As my mother used to say, it all comes out in the wash, but sometimes it takes a bit of time. Thus, Professor Mark Woolhouse, who advised the Scottish government during the Covid pandemic, has said that the BBC "repeatedly reported rare deaths or illnesses among healthy adults as if they were the norm," creating the "misleading impression" that "we are all at risk" and "the virus does not discriminate." The idea that everyone was at risk was used to justify the lockdowns since it was put that the Covid virus does not discriminate, when in fact some populations, such as the elderly were vulnerable (and always were to the flu), while children were not. As well, the line was pushed that hospitals were being overwhelmed, when in fact, attendance was at an all-time low, with people not going to hospital out of the panic generated by media such as the BBC.
What was not disclosed by Professor Woolhouse was why the BBC acted in this way? The most plausible hypothesis to my mind is that the government cooperated with the media to push the Covid panic mania, just as this has, and is being done, with climate change alarmism, and mass immigration. The same people who control the government, control the media.
"The BBC failed to follow its own editorial standards during lockdown and instead misrepresented COVID in a way that justified tougher restrictions, a government advisor has claimed.
A submission last week by an eminent epidemiologist to the official UK Covid Inquiry caught the attention of many of those who feel that the government's COVID response was disproportionate to the threat.
Professor Mark Woolhouse, who advised the Scottish government during the pandemic, told the Inquiry that Britain's national leading broadcaster "repeatedly reported rare deaths or illnesses among healthy adults as if they were the norm." He added that this helped to create the "misleading impression" that "we are all at risk" and "the virus does not discriminate."
Lockdown sceptics are not alone in losing general interest in the official inquiry. They say it was set up simply to "prove" that tough restrictions ought to have been imposed even sooner and that it fails, say, to consider the impacts of lockdown on children. But Woolhouse's contribution has undercut part of the government narrative.
The false claim that all people were at an equally huge risk of being harmed by COVID helped to justify measures such as school closures, the impacts of which will be suffered for many years to come.
Pointing to early reports that "hospitals were being overwhelmed during the first wave" while "overall hospital bed occupancy was at an all-time low during that period," Woolhouse said:
I suspect this misinformation was allowed to stand throughout 2020 because it provided a justification for locking down the entire population. … Possibly, this kind of coverage was an attempt to back up government public health messaging; for example, the hugely misleading claim that "we are all at risk."
Alan Miller, who co-founded the Together Declaration during the pandemic to campaign against the restriction of freedoms, said the BBC "mugged us all off." Diagnostic pathologist and campaigner Dr. Clare Craig added: "Does BBC apologise? No."
A spokesperson for the corporation told The Daily Telegraph that "we do not recognise this description of our working environment," insisting: "We reported on the pandemic in line with the BBC's rigorous editorial standards—using a range of official and scientific sources." What then, asked Craig, "does that say about BBC standards?""