A senior British official collaborated to “try to scare the pants off everyone” about COVID-19 variants in order to enforce compliance with pandemic restrictions, according to explosive text conversations disclosed on Sunday.
When should they “launch the new variation,” Matt Hancock, the British health minister at the time, inquired of an assistant less than a week before the British government dropped plans to loosen limits for Christmas 2020.
On December 13, 2020, Hancock and his assistant Damon Poole were talking about how to encourage adherence to the rules and whether London Mayor Sadiq Khan would support a lockdown.
Poole said to Hancock, “We can roll pitch with the new strain rather than doing too much forward signaling.”
“We scare the pants off everybody with the new strain,” Hancock retorted.
Poole concurred, saying “Yep, that’s what will produce proper behavior change.”
The health minister then startlingly inquired, “When do we implement the new variant?”
Poole replied that he had “been thinking about all of this” and counseled Hancock to be “more cautious,” proposing they keep “schools off paperwork/agenda,” possibly referring to avoiding imposing additional limits on schools.
The following day, Hancock revealed fresh lockdown measures that were justifiable by a brand-new purported COVID-19 variation.
Hancock stated on December 14, 2020, “Even after such a challenging year, we must keep watchful. The increase in transmission and the new COVID variation should serve as a warning to us all.”
More than 100,000 WhatsApp chats were intercepted by The Telegraph and made public, and they included unsettling messages.
What was Hancock’s response?
Hancock, who is still a member of Parliament, condemned the disclosure of his communications.
He said, “There is just no public interest argument for this massive breach. The Inquiry has already been given access to all of the book’s materials, making it the suitable and only setting in which to analyze everything and draw the appropriate conclusions.”
He expressed dissatisfaction, saying, “As we’ve seen, exposing them in this manner presents an incomplete, biased account to promote an anti-lockdown agenda.”
