Normalising "Lockdown"

This is a section from Volume 2 of “Covid-19,” Psychological Operations, and the War for Technocracy, which I am publishing in advance.

Introduction

Liberal democracies are meant to safeguard liberty, not take it away. In February 2020, it was unthinkable that democracies around the world would spend the next 17 months or so imposing severe restrictions on civil liberties in the form of “lockdowns” (a prison term), or that the “free” people of those countries would put up with such treatment. Yet, that is precisely what happened.

What explains the public’s willingness to tolerate “lockdowns,” especially for so long? I put the term “lockdown” in inverted commas, because I do not want to legitimise it by using it as though it were normal and unproblematic.

To be sure, the public was lied to about the threat severity of a non-existent “pandemic” and subjected to military-grade propaganda and psychological operations, including the “shock and awe” of the first “lockdown” (Hughes, 2024, Chaps. 4 & 6).

Often overlooked, however, is the calculated and devious means by which “lockdowns” were steadily prolonged, and the ways in which the “lockdown” concept was gradually developed so as to become more “adaptive” in terms of location, duration, and severity – a blueprint for technocratic control in the future.

In what follows, the UK is analysed as a case study of how “lockdowns” were drawn out and developed. Remarkably, “three weeks to flatten the curve” in March 2020 was used to legitimise restrictions that remained in place, on and off (but mostly on), until July 19, 2021. Even after that point, the threat of another “lockdown” remained until the “Covid-19” operation was wound down in early 2022.

The “lockdown” concept thereby became normalised and ingrained into public consciousness, priming the public to accept such measures should they ever be enacted again.

The First UK National “Lockdown”

When Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave his unlawful stay-at-home order to the public on March 23, 2020 (for “lockdown” measures did not legally come into effect until March 26), it was construed as an emergency measure, a state of exception that would temporarily disrupt the normal functioning of society. “Three weeks to flatten the curve,” Brits were told.

Yet, as the three weeks ended, “lockdown” was extended for another three weeks (minimum) on April 16, 2020, with the government setting out five criteria that had to be met in order for restrictions to be lifted. These related to NHS capacity, a sustained fall in deaths, a reduced infection rate, adequate testing and PPE supply, and no risk of a “second wave” overwhelming the NHS (Institute for Government, 2020, p. 10).

Three and a half weeks after that, on May 10, 2020, the Prime Minister praised the public for its support for historically unprecedented restrictions:

It is now almost two months since the people of this country began to put up with restrictions on their freedom – your freedom – of a kind that we have never seen before in peace or war. And you have shown the good sense to support those rules overwhelmingly. (Prime Minister’s Office, 2020a)

But instead of ending restrictions, Johnson set out a “conditional” plan, dependent on “a series of big Ifs,” for keeping the “R” (the infection rate) down. The public had made it through the “first phase,” he claimed; the plan would “get us through the next” (Prime Minister’s Office, 2020a). The first phase had lasted almost 10 weeks, no time frame was specified for the second, and so the “lockdown” began to assume a seemingly indefinite character. The new phase was marked by a new tripartite slogan: “stay alert, control the virus, and save lives.”

There was nothing adaptive about the restrictions at this stage, but it should be noted that the idea of adaptive restrictions had been mooted even before the first “lockdown” was announced. Neil Ferguson’s infamous “Report 9,” whose fear-mongering projections of deaths without mitigation was used to legitimise the “lockdown” (while Ferguson and his married lover ignored it), proposed “adaptive hospital surveillance-based triggers for switching on and off population-wide social distancing and school closure” (Ferguson et al., 2020, p. 15). Figure 4 of that report shows ICU admissions: a rise above 100 per week triggers social distancing and school/university closures; a fall below 50 cases per week acts as the “off” trigger. The report envisages such measures being in force “approximate[ly] 2/3 of the time” (p. 12).

Easing and Retightening of Restrictions

A phased reopening of schools began on June 1, 2020, and “non-essential” shops reopened fourteen days later. On June 23, 2020 – 14 weeks after “three weeks to flatten the curve” – Prime Minister Johnson announced plans to “safely ease the lockdown in England,” with a series of measures to come into effect on July 4, 2020, including “one metre plus” (“social distancing” with mitigations), two households being “allowed” to meet, “Covid-secure” guidelines for businesses, and the reopening of pubs and restaurants subject to table service (Prime Minister’s Office, 2020b). Nevertheless, he cautioned, although “we continue to meet our five tests,” those measures are “entirely conditional on our continued defeat of the virus.”

One telling line in the Prime Minister’s June 23 address was “there will be flare-ups for which local measures will be needed” (Prime Minister’s Office, 2020b). Thus, even before restrictions were eased (but not eliminated) nationally, local “lockdowns” appear to have been planned. Just six days later, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced the UK’s first local “lockdown” in Leicester and parts of Leicestershire, claiming it would last “at least two weeks” (“Leicester Lockdown Tightened,” 2020). But 100 days later, families and friends in affected areas were still “unable to meet up in their homes and gardens” (Woodfield, 2020). This mostly took place over the summer, when case, hospitalization, and death rates were all at their lowest, according to the UK coronavirus dashboard.

On July 17, 2020, the Chief Scientific Officer, Patrick Vallance, floated the idea of another national “lockdown” in the winter, to which the Prime Minister responded two days later that he “certainly” did not want another such “lockdown,” nor did he think “we will be in that position again” (cited Silver & Yang, 2020). This tactic, used repeatedly by the government, involves seeding the idea of a future development by denying it will happen. Another second “lockdown” indeed looked distant when indoor theatres, bowling alleys and soft play areas were reopened on August 14, 2020.

Yet, restrictions were reintroduced with the “rule of six” (a ban on social gatherings of more than six people) and a return to working from home on September 14, 2020, plus a 10pm curfew for the hospitality sector eight days later. At a Downing Street press conference on September 30, 2020, the Prime Minister claimed he would not hesitate to impose further restrictions if needed.

The Second UK National “Lockdown”

Rather than bringing in a second national “lockdown” straight away, a more adaptive or “phased” approach was introduced via a three-tier system of Covid-19 restrictions in England on October 14, 2020. This built on the idea of local “lockdowns” by treating different areas of the country as more at risk than others and subjecting them to different levels of restrictions accordingly. According to the Office for National Statistics (2020), 71% of UK adults “supported or tended to support the use of targeted lockdown measures” in early November 2020, down from 86% in late September — a remarkable level of support if true.

The tier system was useful in priming the public for another national “lockdown.” As Yeadon (2020) realised on October 22, 2020, the first national “lockdown” had conditioned people to accept the idea of regional lockdowns, as well as the potential for a second national “lockdown.” But, he noted, there was no evidence of excess mortality in October 2020 and thus no justification for a second “lockdown.” Indeed, according to Public Health England (2020), “no statistically significant excess all-cause mortality by week of death was observed overall through the EuroMOMO algorithm” for Week 43 (w/c 19 October) in England. At that time, there were no “new variants” and thus no epidemiological reason to suppose a fresh emergency, with the Gompertz curve having completed in late spring.

Because the public had been primed to accept the idea of another national “lockdown,” all it took was some exaggerated forecasts by SAGE about what could happen in terms of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths to scare people into going along with it (Spectator, n.d.). In fact, many people, businesses, and trade unions actively called for additional restrictions in the interests of “safety.” This is exactly the kind of psychological conditioning that social engineers want to achieve: getting people to desire their own subjugation, so that it does not need to be enforced.

The second national “lockdown” in England was announced on Halloween, 2020, and came into force five days later, meaning there would be no remembering the fifth of November, the date when Guy Fawkes reputedly tried blowing up the Houses of Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. But on New Year’s Eve, 2020, a UK national radio station asked the public to vote on which song to play at the stroke of midnight and the winner was Tchaikowsky’s 1812 Overture, the song used in V for Vendetta when the Houses of Parliament are blown up thanks to the actions of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask.

The pseudoscientific language of “circuit breaker lockdown” was used to describe the second national “lockdown,” i.e. a short, sharp set of measures intended to cut off opportunities for the virus to spread. With the public rightly suspicious of how long the first national “lockdown” had dragged on, the second was limited to four weeks and the end date (December 2) was given at the start and adhered to. This helped to win public support for shorter “lockdowns” that can quickly be switched on and off, adding duration to location and intensity (through the tier system) in terms of adaptability.

Tiers 1-3

Rather than the second national “lockdown” simply ending, however, it reverted to the somewhat arbitrary three-tier system of restrictions, for which the precedent had been set in October 2020. Northumberland, for instance, was placed in Tier 3 based on 228 cases per 100,000, while nearby Carlisle was placed in Tier 2 for 227 cases per 100,000. A 0.23% infection rate was thus deemed sufficient to impose the most stringent restrictions.

Yet, it was not entirely a reversion to the status quo ante. For whereas 42% of the country had been living under Tier 1 (the least restrictive tier) before the second “lockdown,” fully 99% was placed in Tiers 2 and 3 afterwards (Robinson, 2020). Thus, the nationwide scope of restrictions remained in place, and the public was nudged into the higher tiers. Before the second national “lockdown,” 43% of the population was in Tier 2 and only 15% in Tier 3; afterwards, those figures had increased to 57% and 42%, respectively.

On December 15, 2020, a further 11 million people in London, parts of Essex and Hertfordshire were moved into Tier 3, shifting the total numbers in England to 34 million in Tier 3, 21.5 million in Tier 2, and 700,000 in Tier 1 (“London to move into Tier 3,” 2020). This put 60.5% of the population into Tier 3, 38.3% into Tier 2, and 1.2% in Tier 1. Thus, between November 4 and December 15, 2020, the proportion of the public in Tier 3 more than quadrupled from 15% to 60.5%, while the proportion in Tier 1 fell from 42% to just over 1%. In other words, in under a fortnight since the end of the second national “lockdown,” most of England was back under stringent restrictions.

Tier 4

Things got even worse with the introduction of a new tier, Tier 4, on December 19, 2020. Tier 4 “stay at home” orders meant that people in London and areas of the South East were only allowed to travel for work, education, exercise, or childcare purposes (Prime Minister’s Office, 2020c). Travel into or out of Tier 4 areas was prohibited.

The Prime Minister described Tier 4 as “broadly equivalent to the national restrictions in place in November,” meaning that approximately one fifth of the English population was effectively still in full “lockdown” nine months after the “lockdowns” had begun (“UK Brings In Tier 4 Restrictions,” 2020). The principle of viral entropy apparently did not apply to “SARS-Cov-2” as “new variants” emerged.

A further six million people were placed into Tier 4 on Boxing Day, 2020 (“Six Million More People to Enter Tier 4,” 2020). By New Year’s Eve, eight in ten people in England found themselves in Tier 4 as it was extended to the North East, Greater Manchester, large parts of the Midlands and the South West (Halliday & Barr, 2020). The population was gradually being returned to a state of full “lockdown.”

The Third UK National “Lockdown”

It came as no surprise, therefore, when the third national “lockdown” in England came into force on January 6, 2021. The unthinkable had happened. As one critic noted,

The UK enters the New Year with 68 million people under house arrest and the expansion of the biosecurity state being offered to us — like criminals offered neurointerventional treatment — as a condition of the freedom the Government now holds in its hands like a prisoner governor. (Elmer, 2021)

Indeed, “returning freedoms” was to become a weapon used to extort “vaccinations” and to push for “vaccine passports” and other measures needed to build the biosecurity state.

Curfews – historically the hallmark of a police state – were introduced in Western countries around the turn of the year. German states and cities began instituting curfews in December 2020; a 6pm curfew was introduced in France on January 16, 2021; and a 9pm curfew was introduced in the Netherlands five days later. The British government looked on with apparent envy, reportedly considering “a tougher lockdown ‘with curfews, exercise limits, compulsory masks outside, no support bubbles and nurseries shut,’” and with people only being allowed to leave home once a week (Carr & Wilcock, 2021). Following the headline-making murder of a British woman by a policeman, the sexist idea of a 6pm “male curfew” was floated (Bloom, 2021; Fullarton, 2021). Any pretext for promoting curfews would do, it seemed.

The third national “lockdown” lasted, not for a clearly defined four weeks (as per the second national “lockdown”), but was, rather, steadily extended for over six months, until July 19, 2021.

Ultimately, however, the viability of “lockdowns” receded with the rollout of the “vaccination” campaign. With roughly two thirds of the UK population (44 million people) having been “fully vaccinated” (then two doses) by early September 2021, according to official figures, any further “Covid-19 lockdown” would have amounted to an admission that the “vaccination” programme had failed, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson effectively conceded (Riley-Smith, 2021).

Future “Lockdowns”

Despite the end of “Covid lockdowns,” the Telegraph noted ominously that the “ability to reimpose restrictions will stay on the statute books” (Riley-Smith, 2021). “Next time,” Bill Gates (2021) claimed (as though an alleged global pandemic were a frequently occurring event), “governments will have a greater understanding of when and how to deploy more burdensome strategies like lockdowns.” Patrick Vallance proposed an “advice handbook for the future” that would include the most important “components of restrictions” (Science and Technology Committee, 2022).

Perhaps Vallance’s “limited” approach was intended to appear reasonable against the backdrop of horrendous reports emerging from China of 30 million people being put back into “lockdown,” with people screaming from their balconies in Shanghai while drones broadcast the message “control your soul’s desire for freedom” (Lewis, 2022; “This Cannot Last,” 2022; Sarkar, 2022). It is said that the footage was censored in China (Wade, 2022), leaving only the Western legacy media as its source. Was the footage a psy-op to make Western “lockdowns” seem benign in comparison, and thus to make Westerners grateful for small mercies?

The cause of any future “lockdown” need not necessarily be disease. For example, there could also be “climate lockdowns” or “energy lockdowns,” depending on the manufactured crisis du jour. But whatever the pretext, it is evident that the goal all along was to normalise a condition of unfreedom, so that the public would, in future, consent to locking itself down on command – a powerful psychological means of control to counter social unrest in the war for technocracy.

References

Bloom, D. (2021, March 11). Sarah Everard: Peer suggests 6pm curfew for all men would keep women safe on streets. Daily Mirror. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/sarah-everard-peer-suggests-6pm-23684692.

Carr, J., & Wilcock, D. (2021, January 11). No. 10 considers a tougher lockdown “with curfews, exercise limits, compulsory masks outside, no support bubbles and nurseries shut” if Covid cases keep rising – amid suggestion “people may only be allowed to leave home ONCE a week.” Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9131613/Is-lockdown-TOUGHER-Matt-Hancock-refuses-rule-curfews-closing-nurseries.html#comments.

Elmer, S. (2021, January 8). Our default state: Compulsory vaccination for COVID-19 and human rights law. Architects For Social Housing. https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2021/01/08/our-default-state-compulsory-vaccination-for-covid-19-and-human-rights-law/.

Ferguson, N. M, Laydon, D., Nedjati-Gilani, G., Imai, N., Ainslie, K., Baguelin, M., Bhatia, S., Boonyasiri, A., Cucunubá, Z., Cuomo-Dannenburg, G., Dighe, A., Dorigatti, I., Fu, H., Gaythorpe, K., Green, W., Hamlet, A., Hinsley, W., Okell, L. C., van Elsland, S., Ghani, A. C., et al. (2020). Report 9: Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce Covid-19 mortality and healthcare demand. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf.

Fullarton, C. (2021, March 14). Sarah Everard: SNP MP calls for male curfew in areas where women murdered. The National. https://www.thenational.scot/news/19159524.sarah-everard-snp-mp-calls-curfew-men-areas-women-murdered/.

Gates, B. (2021, December 7). Reasons for optimism after a difficult year.” GatesNotes. https://web.archive.org/web/20211221000421/https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2021.

Halliday, J., & Barr, C. (2020, January 30). Covid: Eight in 10 people in England to be in tier 4 from New Year’s Eve. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/30/covid-millions-more-in-england-to-enter-tier-4.

Hughes, D.A. (2024). “Covid-19,” Psychological Operations, and the War for Technocracy, Volume 1. Palgrave Macmillan.

Institute for Government (2020, May). A four-nation exit strategy. https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/four-nation-exit-strategy-coronavirus.pdf.

Investigations Team. (2023, July 6). Britain drilled to accept lockdown in future pandemics, says ‘nudge unit’ chief. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/06/britain-drilled-to-accept-lockdown-in-future-pandemics.

Leicester lockdown tightened as coronavirus cases rise. (2020, June 30). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53229371.

Lewis, L. (2022, March 15). THIRTY MILLION people in 13 cities are put into Covid lockdown in China with hazmat-wearing officials back on the streets on a scale not seen since pandemic began. Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-10614797/THIRTY-MILLION-people-13-cities-Covid-lockdown-China.html.

London to move into tier 3 as infections rise. (2020, December 14). BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55306928.

Office for National Statistics. (2020, November 6). Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain: 6 November 2020. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandwellbeing/bulletins/coronavirusandthesocialimpactsongreatbritain/6november2020.

Prime Minister’s Office. (2020a, May 10). Prime Minister’s statement on coronavirus (COVID-19): 10 May 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-10-may-2020.

Prime Minister’s Office. (2020b, June 23). Prime Minister’s statement to the House on COVID-19: 23 June 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-statement-to-the-house-on-covid-19-23-june-2020.

Prime Minister’s Office. (2020c, December 19). Prime Minister announces Tier 4: “Stay at home” alert level in response to new COVID variant. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-announces-tier-4-stay-at-home-alert-level-in-response-to-new-covid-variant.

Public Health England. (2020, October 26). All-cause mortality surveillance 29 October 2020 – Week 44 report (up to Week 43 data). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/930814/Weekly_report_mortality_W44.pdf.

Riley-Smith, B. (2021, September 12). No more national lockdowns as Boris Johnson rips up Covid rules.” The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/12/no-national-lockdowns-boris-johnson-rips-covid-rules/.

Robinson, M. (2020, November 26). London could go into tier THREE before Christmas: Hancock warns “There is a lot of work to do” to keep the capital in tier 2 ahead of review on December 16. Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8989831/Lockdown-Tiers-England-finally-revealed.html.

Sarkar, A.R.. (2022, April 11). Locked down Shanghai residents not allowed to leave their homes even to get food seen screaming from their balconies. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/china/shanghai-residents-screaming-windows-covid-lockdown-b2055311.html.

Science and Technology Committee. (2022, March 30). Oral evidence: The Work of the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, HC 1205. https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/10034/pdf/.

Silver, J., & Yang, Y. (2020, July 19). Johnson vows no second lockdown, asks cabinet back to work.” Bloomberg. https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/u-k-s-johnson-tells-cabinet-to-return-to-office-next-week-mail.

Six million more people to enter Tier 4 on Boxing Day. (2020, December 23). BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55428017.

Spectator. (n.d.). The Spectator data tracker: SAGE. https://data.spectator.co.uk/category/sage-scenarios.

“This cannot last”: Residents in locked down Shanghai scream from their balconies – video. (2022, April 11). The Guardian. ‘https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2022/apr/11/this-cannot-last-residents-in-locked-down-shanghai-scream-from-their-balconies-video.

UK brings in Tier 4 restrictions for South East and London. (2020, December 19). Open Access Government. https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/tier-4-restrictions/100674/.

Wade, S. (2022, April 22). Minitrue: Silence the “voices of April” viral video on Shanghai lockdowns. China Digital Times. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/04/minitrue-silence-the-voices-of-april-viral-video-on-shanghai-lockdown-full-english-transcript/.

Woodfield, A. (2020, October 7). Leicester lockdown: 100 Days of extra restrictions in city. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-54423723.

Yeadon, M. (2020, October 22). Dr. Mike Yeadon. The Delingpod. https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-atukd-efc5d9.

Support My Work

If you valued this content and are not a paid subscriber, please consider leaving a one-off tip for an amount of your choosing.

If you would like to make a one-off or recurring donation to help fund my work in general, I would be most grateful. There are numerous ways of doing so, including wire transfer, Paypal, crypto, UK cheques, and BMC.

If you have not done so already, please consider taking out a subscription to davidahughes.net or upgrading an existing one – free, paid, or gold-tier.