Ministers use ‘propaganda’ tactics to intimidate public to follow COVID rules

The co-founder of No10’s ‘Nudge Unit’ has accused the government of using tactics to scare people to follow the COVID rules during the pandemic.

Behavioral scientist Simon Ruda suggested that there was an excessive emphasis on modeling and data which he warned was ‘hypocritical’.

writing in magazine Unherd Today, he said fear was initially used to promote public compliance during the first lockdown But the crisis was right through.

Mr. Ruda, who helped establish No10’s Behavioral Insights team in 2010, said, “This fear seems to have driven policy decisions into a worrying feedback loop.”

‘To my mind, the most serious and far-reaching mistake in responding to the pandemic is the level of fear voluntarily expressed on the public.’

Started under the government of David Cameron, the group was responsible for positively influencing behavior with small changes without introducing legislation.

Its past successes have included promoting diversity in the police force, helping job centers benefit more people, and increasing the number of organ donors.

But Mr Ruda warned that deploying a ‘nudge’ strategy during the pandemic could amount to ‘state sanctioned propaganda’.

Behavioral science was conceived as a means of identifying and correcting the biases that drive humans to make non-rational decisions.

‘But it is not clear to me whether the trade-offs many governments are making in their response to the pandemic are based on utilitarian rationality.’

Ministers have been criticized for putting too much stock in the ‘worst’ Covid scenarios modeled by its advisors.

The government has used these estimates of cases and deaths to justify restrictive measures to the public or to encourage people to change their behaviour.

One of the more recent models warned of 6,000 daily Covid deaths and 10,000 hospitalizations this winter in a pessimistic scenario.

In fact, there are now only 250 deaths per day – almost half of a bad flu year – and 2,000 hospital admissions.

No10’s chief modeller has previously said that the committee does not consider optimistic scenarios because ‘it does not lead to decisions’.

While no new restrictions were imposed in England, people were told to cancel their Christmas parties and ‘prioritize’ what they received.

More restrictive measures were reintroduced in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

But Mr Ruda suggested there were not enough experts within Downing Street’s scientific ranks to challenge the data or advice.

Referring to the government’s now famous ‘Following the Science’ line, Mr Ruda said: ‘As we have learned over the past two years, the focus on “science” has blinked…

Prioritizing reflection, reason and debate by placing all value on data risks – and obscuring the limits of that data as a depiction of reality.

‘… that’s why we need multidisciplinary teams, a strong culture of intellectual humility and designed-in cognitive diversity to tackle problems especially in times of uncertainty.

Several experts have called for the daily publication of COVID cases, deaths and hospitalizations to be canceled or placed in reference to other diseases.

Ruda wrote, ‘The more we measure something, such as a covid infection, the more prominent it becomes and therefore the more it matters.

He also raised concerns about the long-term effects of the campaign of fear deployed during the pandemic.

We have fought COVID… now we need a national effort to beat cancer: Professor Karol Sikora warns ‘time is running out’ to prevent thousands of people dying unnecessarily from the disease ‘ as the pandemic has ‘devastated’ Britain’s progress

While all eyes were on him boris johnson And bloodshed at the partygate, in a quiet corner of Westminster a small group of MPs quietly showed up to politicians – dealing with matters of life or death.

It is indeed a grim experience for anyone who engages in the debate today amid a smattering of parliamentarians on the issue of access to radiotherapy.

MPs from all parties stood in line and described the chilling situation we are now facing with cancer. In his words, it is a crisis in every shape and form.

Before Covid, the UK had a very poor record on cancer outcomes. Now the pandemic has sabotaged all recent efforts to improve recovery and survival from cancer. Appointments were cancelled, diagnosis was delayed and treatment derailed. With cancer, life is delayed.

The well documented statistics are terrifying and anyone who thinks they will never be affected should remember that cancer will affect 1 in 2 of us at some stage in our lives.

I have always tried to be as positive as possible during the pandemic, but as someone who has spent 50 years treating cancer patients, I see the current situation as its most dire.

Of all the medical backlogs severely aggravated by the pandemic, cancer is the most vulnerable and time is fast running out.

In the radiotherapy debate, the Catch Up with Cancer campaign created by Craig and Mandy Russell was repeatedly mentioned after their 31-year-old daughter, Kelly Smith, who had bowel cancer, died during the lockdown. The petition, started by Kelly’s parents, attracted several million signatures and clearly showed everyone what really mattered to people.

A significant contributor to the delay in diagnosing people with suspected cancer in this country is the labeling of (probable) cancer too early and too arbitrarily. Patients are placed on either a high-risk route (the two-week fast track route) or the slow six-week clinical route. Stratification is done in many cases with very little information as well as the fact that these deadlines are often not met.

We can gain a lot by determining the likelihood of cancer with better information. The first stop for all should be a quick set of diagnostic tests and until the diagnosis is complete, treatment cannot begin.

So how can capacity be improved? Of course, there should be more resources in terms of equipment and people. The government’s commitment to 40 community diagnostic centers from a football stadium to a renovated retail outlet is a big step in the right direction. In addition to the challenge we face in terms of diagnostics, tremendous advances in precision radiotherapy – including amazingly precise treatments such as proton beam therapy – have brought real benefits to patients.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid has echoed NHS England’s recent advice for hospital trusts to make urgent agreements with independent healthcare providers to help tackle the backlog. The cancer centers I work at offer their services to the NHS at a non-profit rate, providing much needed additional capacity. If there is one prevalent complaint from the public, it is that they cannot access early diagnosis and even when they can, treatment is too slow.

Today’s debate was in a storm of agreement between former Lib Dem leader Tim Farone to Labor’s Graham Morris and government minister Maria Caulfield (who knows the challenges well as a cancer nurse) that radiotherapy provision is a major concern. Prioritizing is part of the clinical arsenal of weapons that are needed to combat cancer.

If before the pandemic the challenge of cancer was formidable, it is huge now. There is clearly the political will to tackle this problem, but all of us involved in cancer care need to demonstrate the same determination to act now as we rose to the challenge of a vaccination booster campaign. We need another national effort. On this the lives of the people depend.

Karol Sikora is a Consultant Oncologist and Professor of Medicine at the University of Buckingham Medical School.