WEU, for those that are unaware, is an acronym for “Weekly Epidemiological Update.” It was the title that the World Health Organization (WHO) gave to their Covid reports. The WHO started generating these weekly reports on 17 August 2020 after giving up on their idea of daily reports. A full 158 WEU reports were produced before zeal for the project petered out. Recently an article was published in the BMJ which was designed to provide “an in-depth analysis” of the “process, from data collection to publication, focusing on the scope, technical details, main features, underlying methods, impact and limitations” [1].  That article has 52 names in its list of authors, 51 of whom were affiliated with the WHO. The remaining co-author was from Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

The article begins with a “Summary Box” that contains five bullet points, each a conclusion based on their analysis of the WEU reports. Since we respectfully disagree with all five points, we thought it appropriate to write a formal response.

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 Bullet 1:

COVID-19 has posed an unprecedented global health crisis, demanding timely, reliable information on the pandemic’s progression to inform the public and guide decision-making.

They expand on this in the body of the article by saying: “The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented global health crisis, with more than 770 million confirmed cases and over 6.9 million confirmed deaths being reported globally to WHO from 1 January 2020 to 1 September 2023.”

While we certainly do not begrudge the WHO for deciding to keep tabs on a disease that potentially claimed 6.9 million lives over the space of 44 months, we take exception to calling it an “unprecedented global health crisis.” The word unprecedented means “never having happened or existed in the past” [2]. We are at a complete loss to see how Covid was a global health crisis, let alone an unprecedented one [3]. To be thorough, we demonstrate that there was nothing unprecedented about Covid by pointing out a few things that happen during every normal 44 month period:

• 89 billion cases of respiratory infections [4]

• 2.5 billion people are infected with the norovirus [5]

• 264 million people die of old age [6]

• 37 million people die of cancer [7], and

• 5 million people die in a car accident [8]

Therefore, even taking their numbers at face value, the only thing that was unprecedented about Covid was the response to it. Never before in the history of humanity was nearly the whole world locked down in a vain attempt to arrest the spread of a disease. The “global crisis” of the past four years was not a respiratory disease but a bureaucratic disorder. The crisis was man-made, inflicted on humanity by governments and public health officials that chose to lock people in their own homes, prohibit them from earning a living, close churches, mask children for hours a day, ban weddings and funerals, isolate children from their dying parents, ticket people for walking in a park, and then, finally, to coerce the masses to have an untested pharmaceutical product injected into their arms. Every one of these decisions was unprecedented and nearly global in extent. These responses destroyed healthy businesses, killed poor children, increased stress, weakened immune systems, drove many to the brink of insanity, and in general caused more havoc and death than Covid ever would have. Excess deaths in most countries around the world during the past four years prove this terrifying reality [6].

The fact that the authors never mention any of this, but instead call Covid the unprecedented global health crisis is an embarrassment to the medical professional. The glaring omission makes the WHO a serious contender for itself becoming an unprecedented global problem. If the WHO was truly concerned about public health, then instead of producing weekly updates tracking Covid they should have been producing weekly updates tracking the unprecedented human carnage caused by lockdowns and vaccines [9].

Bullet 2:

The WHO’s COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update (WEU) provided regular, comprehensive and authoritative analyses of the global COVID-19 situation.

Actually, the WEU reports were neither comprehensive nor authoritative. For example, in Figure 1 of their article they provide six graphs, each showing Covid cases and deaths in a different region of the world: Europe, Americas, Mediterranean, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. Of significance is that in Europe and the Americas there is an almost complete disconnect between cases and deaths, whereas in the other four regions deaths rise and fall in sync with cases. As it is impossible for Covid to have changed its lethality simply by crossing a border to a new country, the graphs are proof that the data was anything but “comprehensive.” We have previously described at length the phenomenon of how the Covid data varies significantly by country [10, 11]. The WHO reports, however, are strangely silent on this glaring trend. How then can they be called “authoritative analyses”?

Bullet 3:

The production of the WEU included several steps, which were standardised, regularly refined and automated when possible, to ensure consistency and accuracy.

The steps taken by the WHO to generate each WEU may have ensured consistency, but it is certain that the results were not accurate. For instance and by their own testimony, they admit to enormous gaps in their data:

• “During this period, reporting completeness varied significantly.”

• “The number of countries reporting  data on new  hospitalisations ranged from 41% to 12%.”

• “The number of countries reporting  data on ICU admissions ranged from 17% to 4%.”

• “11% [of countries] reported weekly new hospitalisation data at least 80% of the expected times.”

• “9% [of countries] did the same for new ICU admission data.”

Furthermore, in the last published WEU it says:

“Please note that the absence of reported data from other countries to the WHO does not imply that there are no COVID-19-related hospitalizations in those countries. The presented hospitalization data are preliminary and might change as new data become available. Furthermore, hospitalization data are subject to reporting delays. These data also likely include both hospitalizations with incidental cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection and those due to COVID-19 disease.” [12]

Therefore, not only do they admit to a lack of data and to delays in reporting, but also to the fact that the data they did receive may or may not be indicative of Covid at all. 

Naturally, this lack of data is entirely expected, for it typically takes many months or years even for technologically advanced countries like Canada and the US to produce good data [13]. What is unexpected, however, is that despite such glaring holes in the data, the WHO should still claim their reports were accurate. Precise, maybe, but certainly not accurate.

If a majority of countries were not reporting any data, how could the WHO generate anything even remotely useful? Indeed, if only 9% of countries reported at least 80% of the time, how can it possibly be said the WEU reports were accurate? It cannot. They weren’t.

Furthermore, although it is not said expressly, there is an important reason why the above quotations discuss “hospitalizations and ICU admissions” rather than “cases and deaths.” The reason is that the WHO used different sources for each. Hospitalization and ICU data were obtained from health authorities, but case and death statistics were extracted from “data repositories” (See Figure 5 in [1]). In other words, despite the fact that only 9% of countries reported their data to the WHO, the WEU could still report cases and deaths in 100% of countries because the data came from a different source. The fact that the WHO did not even claim to be getting its case and death data directly from each country testifies that countries around the world were unable to produce this information. 

If countries were unable to generate case and death data, where did the data repositories get this information from? The short and blunt answer is that they made it up.

Indeed, no information is provided in their article about which repositories were used. However, the obvious and primary data repository would have been the one maintained by Johns Hopkins University (recall that one author of this WEU analysis was from JHU). Based on our recent study of the JHU dashboard [13], all the evidence strongly suggests that case and death numbers in their data repository were primarily generated by computer simulations rather than observed events. This WEU analysis confirms our conclusion, for the very fact that the WHO did not (and could not) obtain case and death data directly from each country, and that only 9% to 11% of countries could report on hospitalizations or ICU admissions, means that factual data was positively unavailable. 

Therefore, the WHO did not have access to case or death data, let alone hospitalisation or ICU admission data. It is remarkable that the authors of this WEU analysis would neglect to discuss this critical aspect of their data. It is disturbing that despite these glaring problems and holes they insist that their data was accurate.

Bullet 4:

Addressing the persisting challenges inherent to the global surveillance of COVID-19, many of which were exemplified by the WEU, will require sustained international collaboration, commitment and investment.

What this fourth bullet means is that the WHO thinks that governments around the world need to invest more money and time into their continued surveillance of Covid. In the body of the article this is explained as follows: 

“It is critical that countries maintain core SARS- CoV- 2 surveillance capacities and activities to inform ongoing public health measures and ensure that  future surges of COVID- 19 are rapidly detected, allowing for swift action to prevent larger outbreaks.”

There are multiple problems with this statement. In the first place, the “health measures” that were already tried (lockdowns, masks, vaccines), besides causing enormous economic damage, mental stress, and deaths, failed to change the course of Covid. The failure of lockdowns has been proven by hundreds of different researchers [9]. And concerning the Covid shots, the authors themselves admit that the vaccine effectiveness (VE) waned over time: “For both Delta and Omicron… VE for individual vaccines [declined] over time for severe disease, symptomatic disease and infection.” What they fail to admit, however, is that the initial high VE and also the subsequent decline were nothing more or less than a mathematical result of the way vaccinated individuals were classed as unvaccinated for a period of time [14]. In plain English, the shots were a colossal failure at preventing Covid [15]. Moreover, the Covid shots have caused an unprecedented number of severe adverse events, including at least one million deaths [16]. If the “swift action” that was taken in the past failed to arrest Covid, what then is proposed to stop future outbreaks?

In the second place, because data takes so long to collect it is functionally impossible to “rapidly detect” surges of any particular respiratory ailment. This is especially true for a disease like Covid whose symptoms are indistinguishable from several other respiratory illnesses [17]. Nor will it help to rely on genomic sequencing to resolve the conundrum. The authors themselves prove this, affirming that:

“Timely  sharing of genomic sequencing data from countries was also challenging due to the median lag between the collection and submission of SARS- CoV- 2 sequences to GISAID varying significantly across countries, ranging from approximately 2 weeks to over 9 months.”

If it takes several months for genomic sequences to be uploaded, by the time surveillance has determined anything of value, the surge, if there ever was one, will be long past.

Bullet 5:

The methodology and lessons learnt from the experience of the WEU offer a blueprint for the development of information products that can support the response to future major health emergencies.

Since there wasn’t a major health emergency in the first place, it is doubtful if the WEU experience can support any future response.

We respectfully submit that the WEU experience should have taught the WHO to be more cautious about declaring a pandemic, because in doing so millions of lives were ruined and lost without cause [18, 9]. It should also have taught the WHO that rapid global data of a specific disease is impossible to collect, even in a high tech world. And it should have informed the WHO that transparent cost/benefit analyses should be done before sweeping measures are recommended on an unsuspecting world. Unfortunately these important lessons seem to have escaped the authors. 

The question is why?

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This is the last of the series of three papers that examine the fact checking industry. Part one showed the areas not yet covered by American journalists that are exploring the Twitter files, Part two explored characteristics of the industry – its geographic spread, and its reach across all forms of media, and academia. This section outlines the extension of the fact check industry to media literacy training. It goes on to reveal funding sources of the fact check industry, in Western countries and further afield, and the impact this well-funded industry has, and may have, on other parts of the world. 

Fact-checking and media literacy training

Many fact check platforms offer media literacy and fact-checking courses: their main targets are children, students and journalists, although courses may be offered more widely. For example, Logically and NewsMobile joined forces with Facebook to offer a media literacy programme in India in 2021 [1]. Africa Check, its main funders being Meta, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Google, trained 4,500 journalists in fact-checking [2]; operates a media literacy programme in schools [3]; and trained over 10,000 people in media literacy [4].  In 2020 AFP ran a Covid-19 media literacy course in France with the support of Facebook [5], AFP in conjunction with Google, runs worldwide online fact-checking training courses for journalists and produces training videos [6].  In Indonesia, Google has joined with AJI, a journalists’ association, to train trainers in teaching media literacy [7]. In USA, Associated Press (AP) announced that Microsoft is supporting media literacy programmes [8]. Google joins with partners MediaWise, part of the Poynter network, and The News Literacy Project to support media literacy training in US schools and the community for English and Spanish speakers [9]. Google has also donated EUR25 million to the European Media and Information Fund for media literacy training.

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Encouraging audiences to think critically, understand nuances and potential inaccuracies, and to avoid online scams and dangers is commendable, but courses on offer have a narrow focus. For example, a media literacy course for seniors, funded by Meta and operated by MediaWise, limits trustworthy sources to organisations such as mainstream media, Wikipedia, WHO and the Center for Disease Control (CDC)[11]. The course facilitators claim that those who spread other narratives, described as ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’, are doing this for financial gain such as advertising revenue and clickbait, or they may be linked to foreign or harmful sources. This and other courses, such as AFP’s fact checking courses for journalists [12], advise the importance of checking out the source by up-reading (finding out where the information came from) or lateral reading (checking what other sources say about the author or the website/news site). This is problematic because when checking out dissenting voices, despite having appropriate qualifications or experience to join the debate, they are often smeared on internet websites [13]. Being able to listen to a variety of thoughtful and educated views on science, health and other issues should be normal in a free society, without prior judgement of credibility.

For example, an AFP course for journalists entitled “Identify trustworthy sources on health topics and evaluate studies” [14] gives useful detail on analysing academic papers, but emphasises the trustworthiness of a small number of elite medical journals and peer review. However, AFP does not acknowledge the influence of pharmaceutical companies and questions of possible bias in medical journals and peer review, as described by retired editors of both the British Medical Journal [15] and the New England Journal of Medicine. Many academics have seen this trend significantly worsen since 2020 [17, 18, 19], whilst issues of flawed data in peer reviewed and published papers that support official narratives are sometimes ignored [20]. Hence journalists cannot rely on medical journals nor even peer review when investigating health issues, and “trustworthy sources” identified by AFP do not give a full picture of the range of useful academic opinions.

Funding at home and overseas

When media organisations have a fact-checking arm, this is usually funded by the media company. By comparison, independent fact checkers that do not produce a product almost entirely rely on donations, grants and earned income from third party fact-checking contracts, training courses, or designing fact check tools. As revealed in the Twitter files, disclosed grants and donations listed on the websites of international fact check platforms are usually from large institutions associated with Western governments; large Western foundations or trusts; EU, American, European and UK governments; large media corporates; Google; Meta; IFCN; or UN departments. Earned income is usually from large corporates, such as Microsoft, Google or Meta. The sums involved are significant. For example, Full Fact received just under GBP500,000 from Facebook, and around GBP200,000 from Google in one year [21]; whilst IFCN received a grant of USD13.2 million from Google to cover a five year period [22]. 

Governments directly fund content moderation, demonstrated by the Twitter files [23] and subsequent investigations [24], but others also reveal government payments, including investigations by UK’s Big Brother Watch [25] and McEvoy and Curtis [26]. The EU requires moderation of social media content, as described in the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation [27]. Logically, a for-profit fact check platform, states that it has been contracted to undertake work for various governments [28]. It is clear that American, British and other governments are directly and generously funding fact-checking activities in order to encourage domestic content moderation in line with their preferences. But governments also pay for content moderation internationally, such as the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) [29] that funds many fact check platforms including Rappler in the Philippines, and South Asia Check in Nepal; and the EU funded European Endowment for Democracy (EED) [30] that funds Fact Check Georgia and Raskrinkavenje Bosnia-Herzegovina and others. The UK’s Open Information Partnership [31] funds a number of fact check platforms and NGOs in Eastern Europe, especially those who take an anti-Russian line. Many overseas platforms are also directly funded by Western embassies. 

Western social media companies support fact checkers globally. For example, the Indonesian fact check platforms Mafindo and CekFakta members are funded by Google [32]. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, subcontracts fact-checking in 119 countries, with 253 contracts for its third party fact check programme in May 2023 [33]. Facebook only accepts IFCN-verified signatories as fact check partners [34], giving a lucrative initiative for fact check platforms to comply with IFCN’s system. Facebook’s fact-checking programme crosses international boundaries, its contracts demonstrating that content moderation via neighbouring countries occurs around states that are not perceived as friendly to Western interests – inevitably, such interference by outside actors may be seen as hostile or unwelcome. 

Another form of foreign-earned income by fact check platforms is through the design of fact check tools, such as a $2 million grant received by Africa Check from Google [35]. Tools include products that monitor text to find target words or phrases; turn spoken words into text for analysis; predict current and future trends in conversations online and offline; analyse visual images; identify whether text has been altered; and check whether stories, statements or pictures have been used previously. 

In Western countries, the negative effect of censorship include accusations of illegally hacking sites and distorting information obtained to smear those with different opinions [36]; demonetising activities [37], and the removal of accounts [38]. Expressions of similar concerns were not found in other areas, but there are indications that Western influence on international mainstream media and social media is causing concern. For example, one Indonesian study found that newsroom editors thought the local media had been ‘colonised’, with Google now being one of the most important news values that influence story selection [39].  Moreover, India and Georgia have openly expressed concern relating to Western influences via fact-checking within their national boundaries, and have attempted restrictive measures [40, 41].

Conclusion

The recent growth of the fact check industry, its global networks, the widespread annual conferences of fact checkers and media literacy campaigners [42], and the industry’s wealthy funders are still hidden from most of the world’s view. However, fact checkers and current media literacy campaigns challenge freedom of speech and the ability of populations to make informed decisions based on evidence from a number of diverse sources. Fact checkers do not have a democratic mandate, nor any satisfactory appeal mechanism so that those who are censored can challenge their version of what is ‘true’. The Twitter files have made a significant contribution to exposing the ‘Industrial-Censorship Complex’, but examining the whole of the fact-checking industry and its worldwide presence, its reach to all forms of media, its media literacy and fact check activities, and Western funding of content moderation across the world should be cause of great concern for global freedom, sovereignty, and independence. 

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There are multiple events that happened in January 2020 that are, to put it mildly, peculiar. One of them is that only 23 days after China reported that they had found a few cases of an “unknown pneumonia” in the city of Wuhan, three people in Baltimore Maryland launched a dashboard that was designed to track the number of cases and deaths of this disease in every country in the world. All three were connected with the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering at John Hopkins University (JHU). In their own words, the dashboard “was developed to provide researchers, public health authorities, and the general public with a user-friendly tool to track the outbreak as it unfolds” [1]. Along with the dashboard they also maintained a public data repository of cases and deaths [2].

The January 22 launch happened so early on in the Covid timeline that the first WHO situation report had only been released the preceding day, and the term “Covid” had not even been coined yet. In that first WHO report it was announced that “282 confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV have been reported from four countries including China” [3]. Total cases outside of China were only four, and there had been zero deaths. In fact, only six deaths were officially linked to the virus by this date, and all of them were from Wuhan. For comparison purposes and to put things into perspective, the norovirus is estimated to infect 685 million people and cause 212,000 deaths every year [4]. We are not aware of a norovirus dashboard anywhere in the world. 

Odd as it might be that a team at JHU chose to create and launch a dashboard for an unnamed disease despite such low numbers of cases and deaths in so few countries, there are possible explanations for why they did so. Only 3 months earlier JHU had hosted Event 201, a “training tabletop exercise… based on a fictional scenario” of a novel coronavirus causing a global and deadly pandemic [5]. Furthermore, the lead author of the dashboard (Professor Lauren Gardner) is a specialist in modelling infectious diseases. Notwithstanding what these facts might suggest, the dashboard was, at least according to their own testimony, the result of a “spur-of-the-moment” decision and took “just a few hours” to build [6]. 

Despite this hasty beginning, the new website [7] certainly garnered a lot of attention in short order, rapidly becoming the premier data site for media outlets, medical researchers, health authorities, and the general public, not only in the US but also around the world [8, 9]. Within two months of its launch, the website was reportedly being “accessed 1.2 billion times per day,” [10] or nearly half the traffic of the internet giant Google. Within two years it had been cited by medical researchers in more than 8,500 articles [11].

“The Hopkins dashboard has become a ubiquitous and trusted reference point, cited by U.S. federal agencies and major news sources” [12].

Given how much influence the JHU dashboard exerted on the world during the Covid event, it is appropriate to examine it in some detail. In particular, we here discuss some of the difficulties of obtaining data in real-time, the sources they used to obtain that data, how they put data into their system, the language barriers involved in the process, and, finally, the role that computer simulations may or may not have played. The article is rounded out with an example from one particular city, namely New York.

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Obtaining Data in Real-time

Even with the help of modern computers, it typically takes many months (or even years) to produce reliable mortality data. For example, the latest year for which official all-cause mortality figures are available in Canada is still only 2020. The national statistics office, StatsCan, is quick to point out that “reporting delays” and “incomplete data” are the reason behind the three year effort [13]. If it currently takes two or three years for a federally funded organisation such as StatsCan to publish mortality data, how was it possible for JHU to get Covid death data in real time? 

It is equally challenging to produce statistics about one particular pathogen or virus. For instance, seven months after the 2017/2018 flu season had ended, the CDC in the US was still only providing estimates for cases and deaths. Their stated reason was that “data on testing practices and deaths from the 2017-2018 season” were not yet available [14]. The date of that statement was 22 November 2019. Exactly two months later the JHU dashboard went live, promising information on cases and deaths in real-time of a newly found respiratory virus that is similar to the flu. If it takes months or years to obtain mortality and case data for the flu, how was it possible to obtain data for Covid in real time? If it was not possible to do this in 2019, how did it suddenly become possible to do it in 2020?

Naturally, there are plenty of countries in the world where data reporting is unreliable at the best of times. Likewise, the Human Mortality Database, which tracks mortality by country, is regularly ten years behind for many countries [15]. How then did JHU expect to be able to plot Covid deaths for every country in the world in real time? More crucially, how did they possibly update their dashboard “every 15 minutes”? [1, 16]

Data Sources for the JHU Dashboard

Good data depends on good sources, and the only way to understand how the JHU dashboard obtained their data in real time is to examine their sources. Of significance is that their sources changed over time. Initially, their primary data source was “DXY, an online platform run by members of the Chinese medical community, which aggregates local media and government reports to provide cumulative totals of COVID-19 cases in near real time at the province level in China and at the country level otherwise” [1]. This source, therefore, was a combination of news and government reports.

Eventually the team at JHU felt that DXY was taking too long to obtain and publish data, so they branched out to include other sources: “To identify new cases, we monitor various Twitter feeds, online news services, and direct communication sent through the dashboard.” As health agencies around the world set up their own dashboards, JHU incorporated them into their list of sources [2].

JHU therefore acknowledged three primary sources of information other than official government websites:

• Twitter feeds

• online news services

• direct communication sent to the dashboard

To the best of our knowledge, no details are provided about any of these three categories of sources. All three have the potential to contain incorrect, exaggerated, or entirely fabricated information. None are either publicly accountable or subject to independent verification. No specifics are provided about who could or did communicate directly to JHU.

Scraping the internet for news stories about Covid certainly has the potential to speed up the process of collecting data. Unfortunately, and beside the above named problems, it also introduces the possibility of a noise-amplifying feedback loop. After all, if “major news sources” were trusting JHU for accurate data, how could JHU be getting their data from (potentially) the same news sources?

Duplicates

Furthermore, even assuming that all the sources used by JHU were accurate, the task of “combining multiple data sources is a complex process” [17]. One notable challenge is how to handle duplicates. Whenever information is obtained from more than one source it becomes possible that the same event is counted twice. News outlets, after all, do not include health identifiers of the people mentioned in their stories. How then did JHU de-duplicate the data? Does this mean that Covid case and death counts as reported by the dashboard may have been two, three or many times higher than reality in some regions? Indeed, there are occasions when users of the data were convinced the dashboard did contain duplications [18]. For example, on 11 March 2020, one user of JHU’s data repository wrote: “There is a challenge with inserting duplicate data into a stream that never contained it before. Reporting both at the state level and the city level in the same column is bound to cause problems” [18a]. To which another user replied, “CSSE appears to double count cases and deaths” [18b]. CSSE (“Center for Systems Science and Engineering”) is the acronym for the department at JHU that managed the data repository.

Worldometer as a Data source

JHU expressly mentions Worldometer as one of their sources [2]. Worldometer themselves confirm this fact, saying: “Our data is also trusted and used by… Johns Hopkins CSSE” [19]. In general, Worldometer uses computer simulations to report statistical information in “real-time.” Their simulations are based on yearly totals and computer estimates. For instance, if one million people die in motor vehicle accidents every year, then on average one person perishes every 31.6 seconds. The Worldometer dashboard for accidents would simply add one new death accordingly whether or not anyone actually died during that amount of time. Naturally, Worldometer would have no way of knowing if anyone did die.

Did Worldometer use computer calculations to determine Covid statistics in a manner similar to what they do for motor vehicle accidents? If they did (and because they could not know the yearly totals in advance), did they use epidemiological models rather than real deaths to estimate how many people were going to die that year from Covid? Neither question can be answered with certainty. Their list of sources only includes government institutions [19]. However, since a full list of sources is not available, and since they do not expressly deny using computer algorithms, it is quite likely that Worldometer did use computer models to generate their Covid statistics. This is made more certain by the fact that governments would not have been able to generate Covid information in real-time.

In May of 2020, CNN published an interesting news article that highlighted the confusing nature of the relationship between the JHU dashboard and Worldometer [20]. The responses from JHU to questions that were asked of them in preparation for that article were somewhat evasive, and left more questions than answers [21].

The fundamental question that remains unanswered, of course, is why would JHU use Worldometer as a source in the first place? Since JHU used Worldometer as a source, does that mean that the underlying data on the JHU dashboard was also based on computer models rather than real events? Part of the reason why it is so difficult to answer any of these questions is that the code used by the dashboard was not open source, a complaint frequently levelled against the platform by users [22]. Another reason is that data was often input into their system without either explanation or verifiable references.

Inputting Data into the System

According to the Lancet article by Gardner et al, for the first ten days after the launch of the JHU dashboard, “all data collection and processing were done manually, and updates were typically done twice a day” [1]. From a logistical perspective this was doable since there were so few cases and only a few countries involved during this period of time.

Concerning accuracy of the data, they claimed that “[b]efore manually updating the dashboard, we confirm the case numbers with regional and local health departments…as well as city-level and state-level health authorities.” It has already been established, however, that neither Canada nor the US could produce either mortality or influenza data within a six month time frame. How then did not only Canada and the US, but eventually every country in the world, provide daily case and death counts that JHU could use for verification?

In an attempt to answer this last question, the websites of Statistics Canada were examined to see how they obtained their Covid data. It was found that StatsCan did the same as the JHU team did, for they also used “web scraping techniques to gather relevant data from a variety of websites on COVID-19” [23]. Since no information is provided about which websites were scraped, I emailed StatsCan to obtain a list. Their kind reply stated: “Statistics Canada will not have a comprehensive final list of all potential websites used for web-scraping during the pandemic.” Two reasons were given: first, several divisions were involved, each with different procedures, and second, confidentiality issues. StatsCan suggested we contact the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). However, PHAC was relying on StatsCan for the information, and StatsCan was doing the web scraping, not PHAC [23]. Does this reply mean that StatsCan does not know where they got their Covid data from? Or does it mean they know and are unwilling to share their sources with the public?

The reply from StatsCan leaves one wondering if their information came from the JHU dashboard. Given how popular the JHU dashboard became, that it was expressly designed to enable health authorities to track the outbreak, that it was cited by US federal agencies, that it has been widely used by medical researchers, and that StatsCan scraped the web to obtain their data, it is quite likely that StatsCan did. Even if Canada did not, it is more than likely that some countries did adopt the JHU data as their own. How could JHU confirm their data with health authorities if those same health authorities were getting their data from JHU?

In view of this, there exists the very real possibility that JHU uploaded data to their dashboard, some countries used and published this information on their own websites, and then JHU confirmed their entries by comparing their numbers with those on official government websites. If this happened, it is circular reasoning at its finest. Unfortunately, there is no way to prove if this did or did not happen. Either way, it still leaves us wondering what sources JHU used for their data.

Automatic Updates

Whatever the sources were, manual updates were soon terminated in favour of automation: 

“The manual reporting process became unsustainable; therefore, on Feb 1st 2020, we adopted a semi-automated living data stream strategy.” [1] 

The word “unsustainable” makes it sound like they were being swamped with Covid cases. The actual facts refute this. According to the WHO reports there were only 19 countries reporting cases on this day [24]. This might have involved 80 to 100 entries on the first of February. It is not at all clear how so few entries were considered unsustainable.

The Lancet article asserts that the manual updates were first confirmed with the appropriate health authority. Nothing whatsoever, on the other hand, is said about whether or not automated inputs were ever confirmed.

Furthermore, is it even possible to automate data collection across multiple websites from a growing list of countries, when every website uses different formats to display their data? This question is especially valid given how often these formats were changed during the Covid event. Indeed, as one study group found, as late as May 2021 there were still no “standards” for reporting Covid data [17]. How then did the small JHU team do it when they themselves eventually acknowledged all these problems? [16]

Language Barriers

Two of the three people involved in designing the JHU dashboard were native to China, the third was American. This would have enabled them to read the Chinese reports published on the DXY website. But not every country in the world publishes data in either Chinese or English. The difficulties of extracting data from websites in foreign languages are significant even with automated translation tools. Automating this globally is almost inconceivable. Scraping the internet is nigh impossible when the websites being searched are in a language unknown to the researcher. Challenges of this sort are commonly experienced by anyone doing global research, and as a result researchers often confine themselves to countries that use a language known to them. How then did the JHU team do it?

First out of the Gate

The JHU dashboard was almost always the first website to report the first Covid case in a given location. Gardner claimed that:

“the dashboard is particularly effective at capturing the timing of the first reported case of COVID-19 in new countries or regions…With the exception of Australia, Hong Kong, and Italy, the CSSE at Johns Hopkins University has reported newly infected countries ahead of WHO, with Hong Kong and Italy reported within hours of the corresponding WHO situation report” [1].

Contrary to what this statement implies, dashboards do not capture this type of information, people do. How is it possible that the small JHU team responded so fast as to find the first new case in almost every single country before anyone else did? Is it only a coincidence that Gardner had recently developed a model that used air-travel patterns to predict exactly this? Writing about that model, she said: “the model provides the expected number of (the 100) imported cases arriving at each airport globally” [25].

Was this model so accurate that it aided JHU in finding each first new case? Given how inaccurate the model was, that scenario is highly unlikely: the same model had predicted case numbers in China that were five times higher than what was being reported. Despite this glaring problem with her model, Gardner still felt that it was more accurate than fact-based reports: 

“We believe the actual number of 2019-nCoV cases in mainland China are likely much higher than that reported to date. Specifically, we estimate there to be around 58,000 cumulative cases of 2019-nCoV in mainland China by the end of January (as of January 31, the reported cases is close to 12,000).” 

Is it not possible, therefore, that Gardner also felt that her predictions of when and where the first cases should occur were also more accurate than what any country was reporting? Did JHU report new cases on their dashboard based on their models? Is this why she said “the dashboard was particularly effective at capturing…”? If so, did other countries, and the WHO, believe what JHU had reported, and subsequently report it themselves?

Computer Modeling as the main source of data

The only answer that provides a rational explanation for all the questions asked thus far is that the JHU dashboard was based on computer simulations rather than observational data. It also appears that from time to time the JHU team obtained empirical data that was then used to adjust and “correct” the output from their models [26, 27]. The reasons why this is the most plausible answer is as follows:

• Governments are not capable of providing data in real time

• It is too difficult to extract data from news media sites in foreign languages

• Dashboard entries were automated

• There was no valid way to de-duplicate the data if obtained from news sources

• The dashboard was updated on short intervals (15 minutes or hourly)

• Sources include Worldometer, a site specialising in computer simulations

• Sources also include “direct communication to the dashboard,” which could have involved data from a computer simulation

• It is not known whether automated entries were confirmed in any way

• The dashboard was designed to provide health authorities with data

• Health authorities trusted the JHU data as accurate

• The repository contains multiple data dumps to “correct” the data

• The dashboard reported the first new cases in a country before anyone else did

Evidence for the use of Computer Modelling

On 4 March 2024 I sent an email to Lauren Gardner (the lead author of the JHU dashboard project) asking whether or not computer models were used at any point for the dashboard, and whether the models were available. Unfortunately, no reply has been received to date. 

Lacking verbal confirmation, and having thus far only found circumstantial evidence, it was necessary to keep digging for perhaps better evidence as to whether or not JHU used computer models to obtain their data. Not surprisingly, the evidence exists. For example, on 13 March 2020 Professor Lauren Gardner spoke at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill to explain the dashboard. During the presentation she expressly mentioned “modelling efforts that we are doing behind the scenes” [10].

Furthermore, on the JHU website it says:

“Gardner is a specialist in modelling infectious disease risk, including COVID-19….Gardner leads COVID-19 modelling efforts in partnership with U.S. cities to develop customized models to estimate COVID-19 risk at the local level.” [28]

When these two quotes are combined with the fact that Gardner was reported to be so busy managing the dashboard in early 2020 that she had no time to do anything else, it is certain that the modelling work was for the dashboard. Indeed, and as one article pointed out, “working around the clock for 10 weeks straight, they’ve been so consumed with dashboard maintenance that they’ve had little time to analyze the data it actually shows” [6].

It is also worth noting that in 2019 Gardner developed “a novel mathematical modeling framework” for estimating a viral outbreak, a model which was meant to be “calibrated using historical outbreak data” [29]. 

Moreover, the website for JHU’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering states that modelling is one of the foundational pillars of their department. The CSSE department defines itself with these words: “Systems science is a modelling approach that embraces the dynamic interaction of engineered, human-behavioural, and natural components in time and space” [30]. 

Therefore, based on the fact that Gardner is an expert in disease modelling, is accustomed to calibrating models with empirical data, was actively involved in developing models for Covid, has gone on record that her models are more accurate than officially reported numbers, and that her department considers modelling fundamental to approaching any problem, it should be taken for granted that computer models were being used as the underlying source of data. In other words, unless strong evidence exists to the contrary, it is certain that the JHU team was using computer models to generate case and death numbers. No direct evidence has been found however.

In agreement with these sentiments, a survey by Jesse Pietz et al of 25 different Covid dashboards expressly states that the JHU dashboard was using the SIRD (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered, Deceased) epidemiological model in 2020 for simulating the spread of Covid [31].

Finally, an interesting Twitter thread was posted in November 2020 that provides evidence that Ensheng Dong (the undergraduate that built the dashboard) was uploading data to the JHU repository with data created by computer modelling [32]. (Although we regret that the significance of this thread escaped our attention for so long, we do acknowledge that discovery of it formed a significant part of the impetus for the research that led to this article.)

In August 2022, Ensheng Dong et al published a review of their dashboard that discussed some of the lessons learned and challenges faced along the way. The authors assert: “In line with our commitment to open data, the data displayed on the dashboard have solely come from publicly accessible sources” [16]. And a little further on they added, “the dashboard relied entirely on publicly available data.” Does this mean that the dashboard only used fact-based empirical data? Not necessarily. Worldometer is a “publicly accessible source” that was almost certainly based on computer models. Furthermore, some governments used computer models to estimate how many people were going to get sick or die from Covid. The output from these models were also publicly available. And, it is not unreasonable to think that some health authorities were getting their numbers directly from JHU models in the first place. Noteworthy is the fact that they do not say they only used empirical or observational data.

Computer models were used in multiple countries to estimate Covid cases and deaths  [33, 34]. However flawed the models were (and they were terribly flawed [35]), it was always understood that they were only models [36]. The JHU dashboard, on the other hand, claimed to be delivering real-time data of actual Covid cases and deaths. The evidence strongly suggests otherwise.

Confounding the Data

There are multiple problems that will naturally follow if a respected dashboard purports to be hosting empirical data suitable for use by health authorities, but the underlying data is actually being generated by computer models. These problems are guaranteed to persist even if the data is “confirmed” and updated with data from official government websites.

A few of the notable problems that will arise are:

• Some countries, knowing that they are unable to obtain data in real time, will be inclined to trust the dashboard and use its numbers for their own. JHU then “confirms” its own estimates against the “official” numbers. Since the official numbers were based on their own estimates in the first place, the error is confirmed, and neither the JHU data nor the country’s official data are correct. The result will be that Covid numbers in some countries will be as wrong as the computer models.

• Other countries will rely on their own data entirely. When JHU “confirms” their estimates, the JHU data will be corrected. In this scenario the data will be as correct as testing and lab diagnostics allow, or as the data from those countries permits.

• As a result of the above, two neighbouring countries may have vastly different rates of Covid cases and deaths, not because Covid behaved differently in the two countries, but because one country accepted the JHU data as reliable and the other did not. The end result will be that it will be impossible to compare Covid statistics between countries.

• Since JHU data was broken down by cities in some regions of the world, some cities may have accepted the JHU data while others did not. The result will be that Covid statistics may be empirically-based in one city and model-based in another. This will render it impossible to compare one city with its neighbour.

• In those countries where JHU provided city level data, since some cities used the JHU data as their own while others did not, the aggregate values for each province or state may be meaningless.

• The net effect of some regions accepting the JHU data and others not, both at the city, state, and country levels will mean that any computer algorithms used in the JHU models will be visible for some geographical locations but not for others. As a result, in some places the data will fit a SIRD model while in other places it will not. This will render epidemiological studies hopelessly confused.

All of the above-mentioned problems have been central aspects of the many discussions surrounding Covid — not only that we ourselves have engaged in and written about, but also that we have read about or are aware of. For instance, we found from studying Italy that Covid deaths aligned with regional borders rather than with what one would expect from an epidemic of a novel virus [37]. When studying New York City we found that what reportedly happened in that city did not happen in other large cities in the US [38]. When studying mortality patterns around the world, we found that Covid “respected” regional borders in unexpected ways [39, 40]. Therefore the actual problems that surfaced while studying the Covid data aligns with the type of problems one would expect if the JHU dashboard was based on computer simulations augmented by observational data.

An example of how serious it can become when information is believed to be based on real facts though it is based on a computer model is the disappearance of flight MH370 in 2014. The software used by Malaysia Airlines for tracking aircraft led them to believe that the missing plane was over Cambodia. However it was later discovered that “the ‘flight tracker’ is based on [computer simulated] projection and could not be relied [on] for actual positioning or search” [41]. The plane was nowhere near Cambodia, and the delay caused by this misunderstanding was enough to allow the plane to be lost [42].

Example: New York City

Finally, we finish this discussion of the JHU dashboard by examining New York City (NYC) as a case study to demonstrate some of these issues visually. In the first graph below, daily Covid deaths are plotted using data obtained from two different sources: NYC Health (blue line) and the JHU dashboard (red line). The third line (green) is simply the result of multiplying daily JHU values by 4/3. The reason behind this green line is explained below. The graph includes all reported Covid deaths in NYC up until 17 May 2020.

The reason that 17 May 2020 was chosen as the cutoff date for this graph is that NYC Health (NYCH) changed several key aspects of its reporting methods on this day, causing significant disruptions to the JHU trends. It should also be noted that the data used in the above graph was not entered into their respective Github repositories on the day shown. The NYCH data was first committed to the repository on 22 December 2020, after which it was adjusted multiple times over the next three years. The JHU data was entered daily until May 17, then adjusted again on July 1, Aug. 31, and September 1. Other than the fact that the September. 1 entry by JHU was done to distribute deaths in NYC by borough, we are unaware of any explanations for the other adjustments [43].

In general, both NYCH and JHU included what they called “probable deaths” in their daily numbers. Since they kept track of these amounts separately and on a daily basis, we opted to include them in the NYCH daily values (blue line) but not for JHU (red line). In this way, the difference between the blue and red lines in the above graph is on account of “probable deaths.” [43]

The similarities between the blue and green lines provide almost irrefutable proof that the “probable death” numbers were artificially generated on a computer. With a little bit of effort I was able to find a relatively simple equation that makes the match between the two lines all but perfect. However, we leave it for either NYCH or JHU to share what equation they used to generate their “probable deaths.”

We next plot Covid death data (including “probable deaths”) from only NYCH (Fig. 2 below). The smoothness of the curve is remarkable, and almost certainly reflects the use of an SIRD epidemiological model as the underlying source of the data. Naturally, since the JHU curve is identical in shape (only with smaller numbers), it too reflects an SIRD model. Since we have already established that a simple equation exists for “probable deaths,” it is fairly convincing evidence that models were used for all the data: confirmed, probable, and total.

To drive this last point home, and for comparison purposes, we next plot the graph of Covid deaths in Hubei province during the first three months of 2020 (Figure 3 below). Despite the fact that the population of Hubei province (58 million) is seven times that of NYC (8.3 million), the number of deaths in Hubei (peak: 147, sum: 3,164) was significantly less than in NYC (peak: 831, sum: 23,338 ). For these numbers to be correct, it would mean that what happened in NYC was 51 times worse than what happened in the province where Covid supposedly originated. That scenario is so unlikely that it borders on preposterous, and lends support to the notion that the NYC data was not based on observed facts.

It is also observed that the graph for Hubei province (Fig. 3) is more consistent with what empirical data typically looks like (jagged), while the graph for NYC (Fig. 2) resembles  what a computerised model would produce (smooth).

We have previously demonstrated that it is impossible that 23,338 people died of Covid in NYC in spring 2020 [44]. We have also demonstrated that the NYC mortality data is of questionable integrity [38]. Based on the current discussion, we now argue that the most viable explanation for the erroneous data is that a computer algorithm (based on an epidemiological model) was coupled with an improper feedback loop between JHU and NYCH. All of this suggests, and that rather strongly, that Covid death numbers for NYC were invented on a calculator rather than counted in a morgue. We invite either NYCH or JHU to explain why and how these figures should be interpreted differently, and to produce the death certificates of the deceased as proof.

Of course, if Covid death numbers in NYC were based on a computer model, it follows that the residents of NYC were subjected to three months of unnecessary terror in early 2020, being told that thousands of their neighbours were perishing on account of Covid when nobody had (or yet has) any idea how many people were actually dying. It is, therefore quite possible that nothing unusual happened in NYC in the spring of 2020 (even as nothing unusual happened in China [45]), and that the 24% average rise in 911 calls [46] during this period of time, along with the inexplicable and disturbing increase in cardiac arrests [47] were not caused by Covid but by media induced fear [48].

Conclusion

The JHU dashboard was “developed to provide researchers, public health authorities, and the general public with a user-friendly tool to track the outbreak as it unfolds.” Beside the fact that tracking any illness in real time is functionally impossible, and notwithstanding the fact that nothing special was “unfolding” when they developed it, all the evidence suggests that they succeeded in creating a Covid dashboard by using computerised models that were “corrected” from time to time with data obtained from official government websites. By mixing data from computer models with data from observations while simultaneously asserting that they “relied entirely on publicly available data,” they confounded the data so badly as to render it meaningless. As a result, the JHU Covid database is and was so unreliable that it should never have been used for determining either Covid cases or deaths.

As startling as this conclusion may sound, it is basically what Aaron Katz (a supervisor on the JHU development team) said four years ago:

“Ten years from now we’ll see all the reports and retrospectives that will tell us exactly what happened and where….[But for now,] we’re trying to solve this problem of situational awareness in the present moment” [11].

At the very least his words inform us that it typically takes ten years to get accurate data on a specific illness. At the worst, the quote assures us that the JHU dashboard was unreliable, that the trust placed in the data was entirely misplaced, and that the JHU dashboard caused many wrong conclusions about Covid.

In view of all these facts and observations: 

• We call on governments and statistical offices around the world to return to their former slow but accurate process of collecting reliable data through normal channels,

• We encourage medical researchers to resist the temptation to use Covid data from the JHU repository and instead wait until reliable data becomes available,

• We request John Hopkins University to be fully open and transparent about the computer code, models, sources, and procedures used in their dashboard, 

• We invite New York City to begin a transparent inquiry into if and how their data was corrupted by computer models, and, lastly, 

• We urge the general public to be more critical of any claims asserting “real-time” global statistics of a disease.

The author is thankful for the invaluable assistance provided by colleagues and contributors to this article who wish to remain nameless.

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1. There was no pandemic by any reasonable definition – which must surely include that large numbers of previously healthy people in all age groups perished, whereas there was no discernible rise in global mortality in 2020.

2. The pandemic-believers respond to (1) above by claiming that there was nevertheless the spread of a novel pathogen from a point source (“lab-leak of a virus engineered through Gain of Function research”). They say this was a “nasty” virus and the harm caused resulted from “mishandling” or a lack of “early treatment”.  However:
   a) There is no evidence that viruses can be engineered so as to have dangerous pandemic potential – lab-leaks happen all the time.
   b) The purported waves of deaths and serious illnesses appear decoupled from “spread” – there are no clusters or ripples of deaths or unusual illnesses evident; the “virus” bizarrely obeyed national and administrative boundaries to create different “pandemic outcomes”.
   c) The virus and disease claimed to have been caused by it were certainly not “novel”. “Covid” was indistinguishable from the features of known respiratory infectious illnesses. Any purported novelty is explainable by observation and confirmation bias augmented by the most extensive and powerful propaganda campaign ever waged on humanity.

3. All the harms reported can be explained by a combination of:
   a) Massive disruptions in health and social care: maltreatment, non-treatment or inappropriate treatment, especially of the infirm elderly
   b) Misattribution of deaths to “Covid”
   c) Other harms consequent to the response to the false perception that a novel deadly virus was circulating
   d) Data fraud

4. The notion of “something spreading” resulted from the explosion in the number of over-sensitive and under-specific tests (especially PCR) being carried out which were merely finding a pre-existing signal which had already become widespread  – and, crucially, without being noticed at all – before the purported emergency.
   
   As these “positive cases” were found, a number of perverse incentives created a positive feedback loop involving more testing (especially of “contacts”), more “cases” demanding more testing, more “cases” being found and so on.

5. The timeline associated with the early weeks of the Covid era stretches credulity. We are meant to believe that the following all happened spontaneously within a 4-week period:
   a) 27 Dec 2019 – Hubei hospital reports cases of pneumonia of unknown cause
   b) 7 Jan 2020 – the “new virus” is isolated
   c) 12 Jan 2020 – sequence uploaded to internet – from a patient in Wuhan with an otherwise unremarkable pneumonia
   d) 22 Jan 2020 – a dashboard purporting to report cases and deaths globally in real time is set up and launched by John Hopkins University
   e) 23 Jan 2020 – a paper describing a validated test (developed without access to patient material) is published, having been “peer-reviewed” within 24 hours of submission

6. “Lab leak” and “zoonotic spillover” theories are the two constituent parts of a deliberately engineered false dichotomy. By permitting argument between these two choices alone, the question as to whether we actually had a pandemic at all—and what therefore caused the myriad harms—is avoided. Yet BOTH theories have the same endpoint: the sustenance of the “Pandemic Preparedness Industry” which, flush with a hugely successful “Covid” episode will no doubt delight in the prospect of lucrative reruns.
   
   The oft-repeated references to “the next pandemic”— even by some apparent “Covid dissidents”— is a foreshadowing of their intentions, because, remember, as they say:
   “Any rogue lab can engineer these viruses now.”
   
   After all, as we have argued, the actual escape of something from a lab is not required to generate a “pandemic”; the mere seeding of the narrative of escape, rollout of testing and resultant social contagion is all that is needed.

Note: The above (deliberately) does not address the questions as to why the fraud was perpetrated, nor the role of the vaccine programme within it.

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This is the second report describing an ongoing 12-month research project investigating the UK Government’s use of behavioural science ‘nudges’ in their Covid communications strategy to promote compliance with restrictions and the subsequent vaccine rollout. The initial report – detailing the ubiquitous deployment of nudges into the Covid messaging and the likely sources of behavioural science expertise used in the development of the posters, slogans and videos – can be found here, and a summary here. An academic journal article, drawing on information contained in both reports, can be accessed through this link: https://ahpb.org/index.php/gary-sidley-article/

Introduction

Since early 2020, the people of Western democracies have endured heightened levels of state-sponsored propaganda, involving a range of ‘non-consensual persuasion’ techniques intended to aggressively promote the official Covid narrative while suppressing alternative viewpoints. An important element of this campaign has been the deployment of behavioural science strategies – or ‘nudges’. Throughout the Covid event the UK Government, in keeping with many other countries, drew on these interventions to strengthen their public health communications and thereby increase compliance with the pandemic restrictions and subsequent vaccine rollout. These psychological methods of persuasion often operate below people’s conscious awareness and frequently rely on inflating emotional discomfort to change behaviour. As such, the state’s use of these techniques on its own citizens has evoked ethical concerns among both psychological specialists and the general public. 

Attempts to initiate an open debate about the moral acceptability of a government deploying behavioural science methods to lever obedience with current edicts have, to date, been unsuccessful, with state-employed experts in positions of influence denying responsibility for the genesis of the more controversial (for example, fear-inflating) communications and/or displaying a reluctance to address the associated ethical questions. Consequently, it remains uncertain as to which individuals, or forums, within the government infrastructure determined the tone and content of the Covid communication strategy. Nor is it clear to what extent (if any) the stakeholders involved incorporated ethical considerations into the decision-making process.

This report – primarily relying on work done in months three and four of the project – aims to answer the following questions:

1. What sources of ethical expertise (individuals and groups) were nominally available to the Government during the Covid event?

2. What ethical guidance was offered during the Covid event that could potentially have been utilised to inform the appropriate development of nudge-infused messaging? 

3. What degree of influence did this ethical commentary achieve with regard to shaping government messaging during the Covid event?

4. What were the barriers to effective ethical input into the decision-making processes around messaging during the Covid event?

Methodology

Using the UK’s controversial ‘Look them in the eyes’ messaging campaign as a case study, the methods used to access relevant information have included: in-depth online searches using terms such as ‘Covid-19 messaging – ethics of’, ‘Covid communications – ethical input’, and ‘Ethical guidance during Covid pandemic’; scrutiny of the ‘What do they know’ database of the responses to historical Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, using the key words ‘Covid-19’ and ‘ethics’; inspection of the notes and minutes of government scientific and ethical advisory groups that were active during the Covid event; original FOI requests to government departments; and an exploration of the documented outputs of individual ethical experts, both within and outside of the government infrastructure.

Sources of ethical guidance during the Covid event: What have our research efforts revealed so far?

1. There was a substantial resource of ethical expertise embedded within the government infrastructure

From the beginning of the Covid event until October 2022, there was an active group of specialists dedicated to contributing an ethical perspective into government decision-making processes. This forum was known as the ‘Moral and Ethical Advisory Group’ (MEAG). Co-chaired by Jonathan Montgomery (Professor of Healthcare Law at University College London) and Jasvir Singh (Faiths Forum for London), the group was formed in October 2019 and met on 30 occasions. Its membership comprised ethical experts, social scientists, and representatives from UK religious and secular communities. 

The central purpose of the MEAG was to offer advice to the Government on health and social care issues. However, it is apparent from the group’s terms of reference that the expectation – at least in the initial phase of its existence – was that it would be reactive to ad hoc requests arising from health-related issues that required a speedy response. A more influential role was only envisaged in the ‘longer term’ when MEAG aspired to ‘advise proactively on issues that might be relevant to emergency preparedness planning more generally’. Further clarification of the group’s purpose was provided by co-chair, Professor Montgomery, in a meeting on the 22^nd April 2020 when he said, ‘MEAG exists to discuss issues and prompt further consideration from policymakers, rather than necessarily be able to provide definitive answers.’ 

One ethical specialist in the MEAG, Professor Michael Parker, was notable for his presence within other intra-governmental forums. Parker, a Professor of Bioethics at Oxford University, describes his research interests as being in the area of ‘collective action, individual responsibility, and the common good in infectious disease response’ in relation to ‘global health emergencies’. During the Covid event, in addition to his participation in the MEAG, Parker was also an advisor on the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) – a subgroup of SAGE, composed mainly of behavioural and social scientists, that advised the Government on its Covid-19 communications strategy – and was therefore well placed to raise ethical questions about the content and tone of the pandemic messaging. 

Parker has acknowledged his wide-ranging presence in various expert groups throughout the Covid event. In a lecture he gave on the 23^rd May 2022, he said, ‘I’ve attended more than 100 main SAGE meetings, and an equal number, at least, of meetings of various SAGE subgroups … My guess is that I have put in more than a thousand hours over those two years.’ In the same presentation, he suggests that the level of ethical scrutiny available to the Government during the Covid event was distinctive, maybe unique, describing the period 2020 to 2022 as, ‘one of the most sustained and intensive periods over which a government has had access to timely ethics advice on policy evolving in real time’.

Clearly, during the Covid event, there was an ample resource of ethical expertise embedded within the government infrastructure, sufficient – one might think – to influence policy.

2. There were a range of ethical organisations outside of the government infrastructure who were actively offering advice

While the resource of ethical expertise within formal government advisory groups could be described as sufficient, in addition there were a range of organisations offering ethical guidance outside of the government infrastructure. Four institutions fall into this category, albeit with overlapping membership, aims and sources of funding.

Established in London in 1991, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics claims to be the ‘leading independent policy and research centre, and the foremost bioethics body in the UK’ that provides advice on ‘ethical issues arising from developments in bioscience and health’. Since 1994 it has been funded jointly by the Nuffield Foundation, the Medical Research Council and Wellcome. The Nuffield Council believes it was influential during the Covid event; in its 2020 Annual Report it states that ‘The Council played a leading role in identifying and responding to pressing ethical issues, and was able to quickly produce high-quality work to support national and international responses to the pandemic.’ 

A second source of UK-based ethical expertise is the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Founded in 2002 and located in the Philosophy Faculty at the University of Oxford, the organisation comprises a group of academic researchers who aim to promote philosophical methods in ‘practical ethics’. On the centre’s website it states: 

Practical ethics should not only advance knowledge by deeper, rational ethical reflection and dialogue, it should change people’s hearts and so better their own lives and the lives of others.

Their specialists offer ‘ethics advice and consultancy for a wide variety of research projects and areas’.

The Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities is also based at Oxford University. Established in 2017, the centre aims to ‘lead debate on the ethical requirements for scientific research & technological innovation’ and it investigates ‘the ethical aspects of advances in neuroscience, big data, genomics & global connectedness’. The Wellcome Centre regularly engages in collaborative work with the co-located Oxford Uehiro Centre.

The fourth, and most recently established, ethics organisation is the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator. It describes its central function as being to bring ‘UK ethics research expertise to bear on the multiple, ongoing ethical challenges arising during pandemics’ by providing ‘rapid evidence, guidance and critical analysis to decision-makers across science, medicine, government and public health’. Formed in May 2021, the Ethics Accelerator is a partnership between the Universities of Oxford, Bristol and Edinburgh, University College London, and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. The source of funding is UK Research Innovation.

Not only do the geographical locations, workstreams, and sources of financing of these four ethics organisations overlap, but they share common membership. For example, Ilina Singh (Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford) is a co-director at the Wellcome Centre, a ‘Distinguished Research Fellow’ at the Uehiro Centre, and a Principal Investigator at the Ethics Accelerator. Similarly, John Coggon (a Law Professor at the University of Bristol) is a Council Member at Nuffield while also performing the role of co-investigator at the Ethics Accelerator.

Overall, it is reasonable to conclude that, though there were four reservoirs of ethical expertise operating in the UK throughout the Covid event, they displayed significant similarities in relation to purpose and personnel.

3. Policy documents pre-dating the Covid event were available and potentially influential

In addition to the range of ethics experts active during the Covid event, there were at least three historical and well-known policy documents available to policy makers that could have been referred to when making decisions abouts Covid messaging.

The first – and arguably the most prominent – concerns pandemic influenza guidance. In 2007, the Cabinet Office and Department of Health collaboratively produced a report titled ‘Responding to pandemic influenza: The ethical framework for policy and planning’. This document was subject to two elaborations: the ‘Committee on ethical aspects of pandemic influenza’ (CEAPI) in 2011, and the GOV.UK’s ‘Guidance Pandemic Flu’ (published in 2013 and updated in 2017). These advisory papers cover similar ground, recommending that policymakers refer to the following principles when deliberating about decisions:

• RESPECT: Keeping people as informed as possible’; ‘respecting people’s personal choices about their treatment and care.

• MINIMISING HARM: [Considering] the physical, psychological, social and economic harm that a pandemic might cause.

• FAIRNESS: Everyone matters equally; There need to be good reasons to treat some people differently from others.

• WORKING TOGETHER: Working together to plan for, and respond to, a pandemic.

• RECIPROCITY: If people are asked to take increased risks, or face increased burdens … they should be supported in doing so.

• KEEPING THINGS IN PROPORTION: Those responsible for providing information will neither exaggerate nor minimise the situation and will give people the most accurate information that they can … decisions on actions that may affect people’s daily lives, which are taken to protect the public from harm, will be proportionate to the risk and to the benefits that can be gained.

• FLEXIBILITY: People will have as much chance as possible to express concerns about or disagreement with decisions that affect them.

• GOOD DECISION MAKING: Respect for this principle involves openness and transparency … involve people as much as possible in aspects of planning that affect them … take into account all relevant views expressed … good decisions should be rational & ‘based on evidence.

An additional flu-focused document – ‘Health & Social Care Influenza Pandemic Preparedness and Response’ – focusing on the operational aspects of pandemic response in the health and social care sectors – was published in 2012. While reaffirming the appropriateness of the 2007 ethical framework, a further key recommendation – directly relevant to government messaging during a pandemic – was to, ‘Take better account of information from behavioural scientists about how people are likely to think, feel and behave’.

A second source of historical policy guidance, accessible to decision makers during the Covid event, was the World Health Organisation (WHO) document, ‘Ethical considerations in developing a public health response to pandemic influenza’. Published in 2007, it covers a wide range of infection control activities (surveillance, isolation, quarantine, and social distancing) that can raise important ethical questions. Pertaining to messaging during a pandemic, the guidance emphasises the importance of: ‘trust; transparency; communicating to the public early; dialogue with the public; and planning’.

Thirdly, in 2017, the (now-defunct) Public Health England published a paper titled ‘Public Health Ethics in Practice’, one of the two co-authors being the previously mentioned Professor John Coggon. The document is structured around three case studies, one of which focuses on a pandemic scenario, and highlights some general principles:

• Ethics should not be viewed as an afterthought to be examined once policy adoption or intervention selections has taken place.

• [Ethics is] an integral component of public health decision making that should be incorporated into all aspects of policy & practice.

• For public health policies and interventions to be ethically justified, they must be defensible by reference to political theory.

• Ethical guidance must be context specific … task specific … and level specific.

In conclusion, it is clear that, throughout the Covid event, there were multiple sources of ethical expertise and ethical guidance that could have been utilised during the development of the nudge-infused Covid messaging. But in actuality, what did these sources contribute to the decision-making process?

Ethical guidance that was offered during the Covid event: What have our research efforts revealed so far? 

1. None of the sources of ethical expertise raised specific questions about the Government’s nudge-infused messaging

A comprehensive inspection of the outputs of ethical experts during the Covid event revealed that there was no direct reference to the appropriateness and acceptability of the messaging used to promote compliance with the Covid restrictions and subsequent vaccine rollout. Given the sizeable academic literature addressing the ethical questions associated with behavioural science techniques (for example, Sunstein, 2016; Schmidt & Engelen, 2020), the critiques of their deployment during the Covid event (for example, HART, 2022), and the public’s ‘negative sentiment toward behavioural science and its policy counterpart’, this omission is surprising.

The MEAG met on 23 occasions between March and November 2020. Inspection of the minutes of these forums shows that they discussed a range of topics – including the Coronavirus Bill, prioritisation in intensive care, shielding policy, and antibody certification – but there was no explicit mention of behavioural science nudges and very little reference to Covid communications in general.

With regard to expert ethics groups operating outside of the government infrastructure, their outputs also neglected consideration of the moral questions associated with the state’s use of behavioural science strategies. However, there are a couple of instances where their statements could be construed as – perhaps inadvertently – relating to nudge-infused communications. Thus, on the 18^th May 2022, 40 Parliamentarians met with academics (from the Pandemic Accelerator and the Nuffield Council) and patient representatives to discuss the theme of ‘Building Public Values into Pandemic Recovery & Preparedness’. One of the presenters at the event, Professor Dame Theresa Marteau (Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at Cambridge University), proposed that ‘Trust in scientific advice is fostered by scientists communicating in ways that aim to inform (not persuade)’. Although not stated explicitly, such an assertion seems to question the ethical appropriateness of communicators resorting to – often-covert – nudge techniques as a means of promoting compliance with pandemic restrictions.

Another rare example of ethical experts directly referring to behavioural science strategies during the Covid event is contained in a Nuffield Council policy briefing (dated 17^th May, 2022) titled ‘Ethical tools for decision-makers: Responding to public health threats’. While emphasising the importance of three values (reducing suffering, treating everyone with respect, and fairness), the authors propose a ‘Ladder of public health intervention’ in which the third most coercive rung is described as, ‘Present safer behaviours as a social default’. They go on to define the aim of this type of intervention as ‘to help create an environment where acting to protect others is presented as the norm and is seen to be valued’, and refer to wearing a face mask as an illustrative example. Clearly, what is being described here is a ‘normative pressure’ nudge that exploits the fact that an awareness of the prevalent views and behaviours of fellow citizens can exert pressure on us to conform. Although the policy briefing does not discuss the ethical questions arising from these types of interventions, their high ranking on the coercion/intrusiveness ladder implies that such issues warrant debate.

2. No ethical advice was sought during the development of the controversial ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign

Perhaps partly as a result of experts’ neglect of ethical commentary about nudge-infused communications, it appears that those tasked with developing the Covid-19 messaging (involving videos, posters, and slogans) did not seek a specialist ethical perspective on their outputs. 

This provisional conclusion can reasonably be drawn from a Cabinet Office response to our FOI request that asked for details about any specialist ethical input into the making of the adverts and videos used in the ‘Look them in the eyes’ communications campaign. Arguably the most powerful – and controversial – package of Covid-19 messaging in the UK, this campaign involved a series of close-up images of acutely unwell patients wearing surgical masks and ventilation masks, and a voice-over saying, ‘Look them in the eyes and tell them you are doing all you can to stop the spread of coronavirus’. From a behavioural science perspective, the ‘Look them in the eyes’ initiative could be viewed as adding guilt and shame (the emotional mediators of ego nudges) to the previous reliance on fear-inflation (see Research Report 1, p 10, for further details).

The reply from the Cabinet Office to our FOI stated that ‘Ethical approval on government campaigns is not a standard requirement’ and there was a reliance on ‘audience testing via insight research to inform development and ensure accuracy of message take-out’. The Cabinet Office went on to say that ‘Research findings did not indicate that additional, non-standard approvals – such as ethical approval – were required’. 

This FOI response also provided details of what their ‘insight research’ involved. Apparently, the process is centrally managed by a ‘specialist market research recruitment agency, accredited to ISO20252’ deploying ‘a network of recruiters across the UK’. In this instance – the testing of the ‘Look them in the eye’ communications – the research involved ‘six 90-minute focus groups, each consisting of six respondents’. The participants were asked ‘to provide their opinions on the proposed campaign materials’. The conclusion to be drawn from this information is unequivocal: Apart from the exceptional circumstances where members of the general public on their six-person audience panels proactively raised specific ethical concerns about an advert, no ethical advice would be sought. And, given that the ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign is widely regarded as the most provocative UK example of Covid messaging, it seems doubtful that other communication campaigns – such as the ‘All in, All together’ newspaper project – would have incorporated ethical consideration of their materials either.

Placing these findings in a wider context, recent revelations by the ‘Us For Them’ campaign group (Kingsley et al., 2023) indicate a fundamental neglect of ethical oversight across the broad range of Covid communications. In the drive to promote the Pfizer vaccine to children and young adults, the Government did not even follow the basic advertising guidance regarding the targeting of minors, instead claiming exemption from legislative rules relating to the promotion of medicines on the grounds that their messaging did not constitute advertisements. In light of this level of evasion of fundamental governance, the absence of ethical input into the ‘Look them in the eyes’ initiative is less remarkable.

Even more striking were some of the official attempts to justify the imposition of these emotionally disturbing images and messages on the British populace. One justification – as detailed on the MullenLowe website – was their belief that 20% of the population underestimated the risk of Covid-19, and they wanted to ‘make the risk real for those who were unsure or didn’t believe it’. A subsequent Cabinet Office response to our FOI request in August 2023 confirmed that the ‘Look them in the eyes’ initiative was developed with the not-frightened-enough subgroup in mind, the stated objectives of the communications being:

To continue the ‘Stay Home’ campaign, encouraging people to stick to the rules
and take personal responsibility for their behaviours.

To make those people who are ‘unsure’ of the coronavirus risks, or who believe
the risks are exaggerated to reappraise their behaviour and not bend the rules.

The focus on ‘Risk Sceptics’ requires a shift in gear:
from ‘Authoritative Command’ (Phase 1a & b)
to a more emotionally triggering ‘People to People approach (Phase 2).

Most importantly, it proves to be effective in forcing reappraisal of behaviour even among those who currently believe that risks are exaggerated; directly prompting them to seriously consider their ‘small transgressions’ or ‘stretching’ of the rules.

Another Cabinet Office justification for the tone and emotional power of the ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign, based once again on their own qualitative research, was that people were generally less frightened of the virus in January 2021 as compared to the time of the first lockdown in March 2020. An FOI response (on the 6^th October 2023) conveyed details of the official thinking:

… level of perceived risk & concern is not as high as March 2020. March a shock to the system but now have learned to live alongside Covid.

Younger can be more fatalistic, strong belief in personal strength and ability to recover/experience less severe symptoms.

Strong evidence of Covid fatigue across the sample. They have settled into their own level of ‘acceptable behaviour’ and perceived risk that fits with their lifestyle, their specific needs & circumstances.

Significant & visible difference in behaviour & attitude between the two lockdowns. More people on the streets, more businesses open, more traffic on the roads. Fearful but much less panic this time around.

The challenge is in overcoming people’s established ways of managing their lives within the lockdown rules as by & large they believe they are mostly compliant.

Thus, three official justifications for inflicting this emotionally disturbing content on the British populace were: the presumed existence of a subgroup of ‘risk sceptics’ who were not sufficiently frightened of the prospect of developing the Covid-19 illness; younger people were less alarmed and held stronger beliefs in their powers of recovery should they contract the SARS-CoV-2 virus; and the observation that, in January 2021, many people felt less frightened (as compared to the March 2020 lockdown) and had made corresponding adaptations to their life styles. Each of these justifications can be challenged on the grounds of irrationality, dubious ethics, or both.

MullenLowe, the advertising agency that produced the ‘Look them in the eyes’ adverts, worked on the assumption that one in five of the population had underestimated the risk of Covid-19, and therefore it was desirable to ‘make the risk real for those who were unsure or didn’t believe it’.

It is unclear as to the source of this risk estimate. And, given that Covid-19 had already been recognised to be a mild disease in all but a small minority of cases – with an infection fatality rate (IFR) of less than 0.15% for those under 60 years of age (Ioannidis, 2021) – it is doubtful whether one can validly identify a subset of the population as complacent. Furthermore, even if a ‘not-frightened-enough’ subgroup could be reliably distinguished, it is ethically problematic to use the existence of this minority as justification to scare and shame everybody, most of whom (as a result of the media-driven nudge operation) would, by this stage, be overestimating their levels of personal risk. Strategically opting to further frighten and shame the already overly fearful is an action that would be very difficult to defend on moral grounds.

Similarly, referencing younger people’s invulnerability beliefs as a rationale for releasing these emotionally-disturbing videos and posters can also be criticised as being both irrational and unethical. For the researchers involved in developing and disseminating the ‘Look them in the eyes’ material, the fact that younger people had a 

stronger belief in [their] personal strength and ability to recover/experience less severe symptoms (FOI response 6.10.23).

partly justified the tone and content of their campaign. Yet, this assumed belief is a perfectly rational one: healthy individuals under the age of 30 were at no appreciable risk of dying of Covid-19. The IFR for 20 to 29-year-olds was 0.0088% and, for the under 19s, 0.0013% (Ioannidis, 2021). In the context of the multiple risks faced in day-to-day life, these levels are negligible; anyone who implies otherwise is exhibiting a severe form of risk aversion.

The third justification from the ‘Look them in the eyes’ creators – that people were less scared than in March 2020, and had adapted their behaviour so as to function within the restrictions – is, arguably, even more disingenuous. To view as negative the observation that many had ‘learned to live alongside COVID’, and had ‘settled into their own level of “acceptable behaviour” and perceived risk that fits their lifestyle’ (FOI response 6.10.23)  – and to use this as a valid reason for scaring and shaming them – is both perverse and ethically indefensible. A more rational interpretation of these behavioural changes would be that people were increasingly making their own individualised, balanced risk assessments, and making pragmatic decisions about how best to function in difficult circumstances and get on with their lives.

3. Although overlooked, much of the general ethical guidance produced during the Covid event was relevant to the specific ethical concerns about nudge-infused messaging

Ethical questions arising from the Government’s ubiquitous deployment of behavioural science-infused messaging were detailed in an earlier report (see Research Report 1, p5). In brief, four aspects of the Covid-19 communications can be viewed as problematic: the methods per se; the absence of informed consent; the contentious goals; and the lack of transparency. Much of the expert ethical commentary documented during the Covid event, although not explicitly addressing the issue of nudge-infused messaging, had relevance to one of these four ethical concerns. Some illustrative examples will now be described.

• The methods per se

Concerns about the methods relate to the acceptability of a government using techniques on its people that increase emotional discomfort and lead to widespread collateral damage. Strategically evoking fear, guilt, and shame to promote compliance is ethically questionable, as is the harnessing of peer pressure to achieve conformity. Ethical commentary of relevance to these concerns was typically couched in terms of ‘respect’ and the ‘harms’.

In March 2020, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a paper titled ‘Ethical Considerations in Responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic’, that included the statement: ‘While individuals may be asked to make sacrifices for the public good, the respect due to individuals should never be forgotten.’ The same organisation returned to this theme in a 2022 paper in which they highlighted ‘treating people with respect’ as a guiding value of public health interventions. Similarly, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) includes ‘respect’ as a key principle in their ‘ethical framework for adult social care’. The prominent American behavioural scientist, Professor Cass Sunstein, seems to be addressing the same construct in a 2021 interview with the World Economic Forum when he says that nudges should be ‘compatible with human dignity’ and ‘consistent with their (the people’s) values’.

With regard to the collateral damage associated with nudge methods, ethical commentaries focusing on the potential harms of pandemic interventions are pertinent. Addressing the ethical issues relating to the lifting of lockdown, Professor Michael Parker (Parker, 2020) described ‘minimising harms’ and ‘maximising wellbeing’ as fundamental values, two criteria that could reasonably apply to Covid-19 messaging. The same ‘minimising harm’ consideration was highlighted as a key principle in the previously mentioned ethical framework for social care (DHSC, 2021). Likewise, the Nuffield Council endorsed the importance of ‘reducing suffering’ as a guiding value in their 2022 article.

• The absence of informed consent

Obtaining the informed consent of the recipient before administering any medical or psychological intervention has always been a cornerstone of ethical clinical practice in liberal democracies. The apparent lack of any attempt to acquire the endorsement of the British people prior to the mass implementation of psychological methods of persuasion (nudge-infused messaging) can therefore be regarded as ethically problematic. 

Historically, Professor David Halpern – the President and Founding Director of the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) – was unequivocal about the fundamental importance of obtaining consent prior to using nudge techniques. Halpern was a co-author of the influential MINDSPACE document, published in 2010, that detailed the range of nudges in the armoury of behavioural science. This seminal document states: ‘Policymakers wishing to use these tools … need the approval of the public to do so.’ Five years later, in his book, Inside the Nudge Unit, he is even more emphatic about the importance of consent: ‘If Governments … wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public’ (p375). Another prominent behavioural scientist, Professor Cass Sunstein, reinforced this viewpoint when, in a 2021 interview, he stated: ‘if the people don’t like them (nudges), they should be able to say, “We don’t want that one.”’

During the Covid event, much was written about the importance of public involvement in decision making around ethically contentious pandemic policies. As early as April 2020, the Nuffield Council issued a statement, titled ‘Covid-19 and the basics of democratic governance’, that asserts that ethical input ‘is a matter of fundamental democratic accountability’. The same document goes on to say that the UK ‘has a public that has much to say but no opportunity to say it’, and urges the Government to ‘invite a broad range of perspectives into the room, including wider public representation’. The Nuffield Council returned to the same issue in a January 2022 blogpost where they proposed that one of the three core aspects of ethical preparedness is ‘Ethical policy making and public engagement’.

The same theme was raised in a ‘Rapid Ethics Review’ by the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator in September 2021, proposing that ‘The government should decide how to make meaningful public engagement an institutionalised part of their future covid-19 policy.’ The Ethics Accelerator reiterated this recommendation in their meeting with parliamentarians in May 2022, where a key point emerging from the discussion was that ‘Engaging the public in ethical tensions would contribute to building public values into pandemic recovery and preparedness.’ At the same event, Professor Ilina Singh highlighted to MPs the missed opportunity to ‘use tried and trusted ways of engaging the public in considering ethical questions’. 

To summarise, a range of experts – ethicists and some behavioural scientists – have stressed the importance of considering the perspectives of ordinary people during policy decision making, a principle that is of considerable relevance to the state’s deployment of nudge techniques.

• The contentious goals

During the Covid event, behavioural science strategies were incorporated into government communications primarily to promote compliance with a range of unprecedented and poorly-evidenced restrictions. When these measures were imposed, there existed a body of empirical research concluding that lockdowns (for example, Chaudry et al., 2020; American Institute for Economic Research, 2020) and masks (for example, Centre for Disease Control & Prevention, 2020; Cochrane review, 2020) were of little to no benefit in reducing the transmission of a respiratory virus. But, inexplicably, in early 2020, well-established pandemic plans were discarded. The deployment of fear, shame, and peer pressure to realise compliance goals – goals that infringe on basic human rights and where the net benefits are highly questionable – can be viewed as ethically unsound.

Arguably, during the Covid event, the ethical commentary most pertinent to this issue of contentious goals was provided by the Wellcome Centre in a written statement to Parliament in July 2020. In this multi-authored document they highlight the ‘Siracusa Principles’ that provide an internationally agreed-upon basis for restricting human rights during exceptional circumstances. Two of the principles cited require that any such restrictions are ‘In the interest of a legitimate objective’ and ‘Based on scientific evidence’. While these principles arose from consideration of the restrictions (lockdowns, masks, etc.) per se, it is reasonable to suggest that they are equally applicable to the communication strategies implemented to achieve their realisation.

Four months earlier a Nuffield Council report, addressing the key issues to be considered when responding to a pandemic, had stated that ‘interventions should be evidence-based and proportionate’. In May 2022, the same body proposed that a key responsibility of the state was to ‘enable people to live healthy lives’, an aspiration that could be viewed as inconsistent with the strategic use of fear, guilt, and shame in the Covid messaging.

The goals of interventions have also been considered by academic researchers when evaluating the ethics of nudges and other pandemic management strategies. For example, Jamrozick (2022), in his overview of the critiques of the ‘new normal’, wrote:

Ethical evaluations also require reviewing the best available empirical evidence regarding the expected benefits and harms … involved in a policy, as well as the likely distribution of these outcomes in the community.

Alluding to the increasingly common practice of referring to global betterment as justification for unprecedented interventions, Correa et al. (2022) make the crucial observation that ‘Knowing what is the greater good during this pandemic outbreak is the question no one has answered yet.’ 

• The lack of transparency

Many nudges impact upon their targets below their level of awareness and this covert mode of action lends weight to the accusation that they are manipulative. The importance of transparency – with regard to the full range of pandemic decision making – has been repeatedly endorsed by ethics specialists and researchers during the period 2020 to 2022.

In a rapid policy briefing in March 2020, the Nuffield Council proposed that ‘Interventions that interfere with personal liberties should be carefully and transparently justified.’ The following month they were unequivocal on this issue, asserting that the Government should:

Show us (the public) what it is doing and thinking across the range of issues of concern
Set out the ethical considerations that inform(ed) its judgements
Explain how it has arrived at decisions … and not that it is just ‘following the science’.

Some commentators have couched the transparency question in terms of ‘trust’. Subian et al. (2021) argued that a transparent and ethically legitimate framework for decision making can lead to ‘increased public trust in government and commercial entities for routine as well as crisis practice’. Similarly, following their workshop at Westminster in May 2022, the UK Pandemic Ethical Accelerator group concluded: ‘To build trust, transparency alone will not suffice; it is important to share justifications that align with public expectations’, and ‘It’s best to be honest with the public about what we do and don’t know.’

During the Covid event, some behavioural science scholars directly addressed the transparency issue with a specific focus on nudges. For example, Correa et al. (2022) suggested that nudges can be problematic when applied in ‘face-to-face interaction between doctor and patients’ where ‘influences on choice architecture are not so welcome and can be misinterpreted as manipulation’. They add that, in the hands of a ‘bad government’ nudges may be ‘manipulative and violate autonomy’ by encouraging decisions ‘in directions different from those that individuals would do rationally’. Sunstein (2021) was more succinct: ‘Nudges should satisfy certain constraints – that is, they should be transparent, not covert or hidden.’

4. There is a broad consensus among ethicists that their advice had minimal influence upon policy decisions during the Covid event

As already described, the sources of ethical expertise (both within, and outside of, the government infrastructure) offered no specific, targeted guidance to inform the development of the nudge-infused messaging during the Covid event. Although much of the documented ethical advice could be construed as indirectly addressing some of the prominent concerns surrounding the state’s use of behavioural science within its communications strategy, the evidence suggests that the processes involved in the production of emotive and controversial campaigns like ‘Look them in the eyes’ were ethics-free zones. Strikingly, however, many ethics experts have expressed the view that their services were underused, or their guidance ignored, resulting in their achieving minimal impact across the range of policy decisions.

An early ominous sign of policymakers’ marginalisation of ethical advice relates to the treatment of the MEAG. On the 22^nd April 2020, Professor Jonathan Montgomery (MEAG co-chair) confirmed that he would write to Professor Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer) to ask him to ‘consider commissioning MEAG to produce a framework to assist policymakers take moral and ethical issues into account when developing policy’. Surprisingly, this constructive offer was promptly rejected. The MEAG meeting notes of the 29^th April 2020 detail how Whitty had ‘advised against’ a documented ethical framework on the grounds that ‘this might crowd out the capacity of MEAG to consider detailed issues on which advice was being sought’. This response – that could reasonably be construed as a directive to only give ethical guidance when asked to do so – may have informed a MEAG member’s intriguing comment on a Nuffield blogpost in January 2022:

I think this is very much bound up with the abandonment of the influenza plan from 2007, which had a strong ethical component built into it from the start and a clear set of principles for decision-makers to use. There has been considerable resistance to the idea of ethical appraisal throughout the Covid pandemic. (My emphasis).

In addition to a passive, only-respond-when-asked, role being imposed on MEAG, some ethical specialists perceived that subsequent specific requests for advice were tokenistic. For instance, in December 2020, on the contentious topic of vaccine certifications, the MEAG ‘noted that many members considered that MEAG had been invited to advise at a very late stage of the process’. The same observation was made by participants in a stakeholder workshop (Pykett, 2022) where concern was expressed that ‘the role of the (ethics) committee had been to deliver on policy decisions already made’.

Many ethics experts have bemoaned their lack of influence during the Covid event. As early as April 2020, a statement by the Nuffield Council claimed: 

The Westminster Government does not seem to want to engage or take on board other views on any of these issues; nor is it evident that they are thinking about them, or taking advice on them from a social and ethical perspective … as far as we can see, neither the UK Government nor any of the devolved administrations have taken advice from their own Moral and Ethical Advisory Group.

This initial censure of the Government’s disregard of ethics was endorsed over two years later by Pykett (2022) when, in her analysis of key ethical moments in the pandemic, she concludes: ‘Ethical considerations have been simultaneously widespread in public debate, yet marginalised in policy responses.’

Similar criticisms have been expressed by the Pandemic Accelerator experts, for example, Professor John Coggin: ‘Ethical discourse in the UK was – and felt – muted’; Professor Ilina Singh: ‘We have struggled to make policy impact and to engage policy-makers’; and (more diplomatically) Professor Michael Parker: ‘There are a range of ways in which it could have been better, and there could have been more of it.’

Arguably the strongest condemnation of policymakers’ neglect of moral guidance during the Covid event was provided by Dr David Seedhouse (Honorary Professor of Deliberative Practice at Aston University) who wrote: 

One of the most troubling aspects of the Government’s response to the pandemic was its complete disregard for ethics …  a handful of people, quite out of their depth, were able to dismiss ethics – along with previous well-documented Government pandemic planning – with what seemed like a mere wave of the hand. (Seedhouse, 2022). 

Also, ethicists have consistently suggested that a blinkered reliance on the recommendations of scientists was the major reason why policymaking remained an ethics-free zone. At an Ethics Accelerator conference in May 2022, Professor Coggan observed:

There has remained a tendency, particularly within Westminster, to frame difficult decisions as ones that are simply led by ‘the science’ … But there are values at play when a Minister decides which science to follow. And there are value judgements in weighing up the costs and benefits of doing so, and in understanding whether and how this acceptably bears on people’s basic rights. 

Professor Parker made a similar point in an October 2022 article on the Ethics Accelerator website:

To say that one can ‘follow the science’ or ‘follow the data’ is to fail to acknowledge that the making of value judgements about what matters morally is an unavoidable step in any policy-making process.

That science, and the corresponding policies, are not value-free has also been articulated by other commentators (for example, Fritz, 2020, and Nuffield Council, 2020). 

A specific example of where a purported reliance on science was used to deflect ethical evaluation is detailed by Pykett et al. (2022). Pykett describes how members of MEAG offered ethical input into the deliberations of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to help inform its decision making around vaccine prioritisation. However – as stated in the JCVI minutes of the 7^th May 2020 – the ‘Committee agreed that JCVI advice would be based on scientific principles from the available scientific evidence and this would not include detailed ethical considerations.’ 

This assumption – sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit – about the primacy of ‘the science’ in determining policy may bear significant responsibility for what Jamrozick (2022) describes as ‘an ethical crisis in public health’, where many pandemic interventions could be considered ‘unacceptable according to pre-pandemic norms of public health ethics’. Clearly, policy decisions throughout the Covid event have typically been made within an ethical vacuum. The changing pandemic guidance within Adult Social Care could be seen as symbolic of this state of affairs. The original Department of Health and Social Care document (updated in April 2021) comprehensively describes a broad ethical framework, promoting values such as respect, reasonableness and proportionality. However, this guidance was withdrawn on the 1^st April 2022 and ‘superseded’ by another document, titled ‘Infection prevention and control in Adult Social Care’ in which there is no mention of ethics at all.

The barriers attenuating the impact of ethical guidance on pandemic policy: What have our research efforts revealed so far?

1. There was a perceived lack of clarity regarding the identity, and location, of the political decision makers

One of the more prominent conclusions to emerge from the ongoing Covid-19 Inquiry has been the chaos and infighting at the heart of Government. This lack of coordination between ministers, advisors and civil servants may have contributed to the perception of some ethicists that it was often unclear as to where the key policy decisions were being made – undoubtedly, without this knowledge of where the power and influence lie, it is very difficult to introduce ethical values into the deliberation process. (With regard to nudge-infused communication, this barrier to introducing ethical principles into decision making would have been accentuated by the multiple pockets of behavioural science offering advice during the Covid event – see Report 1, section 4b, for further details.)

Two participants at the Pandemic Accelerator conference in May 2022 mentioned the problems associated with trying to offer ethical guidance without knowing the identity and location of the political decision makers. Professor Montgomery described how ‘It proved very difficult, at least early in the pandemic, to identify who was taking decisions. If you can’t identify who’s taking the decisions, it’s hard to offer advice in a timely manner.’ Professor Singh expanded on the same point, stating that ‘Transparency in reasoning and decision-making’ was an ‘area of improvement for this Government in the handling of the pandemic.’ She goes on to say: 

Another challenge is that we have had an ambiguous, or lack of, relationship with pandemic science leadership. We have had trouble identifying where the leadership was. It wasn’t just Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, there was leadership all the way down.

In her review of the ethical moments in the pandemic, Pykett et al. (2022) highlighted the same issue. After facilitating an online workshop on the 25^th March 2021, incorporating the views of four UK Government ethics advisors, she identified the need for ‘a clearer pathway … between advisory institutions and decision makers to ensure ethically-informed debate’.

2. The ethical advice offered was frequently fragmented and drawn from multiple sources

In the notes of the MEAG meeting of the 16^th March 2022 is the statement: ‘Members expressed concern that communications and guidance could be more joined-up.’ The same concern had earlier been raised, less diplomatically, by Fritz et al. (2020) who described ethical approaches in the first months of the pandemic as ‘piecemeal, confusing, and risks needless duplication’.

A more considered perspective on how fragmented ethical advice was a factor in mitigating its influence on policy is offered by Pykett et al. (2022). Referring to an ‘ethical adhocracy’ Pykett and her colleagues describe how, despite being ‘carefully covered behind the impression of a finely-tuned orchestration of expertise’, this unstructured system results in ‘decisions about values’ being ‘highly contingent … on opportunities and situations, with ambiguity and contestation’. Usefully, Pykett et al. consider the causes of this fragmentation and suggest one contributor could be ‘the ambiguity created by the perceived need to develop new ethical principles, guidance & frameworks rather than using well-established principles, such as those from the Committee on Ethical Aspects of Pandemic Influenza’. This suggestion chimes with the questionable way in which scientists and policymakers have been prone to assume that the challenges presented by Covid-19 required a completely different set of responses than previous pandemics.

3. Ethicists lacked visibility to policymakers

In their review, Pykett et al. observe that the MEAG was ‘underutilised’ and, after reading the group’s outputs, they were left with ‘a sense of an advisory body whose potential is not fully realised’. Members of the MEAG seemed to recognise their obscurity; the minutes of their meeting on the 9^th September 2020 state:

The Group explored a range of options to increase the visibility of MEAG and identify opportunities to add value by improving links with policy makers and securing greater influence over decision-making. To achieve this the group agreed to reach out proactively to senior civil servants in key policy areas.

Based on the feedback received from the participants at their workshop, Pykett and her collaborators speculate about the reasons for this invisibility. As for potential contributory factors, they implicate recent structural changes in the heart of Government: ‘The capacity for the civil service itself to provide sound, evidence-based and ethical policy advice to ministers had been hollowed out over the last decade.’ And, on a similar theme: ‘The increasing centralisation of policy strategy & advisory personnel in the Cabinet Office and Number 10 has led to the politicisation of ethical questions of government.’

At their workshop with parliamentarians in May 2022, ethicists from the Pandemic Accelerator emphasised the importance of making policymakers aware of the availability of ‘trustworthy processes’ that incorporate ‘research and reasoning tools’ so as to instil an ethical dimension into their deliberations. According to Professor Singh, one way of achieving this aim is to ‘collaboratively develop an open channel of communication and proactive infrastructure to enable ethics experts to work alongside policy makers’.

4. Ethicists believed they were constrained by being a member of a formal government advisory group

Despite a sizeable resource of ethical specialists embedded within the government infrastructure during the Covid event, they achieved minimal influence across the range of pandemic policy decisions and raised no concerns at all about the appropriateness and acceptability of nudge-infused messaging. Two such ethicists – Professors Montgomery and Parker – have said that they felt to some degree constrained by their membership of formal government advisory groups, thereby raising the possibility that such involvement could constitute another barrier to the provision of effective ethical guidance. 

Professor Jonathan Montgomery (a co-chair of the MEAG), in an article for the Pandemic Accelerator in May 2022, says:

If you’re an advisory body within the Department of Health and Social Care, as the Moral and Ethical Advisory Group was, you are bound by the framework of your terms of reference and accountability.

As previously described, the MEAG members may have been discouraged from proactivity by mentions of responding to ad hoc requests in the group’s terms of reference. Furthermore, as part of the Department of Health and Social Care, its early deliberations were, perhaps predictably, ‘limited to a clinical and biomedical focus’ (Pykett et al., 2022) rather than addressing broader societal issues.

The constraints of formal group membership are also described by Professor Michael Parker (a member of the MEAG and of various SAGE groups). In an October 2022 publication he expresses the view that ‘the role of senior adviser comes with some responsibilities’ and goes on to discuss the ‘difficult balance’ between his individual perspective (and written outputs) and his collective responsibility as a member of a forum. It can, however, be argued that Parker’s appeals to the constraints of formal membership of a government advisory body as a reason for his lack of influence is less convincing; as a participant in full SAGE meetings and the SPI-B subgroup (the latter a forum dedicated to advising Government on their communications strategy), it is reasonable to assume that he had every opportunity – or perhaps even an obligation – to proactively raise issues of ethical concern.

5. The limited experience of members of the advisory groups, together with the negative perceptions of SPI-B held by other key actors, may have attenuated the impact of ethical oversight

Participants in the online workshop facilitated by Pykett et al. (2022) drew attention to the narrow range of skills and experiences of members of the formal advisory groups as a possible reason for the neglect of ethical issues: 

There was one bioethicist on SAGE, and a handful of social/health psychologists, an architect, a legal scholar & an astrophysicist. The wider social science & humanities disciplines are almost entirely absent.

In addition, some of the workshop participants believed that ‘significant overlaps between people sitting on a range of different committees could be problematic’.

Perhaps of more significance to the lack of ethical oversight pertaining to the development of Covid-19 messaging were the negative views held by some politicians and senior civil servants towards members of SPI-B. For example, Dominic Cummins (Chief Advisor to Boris Johnson), when giving evidence to a Health and Social Care Committee in January 2021, described behavioural scientists as ‘charlatans’. A more restrained, though still negative, appraisal of SPI-B members was given by Lee Cain (Director of Communications under Boris Johnson) in his Covid Inquiry interview on the 31^st October 2023; Cain ‘didn’t find particularly helpful’ and ‘disagreed with’ the contributions of the behavioural scientists.

While such pointed criticism may be unjustified, it is clear that the actions of some SPI-B members did invite censure. Professor James Rubin (a co-chair of SPI-B) recently told the Covid-19 Inquiry how ‘the decision in June 2020 of multiple participants of SPI-B to join a subgroup of independent SAGE took me by surprise and put us in an awkward position’. The fact that eight behavioural scientists had become involved in independent SAGE – a group of zero-Covid advocates publicly critical of Government policies – would likely have tempered SPI-B’s influence on other key players. Indeed, as stated in Rubin’s transcript, Patrick Vallance (the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor) at the time described it as ‘an odd thing to do & may cause problems … totally inappropriate’ and said that Government departments were ‘very wary’ of putting anything to SPI-B because of ‘leaks or misuse’. These actions of SPI-B dissidents would have ensured that – if they were to subsequently question the ethical basis of nudge-infused Covid messaging – their influence would likely be weakened.

The next steps

The initial report of this ongoing research project strived to identify the key players (behavioural scientists, civil servants, politicians and advertisement company personnel) who were responsible for the development of ethically dubious Covid messaging – that deployed fear, shame and scapegoating – to lever compliance with pandemic interventions. Building on this analysis, this document has: scrutinised the sources of ethical guidance available to policymakers during the Covid event; documented the advice offered that was potentially relevant to the ethical questions surrounding nudge-infused messaging; presented evidence that this guidance had minimal impact on the range of pandemic decisions, and no impact at all on the design of Covid communications; and listed the barriers that ethicists and academics believe may have been responsible for the minimal impact this ethical guidance had on policy.

Building on this knowledge base, the next steps of the research project will:
a) Provide a critical review of the academic literature discussing the ethics of nudging.
b) Conduct a gap analysis to highlight the key differences between ethical best practice in decision making around the state’s use of nudging and the reality of what happened during the Covid event.
c) Develop, and disseminate, a bespoke or modified set of ethical guidelines and /or processes to inform and constrain how the UK Government uses behavioural science in the future.

You can support us as we deepen our inquiry into the drivers, events and effects of the Covid era. Donate now.

What follows is an initial report of an ongoing research project investigating the UK Government’s use of behavioural science ‘nudges’ in their Covid communications strategy to promote compliance with restrictions and the subsequent vaccine rollout. (An academic journal article, drawing on information in this report, can be found here: https://ahpb.org/index.php/gary-sidley-article/). Future reports will cover the ethical questions associated with state-sponsored nudging.

Introduction

Since early 2020, the people of Western democracies have endured heightened levels of state-sponsored propaganda, involving a range of ‘non-consensual persuasion’ techniques intended to aggressively promote the official Covid narrative while suppressing alternative viewpoints. An important element of this campaign has been the deployment of behavioural science strategies – or ‘nudges’.  Throughout the Covid event, the UK Government, in keeping with many other countries, drew on these interventions to strengthen their public health communications and thereby increase compliance with the pandemic restrictions and subsequent vaccine rollout. These psychological methods of persuasion often operate below people’s conscious awareness and frequently rely on inflating emotional distress to change behaviour. As such, the state’s use of these techniques on its own citizens has evoked ethical concerns among both psychological specialists and the general public.

Attempts to initiate an open debate about the moral acceptability of a government deploying behavioural science methods to lever obedience with current edicts have, to date, been unsuccessful, with state-employed experts in positions of influence denying responsibility for the genesis of the more controversial (for example, fear-inflating) communications and/or displaying a reluctance to address the associated ethical questions. Consequently, it remains uncertain as to which individuals, or forums, within the government infrastructure determined the tone and content of the Covid communication strategy. Nor is it clear to what extent (if any) the stakeholders involved incorporated ethical considerations into the decision-making process.

Given this background, we have begun a 12-month research project that aims to answer the following questions:

1. Which advertising companies and government officials were centrally involved in development of the videos, posters and other communications used to promote compliance with Covid restrictions and the vaccine rollout? 

2. Which behaviour science experts provided guidance to the government officials and/or advertising personnel on how to most effectively incorporate nudge strategies into these Covid communications?

3. How much behavioural science resource was at the disposal of the Government during the Covid event?

4. What sources of ethical expertise (individuals and groups) were nominally available within the government infrastructure during the Covid era, and what advice did they offer?

5. Did the way in which the Government infused their Covid communications with behavioural science strategies correspond to what would currently be regarded as ethically acceptable practice?

6. What would constitute optimal ethical guidelines and/or processes to inform – and, if appropriate, constrain – the UK Government’s use of behavioural science strategies in the future? 

Further details about the project are provided in the research proposal and the subgoals and timelines documents.

This initial paper provides a description of progress to date. Following a brief overview of the nature and origins of behavioural science, the specific ethical concerns arising from the Government’s incorporation of nudge techniques into their Covid-19 messaging will be discussed. The evidence suggesting that behavioural science has been infused into the communications of many government departments will then be presented, with a focus on public health videos and advertisements produced during the Covid event. The concerted efforts to clarify the actors responsible for this nudge-informed output will be detailed, including an in-depth analysis of the work of the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) and the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT). Finally, the anticipated next steps of the research programme will be documented.

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The nature & origins of behavioural science strategies

The paradigm known as ‘behaviourism’ gained prominence over a century ago with the work f John B Watson who viewed the main goal of psychology to be, ‘the prediction and control of behaviour’. The behaviourist approach constituted a rejection of the previously dominant introspectionist movement (which studied subjectivity and inner consciousness) by its exclusive focus on observables: the environmental stimuli that make a particular behaviour more or less likely, the overt behaviour itself, and the consequences of that behaviour (referred to as reinforcement or punishment). Essentially, behaviourism asserts that all behaviour is learnt from the environment through a combination of classical conditioning (learning by association) and operant conditioning (learning by consequences). Over the years the theory has undergone some minor refinements – most notably the ‘radical behaviourism’ of BF Skinner – resulting in strategic regulation of environmental stimuli and reinforcement being the prominent approach to the psychological treatment of phobias and other clinical problems throughout the 1960s and 1970s (albeit less so today).

A current manifestation of the paradigm, behavioural science, similarly relies on a range of strategies – ‘nudges’ – to influence people’s behaviour by shaping a combination of the environmental triggers and the consequences of our actions. According to a Cabinet Office and Institute for Government ‘MINDSPACE’ report in 2010, nudges provide ‘low cost, low pain ways of “nudging” citizens … into new ways of acting by going with the grain of how we think and act.’  Exploiting the fact that human beings spend 99 per cent of their time on automatic pilot, making moment-by-moment decisions without conscious reflection, these techniques – often operating below the level of conscious awareness – can exert a powerful influence upon behaviour. 

In the same year as the publication of the MINDSPACE document, the ‘Behavioural Insights Team’ (BIT) was conceived in the Prime Minister’s Office of David Cameron as ‘the world’s first government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural science to policy’. According to the BIT website, their team rapidly expanded from a seven-person unit working with the UK Government to a ‘social purpose company’ operating in many countries around the world. From 2014, BIT was collectively owned by the UK Government, Nesta (an innovations charity) and BIT’s own employees. In December 2021, BIT was wholly acquired by Nesta for £15.4 million.

Although the persuasion strategies of behavioural science had long been used in the UK by both the state and the private sector, the extent of their deployment gained impetus with the advent of BIT in 2010. Since its inception, BIT has been led by Professor David Halpern who has, until very recently, been the team’s chief executive. Professor Halpern and two other members of BIT also sat on the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), a subgroup of SAGE that advised the Government on its Covid-19 communications strategy. (Most of the other members of SPI-B were prominent psychologists and behavioural scientists who have expertise in the deployment of nudge techniques.)

The armoury of behavioural science is furnished with a wide range of strategies for influencing the actions of others. The literature is peppered with various acronyms as aide-mémoires for the specific techniques, and discussion can sometimes be confusing because terms can overlap and a message or image can be illustrative of more than one nudge. The MINDSPACE report is an acronym for the following nine nudges:

MESSENGER: We are influenced by the source of the information
INCENTIVES: We employ predictable shortcuts, such as strongly avoiding losses
NORMS: We are strongly influenced by what others do
DEFAULTS: We ‘go with the flow’ of pre-set options
SALIENCE: Our attention is drawn to what is novel & seems personally relevant
PRIMING: Our acts are often influenced by subconscious cues
AFFECT: Our emotions powerfully shape our actions
COMMITMENTS: We seek to be consistent with our public promises
EGO: We act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves

Scrutiny of the definitions of these nudges as given in the MINDSPACE document, together with close inspection of the pandemic messaging deployed, suggests that all nine of these strategies were incorporated, to varying degrees, in the Government’s Covid-19 communications. For example, the ‘messenger’ nudge relies on the fact that the characteristics of the person communicating the message will significantly influence the degree to which the recipients take heed of the information conveyed; hence medical and scientific experts (alongside the trusted NHS logo) habitually appeared in the media throughout the pandemic to provide updates and advice. The ‘incentives’ nudge was evident in communications about potential fines for straying too far away from home in the midst of a national lockdown and – slightly more subtly – when vaccination of young people was linked to a speedier return to normal life. However, there are three nudges that have evoked the most attention and ethical concerns: ‘affect’, ‘ego’ and ‘norms’ (experienced by many as inflation of fear, shaming and peer pressure respectively). As the remainder of this report will focus heavily on these three tools of persuasion, a brief explanation of each of these strategies, together with some illustrative examples of how each was used during the Covid event, is given below:

AFFECT: Our feelings will significantly influence how we think and act. Sadness will spawn self-criticism and behavioural inertia, anger will encourage negative evaluations of others and a propensity to act aggressively, and fear will focus our attention onto potential dangers in our environment and make us inclined to avoid perceived threats. It was this latter element that was prominent during the Covid-19 communications campaign, presumably based on the premise that a frightened population is typically a compliant one. Examples of messaging during the pandemic that inflated fear included: non-contextualised death counts, displayed daily on the TV, purportedly keeping a running total of the number of people who had perished from Covid-19; recurrent images of acutely unwell patients in Intensive Care Units in Lombardy (Italy’s pandemic hotspot); reports of bodies littering the streets in Ecuador; the shock-and-awe presentation of Professors Whitty and Vallance (Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Advisor, respectively) in 2020 with their speculative prediction of 50,000 new Covid cases per day; and scary slogans such as, ‘IF YOU GO OUT YOU CAN SPREAD IT. PEOPLE WILL DIE.’

EGO: Human beings strive to maintain a positive view of themselves and preserve a virtuous self-image. This inclination appears to have been exploited during the pandemic as evidenced by our political leaders and public health experts routinely implying that following the Covid restrictions was akin to being a good person. Examples included: slogans such as, ‘STAY HOME, PROTECT THE NHS, SAVE LIVES’ and ‘VACCINATIONS PROTECT US ALL’; the then Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, quipping ‘Don’t kill your gran’ to university students returning home for the summer break; Professor Whitty stating in a 2020 press conference that anyone who increased their own risk of exposure would ‘increase the risk of everyone’; and mask promotion adverts where actors said, ‘I wear a face covering to protect my mates.’ (A recent study concluded that the moralisation of non-compliant behaviour in this way can effectively increase adherence to pandemic restrictions.) 

NORMS: Awareness of social norms – the prevalent views and behaviour of our fellow citizens – can exert pressure on us to conform. We are strongly influenced by what others do; awareness of being in a deviant minority is a source of discomfort. The Government has repeatedly used normative pressure throughout the Covid event to gain the public’s compliance with restrictions. The most straightforward example is how, during interviews with the media, ministers often told us that the ‘vast majority have complied with the rules’ or that 90% of those eligible have already had the first dose of the Covid vaccine. However, normative pressure as exerted by these pronouncements is more effective in changing the behaviour of the deviant minority if there is a visible indicator of pro-social compliance rooted in communities. Mandatory masking admirably fulfilled this purpose by enabling people to instantly distinguish the rule breakers from the rule followers.

Ethical concerns

While the in-depth consideration of the ethical status of state-sponsored nudging will be the focus of the second half of this research project, it is appropriate to briefly mention here some of the concerns associated with the Government’s Covid-19 communications campaign. Four aspects of the behavioural-science-infused messaging are ethically problematic:

1. The methods per se

Is it morally acceptable for the government of a Western liberal democracy to strategically inflict emotional discomfort upon its citizens in order to lever compliance with its edicts? The phenomenon of civil servants harnessing fear, shame and scapegoating to change minds can be construed as an ethically problematic practice that in some respects resembles the tactics used by authoritarian regimes, where the state inflicts pain on a subset of its population in an attempt to eliminate beliefs and behaviours they perceive to be deviant. 

Another ethical consideration associated with the methods arises from their unintended consequences. Elevated levels of fear may have discouraged people with non-Covid illnesses from attending hospital and is likely to have significantly contributed to the tens of thousands of non-Covid excess deaths witnessed during the Covid event. The loneliness of older people will have been exacerbated by the heightened levels of community anxiety, potentially leading to premature death. And it is plausible that the state-sponsored shaming and scapegoating of those deviating from the directives of the dominant Covid narrative will have been primarily responsible for the vilification of the unvaccinated minority.

2. The absence of informed consent

The second source of ethical concern derives from the lack of any attempt to acquire the informed consent of the British people prior to the mass implementation of these psychological methods of persuasion. Obtaining informed consent of the recipient before administering any medical or psychological intervention has always been a cornerstone of ethical clinical practice. Professor David Halpern (the BIT Chief Executive and prominent member of SPI-B) explicitly recognised the significance of this issue. The previously-mentioned MINDSPACE document – of which Professor Halpern is a co-author – states that, ‘Policymakers wishing to use these tools … need the approval of the public to do so’ (p74). More recently, in Professor Halpern’s book, Inside the Nudge Unit, he is even more emphatic about the importance of consent: ‘If Governments … wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public.’ (p375)

3. The contentious goals of the messaging campaign

The perceived legitimacy of using subconscious ‘nudges’ to influence people may also depend upon the behavioural goals that are being pursued. The imposition of lockdowns, community masking, school closures and other restrictions was a major deviation from long-established pandemic management measures; it is questionable whether the deployment of fear, shame, and peer pressure to achieve compliance with unprecedented and non-evidenced public health policies that infringe basic human rights and freedoms would have found favour with the British people. (The fulfilment of alternative goals – to reduce knife crime among young males, for example – might be expected to be more acceptable to the general population.)

4. The lack of transparency

As many of the nudges employed impacted on their targets below their level of awareness, a further ethical question relates to the lack of transparency. This is in contrast to more democratically acceptable methods of government persuasion relying mainly on information provision and rational argument. The covert mode of action of many behavioural science strategies lends weight to the accusation that they are manipulative.

What have our research efforts revealed so far?

In the first two months of the project, a range of methods has been used to access relevant information, including: in-depth online searches using terms such as ‘behavioural science’, ‘nudges’, ‘ethics’, ‘Covid messaging’ and ‘Covid communications’; scrutiny of the ‘What do they know’ database of responses to historical Freedom-of-Information requests; inspection of the notes and minutes of government scientific and ethical advisory groups that were active during the Covid event; 28 original Freedom-of-Information requests to government departments; and an exploration of the documented outputs of potentially key politicians, civil servants and senior advertising executives. Based on these sources, our research efforts have revealed the following:

1. The UK Government had spent over £400 million on Covid messaging by 2021

It is apparent from the previous section that the UK administration devoted substantial resources (time and money) to acquiring behavioural science expertise aimed at nudging ordinary people’s compliance with their Covid restrictions and vaccine rollout. But how much did the Government spend on Covid messaging as a whole?

According to the Cabinet Office, in April 2020 their department approved spending of £216.8 million for ‘Advertising, Marketing & Communications’ in relation to a ‘Covid campaign 2020/21’, with the bulk (£194 million) of it dedicated to Covid-related advertising between April and December 2020. However, a Freedom of Information (FOI) response from March 2022 indicates that – in actuality – the Cabinet Office spent far more: over £5 million in 2019/20, and £370 million in 2020/21. (The corresponding figures for Scotland were £1.3 million and £18.2 million respectively). Other government departments also made payments to the Cabinet Office in 2020/21 of £33.5 million for such campaigns.

During the Covid event, the Government became the nation’s largest advertiser. A range of advertising companies have benefited from this spending, but the two major recipients of state funding have been Manning Gottlieb and MullenLowe. 

Omnigov, a division of Manning Gottlieb, is tasked with media buying for the Government and the vast majority of the Covid advertising spend went through this channel, the company having received £174 million as early as December 2020. MullenLowe – the company centrally responsible for creating the controversial ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign – was the second major beneficiary, receiving £16 million in the period April to October 2020 and £40 million for the year August 2021/August 2022.  Tom Knox (executive partner at MullenLowe, and longest serving member of their Covid-response team) described this episode as the ‘biggest UK advertising campaign since the Second World War’.

2. State-sponsored nudging is ubiquitous

Behavioural science has been involved in British policymaking for longer than in other nations, a factor that might account for its high prevalence and level of influence (Sanders et al. 2021). Indeed, it is reasonable to assert that the impact of behavioural science is now apparent in all aspects of government activity that involve communication with the populace. 

Senior players involved in the development of state-funded messaging concur with this premise. For example, Julia Bainbridge – a founder member of the Freuds agency, one of several advertising companies commissioned by the UK Government – recently stated, ‘Behavioural science is now mainstream and high profile, particularly in my field, which seeks to change people’s behaviour for their own, and the social good.’ In the same article, Bainbridge goes on to say, ‘Behavioural science is now being deployed, at the highest level to address “wicked” problems, from vaccine hesitancy to tobacco consumption, throughout the world.’

Sir Charles Walker, a Member of Parliament, condemned the size and impact of the nudge campaign during the Covid event. In a March 2023 article in the Telegraph newspaper he said, ‘What makes me so angry is the evils & the psychological warfare we deployed against young people and the population, all those behavioural psychologists. And there needs to be a reckoning.’ Professor James Rubin (a co-chair of the SPI-B group) also recognised – in more neutral terms – the ubiquity of behavioural science within the policymaking system when he told the Covid-19 Inquiry: ‘There was the Behavioural Insights Team. There were teams within the UK Health Security Agency, there was the Department of Health & Social Care communications team, the Cabinet Office communications team.’   

This high prevalence of nudgers within the UK Government has not emerged by chance; it has been a strategic goal. A 2018 document by Public Health England (a forerunner to the UK Health Security Agency) announced that, ‘The behavioural and social sciences are the future of public health.’ With a vision of creating a ‘strong and vibrant’ community of behavioural scientists, the organisation’s explicit priorities included aspirations to:

• Make knowledge and skills from the behavioural and social sciences mainstream in all our organisations 

• Embed behavioural and social science skills, tools and frameworks across sectors of the public health workforce.

One product of these endeavours has been the emergence of the Behavioural Science and Public Health Network, a community of academics and professionals with a shared interest in using behavioural science strategies to improve the health of the nation. 

Other elements of government have also strategically increased their behavioural science resources. Within Whitehall a group of civil servants, the Government Communication Service (GCS), is led by Chief Executive Simon Baugh in the Cabinet Office and boasts employing ‘over 7,000 professional communicators across the UK’. The service incorporates a ‘GCS Behavioural Science Team’ based in the Cabinet Office. In 2021, the GCS published a new guidance document titled ‘The Principles of Behaviour Change Communications’. In the foreword to the guidance, Alex Aiken (Executive Director of Government Communications) states:

 At the start of 2018, one of the eight challenges I set for communicators was for the profession to adopt behavioural science techniques to enhance the effectiveness of our campaigns. Coronavirus has made this challenge all the more urgent, and has demonstrated how communications is a powerful and flexible lever to create and sustain behaviour change.

Aiken goes on to celebrate how the GCS Behavioural Science Team has accelerated progress towards the ‘goal of embedding behavioural science expertise across the Government Communication profession’.

The content of the GCS behavioural science guidance relies heavily on the work of prominent British nudgers such as Professor Susan Michie and Professor Robert West (who were both members of SPI-B during the Covid event). The report claims that members of the GCS Behavioural Science Team can offer both ‘expert support to central government campaigns’ and ‘behavioural science consultancy services across government, covering communications, policy and operations’. Furthermore, barriers to effective government communication can be overcome in ‘psychologically relevant ways’. 

A further indication of the high prevalence of behavioural science expertise within the government infrastructure derives from a head count of the number of such practitioners employed in each administrative department. Historical FOI requests revealed that, in 2019, the Department of Work & Pensions hosted 16 staff members in their ‘Behavioural Science’ team, while the Department of Revenue & Customs had 54 employees in their ‘Behavioural Research and Insights’ team. And a recent FOI to the Department of Transport found that, in 2022, they were employing the equivalent of six full-time behavioural scientists at a total annual cost of £299,000 per annum. 

As for the government departments most closely involved in Covid messaging – the Cabinet Office and those responsible for health and social care – FOI requests to establish the number of behavioural science personnel in each year of the Covid event were initially thwarted (see here and here) on the grounds that it would take too much time to locate the requested information and would thereby exceed the cost limit as specified in the Freedom of Information Act. The Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) also reported that, although they held the information, the data we were seeking was ‘not centrally held’. Subsequently, more specific FOI requests (asking about current levels of resource) were more successful. The DHSC, the Office of Health Improvement & Disparities, and the Cabinet Office each confirmed that they housed a small behavioural science team incorporating no more than five members. As for the UK Health Security Agency, they acknowledged the existence of a ‘Behavioural Science and Insights Unit’ within the department currently comprising 24 behavioural and social scientists, two business support professionals and three PhD students, and with an annual budget of £958,000.  

In addition to the in-house resource, the UK Government also entered into contractual arrangements with the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) during the period of the Covid event. Thus, as examples, the Cabinet Office allocated up to £4 million to BIT for a three-year contract (2019-2022) to provide ‘Behavioural Insights Consultancy & Research Services’ so as to furnish this heart of government with ‘frictionless access to behavioural insights to match central priorities’. Clearly, Covid communications would have been the priority during this time period. As for the DHSC, they paid BIT £1 million for a 13-month contract (1^st March 2020 to 31^st March 2021) for ‘Various work for Test, Trace, Contain and Enable agenda’. Considering this evidence, together with the previous description of the work of the GCS Behavioural Science Team (hosted by the Cabinet Office), it is reasonable to conclude a heavy behavioural science presence within these two key government departments throughout the Covid era.

A prominent UK behavioural scientist recently acknowledged the impact this intense nudging campaign has had on the British people. In a 2023 interview for the Telegraph, Professor David Halpern observed that people are now ‘drilled’ and rightly calibrated to accept further restrictions: ‘once you’ve practised something’ (lockdowns, mask wearing) ‘you can switch it back on … you’ve got the beginnings of a habit loop … we’ve practised the drill.’ 

Intriguingly, it seems that actions and communications that could nudge observers’  behaviour in a direction desirable to the administration are sometimes planned in advance. A 2019 report cited quotes from anonymous contingency planners to support the notion that the UK Government pre-emptively prepares responses to negative societal events in order to convey messages of support and empathy with the victims. Although, it is claimed, this strategy of ‘controlled spontaneity’ was hatched in anticipation of terrorist incidents at the 2012 London Olympic Games, these synthetically impromptu behavioural reactions and social media campaigns can easily be deployed to reinforce pandemic messaging underpinned by ego and normative pressure nudges. The ‘Clap for Carers’ ritual – when, for ten consecutive Thursday evenings in 2020, people ‘spontaneously’ stood on their doorsteps and applauded our healthcare staff – is a case in point. Furthermore, it is informative that a FOI request in June 2019, asking for copies of materials relating to the ‘controlled spontaneity’ initiative, was rebuffed; the Office for Security & Counter-Terrorism stated: ‘we neither confirm nor deny whether we hold the information’, absolving themselves from the requirement to disclose on the basis that it ‘would make the UK … more vulnerable to a national security threat.’    

3. The affect, ego and normative pressure nudges were widely used in the Covid messaging

As already discussed, it is apparent that the Government invested heavily in order to ensure ‘frictionless access’ to behavioural science guidance during the Covid event. One important consequence of this outlay has been that much of the Covid messaging has been infused with affect, ego, and normative pressure nudges that typically translate into fear inflation, shaming, and scapegoating.  

In the midst of the pandemic – consciously or automatically – ministers and government scientists peppered their utterances with phrases and slogans that could be construed as harnessing the power of nudging to persuade the populace to follow their rules. Some have already been mentioned, but others included: ‘Protect yourselves, protect your loved ones’ (ego nudge); ‘If you go out you can spread it, people will die’  (affect & ego nudges); ‘Most people are following the rules’ (normative pressure nudge); ‘No one is safe until we are all safe’ (ego nudge); ‘We are seeing the devastating impact of this invisible killer’ (affect nudge); ‘ The people of this country will rise to the challenge’ (ego nudge); and ‘You should wear a mask to protect others’ (ego nudge). Even switching off all mainstream media did not guarantee escape from the messaging; a ride in your car risked being exposed to  scary roadside signage stating, ‘You are now entering a high-risk area.’

Occasionally, a clear intent to deploy nudges on the British people has been evident. The disclosure of personal WhatsApp messages by the Telegraph newspaper revealed that, in December 2020, Matt Hancock (the then Health Secretary) expressed his desire to ‘Scare the pants’ off people via the imminent announcement of a new variant of the virus. Similarly, in January 2021, Simon Case (the then Cabinet Secretary) stated that the ‘fear factor would be vital in combating the latest Covid wave during the third lockdown’ and endorsed the value of ‘ramping up messaging – the fear/guilt factor vital’. Clearly, these powerful actors were not averse to inflicting emotional pain on UK citizens as a means of levering compliance with their instructions.  

Inspection of the website of the Local Government Association revealed that nudge-infused messaging was not restricted to the national arena. For instance, in an article titled ‘Encouraging vaccine uptake by younger people’, readers are advised to utilise all three of the most ethically-contentious behavioural science strategies. With the goal of encouraging more of the younger generation to accept Covid vaccination, one recommendation is that potential recipients are told that ‘most people are getting vaccinated, and that they approve doing so … Since young people tend to be more susceptible to peer influence … social norms can be particularly effective when targeting this group.’ Another piece of advice for the would-be vaccinator is to deploy the ego nudge: ‘Emphasising the pro-social benefits of vaccination is particularly effective among young people’, notably with regard to ‘protecting others, especially those that are vulnerable’. And to inflate fear among this typically invulnerable cohort, the article states: ‘Since young people are less at risk of developing a lethal form of COVID-19, highlight the potential long-term consequences of the illness.’

On the 21^st January 2021 (around the same time as the Hancock/Case WhatsApp messages) YouGov announced the introduction of the new ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign. Described as ‘hard hitting’ and a ‘stark reminder to the public of the ongoing impact of Covid-19’, the public-messaging initiative involved a series of close-up images of acutely unwell patients – wearing surgical masks and ventilation masks – and a voice-over saying, ‘Look them in the eyes and tell them you are doing all you can to stop the spread of coronavirus.’ According to the YouGov publication, these powerful adverts represented a shift in tone from previous communications towards ‘encouraging people to take personal responsibility and consider the impact of their behaviour on others’ – a strategic change of direction that could be construed as adding guilt and shame (ego nudge) to the preceding reliance upon fear inflation. An FOI response from the Cabinet Office reported that ‘qualitative insight research’ had found this series of adverts to ‘be powerful, evocative, and authentic in how it represented the impact of the pandemic at that moment, and the consequences of people not staying at home.’ As revealed by a further FOI response, six-person panellists described the ‘Look them in the eyes’ videos as ‘gripping’, ‘unsettling’, ‘harrowing’, ‘arresting’ and ‘disrupting’.    

More detail regarding the aims and content of the ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign was revealed in an article on the website of MullenLowe, the company who created the adverts. Based on a study that, they believed, had shown that 20% of the population underestimated the risk of Covid-19, the creators strove to ‘make the risk real for those who were unsure or didn’t believe it’ by focusing on the people who had ‘experienced the very worst of the pandemic’. So in addition to strategically scaring and shaming their audience, this messaging targeted everyone with the goal of changing the attitude of what was construed as a complacent minority – an ethically questionable exercise in its own right. 

A Cabinet Office response to our FOI request in August 2023 confirmed that the ‘Look them in the eyes’ initiative was developed with the not-frightened-enough group in mind and was intended to encourage the public to take personal responsibility for their behaviour:

The focus on ‘Risk Sceptics’ requires a shift in gear … from ‘Authoritative Command’ (Phase 1a & b) to a more emotionally triggering ‘People to People’ approach (Phase 2).

Furthermore, the FOI response cited feedback received when the adverts were field tested that included the comment: 

It has strong potential to prompt reassessment of personal behaviour by applying social pressure from fellow human beings.

The inclusion of this comment in this Cabinet Office document indicates that those responsible for sanctioning the videos and posters were aware of the power of the materials to evoke normative pressure on their targets. Similarly, feedback obtained during the field testing drew attention to the guilt-evoking (ego nudge) potential of the campaign: ‘Some can struggle to buy into the emotional guilt trip.’ 

The fear-inflating qualities of the Covid adverts (including those used in the ‘Look them in the eyes’ initiative) were corroborated in a recent qualitative study. After an analysis of the imagery, language and colours incorporated into the posters and videos, the researchers concluded that ‘Government has used a combination of explicit and implicit fear-evoking semiotic interactions within their COVID-19 information campaigns to “nudge” compliance.’ 

Another media project underpinned by behavioural science nudges was the ‘All in, All together’ newspaper campaign that launched in April 2020. Over a three-month period, it involved hundreds of newspapers simultaneously publishing the same cover wrap. The front page of the advert read, ‘Stay at home for the NHS, your family, your neighbours, your nation, the world and life itself’, a headline informed by both the affect/fear inflation and ego/shaming nudges. The back page included a rainbow image – a symbol that had become associated with support for key workers during the Covid event – that could be detached and used as a poster to be displayed in people’s windows. Again, this facilitation of a collective show of virtue – just like the ‘clap for carers’ ritual – can be viewed as a powerful ego and normative pressure nudge; showing the rainbow both identified one as a good person and potentially conveyed to the non-displayers that they reside in a minority.        

4. Mask mandates were likely imposed to strengthen nudges and promote general compliance 

Prior to 2020, and since, the bulk of the more robust, real-world evidence has supported one conclusion: the wearing of face masks by the general public in community settings achieves no meaningful reduction in the transmission rates of respiratory viruses. The most recent (January 2023) Cochrane review – the gold standard of evidential sources – reached the same verdict. In the first three months of the Covid event, the scientific experts and politicians were collectively echoing the masks-don’t-work message until, in May/June 2020, they all U-turned and pushed mask mandates. What could be the reason for this volte-face?

Multiple factors are likely to have swayed UK decision-makers to endorse face coverings, such as a desire to be seen to be ‘doing something’ or – based on the recent revelations from former Health Secretary Matt Hancock – the political whims of Dominic Cummings (former government advisor) and Nicola Sturgeon (First Minister of Scotland). Additionally, a persuasive case can be made that a significant contributor to the U-turn was the recognition that community masking would enhance compliance with restrictions as a whole by strengthening the affect, ego, and normative pressure nudges.  

A mask acts as a reminder that danger is present and also reduces the likelihood that the habitual wearer will reach the conclusion that our communities are now safe enough to re-engage with in a normal way; as such, face coverings will increase and maintain fear. Masks will also strengthen the ego nudge, providing wearers with a stark and easily recognisable symbol of their virtue.  And normative pressure is enhanced when there is an instant visible reminder of who is, and who is not, following the rules; a role that masks effectively fulfil. 

While it is not possible to prove this ‘masks-as-a nudge-strengthener hypothesis’ beyond reasonable doubt, there are a number of observations that are consistent with it. 

Dr Gavin Morgan (a member of the SPI-B subgroup) told investigative journalist Laura Dodsworth in her book, A State of Fear, that his antipathy to face masks was nullified by other group members who liked them because they conveyed a message of ‘solidarity’. This theme, one clearly recognised by Morgan’s colleagues, indicates that the potential for masks to promote cohesion in a collective fight against the virus – a normative pressure nudge – had not escaped the notice of the behavioural science experts. 

Also, close scrutiny of the timeline surrounding the mask U-turn in late spring 2020 is revealing. As the chronology shows, within little more than a month, our ministers, senior scientists, and medical leaders flipped from a stance of repeatedly imploring us all not to wear a face covering in community settings to a coercive one of imposing mask mandates. Inspection of the minutes of contemporaneous meetings suggests that the propensity of masks to strengthen nudges may have been integral to the decision-making process.

As recorded in their minutes of 9^th April 2020,  SAGE – the main Government advisory group during the Covid event – requested that NERVTAG (another collection of experts) produce a further paper on masks, ‘including any behavioural aspects’ associated with them, ‘drawing on SPI-B as necessary’. As can be seen in the responses of these two forums, both NERVTAG and SPI-B remained unconvinced about the net benefits of the routine wearing of face coverings by healthy people. Importantly, however, the SPI-B subgroup took the opportunity to promote face coverings as a way to ‘demonstrate that an individual is concerned about other people’s welfare and is enacting desired social norms.’ 

The game-changing pro-mask paper was published on the 21^st April by ‘Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics’ (DELVE), another advisory group, which includes Daniel Kahneman, Professor of Psychology at Princeton University and world-renowned behavioural scientist, among its Steering Committee members. The DELVE paper endorses the benefits of ‘developing a critical mass of adherence and setting new norms around mask use … because such norms act to inform observers that normative behaviour is both pragmatically prudent and morally proper.’ Recognising that face coverings can promote general compliance with other pandemic directives, the authors go on to highlight that ‘the visibility of masks can be expected to act as a reminder of the need for physical distance, increased hand washing, reduced face touching, and group solidarity.’ 

The Royal Society, a UK scientific academy and a staunch pro-restriction advocate throughout the Covid event, promoted DELVE’s policy-changing output on its own website on the 5^th May, and followed it with its own strongly pro-mask paper that lauded the value of masks in conveying psychological messages that promote general compliance with restrictions. In particular, the Royal Society highlighted the ‘socio-behavioural factors’ associated with mask wearing and made specific reference to the ‘altruism’ inherent to protecting others.   

Clearly, the circumstantial evidence cited above is consistent with the premise that mask mandates were imposed for reasons other than their assumed effectiveness as a viral barrier.

5. Key individuals potentially involved in the deployment of behavioural science strategies included Lee Cain, Conrad Bird, and David Halpern

Undoubtedly, a range of ministers and senior civil servants could have been influential during 2020 in enabling nudge techniques to underpin the Covid messaging campaign. Obvious candidates would include: Boris Johnson (Prime Minister), Matt Hancock (Health & Social Care Secretary), Michael Gove (Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster), Simon Case (Cabinet Secretary), Dominic Cummings (Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister), Alex Aiken (Executive Director of Government Communication), Professor Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer) and Sir Patrick Vallance (Chief Scientific Advisor). It is plausible to assume that one or more of these actors hold a degree of responsibility for the deployment of these strategies.

Lee Cain was Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Director of Communications in the early months of the Covid event (he resigned in November 2020). Previously a journalist, and with experience of contributing to the Brexit/Leave campaign, Cain’s testimony at the Covid-19 Inquiry suggests he may have been a pivotal figure in the genesis of the initial pandemic messaging.

Cain’s statement for the Inquiry claimed that, along with other ‘political advisors’ and ‘one or two people from a digital creative agency’, he was responsible for the construction of the ‘Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives’ campaign. During his interview, Cain celebrates this initiative, claiming that ‘94% of the public understood it and … the compliance rates show that it was very successful.’ He goes on to express the view that this mantra reduced Covid mortality, and that his project constituted ‘one of the most powerful public health campaigns in modern memory.’ 

In response to further questioning, Cain acknowledges that he and his small group of co-workers did not consult with the NHS regarding the content of his ‘Stay Home’ slogan. In keeping with the process used in the development of the ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign (described in section c), Cain also confirmed that there had been a reliance on their own band of expert communicators (rather than in-house resources such as SPI-B) during the production of the ‘Stay Home’ messaging project: 

We had a fast research loop that we would do via focus groups, via polling, things that we’d … used pretty readily in political campaigning that was incredibly effective … I would trust the judgement of the campaigners and the messaging people we used, which were some of the best in the world.

A focus on the interface between the Cabinet Office and the advertising companies who developed the nudge-infused messaging suggests two other individuals who may have played a significant role. Conrad Bird is Director of Campaigns & Marketing at the Covid-19 Hub and appears to have been a central player on the government side. In a November 2020 presentation titled ‘Lesson learnt to date’, Bird celebrates his use of ‘Embedded evaluators, behavioural insight specialists and decision scientists ensuring constant improvement.’ Similarly, in a September 2021 blog post, he states: ‘We’ve learned how to deploy behavioural insights from scientists to improve our major campaigns.’ These comments demonstrate Bird’s familiarity with nudging tools aimed at enhancing the power of his department’s communications. 

Bird recently described one of his greatest achievements as being ‘23 months of Covid-19 communications (including creating the “hands, face, space” slogan!)’. An August 2023 FOI response confirmed that Bird had led the commissioning team responsible for the controversial ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign.

Another senior player – this time on the advertising company side – is Paul Knight, the chief executive at Omnigov (the media-buying arm of Manning Gottlieb). In an interview Knight revealed that he undertook ‘weekly visits to the Cabinet Office’ and that one of his major challenges had been ‘focusing on how we are using insight to inform’. 

Undoubtedly, Bird and Knight (and many other civil servants and advertising personnel) were intimately involved in the development of the nudge-laden messaging. However, the guidance and supervision about how to incorporate behavioural science strategies most effectively into the Covid communications would, almost certainly, have derived from expert sources. The outputs of the specialist groups, SPI-B and BIT, would have been readily available to Cabinet Office officials and the creative professionals, and these will be analysed in the next section. But a couple of behavioural science experts – Professors Matthew Cripps and David Halpern – warrant mention in their own right.

Cripps is Director of the Covid-19 Behaviour Change Unit (CBU) and Director of Sustainable Healthcare, NHS England and NHS Improvement. The CBU has been involved in helping the UK to tackle the pandemic by strongly encouraging policymakers ‘to make sure that behavioural science is embedded into all elements of the national COVID-19 response.’ For example, the CBU contributed towards the production of an NHS England video titled ‘Because I Care’, a brief film aiming to promote social distancing in the healthcare workplace. The video theme is one of equating avoidance of contact with co-workers as akin to virtue (ego nudge) and – intriguingly – displays parallels with the materials used in the ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign.

Cripps also works closely with the University College London ‘Centre for Behaviour Change’, a hub of behavioural science expertise that draws heavily on the ‘Behavioural Change Wheel’, a systematic framework devised by Professors Susan Michie and Robert West to guide interventions. 

As the leader of the ‘Nudge Unit’, Halpern is one of the most prominent behavioural scientists in the UK. He has occupied the role of Chief Executive Officer of BIT from the group’s inception in 2010 until 2023 (his current title is ‘President and Founding Director’). As such, he has had regular access to the inner circle of Government. Throughout the Covid event, Halpern was a core member of both the main SAGE advisory committee and SPI-B. His curriculum vitae also includes the roles of Research Director of the Institute of Government and – from 2013-2022 – the What Works National Advisor. Given this history, together with the major contract that the Cabinet Office had with BIT between 2019 and 2022, Halpern could be viewed as the most likely person to warrant the label of the most influential behavioural scientist in the UK during the period of the Covid event.

Scrutiny of Halpern’s witness statement (May 2023) to the Covid-19 Inquiry provides further detail about his role in influencing policy, particularly in the early stages of the Covid event. In addition to his attendance at SAGE forums, Halpern describes how – on the 22^nd February 2020 – he attended a ‘private breakfast seminar’ at the Royal Society of Medicine, and had ‘private discussions’ with the president of this institution, where he discussed ‘key points that … should be communicated to the public’ regarding ‘areas of uncertainty in aetiology & transmission of the virus’. From the start of March 2020, Halpern also participated in ‘several DHSC daily Covid meetings’. During this period his focus was on ‘“no regret” public health messaging’ promoting handwashing, increased awareness of Covid symptoms, and elbow bumps (as a substitute for handshakes); he – unsuccessfully – argued for a ‘WASH, BUMP, STAY – KEEP COVID AWAY’ slogan. Around the same time, Halpern had discussions with the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, about the possibility of wristbands to identify those who had already had Covid, an intervention that would have (in a similar way to masks) perpetuated fear and alarm. 

As described in the previous section, the wearing of masks in community settings acts to strengthen the most ethically-contentious nudges – affect, ego and normative pressure – and it is clear from his witness statement that Halpern was a strong early advocate for this restriction. Thus, Halpern relates how he sent Professors Whitty and Vallance details of an Italian study that, purportedly, provided evidence on the issue of asymptomatic transmission – a key driver of the pro-mask narrative. Alongside this missive, Halpern describes how he was striving to create ‘habit loops’ along the lines of ‘whenever you go outdoors, you take your mask with you’.

Halpern’s recent media comments suggest that he is not averse to the deployment of the ethically questionable nudges if he believes the ends are desirable. In a January 2023 article in the Telegraph he describes how he deployed a normative pressure nudge on Boris Johnson in order to persuade the serving Prime Minister to wear a mask: ‘We did share with him a slide pack at one point. It had a series of images of pretty much every single world leader wearing a mask, and then a picture with him not.’ Halpern went on to explain that this subliminal prod was used to point out that ‘a normal thing for a world leader to do right now is wear a mask’. His acceptance of the use of normative pressure apparently extends to circumstances where it results in harassment of the non-compliant minority; in a more recent interview in the Telegraph – ‘Lockdown Files’ (Episode 4, 13 minutes, 30 seconds) – he says: 

Behaviour is contagious … I remember seeing some people nearly coming to blows on a train because everyone else was wearing masks & this person wasn’t. You might not be comfortable with that but it is social pressure in action.

With regard to fear inflation (an ‘affect’ nudge) Halpern is more ambivalent, albeit accepting of such a tactic in certain circumstances. He says, ‘Fear-based campaigns are generally not where you want to start unless you think people are really, really mis-calibrated.’ He cites the HIV era as an instance when fear was needed to ‘cut through in a way other things didn’t’. When asked directly (in the July 2023 Telegraph article) about the posters produced for the ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign, Halpern says:

They aren’t posters that we did; I can perfectly understand why they were developed – it was aimed at the ‘superspreaders’ who were out & about thinking they were ‘invincible’ … for lots of people this would seem complete overkill.

There is insufficient evidence to confirm that Halpern was primarily responsible for infusing the Covid messaging campaign with ethically dubious nudges. Nonetheless, considering his high-level experience within the Government, together with these recent comments, it is reasonable to conclude that Halpern possessed both the gravitas and mindset to fulfil this role. And there is additional evidence that he had the opportunity to exert considerable influence at the height of the Covid era; a FOI request in March 2023 revealed that Halpern (and perhaps other senior members of BIT) met on an approximately fortnightly basis with Dominic Cummins in the period January to March 2020 – and it seems likely that further contact with the higher echelons of the Cabinet Office continued after this time.

6. Expert groups – SPI-B and BIT – habitually promoted the nudges of concern

Throughout the Covid event, two collectives of behavioural and psychological specialists – the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) and the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) – produced advisory documents aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of the Government’s pandemic communications. It is conceivable that selected aspects of these groups’ written outputs were used to inform civil servants and advertising companies charged with creating the Covid-19 messaging. To throw light on where responsibility might lie for the deployment of ethically questionable behavioural science techniques within the Covid communications, the 2020-2022 publications of SPI-B and BIT were inspected for advice that promoted deployment of affect, ego, and normative pressure nudges. 

SAGE’s SPI-B

As one of several subgroups of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) – the Government’s main source of advice during the Covid event – SPI-B was convened on the 13^th February 2020. Its membership was composed of experts in psychology, sociology, anthropology, and behavioural science; at least three of the subgroup participants were affiliated with BIT. (Four members of the group opted to remain anonymous.) 

A key element of SPI-B’s remit was to advise on ‘Strategies for behaviour change, to support control of and recovery from the epidemic’. At the start of the Covid era, the group was asked to ‘provide advice aimed at anticipating and helping people adhere to interventions that are recommended by medical or epidemiological experts.’ Meetings of SPI-B were not consistently minuted, but several ‘high-level’ summaries were published.

Undoubtedly, the subgroup’s most strident endorsement of fear inflation (affect nudge) was contained in a document published on the 22^nd March 2020 titled ‘Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures’. Within the text are the following statements:

A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group.

The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.

At the Covid-19 Inquiry, Professor James Rubin (SPI-B co-chair) confirmed that Professor Susan Michie was the group member primarily responsible for compiling this paper. 

In April 2020, the SPI-B group produced another paper titled ‘Theory and evidence base for initial SPI-B recommendations for phased changes in activity restrictions’, that explored the key elements that predict adherence to public health advice. Drawing heavily on ‘Protection Motivation Theory’, the authors describe one important aspect promoting compliance with guidance as being that ‘perceptions of the risk of Covid-19 to self and others are high’, thereby drawing the attention of policymakers to the assumed benefit of maintaining high levels of fear in the target population.  

The premise that SPI-B supported the deployment of fear within the Government’s Covid-19 communications is given further credence by the subsequent comments of two of its members. Dr Gavin Morgan (an educational psychologist) is cited in Laura Dodsworth’s book, A State of Fear, as saying, ‘They went overboard with the scary message to get compliance. They were pushing at an open door because there was already fear.’ (Dodsworth, 2021, p91)

Another – this time anonymous – SPI-B participant echoed Morgan’s view: 

There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian … The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been a weird experiment. Ultimately it backfired because people became too scared.

DODSWORTH, 2021, P94

As for the ego nudge, where following the Covid-19 edicts is strategically implied to be synonymous with virtue, examples within the SPI-B summaries are:

Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures’ (March 2020 document)
“Messaging needs to emphasise and explain the duty to protect others.”

Ways to maintain adherence to restrictions after vaccination’ (December 2020 document)
“[Vaccinated people] will be willing to continue to adhere to rules and guidance once a vaccine is available if they are made aware that this is still necessary to protect others.”

Social and behavioural impacts of lifting restrictions (February 2022 document)
Messaging should emphasise voluntary adherence as a contribution to collective wellbeing.

During her interview at the Covid-19 Inquiry, Professor Lucy Yardley (another SPI-B co-chair) endorsed a similar approach when she emphasised the importance of ‘messages drawing on protecting each other’.

Encouragement for government communicators to deploy norms, involving the harnessing of peer pressure to change the behaviour of a dissenting minority, was a common SPI-B recommendation as illustrated in the following examples:

Insights on self-isolation & household isolation (9 ^th March 2020 document)
Effective methods to encourage adherence to guidance and discourage presenteeism were discussed; these included:

• Changing social norms and allowing others to express disapproval,

• Emphasising high levels of adherence in the wider population.

Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures (22^nd March 2020 document)

• Social approval can be a powerful source of reward … members of the community can be encouraged to provide it to each other.

• Social disapproval from one’s community can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour.

Theory and evidence base for initial SPI-B recommendations for phased changes in activity restrictions (April 2020 document)

• Communities could play an active role in anticipating, reporting, stewarding and managing problems with overcrowding or inadequate social distancing.

How to increase adherence to Covid-19 preventative behaviours among young people (November 2020 document)

• Communications should draw upon social norms of effective adherence by emphasising what other peers are doing (descriptive e.g. your peers are switching to socialising online) and approved perceptions of behaviours (injunctive e.g. your peers think you should start socialising online).

• Communications should avoid giving visibility to non-adherence.

Ways to maintain adherence to restrictions after vaccination (December 2020 document)

• Social pressures, including both family and community pressures, have been found to be strong motivators for people to adopt or reject recommended infection control behaviours … Normative pressures beyond these social networks (e.g. from employers, mass media and the government) have been found to influence adherence to protective behaviours during COVID-19.

Social & behavioural impacts of lifting restrictions (February 2022 document) 

• Government should consider how to encourage adherence to protective behaviours through broader social norms (as in many east Asian countries).

It is noteworthy that, in their evidence to the Covid-19 Inquiry, both Rubin and Yardley (SPI-B co-chairs) expressed the view that their group’s outputs achieved insufficient influence on pandemic policy. Rubin, although saying, ‘I think the stuff we were writing had an impact … at an operational level’, goes on to claim that SPI-B’s advice and reports disappeared down a ‘black hole’. He believed that – by May/June 2020 – SPI-B was being ‘cut out of involvement in Government communication’ and that their advice ‘just wasn’t being seen in the output’. Yardley concurred, saying, ‘on the whole, the communications tended to go ahead with very little input from SPI-B, even though we were very happy to advise.’ 

Rubin’s further evidence to the Inquiry suggests that a key reason for their lack of impact was the fact that eight SPI-B members defected to ‘independent SAGE’ (a group openly critical of Government policy): ‘The decision in June 2020 of multiple participants of SPI-B to join a subgroup of independent SAGE took me by surprise and put us in an awkward position.’ In the same interview it was also revealed that Patrick Vallance (the Chief Scientific Officer) had described this mass defection as ‘an odd thing to do & may cause problems … totally inappropriate’, and that government departments were ‘very wary’ of putting anything to SPI-B because of ‘leaks or misuse’. 

Behavioural Insights Team – BIT

Throughout the Covid event, BIT was contractually committed to providing the Government with ‘frictionless access’ to behavioural science expertise. Not being part of the main SAGE infrastructure, the contributions of BIT employees were less visible than those of SPI-B. Nevertheless, the evidence demonstrates that they frequently provided advice to communicators about how to maximise the power of Covid messaging.

Such a pivotal role is acknowledged in an article on the BIT website where it is announced that, since February 2020, their personnel have been ‘advising governments and public bodies’ regarding Covid communications. More detail about the extent of BIT’s contribution to the Government’s pandemic response is provided in Professor Halpern’s witness statement to the Covid-19 Inquiry in which he describes how his team received ‘requests for input from multiple departments’ and from key actors such as Dominic Cummins and Matt Hancock. He also confirms that, during the Covid event, ‘BIT ran 57 online experiments, four field experiments, provided 41 policy notes, and were involved in eight longer projects’; during peak times, between 15 and 20 members of his team were ‘working on Covid’. 

Examination of BIT’s documented outputs during the Covid years provides evidence of their promotion of the nudges of concern.

In relation to the endorsement of the affect/fear inflation nudge, in December 2020 BIT and the NHS collaborated to produce a document (later redacted) titled ‘Optimising vaccination roll out – the dos & don’ts of messaging’. The advice given to front-line healthcare staff responsible for administering the vaccines included the suggestion to tell people over 65 years of age that they are ‘three times more likely to die if you get COVID’. This reliance on conveying relative risk, rather than absolute risk, would undoubtedly work to inflate the recipient’s perception of the level of danger posed by contracting Covid-19. Such misleading phrasing lends support to the expressed concerns of Simon Ruda – a former BIT director and founder member – who, in a January 2022 interview, said, ‘the most egregious and far-reaching mistake made in responding to the pandemic has been the level of fear willingly conveyed on the public.’

Furthermore, in his Covid-19 Inquiry statement, Halpern says that, in February 2020, the team’s primary brief was to advise the Government on how to ‘communicate Covid-related messages so that the public recognised the severity of the virus’. Halpern goes on to detail how one aspect of this work involved a collaboration with the Cabinet Office to produce a television advert that incorporated visual graphics of ‘vapour permeating around the room’ – content that could reasonably fall into the category of fear inflation. 

Outputs of BIT also support the premise that they advocated for the use of the ego/virtue nudge in Covid messaging:

• In the December 2020 document ‘Optimising vaccination …’ (mentioned above) front-line health staff are advised to tell young people that ‘normality can only return for you and others, with your vaccination’ and ‘The vaccine is not 100% effective, so if only your older relative has it you could still give them the virus if you are not vaccinated.’

• In a 2020 webinar on their website (around 35 minutes into the video) it is described how BIT has been working with NHS-X (a digital service aimed at improving patient care) to identify the most effective types of text messaging. One finding was that the impact of communications about staying at home during a pandemic was maximised if one ‘tapped the altruistic nature’ of social isolation.

• In March 2021, BIT described a study in the US that tested a range of messages intended to increase vaccine uptake. The researchers found that ‘Helping loved ones’ was the most effective. Armed with this finding, they say that ‘Moving forward, we are working to get these results out to policymakers and other stakeholders who can translate our recommendations into real-world outreach.’ 

As for BIT experts recommending norms/peer pressure as a means of changing behaviour during the Covid event, examples include:

• In a 2020 project where they were helping the NHS to design text messages to people who had been advised to quarantine at home, the BIT team recommended recipients be asked to contact several friends and relatives and inform them of their isolation. (Although badged as a ‘social commitment’ nudge, this action would also increase normative pressure on others to stay at home under the same circumstances.)

• In a March 2020 article on their website, they described how they had nurtured ‘organisational social norms’ within private companies so as to make people stay at home when symptomatic; one specific aspiration was to construct a social milieu where being at work with a cough will be ‘perceived negatively’.

Importantly, it seems that BIT was also centrally involved in identifying a subgroup of the population who purportedly warranted a distinctive, more powerful, form of risk communication – a similar cohort to the one used to justify the scary and guilt-enhancing ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign (see section c, above). Thus, in his statement for the Covid-19 Inquiry, Halpern mentions that a part of BIT’s work was to identify the ‘superspreaders’, the one-in-ten who ‘required a different approach’.

As already argued (see section 4d), the collective wearing of masks in community settings can enhance compliance with pandemic restrictions as a whole by strengthening the affect, ego, and normative pressure nudges. It is clear from Halpern’s evidence to the Covid-19 Inquiry, that BIT was strongly advocating for the imposition of face coverings in the weeks prior to the political U-turn on the issue in May/June 2020. Thus, Halpern states that, on the 31^st March, BIT prepared an internal note on ‘Why the UK general public should use face masks’ that argued that ‘the UK’s position … at that time was wrong, and they should be considered as part of the strategy to unlock the UK.’ Furthermore, in June 2020, the ‘BIT arranged the testing of masks at Porton Down, and found that even cloth masks were effective’; Halpern believed these results to be so important that he ‘sent them directly to Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance and Simon Case’. Given that the Government mandated masks on public transport and in healthcare settings on the 15^th June 2020, it is reasonable to conclude that BIT may hold a significant degree of responsibility for the imposition of this poorly-evidenced restriction, one that evokes fear, shame and scapegoating.   

Taking these examples as a whole, one can confidently conclude that the experts in both SPI-B and BIT often endorsed the use of affect, ego, and normative pressure nudges in their guidance about how behavioural science techniques could enhance the persuasive power of Covid messaging. 

7. Prominent figures in SPI-B & BIT have denied responsibility for fear inflation

Despite the multiplicity of evidence suggesting the involvement of many actors in developing and promoting Covid messages that relied on ethically questionable nudges, there has – to date – been a reluctance to accept responsibility for these practices. 

When the SPI-B co-chair, Professor Ann John, appeared in front of the Government’s Science & Technology Committee on the 30^th March 2022 she was challenged by MP Graham Stringer about the strategic decision to indiscriminately ramp up fear (as referenced in the SPI-B minutes of the 22^nd March 2020). During her interview, Professor John claimed that her group advised against using scare tactics as a way of increasing compliance with Covid-19 restrictions, stating, ‘We never advised on upping the level of fear. I think it was presented as part of the evidence base … we absolutely advised that fear does not work.’ Earlier in the interview, John contradicts her group’s terms of reference by insisting that SPI-B was not trying to change people’s behaviour, but instead pursuing the altruistic motive of ‘ensuring that disproportionate and unintended impacts were not felt by different sectors of society.’

A similarly-worded denial of responsibility for fear inflation was provided by Professor James Rubin (another SPI-B co-chair) in his testimony to the Covid-19 Inquiry. When asked directly about his group’s involvement in scaremongering, Rubin claims that they ‘argued against it on multiple occasions’, and also sent a series of papers to senior government officials in both the Cabinet Office and the DHSC advising against the use of fear as a means of promoting compliance. With regard to the paragraphs in the SPI-B minutes of the 22^nd March 2020 describing the need to increase the ‘perceived level of personal threat’ by using ‘hard-hitting emotional messaging’, Rubin describes these statements as being about ‘complacency’ rather than about raising fears, as ‘substantial numbers of people did not seem to appreciate the genuine level of risk that they faced’. So, in essence, he believed his group was educating people rather than frightening them, and that the criticism directed at SPI-B was unfair and stemmed from a ‘misreading’ of their advice and a ‘glossing over of the context at the time’. 

Professor Lucy Yardly (another SPI-B co-chair), during her Inquiry interview, also denied culpability for fear inflation; when asked specifically about her reaction to Matt Hancock’s ‘Don’t kill your gran’ quip, Yardley cautioned against the use of such language, saying, ‘My instinct would probably not because it is trying to draw on fear and shame.’

A further emphatic denial of responsibility came from four core members of SPI-B (Professors Reicher, Michie, Drury, and West) in a March 2023 opinion piece in the British Medical Journal. In the article these behavioural science experts explicitly state that the pervasive fear mongering witnessed during the Covid event had nothing to do with them, instead suggesting that the politicians were culpable: ‘When Hancock & Case advocated scare tactics they were going against the scientific advice they had been given.’ Furthermore, they dismissed the incriminating SPI-B minutes of March 2020 – that referred to the need to increase the ‘level of personal threat’ and use ‘hard-hitting emotional messaging’ – as just being part of an overall review of possible options of persuasion. The authors did not explain why they had remained silent on the issue of fear inflation during the pandemic.

As for BIT, in January 2022, the author of this current document received an unsolicited personal email from BIT’s communication department. The unexpected email was a reaction to an open letter written by the current author to the British Psychological Society, raising ethical concerns about the state’s use of behavioural science. The missive from the BIT spokesperson claimed that ‘none of the examples you reference were actually our work or anything we worked on at all, and we categorically do not believe in using fear as a tactic.’

Professor Halpern has denied responsibility for the posters used in the ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign. Furthermore, in his witness statement for the Covid-19 Inquiry, he laments what he believes to be false accusations directed at BIT: ‘Frustratingly – given our internal advice, and that we didn’t have anything to do with campaigns such as “Stay Alert” (or “Look into her eyes”) BIT was later blamed for encouraging HMG to pursue a fear-based campaign.’

Intriguingly, embedded in this plethora of denials, there are indications of tensions between the various expert groups offering behavioural science advice – perhaps not surprising given their multiplicity (see section 4b). For instance,  Rubin, during his Covid-19 Inquiry interview, was at pains to deny that his SPI-B group was, in effect, another ‘Nudge Unit’: 

Instead of nudging, SPI-B’s work focused on providing support to people to help them to engage with the measures that were openly recommended by public health experts’ … SPI-B didn’t consider those (i.e. nudge) options, or rather it wasn’t a focus for us …  I can’t think of any actual examples where we did recommend them in our papers.

Perhaps in an attempt to suggest that his forum’s outputs conveyed the higher scientific framework within which other advisors  should operate, Rubin says, ‘SPI-B looked at the science of communication whereas these [other teams] were working on the operationalisation of that science.’ Halpern appears to be at odds with this hierarchical differentiation, as indicated by his blunt comments in his Inquiry witness statement, where he says that the SPI-B group was ‘prone to producing vague & not always well-evidenced papers that policymakers & SAGE were underwhelmed by … SPI-B members just stuck with the generalities of the existing behavioural literature … effective applied behavioural science cannot be a spectator sport.’ 

A potential contributor to this tension, and a reason for Rubin to try to distance his group from the ‘nudgers’, is provided by Sanders et al. (2021) in their examination of the public and media discourse about the Government’s deployment of behavioural science in early 2020. A key finding of this study  was that the term ‘nudge’ seems to ‘stir divisiveness’, and the expert groups were perceived differently: 

We found two distinct clusters of actors and concepts in the behavioural science to be received differentially by both the media and public: BIT, Dr. David Halpern and ‘nudge’ were viewed as embedded with the lockdown policy, coupled with negative perceptions; on the other hand, Prof. Susan Michie, Prof. Steven Reicher, and the SPI-B were perceived to be speaking out against these policies.

It is, however, important to emphasise that, in this initial stage of the Covid event, this ‘speaking out’ would primarily have been about urging longer and earlier lockdowns; all the Government’s behavioural science experts remained silent on the questionable ethics of resorting to encouraging fear, guilt and scapegoating as a means of promoting compliance with public health diktats.

If – at odds with many of their published outputs – the behavioural science experts in SPI-B and BIT were not centrally responsible for scaring, shaming and othering citizens into compliance with the Covid edicts, who else could be? Outside of the expert advisory groups, many people with behavioural science capability are employed in a range of government departments, so maybe some of these employees hold a degree of culpability. Or maybe the main commercial advertisers, MullenLowe and Manning Gotlieb, were given the autonomy to decide the tone and content of their posters and videos. (To date, these two companies have not responded to our requests for information on these issues, and the details of contractual arrangements between them and government representatives are often redacted.)

Information divulged during Professor Yardley’s Covid-19 Inquiry interview does suggest that an inner circle of government advisors, along with personnel from trusted advertising agencies, may have been disproportionately influential in shaping the communication campaigns. During her interview, Yardley refers to SPI-B members’ dissatisfaction with the Government’s ‘Stay Alert’ messaging and draws attention to an email response from a Cabinet Office behavioural scientist  (presumably a member of the previously mentioned Government Communication Service) that reads:

The messages in this instance are kept so elusive by a small group of mainly No 10 advisers — these are agencies that have won their political campaigns and are now supporting this one too. My team was never consulted either and as soon as I heard the message I flagged our concerns — only to be told it was too late now (and ‘it tested well’ which often means a shut down of discussion of any risks!) … I am so sorry that despite being the behavioural scientists inside the government communications service we don’t have a handle on this either. It’s so often partially political and in this case I was also told they wanted to keep it deliberately small so that there’s not too many cooks which is also a cultural issue.

One can credibly argue that the ultimate responsibility for the methods used in the Government’s Covid-19 communications strategy lies with the elected politicians and their senior advisors. Some clarification about their role in the development of the Covid messaging was provided by Conrad Bird (Director of Campaigns & Marketing at the Covid-19 Hub in the Cabinet Office). In response to our direct email, Bird – who led the Government’s commissioning team in regard to the ‘Look them in the eyes’ campaign – disclosed that the creative brief to MullenLowe was ‘given orally by my team in response to government and scientific advice concerning the rise of the Covid Delta variant’. As indicated by an FOI response, a major source of this advice is likely to have been the team of behavioural scientists located in the Cabinet Office Government Communication Service. Bird also confirmed that the favoured version of the adverts was ‘signed-off by colleagues from Health, the Chief Medical Officer and responsible Ministers’; a subsequent FOI response confirmed that the high-ranking official ultimately responsible for this sign-off was Matt Hancock, the then Health Secretary.

The next steps

This initial report has detailed the progress made within the first four months of the research project. After a brief overview of the context of the research – namely, the Government’s deployment of ethically-questionable behavioural science strategies throughout the Covid event – this paper has described what we know to date about the following aspects of the nudge-infused Covid messaging campaign: the size of the behavioural science resource available within the Government infrastructure, and the amount of taxpayers’ money spent on it; the advertising companies centrally involved in developing the Covid messaging, together with the identification of the key actors (from both the Government and  the advertisers) engaged in the commissioning, construction and authorisation of the more contentious videos and posters; and the sources of expert behavioural science advice that may have shaped the tone and content of the messaging, with a particular focus on the outputs of SPI-B and BIT. 

The subsequent phases of the project will increasingly focus on the ethics of the state using often-covert methods of psychological persuasion on its own citizens, strategies that commonly achieve their impact via the calculated generation of emotional discomfort and the encouragement of othering and scapegoating. The next steps of the research project will, therefore, involve an in-depth analysis of the ethical issues arising from the Government using nudges on its own people. More specifically, it is anticipated that the project’s progression will involve:

a) Identification of the various potential sources of expert ethical advice to inform the Government’s decision making around Covid messaging.
b) Elucidating the details of any actual ethical guidance that was offered or accessible to the Government during the genesis of the Covid messaging strategy.
c) A critical review of the academic literature discussing the ethics of nudging, and the subsequent identification of what one might consider to be best practice.
d) A gap analysis to highlight any differences between ethical best practice in decision making around the state’s use of nudging and the reality of what happened during the Covid event.
e) The development and dissemination of a bespoke or modified set of ethical guidelines and/or processes to inform and constrain how the UK Government uses behavioural science in the future.

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On 28 February 2024 an interesting article was published on the Substack channel The Sovereign Mind. The title of the article is, But, where’s the bat? The author, Shiven Chabria, argues that the virus called SARS-CoV-2 could not have originated in bats; it must have leaked from a lab in Wuhan China. He outlines several “coincidences” to support this thesis, and concludes that “the statistical odds these occurrences were a result of some massive magical coincidence seems highly improbable.” His article is well referenced and carefully thought out. Since the first thread in the comments mentions Nick Hudson (founder of PANDA), we thought it appropriate to respond to the article, especially since the topic is a recurring one.

In this response we will look at each of the “coincidences” he mentions in his article. In particular, we wish to draw attention to how little is known about these issues, and how many unanswered questions there still are. We also hope to establish that debates about “Covid’s origin” usually involve unstated and unsubstantiated assumptions and therefore typically end up obscuring more important issues.

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Coincidence #1

The seafood “wet market” that many claimed was the epicenter of the pandemic is literally a few miles away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and testing of the animals came up empty.

Although it is true that many have claimed that Wuhan was the epicenter, this does not mean that it was. All that we know for sure is that Wuhan was the location of the first recorded cases. Does anyone know how many cases preceded these first reported ones? Was anyone testing for Covid in June of 2019? Indeed, multiple researchers have found evidence that the virus was present in countries other than China many months before the first recorded case in Wuhan.[ref,ref,ref]. Moreover, China’s CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) concluded the same, publicly asserting that “The novel coronavirus had existed long before” the outbreak in Wuhan. We too have written about this issue. Therefore it is not at all certain if Wuhan was the epicenter of a world-wide outbreak.

Furthermore, even if some level of an outbreak did happen in Wuhan in early 2020, based on what happened in the rest of China, there is no evidence that that outbreak was the beginning of a pandemic. If the Wuhan outbreak had negligible effect in China, how could it have had anything to do with what happened in the rest of the world over the course of the following three years?

Moreover, the claim that “animals came up empty” (that is, the virus was not detected on any animal samples) has implications for both theories, whether lab leak or zoonotic. Coronaviruses (CoVs) not only jump from animals to humans, they also jump from humans to animals. How is it possible that thousands of people from Wuhan were infected with a CoV without animals being simultaneously infected, especially if most of the infected people had been around animals at that market?

Coincidence #2

Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist, Dr. Zhou Yusen, filed for a patent for a COVID vaccine on February 24, 2020. The early timing of his filing raises concerns that the unnamed vaccine was in development months before the COVID-19 pandemic became public….

It is certainly remarkable that a patent on a vaccine was filed less than two months after a virus was supposedly first discovered. China, however, was not the only country where this happened. Indeed, ten days earlier, on 14 Feb. 2020 Moderna announced that it had developed its Covid vaccine and was poised to begin clinical trials on humans. Does this mean that there was a lab leak in one of Moderna’s facilities? The idea borders on the absurd, for Moderna developed their product without having any viral samples on hand; working solely from the genetic sequence (of SARS-CoV-2) that China had published online only 34 days earlier. 

Preceeding even Moderna, INOVIO developed their shot only “3 hours” after the sequence was published online, and by 23 January were already engaging in clinical trials of the product. Was there a lab leak in Plymouth Pennsylvania (the home of INOVIO)? 

Instead of asking if there was a lab leak, shouldn’t we be asking why so many pharmaceutical companies decided that the “pneumonia of unknown etiology” in Wuhan was worth spending millions of dollars on? This question is especially relevant when it is noted that multiple pharmaceutical companies made the decision to focus on Covid before total deaths worldwide had exceeded one thousand. Did they know something that we didn’t? 

Significantly, this second “coincidence” assumes that researchers in Wuhan honestly felt they were capable of developing a life-saving vaccine for a respiratory virus, something that is highly unlikely given past failures of previous attempts.

Further, even if a leak from a lab in Wuhan did happen months earlier than the first recorded case, what does the fact that nobody noticed it tell us about how lethal or virulent this supposedly novel pathogen must have been?

Coincidence #3

We know that Wuhan lab workers were the first COVID patients.

Do we really know this? Given that SARS-CoV-2 has subsequently been found to have existed in many countries prior  to 2020, wouldn’t it be more correct to say that we have no idea who the first Covid patients were? We simply weren’t testing for it. Lab workers in Wuhan may have been among the first reported cases, but it is distinctly possible that they were not the first patients.

Coincidence #4

China destroyed all records from the lab…. There are also no source samples [of coronaviruses]….. Wuhan lab researchers had reported virus sequences to the NIH registry but then called in June 2020 to ask for that information to be deleted.

We have been unable to verify whether or not China destroyed all their lab records. But China does admit they destroyed some CoV samples. The reason given was “biosafety.” On the first of January the Chinese shut down the Wuhan market. Some days later they destroyed coronaviruses in labs. This seems to us to be evidence that the Chinese themselves were uncertain what was happening or why, and were simply taking every precaution. Precaution during uncertainty should not be confounded with prescience on account of certainty.

It is true that scientists from the WIV did upload several genomic sequences to the NIH sequence read archive and then subsequently requested those same sequences to be withdrawn. The NIH complied and removed the sequences from public access. Emails from the owner of the sequences, however, reveal that this request was made in order to prevent confusion on account of the sequences being uploaded elsewhere. Also, not only were the sequences available and openly discussed in published papers, but it was always possible to extract the sequences from cloud servers. Further, “the sequences recovered from the deleted data set are partial and lack full metadata. Therefore, it is impossible to unambiguously place them phylogenetically….” And finally, according to an email received from the NIH, about 4,560 records are withdrawn from the archive on a yearly basis. In other words, China was hiding nothing, did nothing unusual, and the withdrawn sequences served little use.

Coincidence #5

Wuhan lab conditions were abysmal.

The only real evidence offered in support of this claim is that the WIV had put out a request for bids to renovate its air conditioning system. It is quite possible that this information, far from testifying to sloppy protocols, might instead be hinting that the WIV was spending large sums to insure its laboratories remained world-class. For the record, the WIV “is a large complex with multiple buildings that house 20 Biosafety Level II (BSL-2) laboratories, two Biosafety Level III (BSL-3) laboratories, and 3000 square meters of Biosafety Level IV (BSL-4) space.” The BSL4 lab first opened in 2018, making it unlikely that in only two years it had fallen into a state of disrepair.

Coincidence #6

There existed a concrete plan to experiment on bat viruses with the specific aim of enhancing their ability to infect and spread between humans…. The… disclosure… include[s] drafts and planning materials for the DEFUSE proposal, a $14 million grant application submitted in 2018 to DARPA by American scientist Peter Daszak and Wuhan Institute of Virology in which they proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS and SARS-CoV-2 by enhancing (aka gain of function) SARS like bat viruses.

These claims miss the mark. The DEFUSE proposal had two stated goals: first, to identify the risk of a SARS related coronavirus jumping from bats to humans; and second, to reduce that risk. The first was to be accomplished by documenting bat colonies in south Asia, determining what viruses the bats were carrying, and doing experiments to see how readily those viruses infect humanized mice. The second goal was to be accomplished by large scale vaccination of bat colonies to stop the transmission of these viruses. The stated benefit of the research was to protect US soldiers in south Asia from getting sick after encounters with bats. It is doubtful if this benefit was really necessary. And, it is questionable if either goal could ever have been achieved. The project was rejected by DARPA. Therefore this proposal is irrelevant to the question of Covid’s origin. 

(On the outside chance that the project found other sources of funding, we emailed Peter Daszak directly to find out if any of the proposed work has begun yet, but to date have received no reply.)

The Bombshell Defused

Despite the lack of significance of the DEFUSE proposal, it is the “bombshell” coincidence used in The Sovereign Mind article to support the lab-leak hypothesis. Since so much space is given to it, it is appropriate to consider some of the more important claims that were made about the proposal and its authors. We examine six claims.

Claim #1

These experiments were to occur in part in Wuhan with fewer safety precautions than required in the U.S. — ostensibly to save on costs. American scientists concealed this from their desired funder — to evade any national security concerns about doing high-level biosecurity work in China.

This is factually incorrect on two points. First, the proposal expressly mentioned “WIV” as the location of proposed work more than a dozen times. Second, there was no need to evade security concerns because the project did not involve that level of experimentation. The executive summary says expressly that the planned engineering used “backbones” that were “exempt from gain of function concerns.”

Claim #2

SARS COV-2 seemed completely at home inside human cells and spread remarkably easily from human to human (something animal viruses infecting humans struggle with), possibly because it had already been adapted in humanized laboratory mice to the human cell receptor.

The problem with this statement is that two weeks after the supposed outbreak in Wuhan had begun, some five million people from Wuhan left their city and traveled all over China to celebrate the coming Chinese New Year. Despite this “super-spreader event,” only a few people in the other provinces got sick, and within weeks the outbreak had fizzled out and died off completely. Thus, if the outbreak did start in Wuhan, then the virus was not very transmissible. If the outbreak did not start in Wuhan, then the WIV had nothing to do with it. Either way, the lab-leak hypothesis is on shaky ground.

Claim #3

SARS COV-2 possesses a furin cleavage site, found in none of the other 871 known members of its viral family.

It is true that a furin cleavage site is not found in any of the known coronaviruses that have been placed in the same subgenus as SARS-CoV-2. Obviously, we know nothing about the unknown coronaviruses in this family. Moreover, “furin cleavage sites are widely present in the whole coronavirus family.” Were all these other coronaviruses also the result of a lab leak?

Claim #4

Daszak and Baric were painfully aware that the gain of function research they proposed could mushroom-cloud to a full-blown pandemic.

This too is factually incorrect, as the very quotation they offer in support of this claim proves the opposite. Daszak said: “we MUST make it clear in proposal that our approach won’t drive evolution the wrong way (e.g. drive evolution of more virulent strain that then becomes pandemic…)” In other words,  Daszak and Baric felt it was impossible for their lab work with coronaviruses or their vaccination of bats to ever cause a pandemic. This concurs with what was said regarding claim #1 above, namely that there was nothing in their work that involved gain-of-function concerns.

Further, in Daszak’s statement of competing interests in his Lancet article he says, “NIH reviewed the planned recombinant virus work and deemed it does not meet the criteria that would warrant further specific review by its Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight committee.” Therefore on at least three separate occasions Daszak affirmed that he felt his work did not have pandemic potential.

Claim #5

What are the odds that a bat virus… could perfect the ability to consistently infect humans on first try? … human to human transmission of animal viruses remains uncommon, and certainly not a pandemic level event because the virus machinery needs time to adapt to a human host and this process takes months or even years.

Who knows how many “tries” were made? Who knows if the virus came from a bat? Who says Covid was a “pandemic level event”? Who can say that it didn’t happen over several years? Who has any idea how common it is for animal viruses to pass from one human to the next? Despite all our efforts and research, mankind still knows very little about where viruses come from, how they jump from animals to humans, when they jumped, or what happens when they do. Of all the viruses in existence, few have ever been sequenced. None have been tested for like SARS-CoV-2,  leaving us hopelessly ignorant of what is normal, what is happening, and what existed before 2020.

Claim #6

The people who wrote the DEFUSE proposal also wrote the Lancet article which called anyone entertaining the possibility COVID came from the very lab they proposed doing gain of function experiments, almost exactly two years prior, a fearmongering, misinformation spreading racist, and then tried to cover up the blatant incestuousness of it all.

The Lancet article referred to here did not call anyone a “fearmongering, misinformation spreading racist,” at least not as far as we can see. Rather, it was an affirmation that the authors were confident that SARS-CoV-2 did not originate in a lab. It is true that Daszak decided to sign his name to the letter. His initial hesitation may not have been to “cover up” his involvement in creating novel viruses, but on account of the fact that he had respected colleagues who  worked at the WIV. In reading through his emails, it seems plausible that he was simply deliberating about the right thing to do.

In essence, the main argument of all these “coincidences” and claims is that it had to be a lab leak because Daszak and Baric said it wasn’t. We suggest that this is a very weak argument, for not only did both men assert that it was impossible for their work to ever cause a pandemic, but they might just have the expertise to know.

Claim #7

Chinese authorities—knowing that attracting world spotlight would bring unwanted scrutiny and open Pandora’s box— underplayed the possibility of human-to-human transmission.

Actually, when we discovered how few Covid cases and deaths there were in China in early 2020 despite millions of people traveling for family gatherings, we also were forced to conclude that there was little to no evidence of human-to-human transmission of whatever caused the minor outbreak in Wuhan. It is reasonable to think the Chinese authorities came to the same conclusions for the same reasons.

Other Claims

The Sovereign Mind article contains a few other claims that involve technical aspects of SARS-CoV-2 (restriction enzymes and restriction maps). To support these claims the author quotes from a paper written by Alex Washburne et al. The main hypothesis of that paper, however, has since been adequately refuted by another paper. The curious reader is invited to read both papers. 

Ending Question

The Sovereign Mind article began with a question: “But, where’s the bat?” It ended with an almost identical question: “Where are the sick bats?” There are several underlying assumptions in this question that are most likely false. This can be brought to light by asking three questions in response:

1. Do we know if any bats got sick?

2. Do bats get sick from coronaviruses?

3. Where are the sick people?

Nobody knows if more bats got sick than normal during the past four years. The main reason we don’t know is that Dr. Daszak’s project DEFUSE (which planned to count bat populations) was never funded. 

Notwithstanding our limited knowledge, it is safe to suggest that bats were not getting more sick than normal, at least not on account of Covid. The reason is simple: bats are carriers of coronaviruses; but somehow “these viruses do not appear to cause disease in bats.” Were bats carrying more SARS-like viruses on account of Covid? We don’t even know that.

Finally, we briefly examine whether or not Covid has caused an increase in the number of cases of sick people. Total Covid cases to date are estimated to be about 775 million. While this may sound like a disproportionately large number, we argue that it is such a small number that it should be considered part of the normal respiratory illnesses that occur every year. Humans regularly get sick with some sort of respiratory illness, whether flus, colds, or the like. Few of these are ever diagnosed in a laboratory. In the US, the average person catches a cold three times every year. If this rate applies to the entire world, it means that in a typical four year period there are 96 billion cases of the cold (8 billion people x 3 cases/yr x 4 years). If we included the flu, this number would be even higher. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that over the past four years Covid amounted to less than 0.8% of the normal respiratory illnesses. Hence, the more appropriate question that we should be asking is: Where are the sick people?

In conclusion, if there was an “orchestrated cover up,” it was to conceal that:

• Covid has been around a lot longer than anyone cares to admit,

• Covid was significantly less lethal and virulent than claimed,

• the massive and unprecedented response to Covid was entirely unnecessary, and

• untold suffering and death was caused by the response. 

It seems to us that the lab-leak controversy helps conceal these things.

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In Part 1 of this series of three papers, the importance of the work of American journalists in exposing government influence on content moderation of social media posts was acknowledged, and other fact-check activities that have not been reported or explored by journalists were outlined. This section reveals further details of two characteristics of the fact-check industry: the spread of fact checkers throughout the world, and the extension of fact checking to the legacy media and academia.

A worldwide industry

A preliminary examination of international fact-check platforms found about 500 active platforms worldwide, around half linked to media outlets. Some have specialities—such as media personalities, health, climate, and online games. The focus of independent (non-media) platforms is to review content on social media and internet sites. Fact-checking occurs in European, Asian, and African languages, including minority languages of hard-to-reach communities. Over 200 support organisations were also uncovered, including AI companies that produce fact-check tools, universities, NGOs, journalist associations, and networking organisations.

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Although independent fact-check platforms are found worldwide, the origins of Asian, African, and South American fact-checking systems are often traced to Western organisations. For example, Africa Check, the first African fact-check platform, was launched in South Africa by Agence France-Presse (AFP) in 2012, and had accounts listed with Companies House in London until November 2021. Africa Check has now extended its fact-checking functions to Senegal, Nigeria, and Kenya. In 2017, members of Mafindo, the first Indonesian fact-check platform founded in 2016, and Asosiasi Media Siber Indonesia (AMSI), a cyber media organisation, were invited to attend a Google Media Lab Summit in California. Following this event, at a Google-funded summit in Jakarta in 2018, Mafindo and ASMI, together with the Indonesian Journalists’ Association (AJI), launched the CekFakta group, with 22 Indonesian media organisations recruited as its first fact-checking members.

Not only do fact-check platforms form national groups such as CekFakta, but they also form international networks. As described in Part 1, the most important of these is the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) launched by the Poynter Institute in Florida in 2015. By 2017 IFCN had established a Code of Principles to which international fact-check platforms who comply with their code become signatories. Whilst it is commendable for journalists and fact checkers to have a professional standard, it should be noted that content published on the Poynter Institute website follows mainstream Western narratives on hot-button issues such as climate[ref, ref, ref] and health[ref, ref].

There are also regional fact-checking groups, such as the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), which is subdivided into 14 regional hubs, such as NORDIS that operates in the four Scandinavian counties. There is also a Spanish/Portuguese group, LATAMChequea, that networks across Iberia and South America, and which has also formed a subgroup, FactChequeado, that targets Spanish-speakers in the USA. These are examples of the many fact-check associations that are developing internationally.

Where countries are hostile to Western influence, such as Belarus, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela, networks of fact-check platforms are established in nearby countries to check and modify content. For example, Facebook employs third-party fact checkers from Latvia, Poland, Georgia, Lithuania, Estonia and USA to fact-check in Russia in Russian languages.

Extending to the legacy media

The new systems of fact checking extend across all media forms: newspapers, radio, television, online news; as well as online games, social media, and encrypted platforms. For example, regarding news media, a journalist from the Washington Post described how fact-checking methodology changed in that newsroom from 2007. That newspaper was one of the first signatories to the IFCN code in 2017. Journalists who do not agree with content moderation have a limited choice of paid employment in the media industry as, in Europe and the USA, the media is in the hands of a few wealthy owners[ref, ref]. Another influence on newsrooms is copy received from news agencies such as Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, and Reuters, which are all signatories to the IFCN code; their already fact-checked copy circulates to newsrooms across five continents. Global newsrooms register with IFCN, demonstrating that they fulfil the criteria of the IFCN code.

A list of fact-checking platforms from Duke University Reporters’ Lab in September 2023 includes 74 active fact-checking platforms in the USA. Of these, 48 are associated with media companies—including large companies such as The Washington Post and CNN, as well as local newspapers such as the Reno Gazette and the Nevada Independent—demonstrating that fact-checking practices are extending across all sections of the mainstream media.

As in USA and Europe, media outlets across the world are increasingly moving online; and whilst there are many positive commercial reasons to do so, plus improved access for audiences/readers, it also makes it easier for fact checkers to monitor content. In fact, moving online gives an incentive to news organisations to adopt the new fact-checking procedures. Across the globe, Internews—that, together with its partner Ads for News, collaborates with the World Economic Forum—and Google with its Adsense programme, encourage local media in USA, Africa, and Asia to move online, incentivising content moderation by offering advertising revenue if content is considered to be ‘trusted’.

The extension to academia

It is also the case that the new fact-checking industry has extended to academia. In Europe fifteen organisations supporting fact checking were found that are funded by the EU, European Commission, or the Council of Europe: these involved universities, AI companies, and fact-check platforms. Some are extensive. The aims of EDMO are to map all fact-check platforms; coordinate research; build a portal for everyone to check and coordinate information; develop a framework for data collection; and support public authorities. Other EU-funded organisations perform tasks such as setting EU fact-checking standards, conducting research, designing fact-check tools, creating content, building virtual reality tools, distributing data, or coordinating university journalism departments to ensure that students are taught fact-checking to meet the current content-moderation requirements. Eighty-three universities in 31 European countries were named as participating in these projects and American journalist, Matt Taibbi, found American universities were similarly part of the fact-checking network.

Conclusion

This examination of the fact-check industry worldwide demonstrates that, as noted in the Twitter files, the intrusion of fact-checking into free speech extends globally, covers all forms of media, captures academia, the technology industry, and legacy media. In Part Three, other functions of the fact-check industry will be examined, together with international funding issues.

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For instance, in November 2023 we published a revised “vaccine stance” which, though building on work we had done over the past few years, took us to what many regard as a radical position, certainly in comparison to the position we had taken a year before.

It is well known that our material to date is highly critical of governments’ actions over the past 4 years. However, most of our articles, especially those written prior to the past year or so, explicitly or implicitly accept the proposition that there had been an event which justifies the use of the word “pandemic”, and that this had been caused by “the virus”.

In our revised vaccine position, we stated inter alia that in our view the “Covid vaccines” were simply not required because, under any reasonably useful or sensible definition of the word, we had not had a pandemic.

This position statement seeks to set out in more detail what our current thinking is in relation to this relatively new position.

What do we mean by “there was no pandemic”?

The conventional understanding and public perception of a pandemic is one associated with the spread of a disease which a) increases the risk of death for many people, including the previously healthy, and b) directly causes a high number of deaths that would not have otherwise occurred.

Indeed, governing authorities and public health officials implied that everyone, regardless of age and health status, was susceptible to the new virus, anyone could die from it, and that infection by it created substandard immunity which needed augmenting by novel therapeutic injections.

However it quickly became apparent in 2020 that whatever “Covid” was, it did not seem to afflict the healthy any more than many other common respiratory infections, left huge swathes of the planet untouched (even with vast over-attribution), and had no discernible effects on global all-cause mortality.

Hence, under any reasonable and commonly held understanding of the meaning of the word “pandemic”, we were not experiencing one. This is so whether or not a novel virus did emerge at some point prior to 2020 to cause a novel disease referred to as “Covid-19”.

Many of those who insisted we had experienced a pandemic have switched to relying on a meaning of pandemic which does not require that it involves large numbers of deaths, only illness.

However, a wave of largely non-fatal and nondescript respiratory illnesses mainly affecting the elderly and otherwise frail was NOT the basis upon which the establishment justified instituting what turned out to be extraordinarily harmful measures, including the coerced administration of novel therapeutics to billions of people.

Regardless of whether or not what transpired accorded with any entity’s definition of pandemic, it is clear that authorities misled the world – with catastrophic consequences – about the existence of a sudden global health emergency, including the events which preceded and followed the pandemic declaration.

Many have characterised the events of the Covid era as an overreaction to a novel virus which turned out to be less serious than initially claimed, and that serious mistakes were made in the response.

However, we go further than that. We challenge the core assumption underpinning the entirety of most discourse around the subject, as we shall expand upon below.

So, if it wasn’t really a “pandemic”, surely something novel was spreading?

It appears to have become an accepted truth that:
Something novel spread person-to-person from some point directly causing waves of a novel illness.

In 2020 the narrative being promoted was that of a virus with a zoonotic origin which emerged in Wuhan before spreading around the world causing a global pandemic.

More recently, the idea that the zoonotic origin story is false and was being used as a cover-up for the dangerous Gain-of-Function (GoF) research which actually “caused the pandemic” appears to have been gaining traction. It may be significant that, whereas in other respects the mainstream media appears to still be extremely reluctant to report counter-establishment material in relation to the Covid era, the lab-leak theory no longer appears subject to any such censorship.

Our view is that the “lab leak” and “zoonotic spillover” theories are the two constituent parts of a false dichotomy – the presentation of these two options, and the promotion of lively debate solely between them but not outside those parameters, is acting as a distraction from a number of very important questions about the essential nature of the pandemic episode, especially during its early weeks and months.

At present, although there are differences in belief as to where precisely “the virus” originated and how serious an illness it would have caused had authorities “responded better”, there is near-universal acceptance of the following core narrative, including by some of those who have opposed most or all recent government Covid policies:
There was a novel disease caused by a virus which originated from a lab where Gain-of-Function research was being carried out before spreading person-to-person around the world causing a global pandemic.

Not only does PANDA argue against there having been a pandemic, we also do not accept that it has been proven that something novel spread person-to-person from some point directly causing waves of a novel illness.

Is “was there a lab leak” the right question?

Apparently there are hundreds of lab leaks every year. Curiously, none of these have ever seemed capable of causing a significant mass death event, let alone a global pandemic.

So the pertinent question is not “was there a lab leak?” but rather “did a lab leak from a point source result in a virus spreading around the world, suddenly causing lots of people to become sick with a novel illness?”

In PANDA’s assessment, there is no convincing evidence supporting this hypothesis. It is important to note that the establishment narrative requires that all three of these elements be true:

1. That viruses can be engineered so as to have dangerous pandemic potential.

2. That the waves of deaths and serious illnesses are linked to the spread of such a virus.

3. That the virus and disease caused by it are novel, under any rational meaning of that word.

1. Can viruses be engineered so as to have dangerous pandemic potential?

The relationships between sequence, structure and function of viruses are complex and poorly understood. We do not accept that scientists can predict what effect changing a number of base pairs, or inserting some additional genetic material, would have on a virus when it encounters selection pressure in the wild.

We actually doubt that it is possible to create engineered viruses in a laboratory which are, in the real world, replication-competent on a broad scale.

However, even if it were possible to create engineered viruses which are replication-competent, we doubt they could add any significant additional burden of illness or death to the human population let alone do so in such a short timeframe.

Moreover, even if it were possible to create replication-competent engineered viruses which can cause significant illnesses, because of the inverse relationship between contagiousness and virulence whereby all novel viruses rapidly attenuate, such effects are likely to be limited and localised.

We therefore believe that the chance of an engineered virus, which is replication-competent such that it can spread from person to person around the world, causing a dangerous pandemic to the human population globally, is vanishingly small.

2. Were waves of deaths and serious illnesses linked to the spread of such a virus?

The clusters or ripples of illness that would characterise spread of a dangerous contagious pathogen from a point source are not in evidence.

“Pandemic outcomes” differed hugely between neighbouring countries and regions, appearing to obey national, political and administrative boundaries. Differences in the ways in which panic, fear, hysteria spread, and the ways in which harmful pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions were applied, are much simpler and more likely explanations for such observations than a spreading pathogen.

With respect to timing, the commencement of the state of “pandemicity” is congruent with the declaration of a pandemic, with no prior signs of abnormality anywhere. Furthermore, there is evidence that the same signal (detected via PCR testing) used to assert viral spread was actually present globally for months before the emergency.

The models developed and used to predict the course of the “pandemic” and inform governments as to what measures they should take are underpinned by multiple baseless assumptions about how viruses spread. In truth, the evidence base regarding mechanisms of transmission for respiratory viral pathogens is extraordinarily thin. This is especially the case for pathogens for which the population has substantial prior immunity.

3. Was there a novel virus causing a novel disease, under any rational meaning of “novel”?

It is simplistic to use this word to refer to “genetically novel” since that would mean every flu was novel. It would also mean that every time there was any mutation of a virus (something which happens with great regularity, even within a single infected person), the result would be a “novel virus”.

The use of the word “novel” by the government officials and agencies which promoted the pandemic narrative conveyed the misleading notion that there was no adequate immune recognition, and that the virus was capable of causing a novel disease with unique characteristics or signatures.

However, whatever SARS-CoV-2 was, there was in fact substantial and effective prior immunity, correlated to the extent of recent exposure to similar coronaviruses. Nearly every healthy person mounted an immune response which was sufficient to prevent serious illness. This is incompatible with any reasonable or useful understanding of the meaning of “novelty”.

We do not accept that there is convincing evidence of a novel disease entity caused by a novel virus. Every characteristic of Covid and all the harms pinned on “the pandemic” can be accounted for by a combination of: the features of known respiratory infectious illnesses; observation and confirmation bias; maltreatment, non-treatment or inappropriate treatment; and other harms consequent to the response to the perception (false, in our view) that a novel deadly virus was circulating.

So what – if anything – did spread?

The starting point in understanding the events of 2020 is acknowledging that whatever the “novel virus” was, it had silently become widespread months before the start of “the pandemic”.

In PANDA’s view, the notion that something then spread during the “pandemic phase” was not driven by person-to-person pathogenic spread but by an extremely rapid ramp-up of PCR testing finding increasing numbers of “positive cases”.

Retrospective analyses of blood (and other) samples collected months before the Covid era consistently found evidence of “the virus” across a wide geographical area. Startlingly, such spread occurred without any reported clusters of unusual illnesses or excess deaths – these only started upon the institution of the response to the assumption that something novel was circulating.

PANDA believes that the rapid rollout of inappropriate, non-specific and oversensitive PCR testing created the illusion that something novel was spreading, whereas in fact all that was truly spreading was the testing itself. In many cases the testing was finding other known or unknown viruses, including those associated with normal seasonal coronavirus waves, whole or fragmented, infectious or not.

As these positive cases were found, a number of perverse incentives created a positive feedback loop, involving more and more testing (especially of “contacts”) being carried out, more “cases” being identified, more testing being demanded, more “cases” being found and so on.

PANDA believes that this conflation of spread of what can be regarded as a mere bystander signal with the spread of a dangerous disease lies at the heart of key conceptual differences between individuals and groups who otherwise share a passion for fundamental human rights and freedom from medical tyranny.

PANDA contends that the harms to health we have witnessed are iatrogenic in nature and/or consequences of the response to the detection of that novel signal, and absent its detection, nothing unusual would have been noticed.

While we accept that front-line clinicians perceived the presence of a deadly and novel disease, this does not account for what would have been observed had people's interaction with healthcare not been changed so dramatically and augmented by the relentless campaign of fear waged by governments. It is to be emphasised that the putative causative agent had spread widely across several areas without causing such effects well before the emergency was declared.

Why does PANDA think this is such an important issue?

PANDA maintains it is a mistake to blame “a virus” when the true culprits are those who fashioned and propagated a false narrative. Using the analogy of John Snow and the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak, it is this false narrative – and not a “virus” – which is the pump handle which we need to remove.

As described below, there are dangers inherent in the false narrative currently being enthusiastically embedded in humanity’s psyche. PANDA believes that the best way of insulating us from these is to show that the pandemic was, essentially, a conjuring trick – once the methods of the magicians are revealed, the power of the illusion is lost forever.

Many benefited financially, politically and in other ways from the Covid pandemic narrative, and their ability to continue to do the same for “the next pandemic” does not rely on identifying whether the origin was zoonotic or lab-leak. The perpetrators can continue to argue for the need for a “pandemic preparedness industry” whichever becomes the favoured solution to the “mystery of how the pandemic occurred”.

However, what would be fatal to the future of this lucrative industry is the realisation that we did not have a pandemic at all under any reasonable definition of that word. Hence the extreme reaction to anybody who questions the underlying basis for assuming there was actually a pandemic in contrast to the tolerance shown to those who debate its origin.

The belief that GoF research resulted in a deadly pathogen spreading around the world to create mass illness and death is being used, and will continue to be used, to justify the existence and proliferation of the pandemic and bioterrorism preparedness industries.

Many are demanding that to “prevent the escape of another pandemic-generating GoF virus” we must outlaw GoF research. To be clear, we believe the GoF enterprise is unethical and wasteful, regardless of what it has or hasn’t produced.

History tells us, however, that attempts to enforce moratoria will likely be no more straightforward than previous attempts to outlaw anything once knowledge of it becomes widely distributed. This is especially the case since it is often asserted that any lab can now do this, and the Covid era has, as we have argued above, demonstrated that nothing need actually escape from any lab anyway. The mere seeding of the narrative of escape, rollout of testing and resultant social contagion is all that is needed to perpetuate the perception of a pandemic.

Therefore, if the underlying and false assertion that GoF research can create a global pandemic is not confronted, the spectre of “the next pandemic caused by GoF research” will perpetually hang over humanity like a sword of Damocles.

This will, we predict, result in a relentless march toward more and more draconian measures and pervasive programmes being instituted in the name of “doing better next time”. These will inevitably involve biosecurity surveillance, international treaties to ensure a coordinated global response with stronger and enforceable centralised powers, 100-day vaccine capabilities and the like, all of which are currently being touted as necessary measures.

It is probably not necessary to review the harms and potential harms of such purportedly required measures, other than to remark that their implementation over the past few years was responsible for the transfer of several trillion dollars from the citizenry into the hands of private corporations and other institutions, as well as a variety of other non-financial gains by many actors in the realm of politics, ideology and control.

It is no wonder that those who have profited from all aspects of the Covid narrative would like to retain the rights to this lucrative franchise.

What this statement does NOT say

Firstly, it is not to be read as questioning the existence per se of naturally-occurring viruses. This is not to deny that there are clearly many unknowns with respect to viruses – and the extent of what we don’t know appears to be immeasurably greater than virologists would care to admit. How viruses are transmitted, how and why they infect certain people at certain times and not others, where they come from, how they change, and whether/if they can disappear are poorly, if at all, understood

Secondly, stating that we doubt an engineered virus escaping from a lab caused a deadly pandemic called “Covid” says nothing about any belief around whether bioweapons capabilities exist. Our articles, commentary and this position statement contain no assertions about bioweapons as a general category. Bacterial, bio-chemical, nerve gas and toxicological weapons would seem to be potentially extremely dangerous and all warrant our attention, but not because they can cause pandemics, their effects being localised.

Thirdly, this statement says nothing about what doctors and patients experienced, the nature of illnesses or conditions being treated, or the efficacy of treatments administered. However, in our view the many inconsistencies between these specific observations in specific places, and the story of a novel virus spreading across the world, demand further detailed examination.

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Nearly four years ago, on 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared that “Covid-19 could be characterised as a pandemic.” The series of events leading up to this remarkable statement began only ten weeks earlier (31 December 2019) when the WHO “picked up media reports of … a cluster of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan.”

As a result, it has been taken for granted by most that the city of Wuhan was the starting point of the Covid pandemic. While there has been much debate about where the virus came from—that is, whether it jumped to humans from an animal source at the Wuhan wet market or whether it leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology—few have questioned that a pandemic started in Wuhan.

Science, however, is not about taking things for granted, but about questioning narratives and investigating facts. With this in mind, we wish to consider in more detail what happened in China in early 2020. 

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The City of Wuhan

The city of Wuhan with its population of more than 11 million people is about 20% larger than New York City (NYC), the largest city in the US. It is the capital city of the Chinese province of Hubei, and is considered one of the nine most important cities in China. On 23 January 2020, this enormous city was “placed under lockdown due to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus outbreak.” Hubei and other provinces in China followed suit soon after, albeit with different levels of restrictions.

During the 24 days between 31 December 2019 (when something “unknown” was first picked up) and 23 January 2020 (when Wuhan was “locked down”), the total number of cases of Covid in the entire province of Hubei was 444. The number of deaths attributed to Covid during this same 24-day period was seventeen.[JHU CSSE COVID-19 Data] Although some people question the validity of Covid data emanating out of China, it is important to note that the WHO accepted the data as reliable, and their decisions were based on it.

It is helpful to put this number of deaths into perspective. The crude mortality rate of Hubei is about 5.9 per 1,000 residents, and the population of Hubei is 58 million. Thus, on average, 22,500 people in Hubei die during a normal 24-day period. The 17 Covid deaths, therefore, were effectively negligible. Locking down a province of 58 million people for just 17 deaths in 24 days is certainly an extreme response.

Was there something particularly lethal about Covid that warranted it? Based on the number of reported cases (444) and deaths (17), the case fatality rate (CFR) of Covid in Hubei province as of 23 January 2020 was 3.8%. For all of China it was 2.6% (17 deaths, 643 cases). Although this is higher than that for influenza A, it is four times less than the CFR of SARS, thirteen times less than that for MERS, and there are several dozen other human infectious diseases with a CFR greater than 2.6%. Also, and more importantly, the CFR for any “unknown” disease will almost certainly appear much higher than it actually is until more information becomes available. Indeed, only one week later (1 February 2020), the CFR had already dropped to 0.7%, and was showing signs of being on par with the flu.

Two days after the city of Wuhan was locked down, the Chinese New Year was ushered in (25 January 2020). This day is an important holiday in China. It usually involves many days of festivities and of increased travelling, making it “the world’s largest annual migration.” Since the surge in travel volumes usually begins two weeks before the New Year, it had been ongoing for some time before the lockdown was initiated. According to Fan et al., “Due to the impending Chinese New Year, more than five million people travelled from Wuhan for either family reunions and/or holidays, contributing to the subsequent outbreak of Covid-19 in every province/region in China within a matter of weeks.” The notion of locking down a province to stop the spread of a virus after five million people had already left the province, and would shortly return, makes this response even more odd.

Covid Cases in China

How bad was the “outbreak” of Covid that was purported to have been caused by this mass migration? To answer this question, we plotted Covid cases in China by province from January to March 2020. As case numbers were so small in most provinces, we show only the four provinces with the highest numbers of cases. The remaining 29 provincial regions (Taiwan is excluded) are lumped together and treated as a single entity. 

Several aspects of the preceding graph are worth noting. In the first place, the number of cases in Wuhan dwarfed all other provinces combined. Total cases in Hubei by the end of March amounted to 67,800, whereas the combined total in the other 32 provincial areas was only 13,639. Therefore, despite the exodus of five million people out of Wuhan in the days leading up to the lockdown, despite there being cases in every other province, and despite the other provinces not being locked down as tightly as Hubei province was, somehow the SARS-CoV-2 virus didn’t seem to spread in those provinces. Nor can the difference be attributed to population density, as 14 of the 33 provincial regions are more densely populated than Hubei.

Second, the spike in cases that occurred in Hubei province on 13 February 2020 is somewhat misleading. The increase resulted because China changed its policy and began including not only lab-confirmed cases but clinically diagnosed cases as well. This policy change was in place for about two weeks and, in consequence, artificially inflated the number of cases by about ten thousand. Covid, after all, is clinically indistinct from other common respiratory viruses.

Third, the total number of cases in China in the first three months was 81,439. Given that China has a population of 1.5 billion, it is observed that during these three months less than 0.006% of the populace was infected. Such a low number of infections argues strongly against the common claim that Covid is a “highly contagious disease.” This is especially so given the fact that this almost negligible infection rate happened in the context of a mass migration and millions of family gatherings.

Fourth, the lockdown of Wuhan and the restrictions placed on the rest of China seem to have had no impact whatsoever on the trajectory of Covid cases. Cases began to rise after the lockdown was initiated, continued along a generally increasing trend for three weeks thereafter, and then tapered off to zero. By the time the WHO declared Covid a pandemic, it had entirely fizzled out in China.

Multiple published studies have claimed that the lockdown of Wuhan successfully eradicated Covid from the province. To justify the claim, the authors typically assume a three-week lag, thereby making the drop in cases artificially align with when the lockdown supposedly began to take effect. However, the papers we looked at have no more proven that the lockdown caused the decline than that the Chinese New Year caused it, for the timing of that event is also about three weeks before cases peaked. Furthermore, multiple studies into the usefulness of lockdowns in other countries concluded that lockdowns did not change the trajectory of Covid. Figure 1 above is a powerful visual demonstration of this.

Covid Deaths in China

Having considered Covid cases, we turn next to examine the number of deaths attributed to Covid in China. Figure 2 below plots daily Covid deaths in the first three months of 2020. We have used the same provincial strategy as was used above (Figure 1) in the plot of Covid cases.

Once again, several notable observations can be made from this graph. First, the lockdown of Hubei province was initiated when daily deaths were almost zero.

Second, as with cases, the lockdown seems to have had no impact whatsoever on the trajectory of Covid deaths. Deaths generally rise for three weeks after the lockdown, peak on 14 February 2020 (one day after the peak of cases), and then taper off to zero over the next six weeks. By the time the WHO declared Covid a pandemic, deaths attributed to Covid in China were trending rapidly to zero.

Third, the total number of deaths (3,285) and the peak (152) are extraordinarily small numbers when placed in the context of the enormous Chinese population. By way of comparison, in a typical three-month period, 2.48 million people in China die. We compare these two numbers visually in the following diagram. (See Figure 3).

Conclusion

Having examined the data regarding Covid cases and deaths in China in the first three months of 2020, we observed that the lockdown of Hubei province was followed by a very slight surge in Covid cases and deaths. Both had fizzled out by the time the WHO declared a pandemic. In consideration of these facts, we find:

• no evidence that the Chinese lockdown had any impact on the trajectory of either Covid cases or deaths.

• no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was highly transmissible.

• no evidence that Covid was unusually lethal.

• no evidence that anything significant happened in China as a result of Covid (other than the lockdown itself).

• nothing that can support the WHO’s decision to consider Covid a pandemic.

Unless the SARS-CoV-2 virus somehow changed its virulence depending on either ethnicity or regional boundaries, we find no reason to think that Covid should have been more lethal in any other country than it was in China. As such, we conclude that there was nothing worthy of being called a pandemic in 2020. Finally, since Covid did not spread out of Wuhan despite five million travellers to other Chinese provinces (a “super-spreader” event of epic proportions), we find no reason to think that it spread out of Wuhan to other countries either.

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Introduction

On January 5, 2024 the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article by Peter Marks and Robert Califf. Both authors are affiliated with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The article, “Is Vaccination Approaching a Dangerous Tipping Point?,” is a discussion about growing vaccine hesitancy in the US, and includes suggestions on how to alter this trend. The article is brief; it contains only nine paragraphs and one figure. The authors claim that vaccines (including the Covid shot) have been carefully developed and are safe and effective. They also argue for the medical community to “redouble its efforts” to provide the public with appropriate information about vaccines.

Unfortunately there are multiple problems with the claims made by the authors. We do, however, agree with their conclusion that “the best way to counter the current large volume of vaccine misinformation is to dilute it with large amounts of truthful, accessible scientific evidence.” In consequence, we think it appropriate to respond to the article by countering their incorrect claims with truthful, scientific evidence. To accomplish this, we consider nine specific claims made in the article.

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Claim #1

“Despite the care taken in the development and deployment of vaccines and their clear and compelling benefit of saving individual lives and improving population health outcomes, an increasing number of people in the US are now declining vaccination for a variety of reasons … the situation has now deteriorated to the point that population immunity against some vaccine-preventable infectious diseases is at risk.”

 Response

Contrary to the claims here about how carefully vaccines are produced, the pharmaceutical industry rushed the Covid shot to market after only a few months and an incomplete clinical trial. There was no formal cost/benefit analysis conducted. The shot was not tested to see if it either stopped or reduced transmission. They never tested to see how long the injected material stayed in the body. Toxicity studies were not completed, despite evidence that injected material became widely distributed throughout the body. Therefore, it would be more correct to say that the Covid shot was an untested product, and this despite it being a brand new technology with unknown risk factors.

After rushing an untested product to market, falsely claiming it to be safe and effective, mandating people to take it, all while turning a blind eye to the unprecedented number of adverse events it caused, and then censoring anyone who tried to ask questions, is it any wonder that some people became sceptical of the vaccine industry? The FDA has no one but themselves to blame for this trend. Therefore we conclude that the FDA, albeit inadvertently, caused millions of people to rethink the topic of vaccines and also to permanently mistrust the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, this trend is quite understandably spilling over into mistrust of mainstream healthcare more generally. Nor are we alone in these conclusions: the Surgeon General of Florida, Dr Ladapo, in an open letter, accused Robert Califf (one of the authors) of causing “deep distrust in the American health care system.”

Claim #2

“Vaccine hesitancy to childhood vaccines … has been found to cluster in middle- to high-income areas among parents with at least a college degree who preferred social media narratives over evidence-based vaccine information delivered by clinicians.”

Response

The fundamental claim being made here is that clinicians are well informed about vaccines and qualified to transmit quality information to patients. While it is certain that some doctors can be praised for their diligence in seeking out scientific evidence about vaccines, this is certainly not true of all. A majority of doctors belong to the latter group of people. During the Covid era, most doctors failed to do something as simple as to read the published papers reporting on the phase 3 clinical trials. Even those involved in publicly promoting the Covid shots rarely examined the evidence themselves, nor did those actually doing the injecting, most of whom were financially rewarded for their participation. Numerous healthcare professionals have affirmed this to be the case, including well-known public figures such as nurse educator John Campbell, cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, and relatively unknown doctors such as Robert Jackson. Worse yet, in some regions of the world significant pressure was exerted on doctors to make sure that they did “not communicate anti-vaccine” sentiments, even going so far as to forbid them from saying anything against the official Covid narrative. Coercion and censorship is a far cry from allowing clinicians to freely provide accurate information to their patients.

The secondary claim is that educated people are being misled by wrong information that they find on social media. Although this statement was made in the context of the “measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines,” it is apparent that the authors feel that the same happened with the Covid shot. There are multiple problems with this sentiment. Firstly, all of the big social media platforms, including YouTube, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter aggressively censored content that contradicted the official Covid narrative. Secondly, many thousands of medical professionals, having discerned serious problems with the mRNA platform and the Covid shots, went public about their concerns. Despite the censorship, some found creative ways to publish their research. Thirdly, given that people rejecting the Covid shot faced public ridicule, lack of access to public revenues, possible discrimination if in need of medical assistance, and total loss of income, it is in fact much more likely that the educated people who rejected the Covid shot did so after carefully investigating the facts. We are not aware of any educated person being misled by preferring false social media narratives instead of evidence-based information. We do know of many who, after diligent research of the evidence, concluded that the Covid shots were neither safe nor effective. In complete contrast to claim #2 above, it is certain that many who accepted the Covid shot did so on account of media reports and public pressure rather than by intelligent examination of evidence-based information.

Claim #3

“Anyone doubting the benefits of vaccination need only look to low-income parts of the world where measles vaccination is inaccessible, and many thousands of children continue to die each year due to preventable disease.”

Response

This statement violates a fundamental rule for conducting medical studies, namely the importance of comparing outcomes between groups with similar characteristics. For instance, all other things being equal, one would expect lower mortality rates in a younger group than an older one. In the same vein, it is not proper to compare childhood mortality rates between low and high-income countries, and then to use the difference to assert that vaccines are beneficial. Low-income countries typically have issues with the availability of clean drinking water and nutritious foods. It is reasonable to suspect that poor water quality and scarce food is the principal reason for excess childhood deaths in these countries, not vaccine accessibility. Indeed, malnutrition has been identified as the most common underlying cause of death among children. Vaccines do not fix malnutrition.

Claim #4

“Communication regarding the potential benefits of vaccination can hopefully also improve the number of individuals accepting vaccination to protect against COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus disease.”

Response

We humbly submit that the solution to low uptake of the Covid shot is to communicate the truth rather than the “potential benefits.” The truth that people need to hear from the FDA is that the shot was a colossal failure at stopping ‘Covid’. Indeed, as one study found: “The higher the number of vaccines previously received, the higher the risk of contracting COVID-19.” The FDA also needs to admit that the Covid shot resulted in an unfathomable number of adverse events, including the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of people. Put bluntly, what we need from the FDA is an honest and sincere apology for the global disaster that they caused by promoting an unproven vaccine platform. Further, the FDA needs to immediately suspend approval of the Covid shots. If the FDA did these things, it is possible that the general public might regain some of its lost confidence.

Claim #5

“Contrary to a wealth of misinformation available on social media and the internet, data from various studies indicate that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic tens of millions of lives were saved by vaccination.” 

Response

In order to back up this claim, the authors provide two bar graphs (Figure 1 in their article), in which it is visually reported that the unvaccinated have a significantly higher mortality rate from Covid than do the vaccinated. The data used for this graph comes from the CDC, which defined “Vaccination status” as “A person vaccinated with at least a primary series and had SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigen detected on a respiratory specimen collected ≥14 days after verifiably completing the primary series of an FDA-authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccine.”

The term “primary series” refers to the minimum number of shots recommended to complete the manufacturer’s specifications. In the case of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA shots for Covid, the primary series includes two shots.

What this means is that if a person tested positive for Covid six months after receiving their first Covid shot but a few days before their second shot, and subsequently died, they were treated as unvaccinated because the test specimen was taken before the primary series was completed.

Likewise, if the test was taken 13 days after the second shot, and the person subsequently died, they were still regarded as unvaccinated because the specimen was taken less than 14 days after the second shot.

By excluding these time periods from their analysis they have arbitrarily increased the effectiveness of the vaccine. Indeed, it has been demonstrated mathematically that even by excluding just two weeks it is possible to make a saline shot (that does nothing) appear to have a vaccine efficacy of 95%. Worse than this, since the Covid shots have been demonstrated to cause an increase in infections especially during the two weeks following an injection, by excluding this period vaccine efficacy is falsely increased even further.

Furthermore, we have previously demonstrated that the claim that the Covid shots saved tens of millions of lives is impossible.

Even if the vaccine did save some lives, in order for it still to be a worthwhile product the lives lost on account of adverse events from the shot would need to be less than the lives saved. Sadly, this article in JAMA fails to mention this requirement, let alone provide any estimates of deaths caused by the shot. In contrast, we have shown that even by a conservative estimate the Covid shots had a higher fatality rate than Covid did.

Claim #6

“The current reversal of vaccine acceptance has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of excess deaths from COVID-19.”

Response

Again, the reality is the opposite of what is claimed here. There is plenty of evidence not only that the Covid shots actually increased the number of Covid cases, but also that they damage the immune system. Since there is no credible scientific evidence that the shots reduced the infection fatality rate of Covid in breakthrough cases, there is reason to conclude that declining vaccine acceptance saved lives, not the other way around.

Claim #7

“To reduce deaths, hospitalisation, and the burden on families and the health care system, all those directly interacting with individuals in a health care setting, ranging from front office staff to retail pharmacists to primary care physicians, need to focus at every appropriate opportunity on helping to ensure that individuals have the necessary information to make informed choices regarding vaccination, considering the benefits and risks.”

Response

We completely concur with this sentiment. However, what the authors have couched in this sentence is the falsehood that the FDA provided “necessary information,” encouraged people to make “informed choices,” and provided data on the “risks” of the Covid shots. Nothing could be further from the truth. Regarding giving the public access to information, the FDA “asked a federal judge for permission to make the public wait until the year 2096 to disclose all of the data it relied upon to license Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.” As for “informed choices,” the public was coerced into taking the shots or risk financial ruin (or worse in many other countries). Regarding “risks,” even in this article the authors mention nothing at all about any known risks of the Covid shot, let alone the unknown risks or long-term effects of this unproven technology. Instead, the entire article is written as if the FDA is still persuaded that the Covid shot is both safe and effective.

Claim #8

“COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus disease… [are] vaccine-preventable illnesses.”

Response

Unfortunately, none of these diseases can be prevented by our current vaccines. Not even after 17 years of research was anyone able to develop a vaccine for SARS-1. Studies have demonstrated that the flu shot is probably ineffective. The number of breakthrough cases of Covid was so large that the CDC stopped recording them. And even Dr Fauci himself recently admitted that “past unsuccessful attempts to elicit solid protection against mucosal respiratory viruses and to control the deadly outbreaks and pandemics they cause have been a scientific and public health failure that must be urgently addressed.”

Claim #9

“We will do our part at FDA by continuing to provide health care clinicians and the general public with timely and accurate information in plain language to help explain the benefits and risks of vaccination.”

Response

As the forgoing responses have demonstrated, the FDA is not in a position to “continue” doing what it has not yet done. At the very least they could begin by mentioning some of the “risks of vaccination.” 

In conclusion, one is left wondering if the authors are biased on account of financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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This can be found here.

What we have learned in the past year has made us rethink nearly every single aspect of what was written in that document.

Yes, we still stand by the title referring to the vaccine rollout as a “failed experiment”.

But we would now go much further.

The protocols for the Phase III trials which formed the basis of the authorisation of these products specified clinically irrelevant endpoints and were (in the main) conducted in healthy, younger subjects who were at negligible risk of serious illness. Consequently they were incapable of measuring the purported benefits.

Moreover, there is rapidly accumulating evidence of conduct designed to skew the results which many would regard as fraudulent. In any case, critical analysis of the results is not consistent with any benefit when all-cause outcomes are considered.

The so-called “real-world” studies conducted after rollout are riddled with obvious confounders and use a variety of statistical tricks - completely ignored by previously reputable academic journals - which significantly bias the results.

Hence the claims made by public health officials, politicians and media regarding safety and efficacy were without basis or merit.

The purported benefits claimed are starkly contradicted by population-level data suggesting significant increases in overall mortality and morbidity in heavily vaccinated populations.

In terms of safety, each week brings new data and potential biological mechanisms of harm suggesting that these inadequately tested and complex therapeutics are substantially more dangerous than originally claimed. It is not our intention in this piece to give a summary of the current state of knowledge relating to safety, the story around which is in any case evolving so rapidly it is difficult to keep up with developments.

The above would be concerning enough even if there had been an actual justifiable need for the vaccines in any segment of the population. However, even that prior assumption - which we had (albeit tentatively) accepted in the case of the elderly or otherwise “vulnerable” - must now be challenged, because our further research has led to the following conclusions in respect of the purported “pandemic”.

There never was a lethal pandemic of any pathogen which was “risk additive” to the already existing causes of respiratory infections. This is the case whether or not there was something some might regard as “novel” circulating, whether “it” came from a lab or was zoonotic in origin, and whether “it” originated in China or elsewhere.

Whatever “it” was which caused the various tests developed and rolled out at insane speed and cost to turn “positive”, there is ample evidence that “it” had become widely spread across several continents months before the emergency was declared, without apparently causing any excess mortality or reports of clusters of unusual clinical presentations anywhere (other than the cases claimed for Wuhan).

The null hypothesis, therefore, is that it was the declaration of the emergency itself, and the cataclysmic changes to health and social care consequent to that, which caused any and all the harms which those responsible are attempting to attribute to a novel virus.

There is no convincing evidence that the spread of any pathogen - as opposed to the spread of waves of fear, panic and medical dystopia - is directly linked to waves of fatal illnesses.

Had the testing not been available, and had doctors continued to treat patients with respiratory infections on an individual basis according to their presenting symptoms (consistent with decades-old practice), we do not believe that anything unusual would have been noticed, as what was happening before the “emergency” (ie. nothing of note) would have continued thereafter.

In other words, had we done nothing, there would have been no 2020 pandemic mentioned in the history books, using any reasonable definition of the word “pandemic”.

It follows from the above that there was no need or justification for the rollout of any novel therapeutics, including the products termed “vaccines”.

Rather than asking the question “were the vaccines needed as a response to the pandemic?” we should instead be asking “was the pandemic needed for the vaccines?”.

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In a previous article we discussed the large spring 2020 spike in mortality reported for New York City (NYC). This spike comprises an extraordinary 26,000 unexpected deaths over an 11-week period, a much greater figure than would be expected based on experience from the Covid outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, as explained in that article. Our conclusion was that “something else beyond Covid… was responsible for a significant majority of the excess deaths.”[1] Accordingly, we suggested a few possible alternatives, namely “iatrogenic harms, psychological effects, neglect, panic, ventilators and sedatives, and policies….” Since publishing that article we have been digging deeper into what might have happened in NYC. After many discussions, and after poring over data, we have come to the point where we are forced to consider the uncomfortable possibility that there is another alternative: something is wrong with the data itself. In other words, there is reason to believe that the actual number and timing of the deaths in NYC in the spring of 2020 is different from the official government mortality records.

We are not currently in a position to prove that the numbers are wrong. Nor do we purport to know if the data is false on account of deliberate fraud. Despite our best efforts, the information required to certainly establish either point has thus far escaped our possession. What we do know is that the data that we have been able to obtain (whether from publicly available sources or by freedom of information requests) is incongruent with itself. Accordingly, we here present eight reasons why we think the NYC mortality data for spring 2020 might be false.

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1. Compressed Timeframe of the Excess Mortality

First, if human factors (such as panic) and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs, such as lockdowns) caused any excess deaths, we would expect to observe excess mortality for as long as either lasted. At the very least we would expect to see the excess slowly return to zero over time as the effects reach their limit of destructive influence. This did not happen in NYC. Rather, the official data would have us believe that over 26,000 more deaths than seen in the previous year in NYC happened in one very brief 11-week period in the spring of 2020. The following graph demonstrates this vividly. 

As can be seen from Figure 1 above, after multiple months of a relatively flat baseline (163 deaths/day), a massive spike in mortality abruptly started on March 17, 2020, took only 21 days to reach its peak (1200 deaths on April 7), and then returned to baseline (153 deaths/day) in only 44 days. The entire wave lasted just shy of 10 weeks. There are three aspects about the above graph that makes the data seem implausible: the increase in all-cause deaths was too rapid, the peak was too high, and the return to normal too fast.  It seems unlikely that all of the factors that we mentioned in our previous article could have combined to produce a wave of this nature.

Although we demonstrated in our previous article on NYC [1] that the number of deaths attributed to Covid was unduly high, yet it is instructive to remove from Figure 1 all the deaths that were attributed to Covid. As can be seen below in Figure 2, we find an identical pattern: months of an almost flat baseline followed by a steep increase and then an abrupt return to normal. The only difference is that the peak is lower. 

It is difficult to comprehend why there should be only six weeks of excess deaths in a year that saw ongoing restrictions & closures, civil unrest, healthcare avoidance, and myriad mental health challenges.

2. Simultaneous Rise in Deaths Across All Adult Age Groups

A second reason why we suspect the veracity of the NYC mortality data is that both the sharpness of the 2020 spring wave and its phenomenal height were simultaneous across every age bracket. This may be seen in the following 2 graphs:

As one would expect, the peak increases with each successive older age group. What is unexpected and notable, however, is that the spike in deaths happened simultaneously across all age groups. Unless these deaths were caused by an external agent (such as buildings collapsing), we would expect the weak and frail elderly to succumb sooner than those still in the prime of their lives.[2]

3. Simultaneous Rise in Mortality in All Settings

Third, the same odd trend was found even if the data is broken down by place of death.

Is it possible that hospitals, nursing homes, and private residences all experienced such an unprecedented spike in all-cause mortality at exactly the same time? What mechanism is there to accomplish such a phenomenal event? Existing models of viral transmission cannot be tweaked sufficiently to create a matching mortality profile.[3] Neither do changes to hospital protocols typically cause massive increases in deaths at home, unless it involves utter negligence on the part of paramedics and ambulances responding to home emergencies. 

4. Mass-Casualty Event Without Explanation

Fourth, according to the official data, New York City experienced 34,451 deaths in a period of time when only 10,732 people would normally have died, resulting in an unimaginable 24,719 extra deaths (See figure 1). It seems unlikely that all the hospitals and funeral homes in New York City could have handled three times their normal capacity for 10 weeks straight, let alone a peak that reached more than seven times normal. Furthermore, if these deaths did happen as recorded and an observer with no knowledge of the pandemic narrative was asked to comment on likely causes, it is almost certain he or she would suggest a mass casualty event such as an earthquake, an asteroid strike, a terrorist attack, a large-scale release of a toxin, or even a failure in the water treatment system. It may be helpful to examine this claim a little closer.

NYC experienced a non-natural mass casualty event in September of 2001. Therefore it is appropriate to compare the 2020 event with the devastating destruction of the two towers in the World Trade Center. We begin with a graph of all-cause deaths for those aged 20 to 44 that spans from 2001 to 2020, and which therefore covers both events.

As can be seen from Figure 6, the comparison between what happened on  “9/11″ and in the spring of 2020 is eerily identical, albeit the event in 2001 had a more vertical spike. Nevertheless, both events saw a massive and sudden increase in death that peaked far above normal, followed by a rapid decline back to normal. In the case of “9/11” the explanation is that two large sky-scrapers crumbled while occupied. The problem is that no similar mass-casualty event was recorded in 2020. If such an event did happen, it has thus far escaped detection.

Incidentally, figure 6 has the potential to make the “9/11” event appear more cataclysmic than the 2020 spring wave. Although it was worse for the 20 to 44 age group, it was definitely not worse overall, as may be seen by the following graph which includes all age groups:

Are we to believe that what happened in NYC in the spring of 2020 was so much worse than what happened on “9/11” that it caused 21 times more excess deaths among NYC residents (1,176^[4] to 24,719) – all without any event capable of causing such unprecedented carnage?

5. Discrepancy Between Mortality and Hospital Activity

Fifth, if in fact the daily all-cause mortality suddenly shot up to 738% above normal, and then fell precipitously back to baseline, we should expect to find evidence of this in hospital records and ambulance dispatches. Sadly and unexpectedly, the data seems to imply the exact opposite.

In Figure 8, the number of emergency department visits (red) plummeted at the exact same time that the phenomenal and unprecedented wave of deaths (black) was supposed to be happening. The total number of patients being transported by an ambulance also dropped, albeit not to the same extent. 

Furthermore, not only did emergency department visits drop, but outpatient visits also plunged substantially and at the same time. Even inpatient admissions witnessed a moderate decline. We demonstrate this by looking at data for 2 particular hospitals: Maimonides Medical Center (one of the city’s largest private hospitals), and Elmhurst Hospital, (which received wide media coverage about being overrun with patients in late March 2020).

During the 10 week spike in mortality, 21,003 deaths occurred in  hospitals (Figure 5: hospital inpatient + Emergency/outpatient). This is 15,065 more deaths than expected based on the baseline average. Are we to believe that at a time when Emergency visits plunged (from 12,000 per day to less than 5,000), ambulance transports dropped (from about 3,000 to 1,500 per day), and outpatient and inpatient visits also tanked, that 15,065 extra people suddenly died in a hospital? Although the numbers are mathematically possible, it would require that at the peak of the wave the great majority of people either already in hospital or coming to a hospital died. That scenario sounds implausible to us. If it did happen, it most certainly was not caused by a respiratory virus like Covid, which has an infection fatality rate less than 0.2%. [5] At the least, such an appalling hospital record should require an honest inquiry.  

6. Discrepancy Between Mortality and Hospital Occupancy 

Sixth, despite the fact that hospital inpatients accounted for the bulk of the deaths (figure 5), bed occupancy levels in NYC hospitals showed only a minor increase, and never reached capacity, as may be seen from the following graph: 

The reason behind why the above graph starts abruptly on March 26, 2020 is that the data is suspiciously unavailable for any dates before this. Despite the glaring omission, it is still possible to observe that there is no evidence of hospitals being overrun with patients during the phenomenal spike in the number of deaths.

Furthermore, data obtained directly from the agency that operates the city’s public hospital system show a marked decline in Elmhurst Hospital’s ICU occupancy rates during the spring wave, a pattern that distinctly diverged from that of previous years:

At the risk of being repetitive, are we to believe that 15 thousand extra deaths occurred in NYC hospitals while total bed occupancy levels dropped? Of course, it is possible that beds were empty because so many dead people were being discharged. The problem with this explanation is that since Covid is given as the leading cause of death during the spike, and since Covid hospitalizations began about the same time as the spike in mortality,[6] the only way for discharges to remain ahead of bed occupancy is if those that died remained in a hospital bed for less than one day.  However, official data for NYC informs us that the median duration of hospitalization was 6 days for Covid patients, or 8 days for those that died. Furthermore, Covid patients regularly survived 3 weeks before dying. [6, 7, 8] Why then is the massive spike in mortality not reflected in bed occupancy levels? 

An alternative explanation for how discharges prevented bed occupancy from being overrun is that the bulk of people dying were those that had been in hospital already for some time before the spike occurred. That, however, would implicate hospitals for either fraudulent coding of Covid deaths or utter mismanagement of existing inpatients. 

7. Unparalleled Scale Compared to Other Major U.S. Cities

Seventh, the magnitude and shape of the spring mortality curve in NYC is significantly worse than what happened in any other major U.S. metropolitan area, as can be seen by the following graph. 

Despite the fact that the 5 other counties included in figure 13 experienced somewhat similar circumstances (news of Covid, lockdowns, changes to hospital protocols, panic, etc.), the excess mortality of the spring wave in NYC stands 14 times worse than all the others. This seems questionable. 

8. Unexpectedly High Mortality in Younger Adults

Eighth and last, as can be seen from Figures 2 and 5 above, the number of younger people that perished in the NYC spring wave of 2020 is unexpectedly high. Covid did not typically kill younger people.[9] Nor should iatrogenic factors have caused unprecedented numbers of deaths in these age brackets. Nevertheless, the official data blames almost all the hospital inpatient deaths of residents in the age group of 25 to 54 on Covid. 

The implausibility of this can be further demonstrated by comparing what happened in the rest of the USA with NYC for this age group.

 As can be seen from Table 1, more than one quarter of all the deaths attributed to Covid in 25 to 54 year old Americans happened in New York City, despite the fact that only 3% of Americans in this age group lived in the City in 2020. 

Conclusion

In summary, we have outlined eight different reasons why we suspect that the data surrounding the 2020 spring mortality wave in NYC might be incorrect. They are:

1. It is unlikely that Covid combined with iatrogenic and other factors could have caused a wave of mortality as recorded.

2. It is implausible that every age category should experience a spike in deaths simultaneously.

3. It is improbable that deaths occurred simultaneously independent of place of death.

4. The magnitude and steepness of the spike in deaths is indicative of an unparalleled non-natural mass casualty event. But no such event has been detected.

5. Records of hospital visits and ambulance transports do not correlate with what would be expected had the massive wave of mortality happened as stated.

6. Occupancy levels of hospital and ICU beds are not what one would expect if such a wave of death happened.

7. What happened in NYC is significantly worse than similar cities in the U.S..

8. Far too many younger people are reported to have died in a very short time frame, and to have died from Covid.

Therefore, we call upon the authorities to release basic daily hospital data so that admissions can be matched with bed occupancy, deaths and discharges. Death certificates should also be released in order to prove the number of deaths occurring each day and at each place of death. Officials must substantiate the timing and magnitude of the event with complete datasets, supported by records. 

Finally, if the data are correct, it does not bode well for how hospitals, congregate settings, and ambulance services were managed. We believe the people of New York City deserve a full explanation for how so many people died in such a short time.

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In the previous article we began an investigation of the official data regarding Covid mortality by looking at and comparing several variables by state in the USA. [1]  It will be recalled that we found three significant trends:

• Cumulative Covid deaths (CCD) by state varied linearly with the 2019 crude mortality rate (CMR) of each state.

• CCD decreased slightly with increasing latitude.

• CCD represented a small portion of regular mortality rates.

These observations strongly imply that Covid deaths should be categorised as part of the baseline of normal deaths, rather than as the driving force behind excess deaths.

In this article we shall continue looking for trends in Covid mortality, first by looking at the data from Canada and then, finally, by looking at various regions around the world.

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Canada 

The discovery that cumulative Covid deaths decreased with increasing latitude naturally encouraged a review of Canadian data to see if the trend continued north of the US border. We begin with a bar graph comparing Covid mortality in Canada with crude mortality rates by province.

As can be seen from the above graph, CCD was, on average, about 4.5% of CMR. It will be recalled from the previous article [1], that in the USA the ratio was 11%. Some people attributed the lower Covid mortality rate in Canada as compared with the USA to stricter lockdowns. However, as we saw when comparing states in the USA, it is not necessarily appropriate to do straight comparisons of this sort without first considering other more important factors. For example, the difference might be principally due to different mortality rates. Or it could be caused by the more northern latitudes. 

Did the trend in the U.S. of decreasing Covid mortality with increasing latitude carry on into Canada? To answer this question, we plot CCD against latitude for each state or province in the US and Canada. Since the vast majority of Canadians live in cities situated within 100 miles of the US border, latitudes used here do not represent the geographical centre of each province, but rather the centre of the largest one or two cities in each province. The results are shown below.

In the chart above (Fig 15), it is clear that all ten Canadian provinces continue the trend of lower CCD with higher latitudes. Of particular interest is the fact that after Canada was included, the ‘best-fit’ line forced Alaska (not shown) to become an outlier. Hawaii (also not shown) is still an outlier off to the left. In both cases this was expected: we did not think that latitude factors affecting mortality rates could be consistent in the extreme north (Alaska) or in the middle of an ocean (Hawaii). Therefore excluding both outliers, regression analysis gives R-squared equal to 43%, which is moderate, and implies that the visible correlation is probably of significance. 

It would be interesting to include Mexican provinces in the picture to see if the trend continued to the south as well. However, we have reason to suspect that the Mexican data is more unreliable than elsewhere.

It is not intuitively obvious why Covid deaths should vary with latitude, especially if (as claimed by many sources) these deaths were caused by a novel virus to which there was no pre-existing natural immunity. Furthermore, it is surprising that the variation should be negative (decreasing death rates with increasing latitude). To explore this trend further we plotted the crude mortality rate against latitude, to see if there were any trends in general health as one moves north. The results are shown below.

Figure 16 reveals no obvious pattern or trends in the relationship between CMR and latitude. If we combine this information with what we observed in the previous article [1], this gives us the interesting phenomenon that:

1. CCD is linearly proportional to CMR

2. CCD is linearly related to latitude, but CMR is not

3. CMR is linearly related to median age, but CCD is not.

We have already established that the linear relationship between CCD and CMR cannot be causal: people dying in 2019 cannot determine who died in 2020 and beyond. This suggests that the pattern of Covid deaths varying with latitude is independent of general health (crude mortality) and instead has to do with other factors. It is possible that the apparent correlation might simply be by chance, for example, by Simpson’s paradox.[2] To determine if there is a true correlation, and what factors – if any – might have caused it, would require a closer look at the data. For instance, did the south typically have more Covid deaths only in the summer months, and if so, why? Does the trend persist if more localised county data is considered? Is there a correlation between latitude and average vitamin D levels that parallels Covid mortality? [3, 4] Might something apparently as obscure as the amount of tea people drink have contributed to this phenomenon? [5] Whatever the answer is, it is outside the scope of this paper. 

The following three questions remain unanswered, and warrant more study: 

1. Are there any particular reasons why Hawaii was an outlier in terms of CCD vs CMR? 

2. Do those reasons account for why the northernmost corners of the continental USA were also outliers? 

3. Why did Covid mortality rates decrease with increasing latitude?

Worldwide trends 

Were these trends with respect to Covid mortality also seen in other countries, or are they unique to North America? We begin with a look at CCD vs CMR, where we find the same distinct trend, albeit not quite as strong as in North America. 

Figure 17 (above) excludes countries for which data reporting was thought to be particularly unreliable. It accounts for 5.2 billion people (66% of the world’s population), and 6.3 million reported Covid deaths (93% of all reported Covid mortality). Despite covering a period of three-and-a-half years, and representing billions of people, vastly different recording protocols, and distinctly different age profiles, the general trend is still observable. 

The yearly average fatality rate of Covid globally is 0.02% (6,949,436 reported Covid deaths ÷ 7,975,105,156 people ÷ 3.5 years), which represents only a small fraction of normal deaths in a given year. 

Although Figure 17 might at first appear to be somewhat cluttered, the following observations can be made: 

1. Other than Peru, countries are reasonably clustered by continent so that, despite the fact that some countries had substantially higher Covid mortality rates,[6] one would be hard pressed to point out which country was which, were they not labelled. 

2. African countries (excepting South Africa and Tunisia) cluster in what is basically a horizontal line, suggesting that Covid in Africa was independent of crude mortality rates. This was true despite a three-fold increase in CMR between countries. Total Covid deaths in this continent amounted to about 0.01% of the population, or a yearly average of 0.003%, which is a tiny fraction of normal deaths. 

3. Covid rates in Asia and Australia, including New Zealand but excluding China (which is not shown), also form something of a horizontal line, again suggesting independence of CMR in these countries. It also suggests independence of government responses or vaccine uptake, since these varied widely. Covid deaths totalled about 0.06% of the population in these countries, or a yearly average of 0.017%. 

4. North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East in general had Covid death rates that were proportional to their respective crude mortality rates. 

If we exclude African and Asian countries from the graph (as these showed no correlation with CMR), and if we exclude Peru (as a wild outlier), the plot of the remaining countries is as follows: 

The following observations may be made from Figure 18: 

1. There is a near world-wide trend that total Covid mortality is linearly related to the 2019 CMR, despite a seven-fold increase in CMR. This implies that people continued to die at similar rates as they had prior to the Covid era. 

2. The correlation here (R² = 47%) is not as strong as in the USA (R² = 67%). All things being considered, the correlation is still remarkably high. 

3. Whereas in the USA the ratio of total Covid mortality to CMR typically increased with CMR (rising from 11% to 11.2%), for these countries this trend was slightly reversed, decreasing from 8% to 7.7%. This difference is, however, not statistically significant, given the variations from the best-fit line. 

To see if there was any correlation between the size of the population of a country and CCD, a plot was made that included the same list of countries. The results are shown below. 

Figure 19 reveals no obvious relationship between the number of people living in a country and CCD rates. If Covid had been a novel virus with an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 1% (as claimed by some), if neither lockdowns nor vaccines worked (as the evidence suggests), and if we allow three-and-a-half years for the novel virus to become endemic, then the above graph would have shown all countries falling on a horizontal line at CCD = 286. That this is the case may be proven as follows:

First, the equation for calculating CCD that we have used is:

If the entire population was exposed to Covid by the end of June 2023, then:

Inserting equation (2) into (1) gives:

Plugging a value of 1% for IFR into equation (3) gives CCD = 286, independent of population. In Figure 19 the countries in North and South America lie on an almost horizontal line at about CCD = 80, which would correspond to an IFR of 0.28%. Asia, including Australia and New Zealand, also approximates a horizontal line at about CCD = 18, (IFR = 0.06%). European countries, on the other hand, are scattered and show no trends. It is unlikely that the same disease could vary so drastically in its IFR simply by crossing borders or by travelling from one continent to the next (especially since it is claimed that the variants were common across the world). It is more likely that the term ‘Covid mortality’ was tracking something else other than a novel virus, such as deaths from bacterial pneumonia.[7, 8] Either way, it would appear that all the fuss, efforts, restrictions, and doses of Covid shots in America and Europe were a colossal failure: they only served to increase Covid deaths. 

World Latitude Considerations

Lastly, we plot cumulative Covid deaths against the latitude of each country that we have thus far included in our analysis. The results are shown below. 

As can be seen from Figure 20, Asia (including Australia and New Zealand) and Africa reveal no correlation between Covid deaths and latitude. This was expected, since we already saw that Covid mortality in both regions was uniformly tiny. 

Countries in the Middle East show a weak trend (R² = 19%) opposite to that found in North America, so that here Covid mortality generally increased with increasing latitude. The rate of increase was about 1.7 extra Covid deaths per 100,000 people per year per degree latitude northward. In our discussion of this phenomenon in the USA and Canada, we asked whether vitamin D or tea might have contributed to the trend. It is conceivable that Middle Eastern countries have cultural practices and diets that tend to reverse the influence of these two factors relative to what happens in North America. However, investigating this further is beyond the scope of this article. 

It is also observed from the above graph that when South American countries are compared to Canada and the USA, any trends in Covid mortality by latitude disappear. The yellow dots in Figure 20 appear randomly scattered. 

The countries in Europe, however, do show some vague semblance of a trend. To identify this, we plot just European countries. The graph is shown below.

As can be seen from Figure 21, there is a very weak trend (R² = 4.9%) of decreasing Covid mortality with increasing latitude. While in Canada and the USA the trend was about two fewer Covid deaths for every degree of latitude northwards, in Europe the trend was only half as much. The increased scatter in Europe may reflect the fact that there are many countries with noticeably different cultures and diets, whereas in North America there are only two countries with somewhat similar cultures. However, the matter needs to be studied further before anything particular is affirmed. 

Conclusions 

We have examined Covid mortality during the Covid era and found several interesting patterns, which are summarised as follows: 

• Except for Asia and Africa, there was a strong correlation between cumulative Covid deaths in any region and the 2019 crude mortality rate. 

• This correlation was so strong that it dwarfed any outcomes from human interventions taken by governments during the period. 

• In those countries where Covid was proportional to crude mortality, Covid mortality amounted to between 8% and 11% of the previous crude mortality rate. 

• Covid mortality is a small fraction of regular mortality.

• This proportional correlation strongly implies that deaths attributed to Covid belong in the expected baseline of all-cause mortality data. 

• In those countries where Covid was not proportional to crude mortality, Covid mortality was very minor. In Africa it amounted to about 0.003% of the population per year. In Asia it was slightly higher, at 0.017%. 

• The world-wide average fatality rate of Covid was 0.02% of the population per year. This is a small fraction of normal yearly deaths. 

• There was a weak correlation between Covid mortality and latitude. The relationship was negative in both North America (two fewer Covid deaths per 100,000 people per year per degree north) and Europe (one less Covid death per degree north), and positive in the Middle East (1.7 more Covid deaths per degree north). The trend was not discernible in Africa, Asia, or South America. It is not clear what caused this trend, nor how statistically significant it is. 

• Covid mortality had different trends on different continents. A population-based analysis that assumed it took 3.5 years for Covid to become endemic suggested that Covid may have had an average fatality rate of 0.06% in Asia, whereas in North and South America it might have been as high as 0.28%. 

•  If there were any positive outcomes from all the various government attempts to control and restrain Covid (i.e. lockdowns or Covid shots), the outcomes could not be discerned from the data. 

• The extra Covid mortality in places such as North and South America, and in Europe, relative to the rest of the world suggests that ‘Covid mortality’ statistics were not tracking deaths from a novel virus, but something more common, such as bacterial pneumonia. 

• It is possible that all the efforts to contain Covid actually had a negative effect, and instead increased mortality. 

• It is possible that the extra deaths attributed to Covid in America and Europe simply reflect different protocols for documenting a Covid death.

In summary, if we take official Covid mortality data at face value, all the patterns and evidence argue that if governments and the media had never mentioned Covid, nobody would have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

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After three and a half years of unbridled and myopic media coverage of a single disease, coupled with unprecedented availability of data on that disease, it is appropriate to ask if any world-wide patterns of interest have surfaced concerning Covid mortality.

Unfortunately, the term ‘Covid mortality’ must be used with caution on account of the numerous problems with the publicly available data. A few of the more notable problems are: 

• Different countries used different laboratory protocols for determining Covid cases.[1] It is not clear how this affected official numbers. 

• What constituted a ‘Covid’ death varied by country and even within countries.[2] The effect of this is also uncertain. 

• The PCR test commonly used for determining Covid cases is not capable of establishing whether or not a person is actually infected with a virus, but it is capable of giving false positives.[3, 4] How often and to what extent this influenced Covid data is unknown. 

• It is not at all certain how often Covid was the causal agent of death in those so labelled.

• Some countries performed mass testing of their populations while other countries did not.[5] How this contributed to the numbers in the data is enigmatic. 

• The percentage of Covid cases that were sequenced in a laboratory varied drastically between countries, and over time.[6] Whether or not this caused differences in the accuracy of the data from one state to the next is unknown. 

Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that previous to the Covid-era mortality data usually took a year or two to be processed and published. No sooner had Covid garnered international attention, however, than there was an astonishing change, such that data was suddenly published almost in real time. As recently as 2019, the CDC admitted that “there is a trade-off between timeliness and accuracy of… estimates.” And, “testing data are often not available for up to two years after the end of an influenza season.” [7] Since it is unclear how this sudden improvement was accomplished during the Covid era, it is also unclear how accurate the data surrounding Covid mortality actually is.

Naturally, the net result of all of these factors (let alone other factors that we have neither discerned nor mentioned) working together and at the same time, is that Covid mortality data must be considered dubious at best. Also, any conclusions arising from comparisons between countries or regions should be taken with a grain of salt, and possibly even viewed as either sketchy or meaningless. 

Notwithstanding how difficult it is to establish  how many deaths were caused by Covid, let alone how the SARS-CoV-2 virus factored into those deaths, the term ‘Covid mortality’ might still mean something, for it is almost certain that most deaths attributed to Covid do indeed correspond to a particular individual who died somewhere, for some reason, to the sorrow of friends and family. It is also likely that there were world-wide trends in the way the data was handled and processed. For this reason, and for the purpose of this article, we here define ‘Covid mortality’ strictly as ‘official published tallies of deaths attributed to Covid’. The goal here is to determine if anything can be learned from the (flawed) data surrounding ‘Covid mortality’.  

To accomplish this, we begin by taking a close look at two neighbouring mid-western states within the USA. From there we will expand outward to consider a cluster of five neighbouring states. After this we will again broaden our view, this time to examine all the states in the USA. Next we will add Canada into the mix; and, finally, we will consider the world at large. To make the subject matter more manageable, we have chosen to publish our work in two parts. This first article will focus solely on the USA.

Two neighbouring states 

Many studies have been undertaken to examine how successful lockdowns were at curtailing ‘Covid mortality.’ The general consensus of the articles we have encountered is that lockdowns had no discernible influence on the trajectory of Covid.[8] In a previous article,[9] we demonstrated this visually with a graph that plotted Covid cases in two mid-western states, namely North and South Dakota. We chose these two states because they are adjacent to each other, enjoy relatively similar climates, have comparable population densities, and, significantly, took divergent paths in responding to Covid. North Dakota chose to lock down somewhat, while South Dakota opted for no lockdowns at all. Despite what some might have expected, the curves were almost identical for the two states. 

The above graph, however, only covered the first year of the Covid-era. It is appropriate, therefore, to ask how these two states fared in the following years. This is an especially relevant question since matters affecting health frequently take years to surface. If we include the first three and a half years of data, and plot cumulative Covid deaths instead of new cases, the graph still shows remarkable parallels between these neighbouring states, as shown below.

From this graph (Figure 2) we see that, beginning at about the time that the Covid shots were rolled out to the public, South Dakota took a slight turn for the worse relative to its northern cousin. Were the Covid shots the driving force behind this shift in trends? Based on the foregoing graphs, we might be inclined to think that since South Dakota opted to avoid lockdowns, the residents might also have chosen to avoid getting the jabs and so had more Covid deaths. Actually, the opposite happened, as may be seen from the next graph. 

Although South Dakota did not lock down at all, the people were more willing to roll up their sleeves and get the jab than were those to the north. Despite the extra doses, however, South Dakota reported a higher rate of Covid deaths. Does this mean that the extra shots made Covid worse in South Dakota? We can test this hypothesis by bringing a few other mid-western states into the comparison, to see if the same sort of trends happened there as well. We begin by adding Minnesota. 

In Figure 4 we see that except for the first few months Minnesota had lower rates of Covid deaths than either North or South Dakota. If, in fact, higher vaccine uptake resulted in increased Covid deaths, we should expect that Minnesota (which had the lowest Covid deaths per capita of the three) should also have had the lowest vaccine uptake of these three states. Again, the opposite happened.

More Minnesotans were jabbed, and yet fewer died of Covid than in South Dakota. We are forced to conclude, therefore, that the idea that more Covid shots drove increasing numbers of Covid deaths in South Dakota relative to North Dakota was an overly simplistic assertion. It does not even reflect what happened in three states. We could carry on adding states into the mix, comparing population density, vaccine uptake, stringency of lockdown measures, and so forth, but all we would find is that there appears to be no simple correlation between these variables. 

Why all the confusion? Is it possible that despite all the fanfare, cost and expense, lockdowns and vaccines did not play a decisive role in determining Covid outcomes? We would be hasty to jump to such a conclusion based on this limited study, of course, except for the fact that multiple researchers have come to these exact conclusions: lockdowns did not noticeably change the trajectory of the virus.[9] Neither did the Covid shots prevent transmission or death.[10] Nonetheless, it is probably best for the moment to conclude that it is not possible to use  a comparison between states to establish whether or not lockdowns and Covid shots decreased Covid deaths. Such a conclusion is unexpected. 

So the question now before us is, how do we account for the variations in Covid death rates between different states in America? Is it even possible to find an explanation? This question is certainly not new. Shortly after governments and news outlets began flooding the internet, airwaves and newspapers with daily dashboards of Covid cases and deaths, even casual observers began to notice differences in the case rates between different countries, regions, states, and provinces. These differences were noticed because they were significant. Not surprisingly, they posed a challenge that epidemiologists found difficult to explain. [11, 12] They also caused a lot of speculation, as in the debate over whether or not Sweden did the right thing by refusing to lock down their country. 

Five neighbouring states in the American Midwest 

It is important when seeking to compare mortality rates that the regions being compared share similar characteristics. For example, a state with an older population such as Maine, with a median age of 45, will have a higher all-cause mortality rate than a younger state such as Utah, with a median age of only 32. [13] When comparing mortality rates between states, therefore, age-adjusted mortality rates are sometimes used. However, since we are seeking to explore differences in Covid mortality between states, it might be better for our purposes to use crude mortality rates (CMR). 

Crude mortality is defined as the total deaths in a specified location divided by the total population. For ease of presentation, we calculate CMR per 100,000 people in the population as follows: 

Crude mortality encompasses every death in a region, which means that it functionally takes into account every possible aspect of mortality, including the median age, general health, availability of health care, and prevalence of disabilities. It would even include how dangerous the roads generally are or how reckless the average driver is, although it would be difficult to tease such a minor factor out of the data. 

In order to compare Covid deaths with crude mortality rates, we define CCD as the cumulative Covid deaths in a particular region per 100,000 people, averaged per year: 

The denominator 3.5 accounts for the fact that the data used to calculate total Covid deaths spanned a window of 3.5 years (1 January 2020 to 30 June 2023). Thus, CCD is a yearly average of deaths due to Covid, in the same way that CMR is a yearly average of all deaths. Below we plot the CMR in 2019 alongside the CCD for five midwestern states (Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Iowa). 

The first thing that stands out is that despite all the attention given to Covid, it represents only a small fraction of total deaths in a normal year. A second notable fact is that there is an almost 20% increase in CMR between Minnesota and Iowa. Third, there seems to be something of a trend, such that the higher the CMR was in 2019 for a particular state, the higher the published Covid deaths were during the Covid-era in that same region. 

All states in the USA 

To test if there really was a trend between CMR and CCD, we made a scatter-graph of all 50 states plus DC. The results are shown below:

As can be seen in Figure 7, there is a noticeable trend of increasing CCD with increasing CMR. Furthermore, it is also observed that there are six states that distinctly fall below what appears to be the norm for the other states. These six states (Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine) somewhat obscure the trend. Interestingly, five of these six states are found in the extreme northern corners of continental USA. The sixth is an island in the Pacific. This unexpected trend suggests that there may be an association between Covid deaths and geography. To test this hypothesis, we plotted the data again, this time colour-coding states according to the Health & Human Services (HHS) region to which they belong. A map of the ten HHS regions in the United States is shown below.

The new colour-coded graph is shown below. 

Figure 9 reveals a few patterns worth mentioning. HHS regions 2, 6 and 9 were typically high, while HHS regions 1 and 10 were typically low. States in any given HHS region tend to follow the same upward trend. To demonstrate this further, we plotted the data yet again, this time removing Hawaii and also HHS regions 1 and 10 from the graph. Of course, there are hazards involved in removing data from a scatter plot, not least of which is the potential to bias one’s conclusions. However, it is justified here on two grounds: first, we are not randomly removing outliers to force a correlation where there is none; and second, we are attempting to eliminate the influence of the observed geographical anomaly from the picture. We freely admit that the reasons for the anomaly are unclear. 

The 40 states included in the above graph show a remarkable linear relationship between CCD and CMR, with a R-squared value of 67% (high fit) for the regression line. The following observations are noted: 

1. CCD varied almost three-fold between states, from a low of 48 (Utah) to a high of 142 (Mississippi), revealing a massive difference in how many deaths per capita in a particular state were attributed to Covid. 

2. Despite this significant difference in Covid deaths, there was a consistent and strong linear relationship between total Covid deaths and the 2019 crude mortality rate. 

3. According to the best-fit line, CCD started at about 11% of CMR and ended at 11.2%. The increase is minor, however, and may be nothing more than statistical noise.

From these observations, and bearing in mind that we removed a few outliers, the following conclusions are suggested: 

1. It is inconceivable that mortality rates in 2019 caused Covid deaths in the following years (2020-2023). People can only die once. Therefore the correlation seen here cannot possibly be a direct causal relationship. 

2. If there is a relationship between CCD and CMR, it is most likely because whatever influenced how many people died in 2019 also influenced how many were going to be labelled a Covid death in the years after 2019. 

3. Since Covid deaths align with CMR despite significant differences in lockdown policies, it strongly implies that any effectiveness of the NPIs was completely dwarfed by the correlation with pre-existing mortality rates. 

4. Likewise, since there were wide differences in vaccine uptake between states, it strongly implies that the effectiveness of the Covid shots, if any, was also dwarfed by pre-existing mortality rates. 

5. It is not recommended to make any conclusions concerning the effectiveness of NPIs by comparing Covid deaths between states; other methods should be employed and taken into consideration. 

6. Since Covid death rates are somewhat correlated to HHS regions, it is possible that things particular to each region may have contributed to the variations in Covid death rates. For instance, it may be that health regions in the USA used different testing protocols (different primers in PCR tests, different cycle thresholds), different procedures for defining a Covid death (Covid symptoms required or not, cancer deaths called a Covid death or not, etc), and different treatment protocols in hospitals (ventilator use, early treatments, etc). This is a matter for further study.

7. Comparisons between states that are in different HHS regions are subject to unknown factors that should be discovered before any conclusions are asserted. 

8. It is not clear why the two extreme northern corners of the USA (north-east and north-west) should both be outliers. This is a matter for further study. 

9. The fact that the ratio of CCD to CMR rises slightly with CMR might suggest that older populations generally fared worse than younger populations.[14] 

In order to dig a little deeper into the last suggestion above, and also to see if the correlation between Covid mortality and crude mortality was simply on account of the age profile of each state, we next plotted Covid mortality against median age. The results are shown below.

As can be seen from Figure 11, there is no observable correlation between median age and Covid mortality. Rather, there appears to be only random scatter. Regression analysis confirms this, for it gives R² = 1%, which is extremely low. This result was unexpected, since it is commonly accepted that Covid mortality generally increases with age. One possible explanation for this null result is that so many older people survived the Covid era unscathed that any state-wide correlation between Covid mortality and median age was lost. For comparison purposes, we next plot the crude mortality rate against median age. The graph is as follows: 

The above graph reveals a medium correlation (R²=38.8%) between CMR and median age. This was expected, since age profile is a strong determinant of crude mortality rates. The fact that Covid mortality is both linearly proportional to CMR and age-dependent, yet shows no correlation with median age is a strong indicator that the relationship between Covid mortality and crude mortality is a matter of significance. 

The linear correlation between CCD and CMR indicates that the idea put forth by multiple governments, modellers and media sources in March 2020 that we were faced with a novel deadly virus against which we had no natural immunity or treatments is certainly false. Had Covid killed 1% of the population indiscriminately, as modelled [15], we would not expect to find a strong correlation between Covid deaths and CMR. Instead, Covid deaths would be proportional to the population, meaning that we would see horizontal lines on our graphs of CCD vs CMR. This is especially true since neither lockdowns nor the Covid shots proved to have any observable influence on the trajectory of Covid. [10] 

Furthermore, the fact that Covid deaths are so tightly aligned with 2019 crude mortality rates implies that if any state experienced ‘excess deaths’ during the Covid era, all the deaths attributed to Covid (or at least the great majority of them) properly belong in the ‘normal’ category of baseline deaths, rather than in the ‘excess’ category. In other words, any excess deaths in the USA after 2019 were likely caused by things other than Covid. Such a conclusion may startle some people, for it is commonly thought that since ‘Covid’ was a new term in 2020, it must have caused any and all excess deaths. The preceding graphs strongly argue against this notion. If, by way of analogy, the CDC decided to implement a new category for certain types of cancers, would that mean that any excess deaths in subsequent years should be blamed on the new term? Of course not. So also, if 2019 mortality rates determined Covid mortality in 2020 and beyond, it is quite likely that the new term ‘Covid’ was simply being applied to previously existing causes of death. 

Adding a new category to the list of causes of death does not cause more people to die. Massive societal interventions, on the other hand, and major disruptions and changes to normal medical protocols most certainly have the potential to affect mortality. For example, vast swaths of society were shut down and large numbers of people were forced out of work. Schools were closed. Hospital protocols were changed. Elective surgeries were cancelled. Masks were required in many localities. The Covid shots were based on a brand new technology never before used in any previous vaccine. The shots were subsequently mass produced, rushed out, and forced on most of the country. In short, so many society-altering changes were made during the Covid era that it is safe to say that everyone in the USA was affected in one way or another. It is almost incredible that anyone would ignore these monumental changes and instead blame the excess deaths on a respiratory virus such as Covid. Indeed, what better way is there of examining how effective all these measures were than by seeing if they resulted in excess deaths?

Someone might ask, is it even possible that all the Covid deaths fit into the normal tally of yearly deaths? It is distinctly possible. As the above graphs testify, Covid mortality was only about 11% of normal deaths in 2019. To be more precise, Covid deaths, as published by the CDC, totalled slightly over one million on 30 June 2023. This gives an effective yearly average fatality rate of 0.096% of the population (1,099,923 deaths ÷ 328,259,523 people ÷ 3.5 years). In 2019, which was a normal year for mortality in the USA, 2.8 million people died in a population of 328 million. Thus, 0.87% (2,854,838 ÷ 328,239,523) of the American population died in 2019. As per the above graphs, Covid mortality amounted to only a small fraction (11%) of the number of normal deaths. Therefore, it is certainly possible for Covid deaths to have formed part of the normal baseline. 

Geography 

In order to investigate further how geography might have affected Covid mortality, we next plotted CCD versus the latitude of each state. We used the geographical centre of a state to establish the latitude. The results are shown below. 

Hawaii is once again an obvious and expected anomaly. The above graph reveals a weak trend (R² = 26% if Hawaii is excluded) of decreasing Covid mortality with increasing latitude. Since HHS regions only involve contiguous states, the states in each health zone generally occur along vertical trend lines (constant latitude, changing CCD). Of interest is that it is possible that Alaska is not an outlier, despite being significantly north of the rest of the states. The regression line suggests that for every degree one moves northward, there were two fewer Covid deaths per year per 100,000 population. 

The idea that even Alaska might fit with the trend of decreasing Covid deaths with increasing latitude naturally led to the inclusion of Canadian data into the picture. However, and as promised, we must break off here to keep the article manageable. We hope to look at Canada in part two.

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At the International Covid Summit 3 held in Brussels in May 2023, Nick Hudson, Chairman of PANDA, stated in an interview with Bright Light News [1]: 

Problems are being presented to us continually as ‘global crises’. Very often these global crises are completely fabricated – there is no real substance to them; they exist often in models, not in the real world … [and] these fabricated global crises admit only global solutions … no local solution is possible or necessary … 

Reflecting on two of these global crises, Covid-19 and anthropogenic climate change, a surprising number of parallels are revealed. This article explores some of these similarities, and considers the role of global crisis narratives in creating the conditions for increasing levels of centralised coordination and control.

Invisible threats

Both the SARS-CoV-2 virus and carbon dioxide (CO₂) are invisible agents, which are blamed for the 2020 global pandemic and climate change respectively. Their mechanisms of action cannot be directly observed by ordinary people. German sociologist Ulrich Beck was prompted by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster to explore the societal impact of the many anonymous and invisible threats of global scope resulting from modernity. He argued that, in what he called a ‘risk society’, people had become radically dependent on specialised scientific knowledge to define what was and what was not dangerous [2]. Today, as members of the public, we are instructed to ‘trust the experts’ who tell us that these invisible agents are responsible for untold damages to human health and the Earth’s climate. We willingly consume the cartoon depictions of a malicious SARS-CoV-2 virus, and images of chimneys belching particulates as truthful illustrations of these invisible deadly enemies.

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Unsettled Science

These causal narratives – SARS-CoV-2, a novel virus, causing a deadly worldwide pandemic; and rising levels of atmospheric CO₂ due to human activities causing climate change – are widely accepted. They are not uncontested, however. 

Many people contend that Covid-19 was not a lethal pandemic, as we had been made to believe. It tended to affect mainly elderly persons with comorbidities who were poorly treated as a direct or indirect result of new protocols, while most young and healthy people were either mildly affected or not affected at all [3]. In the case of climate change, the overwhelming focus on CO₂ ignores the contribution of volcanoes [4], solar cycles [5], geoengineering [6][7], and general degradation of the biosphere [8]. In short, contrary to what we have been told, the science is not settled.

Numerous scientists have signed the World Climate Declaration [9], which asserts that “There is no climate emergency”. Furthermore, a large number of scientists and other professionals have contested the actual scale of casualties directly associated with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.  In 2020, a large number of professionals signed the Great Barrington Declaration [10], which expressed “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing Covid-19 policies, recommending instead focused protection for a period. More recently, PANDA’s team of multidisciplinary scientists, argued that SARS-CoV-2 was not entirely novel or particularly deadly in a series of articles published under these titles:

• What the Diamond Princess tells us about NYC in Spring 2020

• It is impossible that the vaccines saved 14 million lives in 2021

• How many lives were actually saved by the Covid-19 vaccines?

• Did side effects from the Covid shots cause any excess mortality?

• Was SARS-CoV-2 entirely novel or particularly deadly?

• Did lockdowns save the world from certain Covid doom?

• Were the excess deaths in Italy caused by a novel deadly virus?

Numerous scientists are concerned that the official narratives have been presented as the ‘scientific consensus’, which may not be challenged. But any notion of ‘The Science’ as immutable truth is a fallacy; rather, science is a contested, ever-evolving process of observation, inquiry, discovery, conjecture, and debate. 

This is not the first time that data has been ignored in defence of dogma. Medical doctors and scientists have been ‘cancelled’ before, their theories ridiculed, their careers and publications destroyed. Today it is hard to believe that both Galileo Galilei [11] (1564-1642) whose observations by telescope supported the heliocentric model of Copernicus; and Ignaz Semmelweis [12] (1818-1865), who called for disinfecting the hands before assisting at the birth of a child to prevent mothers dying of puerperal fever, were treated as heretics. Then, as now, the authorities could not permit alternative explanations to disrupt their established interests. The list of medical professionals [13] and scientists [14], including Nobel laureates [15], who have been silenced [16][17], dismissed, deregistered, and scorned for remaining true to their observations and convictions regarding Covid and climate change is very long indeed, and an uncomfortable measure of the extent to which these fields of inquiry have become corrupted by powerful interests.

The model makers

Another similarity between these two major global crises is the use of computer modelling in predicting their impacts, which has resulted in significant overestimates in both cases [18][19][20][21]. While models have their uses, they are by their nature utilitarian and unable to grasp the complexity of human, epidemiological, ecological, and climatological systems and processes [22][23]. This renders them dangerous when applied uncritically to prediction, policy-making, and public awareness. As the World Climate Declaration states:

To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. We should free ourselves from the naïve belief in immature climate models. In future, climate research must give significantly more emphasis to empirical science.

Models may be dressed up as science but, as this quote suggests, believing in them is more akin to an act of faith than the process of scientific inquiry. In fact, some feel that Covid and climate change have much in common with religious cults [24], including deference to a priesthood, unquestioning belief in a creed, obedience to commandments, and the repetitive chanting of mantras like ‘Zero Covid’ or ‘Net Zero Carbon’. 

Fear sells

Media houses are well aware that our brains are wired for a negativity bias [25], and they also know that ‘fear sells’ [26]. Both in relation to Covid and climate change, the media has picked up on inflated predictions resulting from computer modelling, and fuelled  widespread fear and even panic with unremitting doses of propaganda and sensationalism. 

Throughout the Covid event, in addition to being assailed by mind-numbing images of the (frankly abnormal) ‘new normal’ in every news bulletin and visit to the supermarket, we were inundated by a tsunami of tallies representing ‘Covid cases’. There was concern that these numbers did not reflect clinical cases, but rather positive PCR test results, which were not just unreliable but arguably fraudulent [27][28][29]. This unreliable test was also used to attribute deaths to Covid, substantially inflating Covid mortality rates, even if this was clearly not the proximal cause of death [30].

In the case of climate change, for decades we have been presented with shocking headlines, disturbing images, and worrying graphs supporting the narrative that rapid global warming due to rising CO₂ levels (for which humans are responsible) is destroying the planet. Every drought, flood, hot summer, or hurricane is blamed on climate change, but so far global warming has failed to live up to the predictions [31]. 

In 2013, when journalists were still able to critique the climate narrative, the Mail Online reported on the cover-up of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [32]. Politicians were concerned because it revealed that the global temperature had not risen for the previous fifteen years, and they worried that this information would encourage climate change scepticism. The story was quickly hushed up, however, and those promoting it discredited. Today, a Google search for the ‘Climategate’ story [33] brings up multiple reports by fact checkers refuting it. Instead, when the weather behaves as it has for decades, and Europe experiences another summer heatwave, it becomes an opportunity not just to dust off the term ‘global warming’, but for the UN Secretary General to announce that “an era of global boiling has arrived.”[34] 

Pumping out propaganda

The role of propaganda during the Covid period has been well documented by PANDA [35], with their ‘Breaking the Chains’ campaign [36] exposing many of the behavioural science techniques used to ‘nudge’ the public [37] into accepting and going along with the official narrative. A company that has played a pivotal role in advising governments and media on both their Covid and climate change campaigns is the Behavioural Insights Team. Their website curates numerous articles reflecting “thoughts, analyses and materials on the behavioural aspect of … Covid-19, and how to tackle its spread.”[38] Recently, they have been focusing more attention on climate change, releasing the report How to build a Net Zero society [39] in January 2023.  

Becoming aware of propaganda techniques during Covid was invaluable in helping me recognise their use in the weaponization of climate change [40]. And while this is not the place to expand on propaganda techniques used in relation to these two crises, the following pair of weather forecast maps – both recorded on 21 June – provide an intriguing example of the use of one subliminal tool: colour. They show clearly how, simply by changing the colour scheme, we can tell a completely different story. The temperatures in 2022 appear to be extreme due to the shades of red used on the map. They are, however, noticeably lower than temperatures on that day in 2017, when the green hues suggest nothing out of the ordinary for that time of year. 

Censorship is the sibling of propaganda. Getting the populace to buy into a narrative requires both flooding of the airwaves with your version of the truth and suppressing alternatives. As anyone who voiced their misgivings about Covid and associated interventions quickly discovered, it was not acceptable to question the official story. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the ‘novel coronavirus’, there was a dearth of curiosity and debate. Questions were more likely to be met with the cold shoulder, a sense of disbelief, the ‘conspiracy theorist’ slur, or cancellation. Once Covid was behind us, and Europe was experiencing a summer heatwave, it was time for the media to shift attention to the climate crisis. Here again we faced a consensus that could not be challenged, with the ‘Covid-denialist’ label being replaced by ‘climate-denialist’.

Researching this article has been a stark reminder of the degree to which access to information has been restricted over the past three years. ‘Googling’ is no longer helpful if you are looking for sources that disagree with the official narrative. Between multiple fact-checkers informing you that the evidence you are searching for has been debunked as misinformation; a blank YouTube screen telling you that the video you are looking for has been sent to the naughty corner for ‘violating community guidelines’; and swathes of articles repeating the official line, it takes a determined sceptic to research an alternative view.

Catastrophism and centralisation

Considering again the threat of ‘global boiling’ mentioned above, there is a strange – possibly intentional – tendency towards catastrophism amongst those in authority. There is apparent reluctance to consider the possibility that a crisis may not be as dire as initially feared, that our efforts to address that crisis may actually be having an effect, or even that – in the case of climate change – a warming trend may be more positive than a cooling planet [43], and rising CO₂ levels may actually be beneficial [44]. Instead of working to encourage and calm the public, however, the authorities appear to hope that the crisis will continue, showing disappointment when an Omicron variant comes along and heralds the end of the pandemic [45], or when global temperatures appear to stabilise. 

Both pandemics and climate change are complex in nature, difficult to understand, and have impacts at a global scale. This makes these issues appear insoluble by ordinary human beings, leaving people feeling not only afraid, but also powerless. In this state, people are more likely to hand responsibility over to powerful actors to solve the problems and tell them what to do. These actors include government representatives and unelected technocrats from supra-national organisations like WHO, the IPCC, and the WEF [46]. 

While focusing on a major global crisis, a myriad of other issues affecting people tend to be overlooked. For instance, during 2020 and 2021, the single-minded focus on Covid-19 made this appear to be the only health condition worthy of attention. Sadly, this resulted in people suffering and dying from many other untreated diseases and health conditions, as well as malnutrition, starvation and suicide exacerbated by lockdowns [47]. Similarly, the focus on climate change is starting to eclipse other environmental concerns that affect communities. 

Furthermore, centralised responses to global crises tend to negate small-scale, community-based efforts, such as traditional and common-sense approaches to health, and citizen action to restore local habitats and manage resources. These pale into insignificance in the face of global initiatives to mass test and vaccinate populations, or to employ mass surveillance and artificial intelligence to reduce people’s ‘carbon footprints’ by tracking every carbon-equivalent purchased, driven, or exhaled [48]. 

Top-down public health and sustainability policy measures represent the opposite of citizen action at a local level. Centralised responses increasingly ignore human rights, freedoms, and autonomy; they seek to control populations, and offer one-size-fits-all ‘solutions’ to whatever the current crisis happens to be. In contrast, addressing issues at a local level builds a sense of camaraderie, empowerment, and optimism within communities; it also encourages diverse, locally appropriate, and often more affordable solutions. 

When issues become global in scale, local action feels almost pointless – I mean, who cares about restoring a local wetland if global boiling is going to evaporate all the water anyway? Instead, all that seems left for climate activists to do is (rather ineffectually) to wave placards [49], deface priceless works of art [50], and glue themselves to roads [51]. 

Beware the cure

Over the past three years in particular, many have become suspicious about measures to address these global issues that have felt arbitrary, ineffectual, and even nonsensical. These measures have been implemented with no cost-benefit analysis or accountability, but have invariably resulted in debilitating costs for the people. 

In the case of Covid, measures included masking, lengthy lockdowns with absurd restrictions, and the mass rollout of inadequately tested experimental injections that have turned out to be mostly ineffectual and, in many cases, harmful [52]. At the same time, many experienced clinicians were prevented from treating Covid in the early stages with cheap, over-the-counter medicines, resulting in patients having to be hospitalised, where many died. 

Regarding climate change, one of the perverse measures used to reduce atmospheric CO₂ has been the development of global financial instruments like carbon emission offsets [53]. Rich nations can buy carbon credits – which allow them to continue producing CO₂ – from developing nations, who agree not to develop hydrocarbon-based energy systems [54]. These countries risk remaining underdeveloped, as they are required to transition to expensive, unreliable solar and wind energy that is unable to provide base-load power to enable industrial development. 

Other anti-human CO₂-reduction strategies include plans to cull hundreds of thousands of cattle [55], which are considered major polluters, and to block sunlight with geo-engineering [56] thus risking food security; and confining citizens to fifteen-minute cities [57] where their mobility will be restricted to ‘save the planet’. 

Breath of death

These two crises are presented as threats to the survival of humanity and the planet. One rather sinister similarity is that both the Covid and climate change narratives target human exhalations, deeming them so dangerous that they may cause death. In one case, even in the absence of symptoms, our out-breaths harbour deadly viruses that can kill; in the other, our exhalations are suffused with a gas that is no longer recognised as food for plants, and thus the basic building block of living things, but is now rebranded a ‘pollutant’ that will overheat the planet and destroy life on earth. 

To limit the danger we pose to people and the planet, these crises demand that human beings curtail their activities and withdraw from circulation – in other words, that we live small lives, and sacrifice our freedom and joy. But far more ominous than a simple curtailing of freedoms is the fact that global leaders who promote and profit from these crises have for decades been seriously discussing the need for human depopulation to save the natural world [58]. These Malthusian tendencies are discussed in a separate article, which considers further similarities between Covid and climate change, and reflects on our complicity as ordinary people in sustaining crisis narratives.

Have we learnt from the Covid crisis?

The Covid lockdowns gave us a taste of how easily people can be terrified into relinquishing those things that are most precious to humanity – bodily autonomy, contact with family and friends, access to places we love, and the opportunity to share our gifts and serve our communities face-to-face. 

Recognising the many parallels between Covid and climate change, we need to ask: Have we learnt our lesson? Are our eyes now open? Or will we fall for the fear-porn again?

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It’s been three years since COVID-19 emerged as a dominant and, for some time, all-consuming issue. Now there are signs we are witnessing the unravelling of some of the key policy responses – blanket lockdowns and population-wide injections – that have been so aggressively promoted by many, although not all, governments around the world. There is also reluctance by many to concede there have been problems with the COVID-19 responses to date. However, doubts about the efficacy of lockdowns are now widely aired and well substantiated and there is increasing evidence for, and awareness of, the dangers surrounding the mRNA genetic vaccine. And it is at least clear that large numbers of people, including scientists and academics, are expressing views at odds with authority or mainstream claims that lockdowns reduce mortality and that mass injections are a rational and efficacious solution.

As debate over ‘The Science’ increases, more and more people now question whether or not there is more to COVID-19 in terms of underlying agendas, in particular with respect to global-level actors such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and so-called ‘Big Pharma’. In the early days of COVID-19 any such talk was immediately dismissed as ‘conspiratorial’ nonsense and, broadly speaking, people raising non-mainstream doubts about any aspect of the COVID-19 issue were subjected to vilification by ‘authoritative’ voices and corporate media. 

Such dynamics were very much in evidence with respect to debate over the origins of COVID-19. And yet, today, the so-called ‘lab leak theory’, whatever its veracity, has moved from a ‘sphere of deviance’ to a ‘sphere of legitimate controversy’ with mainstream scientists through to legacy media and governments discussing it. At the same time, there is increased public awareness of various political agendas, for example the WEF’s ‘Great Reset’ visions. Indeed, a refrain from some quarters is that yesterday’s conspiracy theory is today’s fact. So, if all this is not about a virus, what might actually be going on?

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COVID-19 and the ‘Structural Deep Event’ concept

First and foremost, it is necessary to dispel the idea that any attempt to understand intersections between political-economic agendas and COVID-19 is absurd or crazy. Here, we can learn much from Professor Michael Parenti’s 1993 talk on conspiracy and class power:

No ruling class could survive if it wasn’t attentive to its own interests; consciously trying to anticipate, control or initiate events at home and abroad both overtly and secretly. It is hard to imagine a modern state if there would be no conspiracy, no plans, no machinations, deceptions or secrecy within the circles of power. In the United States there have been conspiracies aplenty … they are all now a matter of public record.

PARENTI, 1993

It is a fact, then, that powerful political and economic actors do not blindly and irrationally stumble through history but rather strategise, plan and take actions that are expected to achieve results. They may make mistakes and plans are not always successful, but that does not mean they do not try and sometimes succeed in their aims and objectives. For example the tobacco industry worked long and hard, and with some success, to shape scientific and political discourse regarding their product and delay public awareness of its dangers.

Second, it is also true that powerful actors can have clear perceptions of their interests and are guided by the desire to realise, protect and further them. Where those interests come from might be reducible to any number of material or ideological influences. But origins do not matter, powerful actors still have conceptions of their interests and what they want to do. 

Third, in today’s world of weakening democracies, corporate conglomerates and extreme concentration of wealth, it is also true that many political and economic actors are extremely powerful, whether measured in relative or absolute terms. They have resources and skills at their disposal that others do not. One potent tool available is that of propaganda, which grants significant leverage and influence to those with the skills and resources to disseminate it. For those liberals who remain at peace with their world – believing that powerful actors simply relay their political, economic and social goals to knowledgeable publics who then consent, or refuse to consent, to those goals – the fact that propaganda is exercised extensively across liberal democratic states comes as a shock. Indeed, many mainstream scholars struggle to recognise the role of propaganda even in well documented examples such as that of the tobacco industry shaping the science on the harms of smoking or the bogus claims regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Recognising that propaganda is a major component of exercising power within so-called liberal democratic states logically removes any justification for the assumptions that a) powerful actors cannot or do not manipulate publics and b) citizenry are sufficiently autonomous and knowledgeable to always be able to grant or withhold consent. 

And as Parenti observed, history is replete with examples of powerful actors successfully pursuing goals and manipulating populations in the process. In the days after 9/11, we now know that British and American officials were planning a wide-ranging series of actions – so called ‘regime-change’ wars – that went well outside the scope of the official narrative regarding combating alleged ‘Islamic fundamentalist terrorism’. One British embassy cable stated, four days after 9/11, that ‘[t]he “regime-change hawks” in Washington are arguing that a coalition put together for one purpose [against international terrorism] could be used to clear up other problems in the region’. Within weeks British Prime Minister Tony Blair communicated with US president George W. Bush saying, amongst many other things, ‘If toppling Saddam is a prime objective, it is far easier to do it with Syria and Iran in favour or acquiescing rather than hitting all three at once’. As these two western leaders conspired at the geo-strategic level, a low-level ‘spin doctor’, Jo Moore, commented on the utility of 9/11 in terms of day-to-day ‘media management’, noting that it was ‘a good day to bury bad news’. Jo Moore was forced to resign, Bush and Blair laid the tracks for 20-plus years of conflict in the international system, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the recently ended 20-year occupation of Afghanistan. And today, there is substantial evidence that the foundational official story regarding the 9/11 crimes is in fact false with the evidence clearly pointing toward the involvement of a number of state-level actors, including within the US.

Professor Peter Dale Scott (University of California, Berkley) developed the concept of the  ‘structural deep event’ and this is useful in capturing the idea that powerful actors frequently work to instigate, exploit or exacerbate events in ways that enable substantive and long-lasting societal transformations. These frequently involve, according to Scott, a combination of legal and illegal activity implicating both legitimate and public-facing political structures as well as covert or hidden parts of government – the so-called deep state which is understood as the interface ‘between the public, the constitutionally established state, and the deep forces behind it of wealth, power, and violence outside the government’. So, for example, Scott argues that the JFK assassination became an event that enabled the maintenance of the Cold War whilst the 9/11 crimes likewise enabled the global ‘war on terror’, and that both involved a variety of actors not usually recognized in mainstream or official accounts of these events. It is important to note that Scott claims his approach does not necessarily imply a simplistic grand conspiracy, but is rather based on the idea of opaque networks of powerful and influential groups whose interests converge, at points, and who act to either instigate or exploit events in order to pursue their objectives. 

Applied to COVID-19, a ‘structural deep event’ reading would point toward a constellation of actors, with overlapping interests, working to advance agendas, and being enabled to do so because of COVID-19. Such a reading does not necessarily include or exclude the possibility of COVID-19 being an instigated event and one that functioned, in the widest sense, as a propaganda event enabling powerful actors to realise their goals. What are the grounds for seriously considering a ‘structural deep event’ reading?

The damaging COVID-19 response

There is now an overwhelmingly strong case to be made that the key responses to COVID-19 – lockdowns, cloth masking and mass injection – were, on their own terms, flawed. 

A large swathe of scientists and medical professionals are now clearly and repeatedly warning governments and populations that lockdowns are harmful and ineffective whilst mass injection of populations with an experimental genetic vaccine resulted in substantial harms. Indeed, it is increasingly clear that the use of the PCR test, which gave a skewed impression of infection and death rates leading to the locking down of entire (healthy) populations for extended periods of time in response to a respiratory virus, and then attempting to submit people to an experimental injection on a repeated basis, were not scientifically robust policies. As of mid 2023, although causes are disputed, there continues to be worrying excess mortality across many countries. It is also now clear to many that the scale and nature of COVID-19 was exaggerated in a way that suggested the existence of an entirely new and unusually deadly pathogen that demanded drastic responses when, in fact, this was not the case. 

It is also now apparent that a remarkable and wide-ranging propaganda effort, involving extensive use of behavioural scientists, was used to mobilise support for lockdowns and, later on, injections as well as exaggerate any threat posed. An early paper published in April 2020, authored by over 40 academics, presented a blueprint for how ‘social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts’. Furthermore, many Western governments have behavioural psychology units attached to the highest levels of government, designed to shape thoughts and behaviour, and these were engaged early on during the COVID-19 event. According to Iain Davis, in February 2020 the WHO had established  the Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health (TAG); ‘The group is chaired by Prof. Cass Sunstein and its members include behavioural change experts from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prof. Susan Michie, from the UK, is also a TAG participant’. In the UK, behavioural scientists from SPI-B (Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour) reconvened on 13 February 2020 and subsequently advised the UK government on how to secure compliance with non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Broadly, these propaganda techniques included maximising perceived threat in order to scare populations into complying with lockdown and accepting the experimental genetic vaccines as well as utilising non-consensual measures involving incentivization and coercion through, for example, various mandates.

We also now know that propaganda activities included smear campaigns against dissenting scientists and, in at least one major case, were initiated by high-level officials: in Autumn 2020, Anthony Fauci and National Institute of Health director Francis Collins discussed the need to swiftly shut down the Great Barrington Declaration, whose authors were advocating an alternative (and historically orthodox) COVID-19 response focused on protecting high-risk individuals and thus avoiding destructive lockdown measures. Collins wrote in an email that this ‘proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists … seems to be getting a lot of attention … There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises’. Rather than a civilised and robust scientific debate, a smear campaign followed. Furthermore, censorship and suppression appears to have been experienced widely across swathes of academia whilst the White House is currently being sued with respect to First Amendment violations against scientists including Professors Kulldorff and Bhattacharya from the Great Barrington Declaration.

The legacy corporate media, social media platforms and large swathes of academia appear to have played an important role in disseminating this propaganda and promoting the official narrative on COVID-19. The proximity of legacy corporate media to political and economic power has been well understood for many decades: concentration of ownership, reliance upon advertising revenue, deference to elite sources, vulnerability to smear campaigns and ideological positioning are all understood to sharply limit the autonomy of legacy media (these factors also arguably shape academia). With COVID-19 these dynamics are exacerbated by, for example, direct regulatory influence, such as Ofcom direction to UK broadcasters, and censorship by ‘Big Tech’ of views deviating from those of the authorities and the WHO. The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) and Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) have coordinated major legacy media in order to counter what they claim to be ‘misinformation’, and this appears to have played a role in suppressing legitimate scientific criticism whilst elevating ‘official’ narratives. At the global ‘governance’ level, both the United Nations and the WHO promoted campaigns around combating alleged ‘disinformation’ and the so-called ‘misinfo-demic’. Currently moves are afoot to further strengthen elite control over media discourse via legislation aimed at preventing so-called ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’ and ‘online harms’ and which is being rolled out over multiple legislatures.

Finally, confirmation of direct involvement of US authorities with censorship decisions by the social media company Twitter has been presented in the ‘Twitter Files’ and, in the UK, further corroboration regarding the role and significance of a Counter Disinformation Unit within the UK government. Matt Taibbi’s work on the ‘Twitter Files’, presents what is described as the Censorship Industrial Complex, or Counter-Disinformation Industry, which links universities, foundations, NGOs and federal agencies and which have actively censored content on Twitter during the COVID-19 event. Critically, these censorship regimes dovetail with the aforementioned legislative developments relating to ‘disinformation’ and ‘online harms’.

Extreme and flawed policy responses – societal lockdown and mandated mass injection – combined with widespread propaganda activities aimed at securing the compliance of the population might be explicable in a number of ways. For example: 

1. The cock-up thesis might be invoked to explain all of this as an irrational panic response by well-intentioned or ideologically driven actors who got things badly wrong and imitated each other while doing so. 

2. It might be that these policy responses are the result of narrow vested interests and corruption.

3. Powerful actors might have sought to take advantage of COVID-19, even instigate the event, so as to advance substantial political and economic agendas and, as part of this, helped to promote advantageous narratives during the COVID-19 event.

Following two years of massive societal disruption aimed at containing a seasonal respiratory virus, and the persistence of some aspects of the COVID-19 narrative despite substantive scientific challenges, it is clearly necessary to take seriously the very real possibility that vested interests and substantial political agendas underly the COVID-19 event. So, what is the key evidence for explanations two and three?

Manipulation and exploitation of Health Agencies: Regulatory Capture at the NIH and CDC plus the World Health Organization (WHO) and Pandemic Preparedness Agenda

Evidence for vested interests and corruption has come, in particular, from analyses of US regulatory bodies and the actions of the WHO. In particular, evidence has emerged showing that key authorities in the US – the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – under the influence of Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Officer to the US President, have suffered from conflicts of interest. The term ‘regulatory capture’ is frequently used to describe this situation. [2] 

For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s detailed analysis of the US-led COVID-19 response in The Real Anthony Fauci, documents the corrupt relationship between so-called ‘Big Pharma’ and Anthony Fauci arguing that, to all intents and purposes, there has been regulatory capture whereby pharmaceutical companies and public officials enjoy mutually beneficial arrangements. This mutual infiltration is understood by Kennedy to underpin the COVID-19 response, especially the commitment to a ‘vaccine-only’ solution and suppression of preventative treatments such as Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).  By way of  example, Kennedy relays the case of Dr Tess Lawrie and WHO researcher Andrew Hill in which Hill appeared to confirm there was pressure to delay publication of results supporting the efficacy of Ivermectin. Regarding HCQ, Kennedy writes:

By 2020, we shall see, Bill Gates exercised firm control over WHO and deployed the agency in his effort to discredit HCQ’ …

On June 17, the WHO – for which Mr. Gates is the largest funder after the US, and over which Mr. Gates and Dr Fauci exercise tight control – called for the halt of HCQ trials in hundreds of hospitals across the world. WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ordered nations to stop using HCQ and CQ. Portugal, France, Italy, and Belgium banned HCQ for COVID-19 treatment. 

More broadly, the WHO has been important in terms of co-ordinating COVID-19 policy responses. Although notionally independent, the WHO has increasingly come under corporate influence via both the growth of corporate-influenced organisations such as Gavi (Global Vaccine Alliance), CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) and private financing via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The WHO is also currently negotiating the treaty on pandemic preparedness with the governments of member states to provide unprecedented powers to this organisation to enable rapid responses, transcending national governments, when the WHO declares pandemics in the future, thus centralising control and potentially overriding national sovereignty.

This line of analysis might lead to a conclusion that what we have experienced to date – harmful lockdowns and injection strategies underpinned by massive propaganda – is primarily the result of corruption, conflicts of interest and vested interests, rather than what could reasonably be described as good faith errors by politicians and bureaucrats.

The World Economic Forum and the ‘Great Reset’

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has been associated by some analysts with the COVID-19 event and in 2020 Klaus Schwab, its founder, published a co-authored book titled COVID-19: The Great Reset. Schwab declared: ‘The Pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world’. One key component of the political-economic vision promoted by the WEF is ‘stakeholder capitalism’ (Global Public-Private Partnerships, GPPP) involving the integration of government, business and civil society actors with respect to the provision of services. Another key component involves harnessing ‘the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution’, especially the exploitation of developments in artificial intelligence, computing and robotics, in order to radically transform society toward a digitised model. Slogans now frequently associated with these visions include ‘you will own nothing and be happy’, ‘smart cities’ and ‘build back better’.

It is also apparent that the WEF, as an organising force, has considerable reach. It has been involved with training and educating influential individuals – through its Young Global Leaders Programme and its predecessor, Global Leaders for Tomorrow – who have subsequently moved into positions of considerable power. It has also been noted that many national leaders (e.g. Merkel, Macron, Trudeau, Ardern, Putin, and Kurz) are WEF Forum of Young Global Leaders graduates or members and have ‘played prominent roles, typically promoting zero-covid strategies, lockdowns, mask mandates, and ‘vaccine passports’. In 2017 Schwab boasted: 

When I mention our names like Mrs Merkel, even Vladimir Putin and so on, they all have been Young Global Leaders of the World Economic forum. But what we are very proud of now is the young generation like prime minister Trudeau, president of Argentina and so on. So we penetrate the cabinets. So yesterday I was at a reception for prime minister Trudeau and I will know that half of this cabinet or even more half of this cabinet are actually young global leaders of the World Economic Forum …. that’s true in Argentina, and it’s true in France now with the president a Young Global Leader 

Corporate members of the WEF’s Forum of Young Global Leaders includes Mark Zuckerberg whilst ‘Global Leaders for Tomorrow’ included Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. 

Financial Crisis, the Central Banks and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)  

It is now established that a major crisis in the repo markets during the Autumn of 2019 was followed by high-level planning aimed at resolving an impending financial crisis of greater proportions than the 2008 banking crisis.  According to some analysts, one response appears to have been a strengthened drive to control currencies via the Central Banks: Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The General Manager of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), Agustin Carstens, stated in October 2020 that:

we intend to establish the equivalence with cash and there is a huge difference there. For example, in cash we don’t know who is using a $100 bill today … the key difference with the CBDC is that the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability and also we will have the technology to enforce that.

A programmable CBDC potentially provides complete control over how and when an individual spends money, in addition to allowing authorities to automatically deduct taxes through a person’s ‘digital wallet’. According to some analysts, this development would also effectively remove any significant control over financial policy at the national level. Although decried as a ‘conspiracy theory’ in the early days of the COVID-19 event, it has now become clear that there is a determined drive toward implementing CBDCs and which has the potential to qualitatively change the character of national-level governance. 

Technologies associated with programmable CBDCs overlap with those associated with 4IR and concepts regarding digitised society. Specifically, digital identity, a potential component of the intended CBDC, provides a basis for the creation of a digital grid upon which information relating to all aspects of an individual’s life will be available to governments, corporations and other powerful entities such as the security services. Also notable is the relationship between digital ID and the drive to create ‘vaccine passports’ as part of the COVID-19 response: Microsoft and the Rockefeller Foundation are central players in ID2020, alongside Gavi. The overall objective is to create a global-level digital ID framework that integrates with health/vaccination status. As with CBDC, the push to implement these frameworks is ongoing, not dissipating, and include the recent announcement by the WHO and EU of a ‘digital health partnership’ aimed at facilitating implementation of digital health certificates for health and travel controlled by the WHO. [3]

All of these political and economic agendas point toward a conclusion more closely aligned with the ‘structural deep event’ (Scott) thesis, in that they highlight the possibility that COVID-19 has been exploited to advance major political and economic agendas. As such, COVID-19 is itself primarily a propaganda event, instrumentalized in order to pursue political-economic agendas. This hypothesis is, at least in part, distinct from the idea that corruption and narrow vested interests explain most of what we have seen. 

Threats to democracy and understanding what this all might mean

The political and economic processes identified regarding the WEF, WHO, digital ID, the central banks and CBDC, the pandemic preparedness agenda and the Censorship Industrial Complex/Counter-Disinformation Industry are not speculative or theoretical, they are directly observable and ongoing. They are also proceeding in the absence of serious scrutiny by legislatures and wider democratic debate whilst new ‘emergencies’ over war in Ukraine and the climate appear to be being exploited in order to maintain momentum even as COVID-19 recedes from view. Indeed, one scholar of political communication notes that ‘insidious scare tactics deployed during Covid are still being used in the field of climate communications, where they were first developed.’

It is also worth spelling out the potential interaction between these agendas and threats to democracy. It is now clear that populations have been subjected to highly coercive and aggressive attempts to limit their autonomy, including restrictions on movement, the right to protest, freedom to work and freedom to participate in society. Most notably, significant numbers of people were pushed, sometimes required, to take an injection at regular intervals in order to continue their participation in society whilst PCR test requirements for travelling, for example, have introduced further coercive elements into everyday life. These developments have been accompanied by, at times, aggressive and discriminatory statements from major political leaders with respect to people resisting injection. The threat to civil liberties and ‘democracy as usual’ is unprecedented. The economic impact has been dire and COVID-19 has seen a dramatic and continued  transfer of wealth from the poorest to the very richest (see for example Oxfam, 2021 and Green and Fazi, 2023). And, today, the drive to create a regulatory framework via the pandemic preparedness agenda, which includes modification of the International Health Regulations, combined with the rolling out of online ‘harm’ legislation and the promotion of moral panic over ‘disinformation’ and ‘online harm’, all create an architecture that enables high levels of control over populations within ostensibly democratic polities. 

Furthermore, the combination of a programmable CBDC, a ‘vaccine passport’ that determines access to services and real-world spaces and the availability of all online behaviours to corporations and governments, can enable a system of near total control over an individual’s life, activities and opportunities. This system of control can be seen in China with the social credit system currently being implemented in certain provinces. Integration of personal data and money though a digital ID would also allow individuals to be readily stripped of their assets. These developments reflect the rise of technocracy whereby government and society become increasingly controlled by experts and technicians and individual autonomy and democracy are curtailed. They can also be related to the transhumanist movement which enthusiastically looks forward to human-machine interfaces and their proclaimed potential to ‘perfect the human condition’.

Of course, it is still possible that the sustained adherence to lockdown and mass injection (in spite of growing evidence against their efficacy and safety) are explicable through reference to government blunders, whilst the parallel political and economic projects and rapid reduction in civil liberties are coincidences. 

However, it would be remiss to set aside the fact that organisations such as the WHO and the WEF exist within a wider network, or constellation, of extremely powerful, non-elected political and economic entities made up of major multinational corporations, intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), large private foundations and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These include, in no particular order, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and other central banks; asset managers Blackrock and Vanguard; global-level entities such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Club of Rome, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, Chatham House, the Trilateral Commission, the Atlantic Council, the Open Society Foundations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and major corporations including so-called ‘Big Pharma’ and ‘Big Tech’ such as Apple, Google (part of Alphabet Inc), Amazon and Microsoft. And, of course, governments themselves are part of this constellation, with the most powerful – the US, China and India – having considerable influence. In addition, the European Union (EU) supranational body, via its President Ursula von der Leyen, promoted the EU Digital COVID Certificate and also demanded at times that all EU citizens be injected.

As such, it is entirely plausible, if not increasingly likely, that the interests shared between multiple political and economic actors have manifested themselves in the form of concrete political and economic agendas which, in turn, have been advanced via the COVID-19 event. It is also possible that the current war in the Ukraine as well as climate issues are being exploited by many of the same actors and in a similar fashion. Along these lines, Denis Rancourt recently noted:

It is only natural now to ask “what drove this?”, “who benefited?” and “which groups sustained permanent structural disadvantages?” In my view, the COVID assault can only be understood in the symbiotic contexts of geopolitics and large-scale social-class transformations. Dominance and exploitation are the drivers. The failing USA-centered global hegemony and its machinations create dangerous conditions for virtually everyone.

An increasingly large body of work supports the understanding of COVID-19 as a structural deep event. Important and pathfinding analyses were provided in the early months of the COVID-19 event by Cory Morningstar, Whitney Webb and Piers Robinson, amongst others. James Corbett was one of the first to warn of the impending dangers of a biosecurity state all the way back in March 2020, whilst Patrick Wood alerted us to the dangers of technocracy long before the arrival of COVID-19. 

In States of Emergency (2022) Kees van der Pijl argues there has been a ‘biopolitical seizure of power’ in which an intelligence-IT-media complex has crystallised as a new class block seeking to quell growing unrest and the strengthening of progressive social movements throughout the world. Under cover of Covid-19, and via ruthless exploitation of people’s fear of a virus, van der Pijl traces how this new class block is attempting to impose control via high-tech, digitised societies necessitating  mandatory injections and digital ID, as well as censorship and manipulation of public spheres. In short, van der Pijl describes a total surveillance society involving massive concentration of power and the end of democracy. Kheriaty’s The Rise of the Biomedical State (2022) offers a detailed presentation of how COVID-19 provided the impetus for an emerging biosecurity state whilst Iain Davis’ Pseudopandemic (2022) presents the COVID-19 event as primarily a propagandised phenomenon functioning to enable the continued emergence of a technocratic order built around the Global Public-Private Partnership (GPPP) and ‘stake-holder capitalism’ that has appeared primarily to serve the interests of what he describes as an elite ‘parasite class’. Simon Elmer’s (2022) analysis presents all of these developments in terms of the rise of a new form of fascism whilst Broecker (2023) emphasises the technocratic and anti-democratic underpinnings of the political developments ushered in under the cover of the COVID-19 event.

Robert F. Kennedy’s The Real Anthony Fauci, although focused on documenting the corruption with respect to public health institutions and ‘Big Pharma’, is clear about its consequences for our democracies. Early in the book he notes that Fauci ‘has played a central role in undermining public health and subverting democracy and constitutional governance around the globe and in transitioning our civil governance toward medical totalitarianism’. Later in the book, Kennedy discusses the interplay between military, medical and intelligence planners and raises questions about an ‘underlying agenda to coordinate dismantlement of democratic governance’:

After 9/11, the rising biosecurity cartel adopted simulations as signaling mechanisms for choreographing lockstep responses among corporate, political, and military technocrats charged with managing global exigencies. Scenario planning became an indispensable device for multiple power centers to coordinate complex strategies for simultaneously imposing coercive controls upon democratic societies across the globe.

Broadly in line with this analysis, the work of both Breggin and Breggin and Paul Shreyer argue that the political and economic agendas advanced during the COVID-19 event had been long in the pipeline and point toward it being an instigated event as opposed to a spontaneous – naturally occurring – one that groups opportunistically took advantage of.

Along with all this, transhumanism, life extension or ‘enhancement’ through technology and digitalised society, observable in some of the output from the WEF and public musings of key individuals, appears to reflect a set of beliefs in technology and progress that can be traced back to Enlightenment thinking of the last 300 years. Philosophical debates over technology and what it means to be human have remained at the heart of the Enlightenment ‘project’, although perhaps deeply buried. Associated with this might be scientism as a religious cult of the West.

Attempts to attach a label to the complex political and economic processes we are witnessing include descriptors such as ‘global fascism,’ ‘global communism,’ ‘neo-feudalism,’ ‘neo-serfdom’, ‘totalitarianism,’ ‘technocracy,’ ‘centralization vs. subsidiarity,’ ‘stakeholder capitalism’, ‘global public-private partnerships,’ ‘corporate authoritarianism’, ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘tyranny’ and ‘global capitalism.’ Dr Robert Malone, inventor of part of the mRNA technology used in the COVID-19 injections, openly refers to the threat of global totalitarianism as does US presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy Jnr.   

In summation, there are multiple and readily observable signs of political and economic actors working to variously instigate, exaggerate and/or exploit the COVID-19 event. At the same time there are no signs that those promoting the claim that COVID-19 represented an unusually dangerous health crisis are conceding any ground, even as the facts become clear that it was nothing exceptional and that the responses have been a disaster for public health and well-being. Both ideology and underlying agendas appear to be influencing the dynamics of current events, all of which are occurring in the context of major shifts in the distribution of power globally: witness the BRICS block and various geo-political realignments, including the increasingly likely strategic failure for the West in relation to the Ukraine war. None of this looks like the COVID-19 response was just some innocent and incompetent blunder by our scientific and medical establishments. 

The tasks ahead 

For those occupying corporate or mainstream positions in politics, media or academia, the fear of being tarred with the ‘conspiracy theorist’ label is usually enough to dampen any enthusiasm for serious evaluation of the ways in which powerful and influential political and economic actors might be shaping responses to COVID-19 to further political and economic agendas. But the stakes are now simply too high for such shyness and, indeed cowardice, to be allowed to persist. There are strong and well-established grounds to take  analyses along the lines of the ‘structural deep event’ thesis seriously, as set out in this article, and there are clear and present dangers to our civil liberties, freedom and democracy.

Building on the work already started, researchers must explore more fully the networks and power structures that have shaped the COVID-19 responses and which have sought to move forward various political and economic agendas. Analysing more fully the techniques used, including propaganda and exploitation of COVID-19 as an enabling event, is now an essential task for researchers to undertake. It is also important to consolidate understanding of linkages with ongoing drives related to the UN sustainability agenda – e.g. 15 minute cities – and the climate agenda, all of which potentially involve technocratic and top-down policy approaches at odds with autonomy and democracy. Such work, ultimately, can not only deepen our understanding of what is going on; it can also provide a guide for those who seek to oppose what is being described by some as ‘global totalitarianism’ or ‘fascism’. It is of equal importance for scholars of democracy and ethics to further unpack the implications of these developments with respect to liberty and civil rights as well as, more widely, creative thinking with respect to alternative visions of social, political and economic organisation and including the development of parallel societies. 

It could of course be the case that such a research agenda ultimately leads to a refutation of the ‘structural deep event’ thesis and confirmation that everything witnessed over the last three years has been simply cock-up or blunder. But it seems increasingly unlikely that this would be the result and evidence in support of the structural deep event reading is stronger now than ever. It is essential that critical research into the consequences of the COVID-19 response does not become bounded by an unwarranted assumption that all can be reduced to well- intentioned but erroneous responses. The stakes are high and it has never been more essential to seriously engage with uncomfortable possibilities – even if that means interrogating uncomfortable and alarming explanations.

Endnotes

1. Thanks to David Bell, Isa Blumi, Heike Brunner, Jonathan Engler, Nick Hudson and Ewa Siderenko for comments and input.

2. Sheldon Watts offers historic background illustrating how the establishment regularly rewrites the science to serve other purposes. In the case of Cholera, the main editors of The Lancet in the late 19^th century actually contradicted their own findings of a previous decade in order to accommodate trade interests concerning the quarantining of British ships from India that would have harmed the British Empire’s economic model. From being a human communicable disease, it transformed into a dark-skinned disease of the orient. Watts, Sheldon. “From rapid change to stasis: Official responses to cholera in British-ruled India and Egypt: 1860 to c. 1921.” Journal of World History (2001): 321-374. Thanks to Isa Blumi for this reference.

3. See https://www.who.int/initiatives/global-digital-health-certification-network – Global ‘public health infrastructure’ to ‘expand digital solutions’ and EU Digital Covid Certificate taken over by the WHO’s  GDHCN  Certificate https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/coronavirus-response/safe-covid-19-vaccines-europeans/eu-digital-covid-certificate_en.

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On 17 April 2023, a petition [1] was debated in the UK Parliament calling for the Government “to commit to not signing any international treaty on pandemic prevention and preparedness established by the WHO, unless this is approved through a public referendum.” The petition had received 156,086 signatures. Of the thirteen Members of Parliament (MPs) who spoke during the debate [2] four strongly supported the motion, three took a more neutral stance, and six strongly opposed the petition or elements of the argument. Examples of arguments in support of the petition can be viewed in a collation of clips taken from the video of the debate [3].

There was a noticeable contrast between the arguments presented by MPs supporting the petition — who exhibited concern for the constituents who had signed the petition and approached them directly — and those opposing it. All those who, like the petitioners, were concerned about the growing power and influence of WHO and threats to national sovereignty were familiar with the contents of the so-called ‘pandemic treaty’ [4], since labelled the WHO CA+, as well as proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) [5]. While some opposing the petition were also familiar with the document, others had not even read it, prompting Andrew Bridgen (MP for North West Leicestershire) to plead with members to do so. 

Those concerned about these proposals presented well-reasoned arguments reflecting an understanding of the history of WHO [6], its many failures during Covid-19, and its current problematic relationships with non-state funders [7,8]. Those supporting WHO’s proposals uncritically supported WHO, focusing on its public health successes and ignoring obvious concerns. Perturbed by the lack of parliamentary scrutiny of the Covid response measures, some MPs worried that the UK government, having played a leadership role in drafting the treaty, might ratify it without parliamentary debate. This reservation was flatly denied by those opposing the petition, with some denying that WHO would in any way threaten UK sovereignty, that its role would remain advisory in nature, and that those opposing the treaty were in effect opposing international cooperation.

This article analyses the arguments made by those rejecting the petition, drawing on insights from Behavioural Science.

The debate was a sad reminder that it is not necessarily the quality of arguments, or even the sincerity of the individuals making them, that wins the day.

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1. Using derogatory language and labels to discredit speakers and their arguments 

A tactic used to shut down discussion and debate was to attach derogatory labels to those supporting the petition. In the debate, two such labels used in relation to the Covid event and the pandemic treaty were ‘conspiracy theory/theorist’ (ten references made by four speakers) and ‘anti-vax’ (one speaker). Some opposing the petition used these labels early in their presentations, their comments and tone indicating that these were untenable positions that no sane person could possibly subscribe to.

Using such labels at the beginning of the debate set the scene, immediately employing a behavioural science tactic to prime the participants and the wider audience. Priming is a ‘nudge’ [9] tactic; techniques that are used to modify people’s behaviours or emotions in a way that is unconscious and therefore difficult to identify or counter. Priming [10] occurs when the emotional attachment or views held about one issue are then used to influence the emotional attachment on a separate and unrelated issue; an emotional contagion if you like. This can be utilised to produce a positive or negative relationship. Over the past three years in particular, the phrase ‘conspiracy theorist’ has become strongly and negatively associated with an archetype of someone whose views are not based in fact and who are not community minded, and therefore not socially acceptable. By stating in his introductory comments that “I have no time for conspiracy theories”, leader of the debate Nick Fletcher (MP for Don Valley) activated this already negative mental construct and associated it with the question of the WHO pandemic treaty. Whether this was purposeful or not is debatable but concerns about conspiracies do seem strangely placed in a debate which should be about publicly documented proposals, and UK and international legislation.

Similarly, Sally-Ann Hart (MP for Hastings and Rye), who herself was committed to representing the concerns of constituents who had signed the petition, warned that, “We must be wary of … conspiracy theories distorting the facts and scaring people. Transparency of debate is therefore needed to squash those conspiracy theories.”

Some comments could only be described as invective. Language such as that used by John Spellar (MP for Warley) was entirely inappropriate in the context of a Parliamentary debate:

… the poisonous cesspit of the right-wing conspiracy theorist ecosystem in the United States … an appalling subculture of those who live by conspiracy theories … Unfortunately, we have some people — a very limited number … who wallow in the realm of conspiracy theories.

The ‘conspiracy theorist’ label has become a catch-all term used to discredit numerous perspectives that disagree with the dominant narrative. It has also taken on the power of a curse, which those who hope to remain accepted by their peers must protect themselves from by declaring their immunity. 

Another such label is ‘anti-vax’, used by Mr Spellar who interjected early in Mr Fletcher’s introduction: 

I thank the hon. Gentleman … for highlighting both smallpox and polio. Is the fact of the matter not that it has been a worldwide vaccination programme that has enabled us to achieve that? Does that not demonstrate the falseness of the anti-vax campaigns?

This is another example of priming, where an exceptionally negative construct (anti-vax), which was set up in mainstream and social media over the past few years, is associated with those who may have genuine concerns about the powers being delegated to a non-elected body. When attached to a person, the related term ‘anti-vaxxer’ is an example of an ad hominem attack [11], which is an example of a false argument. Instead of the argument being discussed on its own merit in terms of data or facts, the audience and other participants are misdirected toward a perceived ‘failing of character’ in those who might have a different view and legitimate questions.

Mr Spellar used this terminology to discredit those wary of vaccinations, in particular the Covid-19 genetic therapy. He continued his interruption of Mr Fletcher’s introductory remarks with the following tirade against academic gastroenterologist Dr Andrew Wakefield who, in 1998, co-authored a research study in The Lancet, linking inflammatory bowel symptoms in 12 autistic children to the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine: 

Part of this argument has been about vaccination. We go back to Dr Wakefield and that appalling piece of chicanery that was the supposed impact of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, which has now been completely exposed and discredited. Indeed Mr Wakefield is now no longer a recognised doctor. 

This argument is an example of ‘false equivalence’ [12], another propaganda tool that has the effect of misdirecting the audience away from the key facts of the debate. Those who doubt the safety and efficacy of the novel Covid ‘vaccine’ have not necessarily questioned the safety and efficacy of all other vaccines, and should therefore not be considered ‘anti-vaxxers’. By associating arguments against the Covid shot with the MMR vaccine debacle, the purpose is to tar objections to this entirely novel and inadequately tested therapy with the same brush as arguments levied against an earlier, unrelated, conventional vaccine.

Mr Spellar’s interjection also reflects another tactic of those who wish to quash debate, namely the use of threats to intimidate those who might be inclined to consider alternative narratives. The story of the suppression of harms caused by the MMR vaccine has much in common with the current censorship of reports of serious adverse events and deaths following the Covid injections. Raising the 25-year-old case of Dr Wakefield who is “no longer a recognised doctor” represents a threat, already a reality for many ethical doctors and scientists, that those who speak out against the harms caused by the Covid injections face being dismissed and deregistered.

2. Using inaccurate and unsubstantiated statements

Justin Madders (MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston) also used derogatory language in denying concerns about threats to national sovereignty posed by global organisations such as WHO: 

On the absurd side, a narrative has been created that the World Health Organization is a body intent on world domination. Borrowing tropes from conspiracy theories, I found one website referring to the WHO as ‘globalists’ … That sentiment is clearly ludicrous, as is the reference to the WHO being owned by Bill Gates or the Chinese Government.

The treaty has nothing to do with Bill Gates, and it is not the first step in creating a world-dominating authoritarian state.

The first sentence in the quote above is an example of a behavioural science nudge tactic called ‘framing’. In framing, words, metaphors and perspectives are used in a way that makes the message more attractive and activates certain emotional reactions. The image created by the MP’s statements is quick to evoke a mental picture of a film-like villain plotting to take over the world. Being ‘absurd’ (untrue) and a ‘narrative’ (story), this should clearly be discounted.

Beyond the language used, Mr Madders’s claims are not substantiated and as such are simply opinions. Firstly, as the United Nations (UN) agency responsible for global public health, WHO can indeed be considered a ‘globalist’ organisation, along with numerous other international bodies such as other UN agencies, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and international corporations and foundations. But, largely due to the growing influence exerted over national governments by WHO and other unelected supra-national bodies during Covid, the term ‘globalist’ has taken on more sinister connotations. Its use by those critical of the dominant narrative may account for Mr Madders treating the term as a ‘red flag’. 

Secondly, Mr Madders may be unaware of the significant changes to WHO’s funding model that have taken place in recent years, with assessed contributions [13] from Member States having declined to less than 20% of WHO’s financing, and Bill Gates now being one of its major funders. WHO’s own website records that, as of Quarter 4 of 2021, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) was their second-largest donor (9.49%) after Germany [14]. While on this point, Steve Brine (MP for Winchester) asserted that “the UK is the second-largest contributor to the WHO”, which is incorrect; in fact, the UK is the sixth-largest contributor (5.99%). Gates is also a founding partner and second-largest contributor to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which is the fifth-largest funder of WHO (6.43%). And with 56.14% of BMGF’s funding going to support WHO’s Headquarters [15], it is unlikely that “The treaty has nothing to do with Bill Gates”, as asserted by Mr Madders. 

Many unsubstantiated statements regarding Covid ‘vaccine’ safety and effectiveness were also made during the debate. Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) asserted that “AstraZeneca saved lives worldwide”, despite the use of this adenovirus viral vector vaccine being restricted or suspended in numerous countries due to many reports of recipients suffering blood clots [16]. 

Similarly, Mr Spellar, referring to the Pfizer mRNA ‘vaccines’, stated that it “certainly was not unproven or unsafe, and it had a huge beneficial impact across the world.” There is, in fact, mounting evidence showing that the Covid injections, released under emergency use authorisation before adequate testing could be undertaken, have been neither safe nor very effective. All vaccine adverse events tracking systems, including the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) Yellow Card system in the United Kingdom, the European Medicines Agency’s EudraVigilance system in the European Union, and the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in the United States, have recorded unprecedented numbers of serious adverse reactions, including deaths. Furthermore, an increasing number of studies are reporting evidence of a broad range of serious adverse events [17]. An independent systematic review of serious harms of the Covid-19 vaccines, currently in pre-print, adds significant weight to these findings [18]. 

Furthermore, after a group of scientists and medical researchers successfully sued the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) [19] to release many thousands of documents related to licensing of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, it was revealed that early trials had resulted in hundreds of adverse reactions [20 (Appendix 1)]. This information had been withheld from the public by the authorities.

The injections have also been been unable to stop SARS-CoV-2 infection or transmission, with Dr Peter Marks of the FDA admitting in a letter responding to a citizens’ petition that proof of efficacy had not been required for authorisation [21]:

It is important to note that FDA’s authorization and licensure standards for vaccines do not require demonstration of the prevention of infection or transmission. (p.11)

Furthermore, the applicable statutory standards for licensure and authorization of vaccines do not require that the primary objective of efficacy trials be a demonstration of reduction in person-to-person transmission. (p.13)

In addition, there is growing concern that claims that the boosters prevent severe illness and deaths amount to a “wishful myth” [22].

Three years of pro-vaccine propaganda and ongoing efforts to censor reports of vaccine harms have effectively blinded many people to the possibility that the rollout of Covid injections may be related to the sharp rise in excess deaths now being experienced in many countries [23; 24]. This is despite the fact that many vulnerable people, such as the elderly and those with multiple comorbidities, had died previously as a result of Covid-19, lockdown measures and medical interventions.

Despite having had the opportunity to peruse the evidence presented by the petitioners, Mr Spellar was still sure that the vaccination campaign had been a huge success, stating:

… mobilisation of [the] intellectual power and production capacity [of the major pharmaceutical companies] in producing a vaccine in record time to stem the tide of covid was absolutely magnificent.

3. Using globalist slogans

Just as certain terms (conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer) have become modern-day curses causing those so labelled to be socially shunned, so have other terms and slogans become the mantras of those wishing to demonstrate their membership of the mainstream. These catchy but often meaningless slogans are building blocks of a collective reality, introduced and normalised through the presentations, publications and public relations communications of powerful individuals, and globalist organisations such as the UN, WHO, WEF and BMGF.

Mr Madders, for example, echoed Bill Gates [25] when he stated: “We need to be better prepared for the next pandemic.” This also represents an unsubstantiated claim, as it ignores the reality that pandemics are actually extremely rare. Since 1900, only five pandemics, each responsible for over one million deaths, have broken out, namely the Spanish flu (1918-1920), the 1957-1958 influenza pandemic, the Hong Kong flu (1968-1969), the AIDS pandemic (ongoing since 1981), and Covid-19 [26]. It also powerfully illustrates the effectiveness of  presupposition, where the speaker inserts a statement or assumption as a fact agreed by all and therefore requiring no evidence of its own. The phrase “the next pandemic” provides a nudge by inserting itself unconsciously into the psyche of the listener and readily bypassing the conscious thought process [27].

The Covid event did, however, demonstrate that a pandemic can mean big gains for certain people. It can literally be used to “reset our world” [28], creating unprecedented numbers of billionaires while destroying the lives of billions or others, stripping citizens of their rights and freedoms, unleashing a tyrannical and repressive security apparatus, and creating a ‘polycrisis’ [29], in response to which governments and even citizens will beg for unprecedented levels of global control.

One of the most meaningless slogans, which appears to have been invented by the UN at the beginning of the Covid event, and which has become a mantra reiterated by countless organisations and individuals, is ‘nobody is safe until everyone is safe’. It is not clear what this unsubstantiated statement even means, but what is clear is that it is demonstrably untrue. Nonetheless, this mantra was recited in some form by four speakers, with Anne McLaughlin (MP for Glasgow North East) stating, “It is only when the world is safe from Covid-19 that any of us are truly safe.” 

Not only does such an obvious fallacy, a propaganda trope, have no place in a parliamentary debate, its use as some type of rational fact by four MPs across the political spectrum does bring into question the quality and independence of any literature provided to them ahead of this event. It is worth considering this much-used slogan and its ramifications in terms of any safety incident. The ideology underpinning it is one of collectivism, even socialism, in that the individual and their relative safety is merely incidental compared to the safety of all. Some might argue that this contradicts the fundamental principles of the International Declaration of Human Rights, which puts the individual at its core. Certainly, it is not an idle statement and reflects the underlying changes being proposed by WHO, which is seeking under their ‘One Health’ initiative [30] a more far-reaching remit where ‘everyone’ will include not only all sovereign citizens of participating nations, but animals and the environment as well.

Slogans infuse documents produced by UN agencies such as WHO. In referring to the zero-draft of the Pandemic Treaty, Preet Kaur Gill (MP for Birmingham, Edgbaston) used a number of them, including: ‘leave no country behind’, ‘global health is local health’, ‘we are stronger together’, and ‘vaccine equity’. Trotting out vacuous statements like this might be appropriate at a protest rally but should have no place in a parliamentary debate. Slogans are rallying cries. They are right-sounding and apparently well-meaning, even moral, in nature. Their repetition is quite hypnotic and they seem to act as spells, potentially binding those who faithfully recite them to an outcome they may live to regret [31]. 

The repetitive nature of any phrase or slogan is a tool of both behavioural science and propaganda. Both the repetitive effect and the rhythmic phrasing allow such phrases to easily enter the unconscious. Over time we simply accept the statement as true, as it bypasses our conscious thought processes that might critically assess such a phrase and see it as false or simply nonsensical. The use of such tactics, particularly by people in positions of authority or trust, allow the effect to be amplified. This is known as the ‘messenger effect’. Simply put, we are more likely to trust the message because it was issued by someone representing expertise and trust [32].

One such case relates to the slogan ‘vaccine equity’. Referring to the “terrible divide in coverage between richer countries and the global south,” Ms Gill lamented that “just 27% of people in low-income countries have received a first dose of a Covid vaccine.” What she does not go on to say, disappointingly, is that there was no correlation between high vaccination rates and low death rates from Covid-19. Indeed, some low-income countries (especially in Africa) with young populations and low vaccination rates experienced very low death rates due to Covid-19, while the USA, one of the richest and most highly vaccinated countries in the world, had one of the highest Covid-19 death rates [33].

4. Patronising the petitioners

Regarding the aim of the petition, which was to request that a referendum be held before the Government could agree to signing the pandemic treaty, Mr Fletcher declared: 

Referendums are divisive; they polarise positions and leave a lasting legacy of division. Whether a referendum is appropriate is for the Government to decide, and if they think it is, they must make all the facts known. I suggest that petitioners, while playing their part in the education process, must do so in a sensible manner.

The patronising tone of this comment is ironic. While the referendum on Brexit did indeed sharpen the edge between ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’, the UK Government’s Covid-19 response was possibly even more effective at dividing the populace into camps and pitting one side (those who complied with the mandates) against the other (those who chose not to comply). Furthermore, insisting that citizens should be “sensible” ignores the fact that constituents in favour of a referendum contacted their MPs to raise thoughtful, well-researched concerns, while some MPs arguing against the referendum tended to rely on slogans, unfounded generalities, and invective, rather than “sensible”, factual, reasoned arguments. 

Mr Spellar not only used disparaging language to deny the request for a referendum, but also predicted that it would be rejected by the House: 

We cannot be arguing to have [a referendum] for every bloomin’ issue, every policy and every treaty. … What we are seeing is overreaction and hysteria, and I would argue that we should give the petition a firm rejection, as I am sure we would do if it ever came to the Floor of the House of Commons.

Inasmuch as MPs in the UK are supposed to represent and take seriously the concerns of their constituencies, it is disturbing that an elected Member should respond with such contempt to a petition signed by more than 150,000 people. 

5. Party-political point-scoring

Disappointingly, despite the importance of the debate and the number of citizens who had taken the time to express their concerns about the pandemic treaty, Ms McLaughlin and Ms Gill spent much of their time criticising the Conservative Government’s response to the Covid event. Instead of focusing on the debate, they chose to score party-political points by indicating the readiness of the Scottish National Party and Labour Party to implement WHO’s agenda, including enabling vaccine equity; sharing technology, knowledge, and skills; and strengthening global health systems using, ironically, the failing National Health Service as a model. 

6. Downplaying or normalising threats to sovereignty

The Covid-19 event has been a classic case of the popular dialectic of ‘Problem-Reaction-Solution’. The engineered over-reaction to the problem of Covid-19 (whether or not there was an engineered virus), and the subsequent societal fall-out, have left traumatised people and their governments desperate to be better prepared for the much-anticipated ‘next one’, and ready to accept a ‘solution’ that few would have countenanced just four years ago. 

In her presentation, Ms Gill expressed the need for an international approach to tackle transnational threats and improve global public health:

Negotiating an effective international treaty on pandemic preparedness is an historic task, but, if we can achieve it, it will save hundreds of thousands of lives. 

If we can use the WHO to support basic universal healthcare around the world, infectious diseases are less likely to spread and fuel global pandemics. 

It is through multilateral efforts, strengthened through international law, that we can ensure that the response to the next pandemic is faster and more effective, and does not leave other countries behind.

… the Opposition absolutely support the principle of a legally binding WHO treaty that sets the standard for all countries to contribute to global health security.

We need a binding, enforceable investment and trade agreement among all participating countries to govern the coordination of supplies and the financing of production, to prevent hoarding of materials and equipment, and to centrally manage the production and distribution process for maximum efficiency and output in the wake of a pandemic being declared.

The last few comments (underlined above) point to one of the most worrying issues for those concerned about sovereignty: if accepted, the pandemic treaty and amendments to the IHR would no longer be non-binding recommendations subject to government oversight but would become legally binding. WHO would be given legislative powers to mandate medical and non-pharmaceutical interventions; to commandeer intellectual property, production capability and resources; and to sanction those who refused to comply.

Some MPs downplayed concerns about these threats to national sovereignty. Mr Madders stated that “creating a global treaty [was] entirely reasonable and responsible” and that it was possible to “both protect our values of freedom and democracy and work more closely with other countries in the face of a global threat.”

Mr Spellar agreed, noting that they were “signatories to hundreds of treaties around the world” and that signing trade treaties was “part of engaging with the world.” He added that during Covid, “international scientific cooperation” had “enabled us to produce a vaccine within something like twelve months instead of the normal ten years … [thus] stabilising the situation.” What was not mentioned is that it was not primarily international collaboration among scientists that allowed the rapid deployment of these Covid-19 countermeasures, but the institution of emergency use authorisations, which allowed inadequately tested products to be dispensed worldwide. Far from “stabilising the situation”, these injectables continue to cause unprecedented numbers of adverse events and deaths, resulting in ongoing destabilisation of society post-Covid. 

Steve Brine (MP for Winchester) observed that, “We cede sovereignty through membership of organisations. We cede the sovereignty to go to war by being a member of NATO.” It is true that all manner of treaties exist between countries and that these are essential for international cooperation; but cooperating as sovereign nations is entirely different to taking instructions from an unelected, supra-national body that is unaccountable to populations. Once in place, WHO’s pandemic treaty and the amendments to the IHR threaten to reduce national sovereignty, giving full power to WHO and its director-general to call pandemics and health emergencies and to regulate the responses of member states.

Those in favour of the pandemic treaty provided no evidence that a one-size-fits-all, legally mandated response to future pandemics would actually prove effective. In fact, Covid-19 was an object lesson in the foolishness of imposing the same public health ‘solutions’ on radically different nations and communities. In reality, mandating centralised protocols disrespects human rights, cultural diversity, national sovereignty, the scientific method, and innovation in healthcare. Instead of trusting human ingenuity to create a multitude of locally appropriate responses, it increases the risk of spectacular failure should the single global solution prove ineffective. 

In an attempt to counter fears about a loss of sovereignty, Mr Madders stated that “We live in a liberal democracy and … are determined to keep it that way.” He denied people’s:

fears that the treaty will restrict freedom of speech to the extent that dissenters could be imprisoned, that it will impose instruments that impede on our daily life, and that it will institute widespread global surveillance without warning and without the consent of world leaders … [and that] Under this treaty, those things will apparently be done without our Government having a say.

He did, however, acknowledge that the measures mentioned above were “already in the power of the Government under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984.” Referring, without giving any details, to “fact checkers” and an unnamed “WHO spokesperson”, he reassured citizens that “WHO would have no capacity to force members to comply with public health measures.” The tyrannical actions during Covid of governments worldwide against their own citizens — many of whom assumed that they did, in fact, live in a “liberal democracy” — makes one wonder why these governments would behave any more independently in future, especially if legally required to follow WHO’s dictates. The repressive regulations and laws passed in various countries since 2020 suggest that this is unlikely, as governments seem to have become addicted to the sweeping emergency powers granted them by this convenient global ‘pandemic’.

Mr Madders and Ms Gill also attempted to allay citizens’ fears by pointing out that there was “over a year of negotiations to go” and that the treaty “would still have to be ratified by the United Kingdom”. Ms Gill also commented that:

The draft treaty is primarily about transparency, fostering international cooperation, and strengthening global health systems … the very first statement in the zero draft text reaffirms “the principle of sovereignty of States Parties” [and that] the implementation of the regulations “shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons.”

Noting the dismissive attitude of the majority of MPs to the petitioners’ concerns, there is little chance that another year of negotiations will convince the UK Government to reject the treaty. 

7. Promoting internationalism over sovereignty 

The UK, as an erstwhile imperial and colonial power, continues to play a leadership role internationally. This may be why some MPs, such as Ms McLaughlin, could not believe that WHO might threaten UK’s sovereignty:

The treaty would have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the UK’s constitutional function and sovereignty … [Imagine a] terrible situation whereby the UK might be unable to make its own decisions if it is outvoted by other countries … the UK is a leading member of the WHO and a primary architect of the treaty, so that is not what is happening here.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) also stressed that the UK was: 

a sovereign state in control of whether we enter into international agreements … with its voice, expertise and wisdom, and our trusted partner status with so many other member states in the UN family, [it] is respected and listened to. 

Ms Trevelyan also referred to the UK’s role as “a global leader, working with CEPI, Gavi and the WHO,” stating that she was “proud to lead the fundraising for Gavi and COVAX.”

A deep chasm appears to have formed between the UK Government and its people. The discussions during this debate suggest that a minority of MPs [3] [link to PANDA video] view themselves as representatives whose duty it is to serve their constituents and respond to their concerns. Most, however, appear to have shifted their focus and allegiance to the international sphere, identifying as members of the “UN family”, playing a leading role in developing WHO’s pandemic instruments, and raising funds, which will ultimately benefit vaccine manufacturers and their investors, impoverishing the majority in the process. Under these circumstances, it is clear why Parliament is unwilling to risk a referendum on WHO’s Pandemic Treaty. There are just too many globalist interests at stake.

At home, increasing numbers of UK citizens are growing weary of a government that speaks glibly of ‘no country left behind’, while leaving its own nation in the dust. Where the people are concerned, trust is gone. 

As Danny Kruger (MP for Devizes) warned:

At the moment, we do not have a commitment from the Government that they would bring the proposals to Parliament, which is very concerning. They say that in our interconnected world we need less sovereignty and more co-operation, which means more power for people who sit above the nation states. I say that in the modern world we need nation states more than ever, because only nation states can be accountable to the people, as the WHO is not.

Concluding comments

After two-and-a-quarter hours of deliberation, Mr Fletcher concluded the debate by thanking the Minister for assuring Members that UK sovereignty was not at risk, and then delivering the most inconclusive resolution:

That this House has considered e-petition 614335, relating to an international agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

For the 156,086 citizens and their representatives who had made the effort to engage Parliament thoughtfully and actively using the relevant democratic process, this ‘resolution’ resolved nothing at all. The exercise amounted to all form and no substance; not only were requests for a referendum dismissed out of hand without adequate discussion, but there were indications that the matter might not even be discussed in the House of Commons.

Illustrating just how little impact was made by those representing the petitioners despite the strength of their arguments, subsequent to the debate and in response to this petition, the government’s official response published on their website [1] commenced with the words: 

To protect lives, the economy and future generations from future pandemics, the UK government supports a new legally-binding instrument to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. 

This ominous response was followed by the now familiar slogan that would sit comfortably in the pages of Orwell’s 1984 but has no place in an official government statement: “Covid-19 has demonstrated that no-one is safe until we are all safe.” Its use further erodes the expectations that such debates will be carried out without bias, undue influence, or ignorance. 

MPs have a duty of care to their constituents to ensure that they are as knowledgeable as possible about the issue being debated, and that they consider the facts rationally and honestly; and citizens deserve to have their concerns taken seriously. Yet two critical questions remain unanswered: firstly, having explicitly stated their support for WHO’s pandemic  instruments, will the UK Government bring this matter to Parliament to be debated? And secondly, would agreement with these instruments, ‘in effect’ if not legally, mean the relinquishment of sovereignty? After all, if the only way the UK will be able to make a sovereign decision in future is by removing itself from membership of WHO, then why would the country wish to sign this treaty in the first place?

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WHO is the United Nations agency responsible for global public health. It aims to “lead global efforts to expand universal health coverage and … coordinate the world’s response to health emergencies.” WHO has 194 member states whose responsibilities are outlined in the IHR promulgated in 1969 and amended in 2005. These regulations are not legally binding and serve as guidance rather than enforceable mandates. In the wake of the Covid-19 event, however, this is set to change. 

In response to member states calling for more effective global cooperation to protect countries from health emergencies, a new international legally binding instrument is being developed to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. This process was initiated in late 2021 at a Special Session of WHO’s governing body, the World Health Assembly. One aspect of this process is the amendment of the IHR, which will become enforceable under international law. Another aspect is the drafting of a ‘Pandemic Treaty’, known as WHO CA+, which describes financing, governance, and supply network responsibilities in the event of future disease outbreaks and other public health emergencies. 

This video below provides clips from the two-and-a-quarter-hour hearing, which illustrate some of the significant arguments made by those supporting the petition.

Watch the video

In summary, concerns raised related to:

• A lack of commitment to national sovereignty and the democratic process by the UK Government, resulting in a loss of trust and confidence in the Government

• WHO’s increasing tendency to centralise control rather than recognise the value of subsidiarity, debate and local decision-making

• Concerns about WHO’s leadership, its influential and conflicted partners, and lack of accountability to member states

• The potential negative impacts of WHO becoming an international authority with legal standing

• Concerns about WHO’s lack of capacity and unwillingness to reflect on its failures.

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Economic measurement tools and methods have for centuries been used as means to embed and reinforce centralist economic authoritarianism. In the case of recent EU and WHO ‘Degrowth’ and GDP proposals, the latest centralising ideologies are ESG, Net Zero, and Pandemic Preparedness, which all aim to consolidate resource control in vast national and supranational bureaucracies.

On the chopping block is GDP, which, we are told in the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All final report, provides a “narrow, distorted view” of economic activity and societal well-being by measuring things it shouldn’t, and not measuring things it should. WHO recommends “getting beyond maximizing GDP and, instead, using a range of dynamic metrics to track progress across core societal values.”

There are indeed good reasons to criticise the GDP fixation. GDP is a mid-twentieth-century creation designed precisely for central planners to be able to track and optimise production. The stated aim of its inventors was to enable planners to manipulate the economy. Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson wrote in his famous textbook, Economics, that GDP “enables the President, Congress, and the Federal Reserve to judge whether … the economy needs a boost or should be reined in a bit,” and that “GDP and related data are like beacons that help policymakers steer the economy toward the key economic objectives.”  

As one of GDP’s inventors, Simon Kuznets was not shy to warn that GDP is a blunt, imprecise measure that easily obscures the quality of growth and allocation of scarce resources. The measure does indeed account for things that may not add to economic well-being – like wasteful government spending – and fails to account directly for things that do – like valued services and activities not directly traded for money income.

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Much harm has been done in the myopic and relentless pursuit of GDP growth, most notably in the Soviet Union and other communist countries where the centralised pursuit of maximal GDP caused tremendous shortages, wasteful gluts, totalising authoritarian control over the economy, and much human death and suffering. 

But replacing GDP will mean little if new measurement systems only further entrench and enable the desire to “direct economic activity” by Great Reset ideologues.

And this is precisely what is happening. At the recent “Beyond Growth” conference hosted by the European Parliament, speakers discussed new ways in which governments and large supranational bureaucracies can direct economic resources. This is the reincarnate ‘Club of Rome’ (the opening plenary was titled “Limits to Growth”, a homage to the Club), and it seeks to reassert the ideas of planetary finitude needing mediation by wise technocrats with sweeping powers: The Great (Malthusian) Reset.

Echoing the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, the conference is using the idea of moving beyond GDP to prepare the soil for ever more authoritarian policies that crimp productivity to accommodate climate alarmism (Net Zero), health technocracy (Pandemic Preparedness and the monitored society), and corporate control (ESG). These objectives are merely the modern veils being used to extend a vast central economic planning system, which in turn needs measures of ‘economic well-being’ designed to show its success and hide its hideous flaws.

This is what the ‘degrowth’ movement is about.

And this is a pity, because much of the underlying disenchantment degrowthers feel about modernity and modern economies are valid instincts. Scarce resources actually do need to be wisely stewarded and mediated within just social systems. Rapidly-congesting, concrete, dystopian urban metropolises are few people’s ideal of a thriving, healthy way to live. GDP expansion for its own sake may indeed be undesirable if it corrodes social stability and continuity, undermines preservation of beauty, or ruins necessary ecological balance.

However, whatever measurements we use to ascertain our economic conditions, what is inescapable is that for societies to flourish and broaden access to material improvements in the quality of life, they must be able to produce wealth.

In the broadest sense, wealth is problem solving, and societies can be said to have become wealthier when they produce more – and better – solutions to their problems, including health and environmental problems.

The debate about ‘what the technocrats should measure’ (if anything at all) is being used to obscure the more critical question: what kind of social and economic organisation is most conducive to an abundance of problem-solving? Is it a system of centralised direction, intent on cutting off communities from abundant energy sources, and allocating resources via bloated bureaucracies at the say-so of detached technocrats? Or is it dynamic systems of decentralised knowledge production, choice, error correction, freedom, and distributed agency, within a sound and stable legal order?

The degrowth movement’s attack on GDP growth is not a good-faith effort to replace a poor, blunt, and often misleading measure in the interests of an abundance of problem solving, but rather a way to harness popular economic discontent arising from failed centralising technocracy to entrench more failed centralising technocracy.

We would be unwise, however, to ignore the underlying sense of dissatisfaction with the modern condition that causes these sorts of ideas to bubble to the surface. Increasingly, centralised global economic management has led to disfigured financial systems, sclerotic bureaucratised economies, and social and political upheaval. Our task is not to ridicule perceptive instincts that express concern, but to discredit iatrogenic economic solutions equipped with new-generation tools of central planning, and instead sketch a more decentralised, human-scale – and humane – path toward the flourishing society.

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