Dan Wootton: Do you feel like you're being lied to by people in charge of Covid decisions?

Do you feel like you’re being lied to by the people in charge of this country and its biggest institutions over Covid-19? Well, you are.

Do you wonder why the vast majority of the mainstream media and most of the usual suspect scientific scare mongers are so desperate to terrify us over Covid by using dodgy stats and fake news? Well, so do I.

Fear seems to have become a prized currency for those in positions of power in the UK. Fear to make us believe Covid cases are a massive problem in a largely vaccinated country. Fear to push the authoritarian plan to introduce mandatory jabs to the NHS by April. Fear to tell us the use of vaccine passports make any sense.

But the media, politicians and leaders must stop their addiction to fear – so worryingly developed since the start of the pandemic last year – and start delivering the facts without hysteria so Brits are able to make up their own minds. I will continue to campaign against this use of scare tactics to keep Brits in their box, prepared to give up God given civil liberties and freedoms that are our birth right.

And this week I have been left horrified that this misinformation is now coming from the NHS itself, which is seemingly using fake stats to try and terrify us into getting a third Covid jab. It came straight from the top of the organisation – from NHS England boss Amanda Pritchard, who told Sky News – of course it was them – this yesterday… That, folks is simply untrue.

Hospital admissions in England are actually lower than last year, with official government statistics showing 7,510 people in hospital with Covid compared to 10,397 last year. Of course, that is still a very worrying number. But to suggest 14 times the number of people are in hospital is just fake news and propaganda.

Health officials tried to cover up for Pritchard by saying she was comparing data from August, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever given that’s over three months ago at the end of summer. But Sky News, ITV News and the i newspaper repeated this NHS disinformation without a second thought.

So quick to want to terrify us, they pounce on the latest claim from any doom merchant without bothering to check if the data even adds up. Just like they’ve been constantly reporting on the hysterical scientists calling for the government to implement Plan B – while ignoring the fact our R rate and case numbers are plummeting.

Many of us are now wise to the government nudge tactics used to scare us into changing our behaviours, so brilliantly exposed by the brave author Laura Dodsworth in her book A State of Fear. We all know the NHS will come under increased pressure this winter, just like it does every single year.

The answer is for Ms Pritchard to reform her organisation to properly protect the British people. Not to try and scare us all into changing our behaviours forever more and making some folk too terrified to continue with the joy of ordinary life. The game is up. Pritchard has been caught out. We’re wise to this stuff now and it’s got to end for good.