People vastly over-estimated the spread and deadliness of Covid-19. One survey5 in July 2020 showed that the British public thought 6–7% of the population had died from coronavirus – around 100 times the actual death rate at the time based on official figures. That would have been about 4,500,000 bodies – we’d have noticed, don’t you think?
It was reported in January 2021 that the Covid epidemic caused excess deaths (to November) to rise to their highest level in the UK since the Second World War. This was headline news throughout the UK media. However, once the age and size of the population were taken into account, excess deaths were at their worst since just 2008.6 That is very significant, and showed that just over a decade of public health improvements had been undone, but less hyperbolic than the headlines.
In September 2020, the British people were also more concerned about the spread of the virus than people in Sweden, the US, France, Germany and Japan – 83% of us thought there would be a second wave, while only 21% of us thought the government was well-prepared to deal with it.7 An international study of public attitudes across Europe, America and Asia found that people in the UK had the highest overall levels of concern about Covid.8 And yet another study reported that Britons were the least likely to believe that the economy and businesses should open if Covid was not ‘fully contained’.9 We were the most frightened population in the world.
By February 2021 we had one of the most rapid and comprehensive vaccination programmes in the world, yet also the most stringent lockdown in the developed world.10
People are notoriously bad at judging risk and numbers, but we substantially over-estimated the dangers. And this wasn’t helped by the daily reports from the government and media. We heard about new cases, but never recoveries. Hospital admissions but not discharges were reported. We were given numbers of daily deaths, but largely without the context that about 1,600 people die every day in the UK anyway.
By the end of March 2021, just 689 people under the age of 60 with no co-morbidities had died from Covid in England and Wales according to NHS England.11 The average age of death with Covid is 82.3 years12 – one year more than the average life expectancy in Britain. Of course, all the deaths associated with Covid count, but if these facts had been widely reported and people had realised it was a disease which was primarily dangerous to the elderly and otherwise unwell, then ‘a substantial number of people’ would probably not ‘feel sufficiently personally threatened’.
One government report said that lockdown could cause 200,000 people to die as a result of delays in healthcare and economic effects, also equating to one million years of life lost.13 Another study at Bristol University14 estimated an average 560,000 lives lost caused by the reduced economic activity during lockdown, due to the well-understood link between wealth and health. Quite simply, people in rich nations live longer.
The government, public health bodies and the media used alarmist language throughout the epidemic. Big numbers, steep red lines on graphs, the use of selective information, careful psychological messaging and emotive advertising created a blitzkrieg of daily fear bombs.
This is a book about fear, not a book about data. Nevertheless, some additional data will be required to help you contextualise the threat of the disease with the policies for managing it, and you will find that in Appendix 1.
A few facts and figures assist with framing the scale and dangers of Covid, and subsequently with assessing whether escalating our fear was appropriate, or not. It is partly an issue of proportion and entirely an issue of ideology. But the numbers risk ignoring the more poignant, human costs of the use of fear. I interviewed people who were driven by fear, anxiety and isolation to develop agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive disorders, panic attacks, started self-harming and even attempted suicide. How do we weigh the potential life saved from Covid-19 with a life deliberately ended by overdose in a hotel room or a jump from a bridge? Can we justify protecting someone from physical sickness, fever and fatigue, if the methods of protection caused someone else to develop a fear of leaving their house, or made them waken sick with dread each day?
Epidemics will come and go. Our basic psychology is here to stay. The pressing issue is whether and how we permit behavioural psychologists, the government and the media to manipulate our psychology.
At times, the experience of the pandemic has felt like a story, or like living in a movie. Not a fun one. While the virus was the plot device in our fantastical reality, the motivating force for many of the characters was fear.
The best macabre fairy tales are also cautionary tales. If you can identify the Big Bad Wolf and understand what he represents and wants, you can find your way through the dark woods and be free. We don’t know how this will end. But rather than wait till it’s all over to tell the terrible story of when the world stopped and humanity was paralysed with fear, I would like to invite you to decide how the story ends. There is still time for us to craft the happy ending of our choice. Shouldn’t we be the authors of our own stories?
As Karl Augustus Menninger said, ‘Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.’ We need to inoculate ourselves against fear.
‘The coronavirus is the biggest threat this country has faced for decades. All over the world we are seeing the devastating impact of this invisible killer … From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home.’
From Boris Johnson’s speech to the nation, 23 March 2020
1. FRIGHT NIGHT
Ifroze. Appalled by the words. Fight and flight are the better known responses to fear. If
