Warning: More Nudging Ahead!

Remember the ‘nudge unit’ in SAGE which created and promoted the climate of unrelenting fear we lived through? We’ve seen and recorded how the MSM were their willing helpers in this exercise. Now this nudge unit has come up with a new ‘nudge item’. We’re happy to record the very first articles in the MSM whose authors are playing along. 

It’s about urging ‘The Yoof’ to get vaccinated. The way this is being done is by utilising ‘altruism’, coupled with the inevitable dose of ‘fear’. They are quite blatant about this. Here’s the covid government setting the scene:

“Ministers are increasingly confident in making an altruistic argument for vaccination as evidence mounts that the jabs significantly reduce transmission of the virus, meaning that everyone who has one protects those around them as well as themselves. A team of scientific advisers was also sent out to make a more practical case for young people sceptical about vaccination when infection rates are so low.”  (link, paywalled)

Lo and behold, the first opinion pieces already appeared this morning. One is an unspeakable effort in the DT which might have been written by a schoolgirl. After the author’s mandatory wail about her generation having given up so much during the covid year, her reason for her contemporaries is to get the jab is precious. It’s:

“to be able to go visit my parents more confidently, hug them that little bit tighter. Even if it gives me no personal benefit, neither does giving up my seat on the train, letting a car go in front of me, making a cup of tea for a colleague. But don’t those small gestures define what it is to be human? If we ask ourselves that question about everything we do – does it cause me a hundred thousandth more inconvenience, or put me at a tiny amount of extra risk? – at what point is life still worth living?” (paywalled link)

No, she doesn’t have this in a smaller size. For her age cohort, altruistically getting the vaccine seems to be a perfect reason for making oneself feel good. It’s virtue-signalling at its finest. Clearly, nothing can be done any more nowadays without someone needing to signal how virtuous they are.

However, in the preferred carrot-and-stick approach we’re also given some ‘sciency’ reasons:

“Professor Jeremy Brown, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), argued that “the benefit of vaccinating young people is not just preventing severe disease”, pointing to the risks of long Covid, which had not been factored into the committee’s calculation. He told Sky News that vaccination “also allows younger people to visit their relatives who are elderly and more vulnerable to the disease, without the risk of infecting them. It will reduce the chance that a young person can infect their elderly relatives with this disease, which is a benefit.” (link, paywalled)

There’s the ‘fear item’: “Long Covid”. Feeling good because one is protecting granny isn’t sufficient. Yon Matt must of course also put his foot in. Here he is, for the record, because the rest of ‘Our MSM’ will spray these points across their papers, especially in the Sunday editions:

“He delivered a blunt warning to young people not to be complacent about infection, telling BBC Breakfast on BBC1: “Covid is a horrible disease and long Covid affects people in their twenties just as much, it seems, as any other age group and can have debilitating side-effects that essentially ruin your life.” (link, paywalled)

Yes – there’s the “Long Covid” fear stick again. It’s a nicely calculated fear item because the behavioural specialists in the SAGE’s ‘nudge unit’ know full well that youth generally has always deemed themselves to be immortal. Thus fear of death wouldn’t work – but fear of a long-term ailment surely will. On top of that comes the WWII slogan of ‘doing one’s bit’. It’s no longer about saving you-know-what, it’s about saving the whole of society:

“In the case of a vaccine for a communicable disease, it’s not just the benefit to all of us as individuals, it’s the benefit to the whole of society from all of us getting the jab,” [Hancock] told Today on BBC Radio 4.“That’s one of the reasons that the uptake in the over-50s has been so spectacularly high, because people, when they’re getting the jab, they know that it’s the right thing for them but everybody rightly feels like they’re doing their bit for their loved ones and their community.” (link, paywalled)

Note the slippery slope Yon Matt just barely avoids: the uptake in the 50+ wasn’t for the selfish reason of protecting themselves – oh no, they also did it out of altruism for the rest of society – no, you can’t have this in a smaller size!  – and now they’re feeling so good!

There’s also the point of ‘herd immunity’ which it is now permitted to speak about. Fraser Nelson makes this point in his opinion piece in the DT. Since he’s ‘connected’ to No 10, it’s worth quoting from that article::

“Would it be so bad, now, to admit to a herd immunity strategy? There have been discussions in government about renaming it “community immunity” or “collective immunity”. It seems odd to be working towards a goal that can’t be properly explained. But a lack of clarity causes problems […]. The argument for young people being jabbed is to help achieve herd immunity, to protect others. But squeamishness about admitting this led to the bizarre situation where young people were told that vaccination is a matter of personal risk.” (paywalled link)

He next brings a rather interesting argument – after making this observation:

“The last year has shown young people making all kinds of sacrifices to fend off a virus that they know will barely affect them. It’s hard to argue that they would not respond to plain arguments now. Matt Hancock is toying with a new soundbite: “do your bit.” But it’s no substitute for a broader discussion.” (paywalled link)

Note that Nelson also repeats the point about ‘Teh Young’ having sacrificed so much – nobody else sacrificed anything, it would seem. However, his main point is a demand for more open discussion, for more clarity. That’s a pious wish because we have seen, over and over again, that the SAGEs and the covid tsars are unwilling to do so because they do not trust us to make our own decisions. 

Instead, they are desperate to keep their grip on our collective throats, producing ever more inane ‘guidelines’. I loved this paragraph, for obvious reasons. Nelson writes:

“In one Whitehall meeting recently, there was serious discussion about new rules for hugging: should it be allowed outdoors, but not indoors? More worryingly, the taskforce setting the rules on international travel last week managed an entire strategy session without any serious discussion about the economic damage imposed by quarantines. In a country where over two million jobs depend on tourism, that’s quite an omission.” (paywalled link)

Crikey! However, the reason I’m quoting this is that Nelson seems to’ve been given permission to hint at deep dissatisfaction inside No 10. We noted yesterday that this dissatisfaction might be the reason that it’s suddenly fine to talk about ‘herd immunity’. I wonder if someone inside the covid bunker now hopes for us peasants to nudge the covid tsars into stopping their fear and hysteria campaign.

I leave you with news of the latest inane covid guidelines. I wonder how many civil serpents were involved in coming up with that guideline – and how many meetings they needed to do so:

“Britons returning to the salon for a long-awaited hair appointment may find that they cannot book longer procedures, such as highlights or braids, because businesses have been told to keep their services simple. Guidance published on the Government’s website says hair and beauty salons “should consider providing shorter, more basic treatments to keep the time to a minimum”. The guidance adds that when doing longer procedures such as braiding or massages, workers should “consider how the length of the appointment could be minimised”. (paywalled link)

That’s on the same level as stores and garden centres exhorting their customers over a tannoy ‘not to browse’, as I heard on my very first visit to a garden centre since covid. Sheep browse – are we now even less worthy than sheep?

Remember: we pay them, as we pay for the Zoom Peacocks. Time to remind them forcefully that they serve us. We are not their serfs!

KBO!