[SPCI-2] "I refused £350,000... to be taken from the NHS — that they tried to offer me to promote messaging to make young people get the jabs. And I said 'No, I’m not doing it.'"
Professor of Social Informatics Diane Rasmussen McAdie on media messaging during the covid era
Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else)
This is post #2 in a series featuring presentations at the recent Scottish People’s Covid Inquiry (SPCI, as distinct from the official Scottish Covid Inquiry).
This one is from Diane Rasmussen McAdie, who is Professor of Social Informatics in the School of Computing, Engineering, and the Built Environment (SCEBE) at Edinburgh Napier University. She discusses media messaging during the covid era.
I found both the start and the end particularly striking, but there is plenty more worth reading/listening to that is packed in between. And I have added occasional additional material in the transcript below.
I think the first step in my cancellation as an academic was when I refused £350,000… to be taken from the NHS — that they tried to offer me to promote messaging to make young people get the jabs. And I said “No, I’m not doing it.”
So my first slide here is… from NHS Lanarkshire, who were the people who tried to give me that money. “Stop Biden’ your time and get testing”… and… there’s a whole video about how we should be tested.
This was when I really was tired, 17th July 2021. I went to Silverbird Shopping Centre in Glasgow for some some things at Boots and some things at Tesco… and remember these…
That’s why all my slides are red… all the fear... I think of red being the colour of the fear and the panic… the red arrows and all of the intensity that was surrounding this whole situation. Stand here. Turn this way. Turn around this way. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. All these directions that we were supposed to follow. And it was absolutely ridiculous. And I was just sick by this whole situation.
I still see the stickers around, including at church, where they seem to be permanently stuck to the floor, stubbornly refusing to “move on”. On one level, I regard them as a useful reminder of the folly of the time.
Let’s go back to 1918… flu pandemic… “Wear a Mask” “You should willingly co-operate wearing a mask, and not necessitate the passage of an ordinance which will make the wearing of a mask compulsory,” this says.
Well, did it happen? Did it flatten the curve? Yes? No? Well, there were people that were protesting even back then… so this has a history of going on.
Did anyone ever watch the film Outbreak… 1995. There was a monkey apparently in this film — predictive programming, right? — saying that this was spreading quickly from this monkey that was being taken to California from Africa, and carrying a deadly virus. The greatest medical crisis in the world is about to happen. Try to remain calm. That was from the synopsis of the video. Does this sound familiar yet?
I am reminded of these posts about propaganda:
It’s not new. Edward Bernays’ book Propaganda was written in 1928.
As noted here in the Updates (Oct 2024) post, his great-nephew Marc Randolph co-founded Netflix…
2010… Mindspace… by the Behavioural Insights team for the UK government. This is where we start to see the nudging and the behavioural psychology, the applied psychology... The key point is that government is always shaping behaviour, often as in nudges. This is framed in terms of the choices government offers. However, Mindspace shows that it is not just choices that affect behaviour. A whole range of factors in the environment affect behaviour without any choices taking place. So you don’t really have a choice.
MINDSPACE is the title of this 2010 UK government document from the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) website:
“Influencing behaviour through public policy”
Hmm.
As it happens, the letters of MINDSPACE can be rearranged:
So many coincidences…
Contagion, 2011… “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t touch anyone.” “Nothing spreads like fear.” I was watching this just a few days ago. They had all of it. Masks, hand sanitisers, panic-buying of groceries, a Chinese market suggested as the origin, the accusation of releasing a biological weapon, space-suit protection for health workers, something called forsythia as the cure according to the “conspiracy theorist” — that’s me, right?
Covid-era Health Secretary Matt Hancock reportedly admitted that “Contagion helped shape his vaccine response”:
And the film was shown in schools:
Edward Bernays springs to mind again. As does the recent plan to show the Netflix drama Adolescence in schools. And this post:
There is no shortage of dots to join.
Nightingale hospitals and arenas. Don’t let anyone in the house. Don’t touch anything. Mass graves with no services allowed. No vaccine. “Social distancing” was actually used as a term in this film. So it was all there.
Use of the term social distancing had grown somewhat in the 2000s up until around 2016…
And then much faster in the late 2010s…
There is more on the origin of the term later…
This was Matt Damon walking through a grocery store with all the shelves empty. He wasn’t supposed to wear a mask apparently, because they decided that for whatever reason Matt Damon was immune. [Laughter] I didn’t write the film. There he is again…
The opening ceremony of London 2012… the dancing nurses. Does anyone remember this? If you can go back and look at this… take a look at it if you haven’t seen it. Dancing NHS nurses… wearing pandemic gear.
This one minute of footage on YouTube is worth a retrospective look; snapshots below:
As to the dancing nurses, this article from Jonathan Engler is worth reading:
18th October 2019, Event 201, New York. A global pandemic exercise, co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“The next severe pandemic will not only cause great illness and loss of life but could also trigger major cascading economic and societal consequences that could contribute greatly to global impact and suffering.” This is directly from the documentation.
[The exercise] simulated “an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic.”
Some of the recommendations included, “Governments, international organizations and businesses should plan for how essential corporate capabilities will be utilised during a large-scale pandemic.”
And it goes on into countries, organisations… how we should all be working together to get all the supplies out… all these counter-measures that we’ll be talking about throughout the day. How do we get all the PPE out? How do we get mass vaccination rollouts happening. So these are all just a list of the recommendations with all of this corporate speak in them.
There is more information in these posts on the many pandemic simulations that have been conducted over the years:
This was something I took at my former employer, the University of Strathclyde, where I was working at the time, on 5th January 2020: “If you have been to Wuhan, China in the last 14 days…” These signs were posted in the university, both in English and in Chinese.
30th January 2020… falling flat on your face in China was a thing at the time, right? [Laughter] The caption says, “Officials stand near an elderly man who collapsed and died on a street [near] a hospital in Wuhan.” And you can see the guys in the suits just… looking at the director… “Okay, where do we go next?”
I am reminded of these posts:
19th March 2020… [according to the UK government] covid was “no longer considered to be a High Consequence Infectious Disease in the UK.”
22nd March 2020… SPI-B [Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviour], which was part of the SAGE behavioural team that gave official evidence to UK government…
“Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures…”
“To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat…”
“A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened,” so we’re increasing the threat… letting people know there are threats.
Here is the document:
Why would people have felt personally threatened when, according to the ONS, the number of people dying was at or below normal levels for the time of year, even though covid had reportedly been in circulation since the end of January?
They didn’t have the data. So they needed to generate fear. Expert behavioural psychology was required, and the UK was well-placed to supply it:
And take it to extraordinary levels:
Everyone remember this?
23rd March 2020… “You must stay at home.” Right? We all remember that.
Also on 23rd of March 2020… the handwashing campaign supported by a behavioural insights team who is responsible for all these nudges, saying this is how you should wash your hands.
And so we start to see how the messaging is happening. We must follow exactly as identified, “a bright clear design with minimal text and an emphasis on the step-by-step procedure. The addition of the ‘Coronavirus’ branding will likely make it even more effective at attracting people’s attention.”
Here is the messaging on the Behavioural Insights Team website:
The BIT is also at work on Net Zero…
2nd April 2020… on the BBC… “In Italy the death rate from covid is more than 10x greater than Germany. Why does the death rate vary so much internationally?” Hmm.
Hmm indeed. See e.g. this article:
The size of the peak in Bergamo — compared to other provinces of the Lombardy region of Italy — does look distinctly odd:
So… all the memes start coming out on the internet… The quarantine wardrobe… the messy hair… everyone staying in their pyjamas.
My birthday is 28th March… So March 2020… March girls… they’re talking about our quarantine birthdays. “Make a mask out of a bra,” they said. So we have the little girl with the tiny bra... Then we have the girl like me on the bottom, where the bra is like this big, right? [Laughter]
6th May 2020… the dancing nurses. Let’s see if this [30-second] video works…
‘There are still some people who don’t know how to put on their masks…’
9th June 2020… that was the caption for that one. It’s really actually a better place for them.
July 2020… World Economic Forum, COVID-19: the Great Reset…
Ah yes, Klaus Schwab’s book as featured in this post:
I can’t help wondering when he actually started work on it.
“One path will take us to a better world: more inclusive, more equitable and more respectful of Mother Nature. The other will take us to a world that resembles the one we just left behind… worse and constantly dogged by nasty surprises. We must therefore get it right.”
2020… this is where we see the origin of social “distancing”, which actually came from a Marxist academic [Karl Mannheim]… written decades ago, talking about how basically… the idea of a social distance… increases the power dynamics, that the people in power stay distanced away from the rest of us. And… “between us there is contained in the mental distance of fear”
Here is the article:
11th May 2021… Your best sexual partner is yourself, according to the BBC. “The latest lockdown easing means new guidance on having sex…” “In England and Scotland, you’ll be able to meet indoors and stay another person’s household overnight from Monday…” Well that’s very nice of them. “The rules… between friends are also being relaxed, which means you can now have sex with someone outside of your household or support bubble.” Lovely.
16th May 2021… the publication of a book called A State of Fear by Laura Dodsworth. I highly recommend taking a look at this book… “Fear of death. Fear of losing our jobs, our democracy, our human connections, our health and our minds… also about how the government weaponised our fear against us — supposedly in our best interests — until we were the most frightened country in Europe.”
A State of Fear is well worth reading:
And I am reminded of this clip from Tony Benn, the former Labour MP known for (among other things) keeping a diary, drinking tea, and renouncing his hereditary peerage…
I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world.
Far more revolutionary than socialist ideas or anybody else’s idea.
Because if you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.
And this idea of choice which capital talks about all the time — you’ve got to have a choice — choice depends on the freedom to choose. And if you’re shackled with debt, you don’t have the freedom to choose.
[Interviewer: It seems like it benefits the system if the average working person is shackled and in debt.]
People in debt become hopeless. And hopeless people don’t vote… They always say everyone should vote. But I think if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people who represented their interests it would be a real democratic revolution. And so they don’t want it to happen. So keeping people hopeless and pessimistic…
And especially this part (emphasis added):
You see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled: first of all frighten people; and secondly demoralise them.
An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern. And I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people… [that] we don’t want people to be educated, healthy and confident, because they would get out of control.
The top 1% of the world’s population own 80% of the world’s wealth. It’s incredible that people put up with it. But they’re poor, they’re demoralised, they’re frightened. And therefore they think perhaps the safest thing to do is take orders and hope for the best.
…which I featured in this post on fear in the context of Christian faith:
10th June 2021… Professor Susan Michie, who was on SPI-B, said masks should stay forever… in 2021. And then in 2022 she got a major job in charge of psychology and behavioural change at the World Health Organisation. What a promotion!
Susan Michie is a Professor of Health Psychology at University College London. In 2020, she was a member of both SAGE and SPI-B. She is an author on three of the first five papers referenced in the 22nd March 2020 SPI-B minutes mentioned earlier. And she also happens to be a long-standing member of the Communist Party of Britain.
Here is what she said: “Vaccines are a really important part of the pandemic control, but it’s only one part. The test, trace and isolate system [and] border controls are really essential. And the third thing is people’s behaviour, that is the behaviour of social distancing, of when you’re indoors making sure there’s good ventilation, or, if there’s not, wearing face masks… and hand and surface hygiene. We’ll need to keep these going in the long term. And that will be good not only for covid but also to reduce other…”
And when asked by the interviewer, “When you say long term, what do you mean by that? How long…?” her reply is: “I think forever… to some extent…”
I am reminded of this post, subtitled “The Fabian Society, then and now”:
31st July 2021… I took this photo myself outside of Glasgow Central Mosque. The sign said, “Vaccination Centre”. Someone had written in with a marker above it the word “Experimental”.
Experimental indeed. Quite apart from anything else, longer-term safety studies, by definition, cannot be done in a short period of time.
4th September 2021… “Children set to be jabbed from early next week”… “Nicola Sturgeon said last week she was eager to deliver doses to younger people ‘as quickly as we possibly can’”. And “Humza Yousaf… said the review would be carried out ‘rapidly’”.
26th October 2021 in Dundee… I was there. I took this photo. “Pick up and Drop off only for Mass Vaccination Centre.”
13th November 2021… NHS Lanarkshire — the people who offered me money… “Watching Strictly tonight?... Why not take a lateral flow test during one of the pre-dance VTs?”
4th-5th December 2021: “UK ‘red’ alert over Omicron’s ability to hit the double jabbed”
18th January 2022… NHS… Unvaccinated people… who get covid are eight times more likely to be hospitalised than those who have had both doses of the vaccine and a booster. Get boosted now.
Re Omicron and the “unvaccinated”, I recommend pathologist Dr Clare Craig’s presentation which will be featured in a forthcoming post.
Spoiler alert: Omicron was mild; and people were classed as “unvaccinated” for the first two weeks after injection, during which time their immune systems were compromised.
As to “Get boosted now”, I am reminded of the comments of UK oncologist Angus Dalgleish at the recent People’s Vaccine Inquiry: “Well, there’s an old adage in vaccines. If you need to give a booster for a vaccine, it doesn’t work. And if you look at the literature even harder, not only does it not work, but it makes you more likely to get infected — totally the opposite of what a vaccine is meant to do.”
17th February 2022… Manchester Weekly News… “Don’t miss out on getting your jab”… Also “Get boosted now” again… “Safe for pregnant women”…
There is not, and never has been, robust evidence that covid injections are “safe for pregnant women”. Again, quite apart from anything else, the long-term safety studies cannot, by definition, have been done in a relatively short space of time.
Related:
31st January 2025… this is just a few days ago. The fear continues. This is from the States: “5 years since COVID declared public health emergency in the US, still killing thousands” of people.
And I would like to mention 9th March 2025 is the covid day of reflection which is now part of UK policy.
My story basically is… that was me… that was the only mask I ever really wore, when I was really, really forced to. And it says “Enjoy the silence”, because I’m sure people did once I put the mask on.
But the personal story that I wanted to share at this point is… my mother died in December of 2021. She went into the hospital for some bruising when she fell… she was in an assisted care home… it’s hard to say… but… next thing I heard is that she was on a ventilator. And a few days later she was gone.
I didn’t have any say in the matter. I’m an only child. My father had already passed away. I was not able to go back to America to help to save… to even attend a funeral, because I was not jabbed and I was not tested. And I refused to test because I knew that’s what she would have wanted for me. But it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. And I just wanted to say that, because this is one of the things that motivates me to do what I’m doing now. And also because I want to hear from the rest of you today who are willing to speak out, who had similar tragedies happen to them.
Related:
Links to the other posts in the series:
#1 Alan Mordue | #2 Diane Rasmussen McAdie | #3 Richard Ennos | #4 Alison Walker
#5 Pam Thomas | #6 Bill Jolly | #7 Martin Neil | #8 Liz Evans | #9 Clare Craig
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