It is obvious and intuitive that fear will inhibit our recovery. In fact, Easthope said it means recovery will be ‘1,000 times harder’. But let’s flesh out an example. As an MP told me, masks were introduced to give people confidence to go shopping. People were scared and the economy didn’t bounce back hard enough after the first lockdown. Thus, masks were mandated.
Introducing a measure without an exit strategy can create more problems. In this case, it is that we are still wearing masks. They have turned the UK population into walking billboards that announce we are in a deadly epidemic. Every time you go into a public space you are reminded by masks of the epidemic. And then the idea that they help (even if they do not) is reinforced. Did you survive your trip to the supermarket? Only because you were wearing a mask! Did you contract Covid on the Tube? No? It must be the mask that saved you! The unintended consequence of the masks is that they keep the fear alive and modify our behaviour, and this has proven useful as far as the behavioural scientists are concerned. As late as January 2021, David Halpern was referring to the useful ‘signal’2 masks give.
Fear also slowed the reopening of schools, as Gavin Morgan, SPI-B advisor, told me, because parents and teachers over-estimated the dangers. Fear means the ‘roadmap’ to recovery is measured in the tiny tottering steps of battle-weary statesmen who must avoid the landmines of error, lest they detonate public condemnation and media derision. Of course, it makes total sense that our rulers wield fear against us, when we realise that they are also ruled by fears.
If we want to recover, if we want life to go back to normal, we need to dial down the cortisol. One of the simplest measures the government could take would be to remove the mask mandate. They are not backed up by convincing scientific evidence or medical necessity (at least, the government hasn’t shown us this evidence) and they are primarily a behavioural psychology tool which is a perfect example of unintended consequences. Masks are a visual metaphor signalling danger, perpetuating the fear and disrupting the human connection and communication which will be vital to society’s recovery.
2. THE PUBLIC HAVE NOT BEEN CONSULTED ON THE ETHICS, OR CONSENTED
If psychologists wanted to make people very frightened in a lab experiment, it would be difficult to obtain the ethics approval, especially for an experiment which mimicked this scale and severity. Informed consent for participants would be essential though. Participants would not be allowed to leave the lab unless they were as happy and in as well a state as they arrived. They would certainly not be left in a state of fear.
The British Psychological Society has a Code of Ethics & Conduct.3 Under ‘Ethical Principles’, it states: ‘Psychologists value the dignity and worth of all persons, with sensitivity to the dynamics of perceived authority or influence over persons and peoples and with particular regard to people’s rights.’ It goes on to say that in applying these values, psychologists should consider consent, issues of power, self-determination and compassionate care.
It seems to me, and to the psychologists who wrote to the BPS, that the behavioural psychologists advising the government have blatantly failed to practise in a way that is consistent with those stated ethical values regarding the fear messaging.
Importantly, we the public have never been consulted about the subliminal methods of manipulation they wield against us. Perhaps we didn’t take it seriously enough when they were pushing forward seemingly innocuous changes like making cigarette packaging plain, or encouraging prompt tax returns. But using fear, shaming and scapegoating manipulate our emotions in far more serious and harmful ways.
Ultimately, do campaigns of fear express the best of humanity? Do we imagine a healthy, virtuous and pleasant society populated with scary ads designed to force us into following rules? Is that really what we want?
3. FEAR CREATES COLLATERAL DAMAGE
The use of fear intrudes on our private lives, our minds and our physiological health. The messaging of fear exposes us, against our will, to harmful and offensive messages and creates unnecessary anxiety. That is exactly why the Advertising Standards Authority has codified against the use of fear.
The fear salesmen – the government, the psychocrats advising them, the media and the scare-mongering scientists – peddled their wares to us throughout 2020 and into 2021. There is no money back guarantee, no refunds or exchanges, the sale is now complete. Was fear a bad purchase?
Chapter 16, ‘Terrifying Impacts’, provided a brutal list of the impacts of the policy of fear and the social and economic restrictions that were enabled by the compliance that fear generated. The government has been remiss in not quantitatively analysing the costs and benefits of its Covid policies, probably because the numbers will not look good. On 22 March 2021, just one day before the anniversary of lockdown, Chris Whitty acknowledged in a press briefing that the government had known ‘right from the beginning the lockdown was going to have really severe effects on many people’s health’.4 He added: ‘For many people, physical or mental wellbeing have been very badly affected by this. Ranging from increased levels of domestic abuse, loneliness – particularly in older people who felt very much isolated in their areas – physical health, people maybe exercising less, greater amounts of alcohol consumption.’ He also said that coronavirus restrictions would affect livelihoods for years, with government able only to ‘reduce and not eliminate’ those effects.
At the worst end of the scale there is concern that fear and isolation might have driven suicide attempts, but it is too early for the data.
