UK government scientific advisor: BBC misrepresented Covid risk to support lockdown

January 26, 2024 at 1:06 pm

Photo: screenshot (dailysceptic.org) + Pixabay (geralt)

The “Lamea people” were declared again soon after the events. The BBC was allowed to paint a false picture of the Covid threat in order to boost public support for closures, UK government adviser Professor Mark Woolhouse told the UK’s Covid Commission of Inquiry, writes The Telegraph .

Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist and government adviser, accused the BBC of “repeatedly reporting deaths or rare diseases among healthy adults as if they were an everyday occurrence”.

He said this gave BBC News viewers at the start of the pandemic a “misleading impression” that “we are all at risk”, when in reality, he said, it was known at the time that over-75s were 10,000 times more likely more die from Covid than children under 15.

Professor Woolhouse told the Covid inquiry that the BBC had not corrected its reporting: “I suspect this misinformation was allowed to circulate throughout 2020 as it justified the whole population being locked down.”

He added that further evidence of this was provided in a briefing on 22 March 2020 by a subgroup of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), focused on public behaviour. The briefing states that “a large number of people do not yet feel sufficiently threatened on a personal level; it may be that they are reassured by the low mortality rate of their demographic group… it is necessary to increase the perception of personal threat among those who are complacent by using a strong emotional message.’

Professor Woolhouse also said the “misconception” created by BBC coverage that everyone was at risk was preventing interventions being targeted at the vulnerable minority who were truly at risk from Covid.

In his written statement to the inquiry into the impact north of the border, he said: “I fear the Scottish Government’s response to the pandemic has been compromised as a result.”

It also concluded that the lockdown was “less effective in protecting the most vulnerable precisely because of their need to interact with health and social care workers: isolation was not an option”. The expert added that this should have been recognized from the beginning.

Sources: telegraph.co.uk, dailysceptic.org

Translated by Hando Tõnumaa

2024-01-26 11:06:44
uk-government-scientific-advisor-bbc-misrepresented-covid-risk-to-support-lockdown

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