Lockdown Files: The Next Chapter

Like most sequels, it’s worse than the original

Last week I went over the first revelations in the Lockdown Files, a trove of covid-era WhatsApp messages between various ‘leaders’ (mostly Matt Hancock) in the government of the United Kingdom.

(You may remember Hancock from such hits as “Pretending to cry on TV” and “Making out with my assistant.”)

Hancock made a huge miscalculation when he turned over his WhatsApp history to Isabel Oakeshott so she could write a book about Hancock’s pandemic “leadership”. Once that project was finished, Oakeshott decided to break her non-disclosure agreement and leak the conversations to “The Telegraph”.

In the first Lockdown Files segment, I outlined how care homes weren’t testing “community” check-ins (only “hospital” check-ins), leading to the destruction of the so-called “protective ring” around the elderly. Further messages detail how the UK government knew there was no good reason to put masks on school children or disrupt their social circles, but the “experts” did it anyway to avoid minor political inconvenience.

The next chapter of the Lockdown Files shows more of the same. We’ll start with perhaps the most circulated conversation first, in which Hancock is chatting with Damon Poole, the Department of Health's media advisor, about how they need to “frighten the pants [off] of everyone with the new strain”. (Interestingly enough, Hancock also ran to Poole when news of his affair was breaking as well.)

There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s start off with what this message ISN’T saying. It ISN’T saying that Matt Hancock has covid variants in his refrigerator to “release” on command. The “variant” was already circulating, it was only the KNOWLEDGE of the variant they were going to release to scare everybody into submission.

And that’s exactly what they did, the very next day — throwing millions of people back into harsh lockdown conditions and shuttering businesses just before Christmas.

“We have no option!” UK’s ‘experts’ said in unison, all the while knowing they were making shit up in order to gain compliance to their illegal lockdown schemes. (After all, they were still throwing holiday parties, so we know they weren’t actually worried about their health.)

And when it’s mentioned that the “wrong people” might point out the lockdowns weren’t working, Hancock reinforces the vaccine narrative. It’s worth remembering that at this point, it had barely been a month since the announcement the vaccine was ready — which conveniently happened the week AFTER the 2020 election. This means that at the time of the conversation, virtually nobody was “fully vaccinated”, meaning Hancock had no actual data to show the vaccine was the way out of the pandemic. (Indeed, many of us were already pointing out the shots didn’t stop transmission in the trials.)

It’s also worth remembering that by the December emergency approval, the UK had already purchased nearly 150 MILLION vaccine doses. If you know anything about government, you know this is the perfect “I have a hammer so everything is a nail” situation. Government had already decided what to do — the tricky part was getting people scared enough to go along with it.

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Other messages with Poole highlight the same “politics-first” thinking. Here, Hancock and Poole discuss publishing an update to the “Watchlist”, which was the UK’s way of tracking and classifying which zones had to live under which lockdown rules.

So while millions of people were waiting around for the ‘experts’ to share new data and perhaps allow a smidgen of freedom, those same ‘experts’ were content to simply hide that data to advance the current narrative.

Where have I seen that before?

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We get another example of this thinking from Hancock’s November 17th conversation with Chris Witty — England's Chief Medical Officer. When it turns out the UK’s 14-day “isolation” period was far too long, Hancock’s main concern is that people will think the ‘experts’ have just been making shit up the entire time. (He was worried people would think that because they were, in fact, just making shit up the entire time.)

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Of course, not everybody was on board with lockdowns and isolation and test and trace. Many British MPs thought the entire thing was a huge overreaction and not necessary.

And despite the “leaders” knowing all that was true — they threatened the “off-message” MPs, sometimes in disgusting ways:

This is so vital to understanding the mindset of the people “in charge”. The “experts” know these “off-message” MPs are correct because the “experts” are having discussions about it in private. But none of that matters — in order to save political face, the “experts” are willing to pull funding for disabled kids because of those kids’ MP.

The article at The Telegraph has the “full” list of “worrisome” MPs and how to get them on-board with the narrative. I highly suggest reading through it.

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This last exchange was actually available for my first article, but I didn’t have room to include it. This turns out to be a happy coincidence, because it segues into my next article perfectly. Here we see a very early conversation between Hancock and George Osborne, who at the time was the editor of the “Evening Standard”, a London-centric “freesheet” with a circulation of roughly 500,000.

This conversation perfectly encapsulates the relationship between government and media. Osborne (and countless other media hacks) are only worried about how to make government happy. Osborne doesn’t even question why Hancock is so desperate to hit his arbitrary 100,000 testing mark or why demand for tests “just isn’t there”. “OF COURSE” he will do what Hancock asks — “Just write out whatever you want, we’ll be your parrot!” (Of course, Hancock already knows this — that’s why he asked in the first place.)

The end result:

THE VERY SAME DAY, multiple articles appeared giving Hancock exactly what he asked for:

And what about that “editorial” that Osborne promised that Hancock would love?

The entire article is just one slob-fest over Hancock and his testing goals. Hancock is leading the way, Hancock is doing the work, Hancock is the answer. The article even gives him a “Well done” — completely neglecting to mention that the only reason the article is even being written is because Hancock doesn’t have enough real demand to fill his testing slots.

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That’s it for today. In my next article, I’ll take a deeper look into media malfeasance while bashing one of my favorite new TV shows. (That’s what we call multi-tasking!)