British intelligence services are now reportedly reassessing their position on the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A Sunday report from the Sunday Times of London quotes British spies who initially dismissed the lab leak theory, but now say it is „feasible.“
The same document presented a grid of 14 options for increasing compliance which included “use media to increase sense of personal threat”, a tactic which was seen as having a “high” effectiveness though spill-over effects “could be negative”.
Some Sage participants now admit to feeling “embarrassed” by such advice.
One regular Sage attendee said: “The British people have been subjected to an unevaluated psychological experiment without being told that is what’s happening.
Psychologists have accused Downing Street of using ‚covert psychological strategies‘ to emphasise the threat from Covid-19 without contextualising the risks, the Telegraph reported.
It was said this created ‚a state of heightened anxiety‘, adding many people became ‚too frightened to attend hospital‘.
Experts fear Britons have been the subject of an experiment in the use of tactics which operate ‚below their level of awareness,‘ it was said.
Grieving families last night said deaths had been wrongly certified as Covid-19.
Demanding an inquiry, top medical experts and MPs also insisted they were ‘certain’ that too many fatalities were being blamed on the virus.
One funeral director said it was ‘a national scandal’. The claims are part of a Daily Mail investigation that raises serious questions over the spiralling death toll.
(May 30, 2020)
Normally, two doctors are needed to certify a death, one of whom has been treating the patient or who knows them and has seen them recently. That has changed. For Covid-19 only, the certification can be made by a single doctor, and there is no requirement for them to have examined, or even met, the patient. A video-link consultation in the four weeks prior to death is now felt to be sufficient for death to be attributed to Covid-19.
Grim new graphs lay bare the dilemma facing Boris Johnson‘s government as officials try to work out how to reopen the country without causing a third wave of coronavirus infections, as SAGE recommends keeping social distancing measures in place until 2022.
(17.01.2021)
I have been criticised by a family doctor on the grounds that a question I put to the PM in Parliament was ‘demoralising for NHS staff’.
I am at a loss as to how this could be the case.
The question to the PM was this:
“Pubs cannot compete with supermarkets for off-sales. Even within a household, people cannot play tennis or golf. Notwithstanding the assault on liberty and livelihoods, why are the regulations pervaded by a pettifogging malice?”
A senior Conservative MP urged anti-vaccination campaigners to keep going with their fight against government restrictions and told them NHS capacity figures were being „manipulated“ to exaggerate the scale of coronavirus, Sky News can reveal.
Another burning question which will determine how gung-ho ministers can be with easing restriction is to what extent the vaccines stop people from spreading Covid.
The Government has commissioned a study to investigate the vaccines and their role on transmission, which is being overseen by Public Health England. It is focused on frontline healthcare workers who‘ve been jabbed.
(08.01.2021)
The MPs also express concern about the government presenting statistics in a misleading way, and urge ministers to take care to maintain public confidence in them.
„There is nothing to fear from openness,“ said Tory MP Greg Clark, who chairs the committee.
(05.06.2020)
Clare Gardiner, head of cyber resilience and strategy at the UK National Cyber Security Centre — a branch of signals intelligence agency GCHQ — will become the centre’s first director-general, responsible for advising ministers on the “alert level” for the virus; which is similar to assessing the terror threat.
Ms Gardiner’s role at the NCSC involves advising businesses and public organisations on how to improve their cyber defences, and she will return to this post after her secondment at the centre. But her research background in epidemiology and medical statistics make her well-suited to the role, according to one person familiar with her appointment.
She will report to Dido Harding, who is in charge of the NHS test and trace service.
The decision to put a security official in charge is likely to cause consternation among public health experts, who have questioned whether the template of a terror analysis centre is appropriate for managing a viral pandemic,