scare People to ensure compliance with lockdowns and Covid restrictions. That’s according to private talks published by the Sunday Telegraph dating back to the Boris Johnson government and the most difficult period of the pandemic, revelations that have greatly embarrassed England’s Conservative Tory Party.
The then Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock He told his aides his aim was to “scare the hell out of everyone” to ensure restrictions were observed. The WhatsApp messages suggest how the then Health Secretary and others debated how the announcement of the ‘Kent’ variant could be used to scare the public into changing their behaviour. Simon Case, Britain’s Cabinet Secretary, suggested in January 2021 that the “fear factor” was “vital” in stopping the spread of the virus, the Guardian reports. Hancock’s adviser also suggested that “raising the tone with the new variant” would help. “We scare everyone with the new strain,” replied the then health minister.
News that embarrasses the UK government
There Conversation, dated 13 December 2020, took place amid concerns about the rapid spread of the coronavirus in south-east England. Hancock publicly announced that the following day, December 14, a new variant of Covid-19 had been identified in the UK. Five days later, London and south-east England reportedly entered a new alert level, Level 4, forcing Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ban gatherings ahead of Christmas. England then went into national lockdown on January 6, 2021.
The journalist Isabel Oakeshott He originally received the material from Hancock while they were working on his memoir. The ex-minister condemned the leak as “Treasonto fuel the newspaper’s libertarian and “anti-lockdown” narrative. In a statement this week, Hancock said all of the material in his book was available for the official investigation into the COVID-19 For his part, Oakeshott said private messages are in the public interest and should therefore be disseminated.
The debate about the origin of Covid
While in the UK the proliferation of Hancock’s private messages puts renewed spotlight on the harshest phases of the pandemic and roils the Tory House, in the United States the debate once again shifts to theOrigin from the virus. In the background, the growing tensions between Washington and China. As revealed by the Wall Street Journal, two major US government agencies – the Department of Energy and the FBI – now believe that Covid-19 originated not from a Chinese “wet market” and thus from a natural species jump, but from a “leak” of the Virus – most likely by accident – from the Institute of Virology of Wuhan.
On Fox News, the Director of the FBI Christopher Wray reiterated the Agency’s position on the issue. “The FBI has long held that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential laboratory accident in Wuhan,” Wray said in an interview. “You’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.” Wray noted that the Beijing government has attempted to thwart and cover up the federal investigation, but the FBI is continuing its work.