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) warned in March last year that ministers needed to increase “the perceived level of personal threat” from Covid-19 because “a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened”.

Now some members of the committee have admitted that its work was “unethical” and that “using fear smacks of totalitarianism”.

One SPI-B member said: “The way we have used fear is dystopian… It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.”

Yes, that is the risk when you set out to terrify an entire population, in a grotesque act of mass manipulation. But nobody in government seems to have thought of the consequences. It appears that we are little more than lab rats in a maze, to be “nudged”, however cruelly, in the approved direction.

These revelations, and others, have been published in a shocking new book about the Government’s Covid-19 response, A State of Fear, by author Laura Dodsworth.

“Our own Government has systematically weaponised fear against us, supposedly in our best interests, until we became one of the most frightened countries in the world,” argues Dodsworth.

Before the pandemic hit, Northern Ireland was already one of the most frightened — certainly one of the most traumatised — regions on Earth. A study by Ulster University found that Northern Ireland has the highest recorded rate of post-traumatic stress disorder in the world.

We know why, of course. Nearly 40% of the population have had a conflict-related traumatic incident. Everyday life was filled with violence, or the possibility of violence; terror was as normal as morning toast. It is dreadful, but not surprising, that Northern Ireland continues to suffer high levels of domestic abuse, self-harm, addiction, depression and suicide.

What we have been through has marked us, and through the inexorable process of trans-generational trauma, it marks our children, too.

So, if it was unethical to frighten people into complying with restrictions in the rest of the UK, it was unconscionable to do so in Northern Ireland.

Yet on March 19, 2020, Health Minister Robin Swann warned that the surge of disease approaching Northern Ireland was of “biblical proportions”. He said 14,000 people could die in a “nightmare scenario” if there was no compliance with social distancing.

On April 1, the scientific modelling said that 14,000 deaths was the “worst-case scenario” and was not realistic. Yet the Health Minister did not choose to share that information with the public. Why?

There is a huge difference between warning people — especially those most at risk — about the dangers of a new disease and scaring the living daylights out of them with apocalyptic modelling predictions.

Why does all this matter now? It matters because it’s still happening. We are still being controlled by fear. Have you noticed that every time we come close to opening up society, a “new variant” seems to pop up?

We’ve had the Kent variant, which we were told could be up to 30% more deadly. It turned out that the Kent variant was no more deadly than the original virus and vaccines were effective against it. Then there was the South African variant and, with impeccable timing, just before schools returned, the Brazil variant.

Now, it’s the Indian variant which could scupper plans to get back to normal. Yet, there is currently no evidence to suggest that the Indian variant is any more lethal.

It’s starting to look like there will always be another new “scariant” to keep us under control.

In the introduction to her book, Laura Dodsworth warns: “We don’t like to believe we can be manipulated, let alone that we have been manipulated — this book may hurt.”

The truth can indeed be painful. But it’s better to be hurt and aware, and free, than locked up forever in Fortress Fear.