A BBC Reckoning for the Covid Lockdowns is Overdue
Trust in the BBC has been collapsing for years. For many, it finally died during Covid when the national broadcaster took on the role of chief cheerleader for the lockdowns, with no dissent allowed, says Toby in the Telegraph. A reckoning is long overdue. Here’s an excerpt.
My trust in the BBC collapsed some time before the leak of of Michael Prescott’s report for the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee. To be precise, it was during the Covid pandemic when the Corporation decided its job was producing pro-lockdown propaganda rather than scrutinising the government’s pandemic response. The effect was to prolong the most disastrous public policy in the history of these islands.
I won’t dwell on why ordering people to stay in their homes and closing non-essential businesses was such a mistake. To take just one example, the IMF estimates the total cost of the UK government’s COVID-19 measures was £410 billion, or £6,067 per person.
This partly accounts for why the British economy is in such a parlous state and why Rachel Reeves has so little room for manoeuvre. For instance, the main reason she can’t borrow more to plug the hole in the public finances is because we maxed out the country’s credit card during the pandemic, with public sector net debt ballooning from £1.8 billion at the end of March 2020 to £2.35 billion by March 2022. This entirely foreseeable cost of the lockdown was just one of many that the BBC decided to overlook, alongside the widening of the attainment gap, the increase in domestic violence, the deterioration of mental health, the rise in undiagnosed cancers and the neglect of care home residents.
The BBC’s editors and producers, like a majority of the lanyard class, seemed to take it for granted that these costs would be more than outweighed by the benefits, even though there was precious little evidence that locking people in their homes would stop the spread of the virus. Indeed, the evidence soon began to point the other way: Sweden, which imposed much more moderate restrictions, had the second lowest excess mortality in Europe between March 2020 and July 2022.
Such was the BBC’s enthusiasm for the lockdown policy, it pumped out nightly “Covid porn”, with Clive Myrie and other correspondents filing reports from “the frontline” where doctors and nurses struggled to contain the deadly virus. It’s no wonder the government’s draconian response commanded such widespread public support. This news footage gave the impression that anyone who breached the social distancing rules was at serious risk of dying. This was not the reality: in 2021 the global infection fatality rate was reckoned by John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine at Stanford, to be 0.27%.
The Beeb went further, Toby continues, using its Trusted News Initiative to take the propaganda global and bring pressure to censor social media across the world.
Worth reading in full.
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That’s when I cancelled my TV licence. Was already in a mood after complaining about jo Coburn attempting a diplomatic incident during Trump’s 2018 state visit.
Sachsgate and the pompous arse Jonathan Ross did it for me.
We got rid of the TV back in 1998, suddenly got really fed up of being preached to. There is so much more to life than the TV. In any form.
The BBC consider themselves to be the Gods of Information, broadcasting ‘right think’ to the huddled masses. In reality they are just a slice of the Useful Idiots.
With all of their pronouncements, permitting no contrary views, you have to ask yourself “Who benefits?”.
True. Just look at their response to being caught faking footage, not to mention all their sycophants spouting nonsense from Nandy Pandy down to slime like Nick Robinson.
The BBC and every other media organisation that I am aware of, globally. Sky News Australia was more sceptical – still owned by Murdoch. Not sure about Fox. But all the UK ones were as awful as the BBC, as was almost every other organisation of any kind everywhere.
I suppose it’s a matter of various news outlets all competing for sensationalist, attention grabbing headlines. The bad news, as ever, sold – and any good news or moderate, down-to-earth analysis (for example the one cited above demonstrating the IFR to be 0.27%) did not sell.
There’s certainly some truth in that. I don’t have a problem with that approach if I am not forced to pay for it, though from a moral standpoint I think they went far beyond excusable commercial behaviour.
Well said. And because so many fell for the fallacy that “because we pay a licence fee they must be impartial”, the result was, as is so often the case, an engineered consensus about lockdowns, vaccines and the rest of it.
True. Had the BBC actually been as impartial as it delusionally claims to be, then things would have been very different. It would have been a very powerful beacon of debate on the subject and, as many of us believe, when open uncensored debate is allowed, truth generally wins out.
But that is fantasy, because the BBC is an establishment mouthpiece design to prop up and maintain the ruling establishment. Always has been, always will be.
Sky News Australia was Sceptic throughout tge Scamdemic tof and have kept it going.
Thank goodness for small mercies. Shows it can be done.
TalkRadio/TV and the early GB News were the only British organisations which questioned the brainwashing propaganda.
Ah yes, Talk. Julia Hartley Brewer and Mike Graham (who I think was initially not that sceptical but Peter Hitchens changed his mind).
And look how Mark Steyn ended up.
I repeat your opinion, as I always do. But special blame for the lockdowns is due to the BBC. In March-20, the sensible policy of herd immunity was reversed only after the BBC ran a scare campaign that a terrible novel virus was rampaging black-death style through northern Italy. The BBC ran pictures of stacked up coffins knowing these pictures originated from a marine disaster off the island of Lampedusa 5 years earlier. The UK teaching unions then panicked and voted to strike, saying Bojo was not taking covid seriously. Only then was Ferguson’s preposterous ‘worst-case half-a-million deaths’ model wheeled out – to provide cover for an action that the government was pushed and panicked into taking by the BBC and the public-sector unions.
The BBC is a national enemy not a national broadcaster. It is time to do away with it.
“The BBC is a national enemy not a national broadcaster. “
100% The world’s best-funded political campaigning organisation.
Let’s for a moment assume that slowing the spread of Sars-CoV2 actually worked despite it – aerosol transmission – certainly didn’t, why would that have been desirable? Three more sombreros to flatten the population aka “We must do something! This is something! Therefore, we must do it!”? The only conceivable effects of “slowing the spread” is prolonging the agony. In the end, everybody will end up contacting an airborne virus, get sick to some degree and recover again, minus a few unlucky people, most of which would have died of something else in the not-too-distant future, anyway. That’s part of the general risk of life everybody has to take every day and stop living to avoid dying makes no sense whatsoever. The public health false technocrats thought they could do something. And because of this, they badly wanted to do something. But we should certainly never have let them. They can experiment among themselves if they really want to and then report about the outcome. Once it has been established that their shit actually works – which it didn’t and probably, never will – we can consider using it for something, ie, have an informed conversation if the likely benefit… Read more »
“why would that have been desirable? “
Exactly this.
While that’s generally also my opinion¹, this text was inspired by your previous comments on the topic.
¹ March 2020, the powers who laugh about us² managed to get me scared of COVID to some degree. I then though about this and came to the conclusion that hiding in the cupboard from an airborne virus would never work and hence, the only sensible option was Business as usual and chance it.
² A German wordplay. The original is Die Mächte, die über uns wachen, the powers who guard and protect us. This is supposed to refer to God and his guardian angels. I’ve been using Die Mächte, die über uns lachen, the powers who laugh about us, as sarcastic refrence to TPTB for some time.
“the powers who laugh about us² managed to get me scared of COVID to some degree”
I am a recovering/in remission/cured? hypochondriac. I too thought about “covid” and decided that worrying about it would be far worse for my health than just carrying on as normal (as far as that was possible at the time – almost none of our friends wanted to see us).
I have met quite a few people in my corner of the French Pyrenees who believe that many of the West’s current problems stem from the English-speaking world. I tend to agree, and I think we can therefore lay a large part of the blame at the door of the Blessed British Brainwashing Commentariat, given its undoubted (and now thoroughly undeserved) influence…
The BBC has been like this since as long as I can remember. My parents used to rail at Jonathan Dimbleby on Radio 4’s Any Questions for his terribly annoying habit of not allowing the panel to answer the question, by immediately jumping in to pose his own somewhat related question with his characteristically biased and left wing views embedded. It drove me wild, too. Then his attitude to those who phoned in on Saturday’s Any Answers was patronising, to say the least.
We never had a telly, but I gather that his brother David hosted Question Time, and was equally irritating and condescending.
Hmm, dunno.
It is undoubtedly true that wokism has strong roots in the US civil rights / social justice movement, but then the question remains – why have the French adopted it? It’s not like anybody forced them to.
Also, let’s not ignore the influence of some French “thinkers”, like Derrida and Foucault.
Some people living under the French mafia may have adopted it. Adopted it. My point.
Many people living under the Spanish mafia have also adopted it. And those under the Czech mafia. And the Swedish mafia. And the Ecuadorian mafia, and so on.
Trillion, not billion for those public sector debt figures!
Thank you! Mod please add a sic [ ] correction and contact the Telegraph editor.
What’s 1000x between friends eh 😑
Let’s write that out in full. Public sector net debt went from £1,800,000,000,000 in 2020 to £2,350,000,000,000 in 2022.
What we used to call astronomic in the old days.
Can someone please refresh my memory. Did they actively participate in the take down of Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, or did they just look the other way – nothing to see here, folks.
Oh they denounced and mocked users of Ivermectin, despite also saying that it has been used widely for years.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58170809
In this article they write about RCTs etc – wonder where their scepticism was regarding the experimental and already-proven-to-be-dangerous jabs?!
This link led to the page shown below. At least it’s not a paywall, but it does encourage everyone to sign in!
It doesn’t do that for me, and I don’t even have a BBC profile to sign in with. The thought of just having one makes me feel sick, and the effects of the thought of using it to identify myself with the BBC don’t even bear mentioning. Maybe it’s because it’s a .com URL and because I am viewing from France.
Another related matter was that the granting of Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the jabs being promoted was justified by the absence of any alternative. If they had admitted that Ivermectin could be useful, it would undermined the EUA. Anyway, the Beeb acted as agents for the pharma trade, in effect.
Alternatives like Ivermectin and Hydroxichloroquine had to be banned because they were effective.
Effective… and CHEAP. Not attractive enough for the grifters.
To my mind this is the closest I’ve seen to real, Biblical, evil. By their lies and dissembling, they consigned millions to a horrible death or painful disabilities, who could have been cured, easily and cheaply. I suspect that many are now enjoying the receipt of more than just 30 pieces of silver.
Watching this unfold, and not knowing how to stop it, has shaken the very foundations of my atheism.
Ivermectin and Hydroxichloroquine were removed once the C1984 was downgraded from a High Consequence Infectious Disease to a Low Consequence Infectious Disease.
They took down HCQ, turned it from over the counter to a made it a prescription only drug for which no doctor would give you a prescription. Yet HCQ has been used as an anti-malaria prophylactic for donkeys years, and has never caused a death nor any other problem. I have taken it several times over the years when voyaging in Africa, as have many people there.
They were against HCQ because it was cheap and big Pharma wouldn’t make any money with it, and President Trump was for it!
It did have the effect that I gave up watching much of their “News” output, and it also encouraged me to donate to this site. It also seems to have contributed to the emergence of GBN.
Most disastrous public policy in the history of these islands?
Stiff competition from: Net Zero, mass immigration, joining the EEC, 1945 – 1950 nationalising the economy and charity and healthcare, creating an open-ended, free to all, welfare-state.
All of those are indeed probably worse in that they are ongoing. “Covid” was probably the worst in terms of intensity, while it lasted.
“To take just one example, the IMF estimates the total cost of the UK government’s COVID-19 measures was £410 billion, or £6,067 per person.”
The cost to all of us in many ways was beyond any price. Lost time in our lives, house arrest and all the other ongoing mental and physical issues caused by not working, the “vaccines”, lost education and development at crucial phase. Bastards.
and that, presumably, is the immediate cost rather than taking into account all the downstream costs such as additional welfare etc.?
Plus business interruption, lost opportunities
Agree fully. I keep on making the point that each and every one of us lost two quality life years. It was worse for some, but not good for most of us. And it is difficult to put a price on that.
That kind of sacrifice may be appropriate in the case of an existential threat, not a bad cold
I have 2 questions:
For all the good that DS has achieved it appears that Toby spends little time reading the learned commentary supplied by the subscribers. We can start with…
There was no pandemic.
Exactly. I think he does it to not alienate many Telegraph faithful who haven’t yet brought themselves to look outside the Overton Window, but may yet be encouraged to do so… gently. Benefit of the doubt much.
No, there was no pandemic. For the umpteenth time. It is still incredible to me how stark the contrast was between how easy it was to see and how difficult it was to convince people of the fact.
It’s easier to fool someone than to convince them they’ve been fooled.
The BBC is a nest of false news and Misinformation, FACT. However it seems to have acquired with Polticians the same sainted status as “Our NHS”, no doubt the words “The envy of the world” to be attached to its name.
What chance do we have? The BBC gets away with it once again, an organisation that covers up for Pedophiles, that does not know what a Woman is, and is happy to designate them to a sub human class below men who wear skirts, Anti semitic to the point of incitement to hatred of Israel and the Jews, anti democracy as shown by the false representation of a democratically elected President of this Countries key ally.
My guess is as long as its a person on the right or a biological female, or indeed an Israeli and the BBC happens to produce a piece of “journalism” anti that individual that results in their harm or death the BBC will get away with it, after all its our treasure.
Can I recommend that anyone who thinks the behaviour of the BBC is beyond the pale they stop paying the licence fee,
“World-beating” is the phrase they use.
Beating the world into brain-dead ignorance, or dying trying.
I think many sceptical readers of this site will already have junked the TV tax – stepping out of the stream of effluent allows us to take a different perspective (and you don’t need to pay for wellington boots any more). It also means we can avoid that force which has been called kitsch in previous articles here, the sort of emotional blackmail that is horribly apparent in TV talent shows and BBC TV news (eg the ‘death toll’).
No way that the BBC in its current form would ever disagree with government policy – e g covid, climate. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you
‘…in 2021 the global infection fatality rate was reckoned by John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine at Stanford, to be 0.27%.’
This is a grossly misleading figure. It is an average of averages. The cvd19 risk was highly age and co-morbidity segmented.
According to prof Ioannidis, the death rate for fit and well children and adolescents was nil. No child or teenager died of covid. Not a single attested case exists anywhere in the world, unless the person was already in extremis from other causes.
Conversely, the death rate for morbidly obese and diabetic over-85’s was 25%.
The overall case fatality rate was 0.27%, but all the risk was concentrated in the extreme age-frail and already terminally ill.
Prof Ioannidis summed it up at the end of his famous video. ‘Suppose I had to choose between annual flu and covid19. Well, if I were 85 and termilly ill, I would choose flu. But otherwise I’d take covid every time.’
FYI:
England and Wales are now in bird lockdown….
Over the past months avian influenza (in this case H5N1) cases have gradually been spreading, despite local lockdowns (3-10 km radius).
These pesky birds keep flying and migrating….
This article only tells about 1/10th of the story.
The entire Covid narrative was completely fraudulent and every member of Johnson’s government and Starmer’s opposition knew that, that’s why they were all partying like pagans throughout.
Small businesses were forced to close and offered “loans” to stay afloat which they are now having to repay. Why are they being forced to repay money that was only borrowed because of the policy of a criminal government ?
The behaviour of the BBC has been disgraceful with regard to the Covid fraud and many other issues and the corporation should be closed but we also need to see serious criminal charges brought against Johnson, Starmer and others for the terrible damage they deliberately inflicted on the country and the population simply to serve their WEF masters and their own political agendas.
I stopped watching the bbc five yrs ago, when they lied about everything covid, and having done my own research reading papers by Professor John Ioannidis, Drs. Harvey Risch, Ryan Cole, Zev Zelenko, Luc Montagnier, Dr Raoult, Pierre Kory, Michael Levitt, Scott Atlas, Jay Battacharya, Martin Kuldorff and Sunetra Gupta to name a few, I realised something seriously was amiss.
The BBC was the megaphone for a gov’t and its medical advisors and politicians. The misinformation generated by tge gov’t and its advisors, was very dangerous. “Safe and effective” vaxxes were neither, closure of businesses, the six foot rule, one hr of exercise a day, school closure, masks, PCR testing, track and trace, locking up the elderly in nursing homes unable to see their families, limited number of people allowed at funerals and on and on. Please NEVER forget what your gov’t did to you. Please don’t forget what the BBC was happy to report. Intelligent journalists had the same access to date, we all had. They chose to place their heads in the sand.
The BBC … Funded by Bill Gates to spout the nonsense and push the mass medical experiment that injured and killed so many of its viewers.
The scientific insanity that was the response to the virus should never be repeated though the Inquiry won’t come to this conclusion.. if it hadn’t been for those rational pundits on GB News and YouTube I think I would have succumbed.