A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic

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SAM, 30, PARAMEDIC

I’ve seen a lot of mental health problems, distress, and suicide attempts this year. We’re always at the local bridge with people who want to jump.

One thing that’s different about this year is that a lot more middle-class and upper-class people are suffering and trying to take their lives because they can’t get jobs. I’ve also come across a lot of grief; people haven’t had the opportunity to grieve properly for people who have died this year and that causes a huge psychological impact and trauma. Fear and grief can affect us more than the physical.

Young people having anxiety episodes because they are so worried about having Covid. People have called us out because they want a Covid test and they don’t want to leave the house.

I talked a 25-year-old woman off the bridge whose mental health had got a lot worse in lockdown. She’d had problems for years, had then got better and was off medication, but in lockdown she went badly downhill. Weirdly, it was the first time as a paramedic I could relate to that. I sympathised and told her I agreed that the lockdown measures were too hard to live with. I said it in front of the police who were there. Jobs like that hit me the most. There’s no bloody need – a 25-year-old woman should not be on a bridge in despair and so isolated she wants to die. These measures are not normal, it’s not right for human beings to live like this.

16. TERRIFYING IMPACTS

This is a collection of some of the ways we were impacted by fear and restrictions during the epidemic. Some of these impacts are as a direct result of fear, and some as a result of lockdown, which is related to fear. After all, could we have consented to lockdown and complied with the rules if we weren’t scared into submission? I have not included the impacts caused by Covid itself.

DEATH

•40,000 excess deaths from the economic impacts over the next 50 years, as reduced income, unemployment and anxiety reduce life expectancy.¹

•32,000 excess deaths among adults in social care by the end of March 2021 due to reduction in support and people being discharged from hospital early.¹

•18,000 deaths due to cancelled operations.¹

•10,000 deaths due to disruption to emergency care.¹

•4,000 deaths due to not seeking help, even when suffering a heart attack or stroke.¹

•There was a 52% increase in excess deaths of people dying of dementia during the first wave.²

•The equivalent of 560,000 lives will be lost as a result of lockdown. (This was calculated before the third lockdown.)³

MENTAL HEALTH

•The number of adults who experienced some form of depression increased from one in 10 to one in five during lockdown, by June 2020.⁴

•15% of people reported depression, anxiety, or fear as a direct result of government pandemic advertising.⁵

•One in eight adults developed moderate to severe depression during lockdown.⁶

•Nine out of 10 autistic people worried about their mental health during lockdown.⁷

•Autistic people were seven times more likely to be chronically lonely than the general population during lockdown.⁸

•Half of 16 to 25-year-olds said their mental health has worsened since the start of the pandemic.⁹

•One in three adults increased their consumption of alcohol during the first lockdown to cope with stress.¹¹

•There was a 16.4% increase in deaths from alcohol-specific causes between January and September 2020 compared with the previous year.¹² (An inquiry is needed to understand this, but I’m putting this impact in the mental health section for obvious reasons.)

•There was a 20% increase in opiate addictions and a 39% increase in number of relapses among addicts.¹³

•There were 15,541 calls relating to suicide or attempted suicide recorded by London Ambulance Service in the first six months of lockdown, from March to November 2020, compared to 11,703 calls over the same period in 2019.¹⁴

•87% of people with an eating disorder have seen their symptoms worsen because of social isolation.¹⁵

•161,699 fewer people per month in 2020 were able to contact mental health services than in 2019.¹⁶

•1.5 million children and 8.5 million adults will need support for depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorders and other mental health difficulties in the coming months and years.¹⁷

HEALTH

•Six in 10 people reported worse sleep since lockdown was announced.¹⁸

•Psychological stress is associated in a dose-response manner with an increased risk of acute infectious respiratory illness, so fear and lockdown measures would probably have increased infection.¹⁹

•27 million missed GP appointments by October 2020.²⁰

•350,000 missed specialist referrals for cancer.²¹

•Cancer Research estimated there could be 35,000 avoidable cancer deaths as a result of lockdown.²²

•30% of those who had a stroke during the pandemic delayed seeking emergency medical attention due to Covid-19. There were 825 excess deaths for stroke and 1,834 excess deaths for cardiovascular diseases (including cardiac arrest) as a result of delays to seeking help (or potentially the result of undiagnosed Covid-19).¹³

•Deaths from diabetes were 161.6% above average, potentially due to delays in care, from anxiety about seeking care or an overburdened healthcare system.¹³

•Until 8 September 2020, birthing partners were prevented from attending scans and early labour, causing stress and leaving women to endure difficult labours, traumatic news and miscarriages alone.

SOCIETY

•45,000 extra homeless people since the start of lockdown.²³

•More than three-quarters of councils across England saw an increase in homelessness in their area since the start of the pandemic. More than four in 10 have seen a significant increase.²⁴

•Half of children entitled to free school meals did not have access to the scheme during Covid-19 lockdown in the UK.²⁵

•20% increase in babies suffering non-accidental harm.¹⁷

•There was a rise of 49% in the number of calls to domestic abuse services.²⁶

•Two-thirds of domestic abuse victims were subjected to more violence from their partners during lockdown.²⁷

•5.6 million people are struggling to afford essentials or have borrowed to make ends meet. The amount of arrears and borrowing among this group attributable to the impact of coronavirus is £10.3 billion.²⁸

•A 25% reduction in pre-pandemic learning for primary school children and a 30% reduction for secondary school children.¹³

•The first lockdown saw the cancellation of 15,000 theatrical