BBC Pandemic: Seeding the Biggest Global Psy-op of all time
Intro:
BBC "BATWINGS IDENT"
Commentary
If you typed in the web address bbc.co.uk/pandemic,
what would you expect to find? A site dedicated to the COVID pandemic,
chock full of propaganda fear-porn, and established no earlier than
January 2020. But what you actually get, is this…
www.bbc.co.uk/pandemic
A site dedicated to the “BBC Pandemic”, a simulation experiment “to
predict the impact of the next pandemic more accurately than ever
before” launched in 2017 for a TV documentary.
The
only thing I can say with confidence is that the two presenters and the
posse of academics who appeared on screen, were lured into performing a
key task which would not become apparent until January 2020 with the
unfolding of the Corona Show. The same goes, I believe, for all of the
people listed in the programmes end credits… [PLAY END CREDITS]
All
of these people were brought together in 2017 for one purpose… and that
was to collect data from the British public that could be used two
years later to manipulate the population into a trance-state of
terrified bewilderment.
But it’s clear that the “hidden hand” couldn’t resist a bit of
showmanship along the way… dropping the “Haslemere Patient Zero”
coincidence into the 2018 documentary, the “Zombie Apocalypse Blue
Magic Muzzle” demo into the 2019 Christmas Lectures, and the symbolic
hidden-eye peacock feather image into Hannah Fry’s promotional
photo-shoot.
So,
I decided to take another look at The BBC Pandemic Experiment, and draw
up a list of questions to help me piece together how this little known
TV programme played a pivotal role in the greatest global psy-op of all
time.
Q1. Who pitched the initial idea for the experiment?
Q2. How was it commissioned and funded?
Q3. What was its purpose?
Q4. What did the participants consent to?
Q5. Who owns the data?
Q6. Did the experiment gain ethical approval? If so, from whom?
Q7. How was the BBC Pandemic dataset used to launch the 2020 Corona Show?
I’ll say straight out that I was able to find answers to all of these questions bar number one… “Who pitched the initial idea for the experiment?”
Although the BBC gives full credit to Hannah Fry for single-handedly
masterminding the whole experiment, I find this very hard to believe.
From what I’ve discovered so far, I suspect that she was picked out by
the BBC early in her career, and trained up for the purpose of playing
the role of Patient Zero in this spookily predictive documentary. So,
I’m still none the wiser about who was behind the programme, and I’ll
be investigating this question for some time yet.
Q2. How was the experiment commissioned and funded?
The first page of the BBC Pandemic website states that…
“This project has been
commissioned by the BBC, and is being undertaken in collaboration with
researchers at the University of Cambridge and the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).”
And in the FAQ it says…
“The study is funded by
the BBC and organised by LSHTM and University of Cambridge, in
collaboration with app developers Big Motive and programme makers 360
Production.”
So, the simple answer is that the pandemic simulation exercise was
commissioned and funded by the BBC. And who funds the BBC? The UK
population is obliged to stump up the cash for the BBC through the mandatory TV licence, currently priced at £159 a year per household; it is a form of taxation...
“You
could be prosecuted if we find that you have been watching, recording
or downloading programmes illegally. The maximum penalty is a £1,000*
fine plus any legal costs and/or compensation you may be ordered to
pay.”
[TV Licensing: Penalties]
But
alongside the BBC are four “collaborators” – The London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University of Cambridge, the app
developers “Big Motive” and the programme makers “360 Production.” This
very conveniently muddies the waters when it comes to accountability,
as we will see later on.
Q3. What was the purpose of the experiment?
The BBC Pandemic website is actually pretty upfront about the purpose of the experiment.
“BBC Pandemic could be key in preparing for the next pandemic outbreak.
The data collected
between December 2017 and December 2018 will contribute to this new
gold-standard set for use in future simulations and in wider Pandemic
research.”
“By identifying the human
networks and behaviours that spread a deadly flu, BBC Pandemic will
help to make these models more accurate and, in turn, help to stem the
next pandemic.”
So,
although the volunteers may have believed they were taking part in a
fictional simulation exercise for an entertaining TV show, the real
purpose of the experiment was hiding in plain sight… to harvest data
for use in future simulations and to help “stem” the next pandemic. So,
in theory, the participants were informed, but little could any of them
have known the true nature of what they’d signed up for, or what
“helping to stem the next pandemic” really meant.
Q4. What did the participants consent to?
The BBC made good use of Hannah Fry in 2017 as
the familiar and trusted face of TV Science to persuade “volunteers”
into signing up to do their bit for science by “downloading the
pandemic app”. Although the app is no longer available, it no doubt
entailed a “terms and conditions” check box… but who ever reads the
terms and conditions?
The BBC Pandemic website still displays the Terms and Conditions. As you can see, they are very sparse on detail, but they do make a big play of participation being “voluntary”…
“Your use of the App and provision of any data collected by it is entirely voluntary and at your own risk.”
This
sounds like a disingenuous effort to cover themselves. As it turned
out, the data collected from those “volunteers” was used two years
later to topple the crucial first COVID domino when the whole
population was put under virtual house arrest – that was the purpose of
the experiment, and it led to a world the participants could never have
envisaged in their wildest, most paranoid imaginings.
[DOMINO VIDEO]
Q5. Who owns the data?
The website states that…
"Data will be kept by the
data processors at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
(LSHTM) for at least 10 years in line with LSHTM policy.”
From this, I think it’s fair to say that LSHTM owns the data, and that
it will be stored until at least 2028, but what I couldn’t find mention
of anywhere is this…
"PROF JULIA GOG AND THE BBC PANDEMIC PROJECT - 2 MINS IN]
JG:
“Finally, and this is the big one for us, we’ve got permission from the
Terms and Conditions individuals are signing up for that this dataset
will be made available for ALL SCIENTISTS.
Interviewer: “And is that unusual to have this kind of dataset for other people to study?”
JG: “I don’t know
anything like it. Erm, so there’s a lot of interest from colleagues
who’ve got in touch and said ‘ah, I’ve heard about this thing, are you
going to be publishing on this, is there anything other people could
have’ Yeah, you can have ALL of it. Erm. We hope to write a paper when
it’s sort of, very early to show what it is and say ‘please, please use
this, here’s how it’s valid, here’s how it’s done, here’s how it
connects with other things… off you go, and it’ll be the BBC Pandemic
Dataset.”
Q6. Did the experiment gain ethical approval? If so, from whom?
I feel this is an important question, especially in light of how the
BBC Pandemic Dataset was released as a free-for-all in 2018.
I could find no mention of “ethical approval” on the BBC Pandemic
website, nor is there any reference to it in the paper written by the
“maths team” published in the Epidemics journal. The 3 main players
involved in the experiment were the BBC, Cambridge University and
LSHTM, and it is unclear whose responsibility this would be or who to
contact to find out. I was about to let it drop when I came across this…
This is a preprint article submitted in February 2020 by “the maths
team”. Hannah Fry is also listed as one of the authors.
2.1 Ethical considerations
Information was provided
and consent obtained from all participants in the study before the app
recorded any data. The study was approved by LSHTM Observational
Research Ethics Committee (ref 14400).
So I emailed the chair of the Ethics Committee, Professor Jimmy Whitworth, to ask for a copy of the report. Here is his reply.
[Email from Jimmy Whitworth]
“Thank you for your query. I can confirm that the application (ref
14400) was reviewed by our Observation A ethics committee in the 15
August 2017 review round, and that a favourable ethical opinion was
granted on 14 September 2017 following a satisfactory responses to the
ethics committee’s comments. If you have any further questions please
feel free to contact our Research Governance and Integrity Office at
ethics@lshtm.ac.uk”
The date of 15th August 2017 is interesting because it means that
Application 14400 must relate to the BBC Pandemic experiment rather
than the 2020 article. I have a hunch that the application and related
documents may contain clues as to the people behind the scenes who were
involved in setting up the experiment, so I contacted the “Research
Governance and Integrity Office” to request a copy. Here is their reply.
“We do not make ethics
applications for research studies publicly available. I can confirm
that as Professor Whitworth has stated, the study was reviewed by the
Observational A ethics committee in the 15 August 2017 review round,
and a favourable opinion was granted on the 14th September 2017.
If you would like to view the Terms of Reference the ethics committee review by, this can be found on the website here.
If you have any specific questions related to the ethics of the study please let me know.”
Best wishes,
Rebecca
The lengthy document “Terms of Reference” provides no useful
information, and although Rebecca invites me to “ask specific
questions”, I know from experience the futility of corresponding with
“trusted institutions” on such matters. It seems odd to me that a
report documenting the ethical approval of a large-scale “citizen
science” experiment of such significance should be kept from the
public. If anyone has experience of getting hold of such documents,
perhaps through Freedom of Information, and you have any tips you can
share with me please do let me know.
Q7. How was the BBC Pandemic dataset used to launch the 2020 Corona Show?
On April 1st 2021, Hannah Fry made this claim on her website:
“So sometimes a TV programme ends up being scarily accurate.
In 2018, Hannah made a
documentary called “Contagion: the BBC4 Pandemic.” It was made in
collaboration with scientists from London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine and Cambridge University, and used a custom-made
phone app to gather contact and movement data in order to simulate how
a fictional pandemic would spread in the UK. Fast forward to 2020 when
the idea of a pandemic shifted out of the realm of fiction and became
very very real. But although the show’s pandemic was fictional, the
data was not – and the team at LSHTM were able to use everything they
collected for the programme to model the real world pandemic, which set
a new gold standard on which the trajectory of the UK response was
based.”
Having researched this claim in some depth, I think it’s safe to say
that it is no idle boast, and that the BBC Pandemic dataset was indeed
used intensively to influence the trajectory of the UK government,
particularly in the early weeks of the COVID ballyhoo. The way this
came about is interesting as it’s clear that nothing was left to
chance, and that the key players had been manoeuvred into position long
before the Corona Show kicked off.
Professor Julia Gog from the University of Cambridge took on the role
as the “maths team captain” for the BBC Pandemic TV show. She’s the one
who explains to Hannah Fry the shock-horror results of the modelling
experiment…
[PLAY CLIP FROM BBC PANDEMIC DOCUMENTARY]
And in this interview, Julia Gog recalls how she was recruited by the British government to help get the Corona Show on the road…
“Interviewer: So then
obviously the pandemic hit, nearly a year ago now, so, how did you
become involved in the effort to fight it?
Well, actually, before
the pandemic hit, after the BBC programme, because we were making these
large pandemic models, erm, our work was picked up by a group called
“SPI_M”… which is one of the groups which fits into the department of
Health and looks at pandemic modelling.”
In fact, four of the six team members [Petra Klepac, Stephen Kissler, Adam Kucharski, Julia Gog],
appear on the SPI-M list, along with another familiar name “Rosalind
Eggo”, who was the guest expert brought on for the Zombie Apocalypse
Christmas Lecture demonstration (pic on screen along with prize,
sponsored by Pfizer).
And ALL of the maths team were involved in submitting reports to SPI-M
in the early weeks of the Corona Show using the BBC Pandemic dataset
collected for the TV programme.
[INTERVIEW WITH JG CONTINUES]
“I’d been approached to…
er… asked to join that, and initially I hesitated […] I didn’t think of
myself as someone who’d get involved in a real-time response, and SPI-M
was all about gearing up for having the modelling groups at the ready
in the case of a pandemic…”
[PAUSE INTERVIEW]
“SPI-M was all about gearing up for having the modelling groups at the ready in the case of a pandemic…” interesting.
[RESUME]
"So initially I said no, and… erm,… no I AM going
to disclose this, the now current… the chair of SPI-M Graham Medley
approached and said ‘well, Julia, if there was a pandemic, wouldn’t you
want to be actually involved in helping’, and I thought, actually
you’re right, I do, so I joined SPI-M”
This
sounds to me like Julia Gog had been weighed-up and judged to be an
ideal innocent to have at the top table for helping to set the upcoming
Corona Show in motion. And in this next interview from February 2020,
she unwittingly reveals the pressure she was under at that time to
perform her allotted task…
[JG FEB2020 CIRM INTERVIEW]
“We’re in a really
different time now, this mid-february 2020 and it’s not at all clear
what’s going to happen next with COVID-19 coronavirus. Erm, and it’s a
difficult question to answer where we fit, from the theoretical end to
the data-driven end. Erm, it’s very tempting for us to say ‘we don’t
have enough data’ because we don’t – there isn’t much data out there –
we don’t know this, we don’t know that, so we can’t say this for sure…
erm, but do you know what, if we want to know what’s going to happen in
the next six months we wait six months, but that’s no practical use at
all. Instead, I think we’ve got responsibility to help as much as we
can… not to just answer our curiosity about this epidemic, but to
answer specific questions about control measures. Say would it help if
we do this or that, would it help if we closed schools or not, should
countries be bracing for a large epidemic what is it we can do about
this? Is it right to have travel restrictions in place. So… It might be
more comfortable for us to say “we don’t have enough data, we can’t do
this”, but we have a duty to do what we can…”
So, at this early stage she is clearly experiencing qualms about delivering what is being expected from her. When she says…
“It might be more
comfortable for us to say “we don’t have enough data, we can’t do
this”, but we have a duty to do what we can…”
It’s evident she’s aware that she’s being asked to do something she’s
extremely uncomfortable with, but has convinced herself that she must
comply for the good of the nation.
Comply she did, and was duly rewarded with an OBE in the 2020 Birthday honours list for “services to academia and the COVID-19 response”.
AND she’s been given the great privilege of appearing alongside
Professor Jonathan van Tam in presenting the 2021 Royal Institution
Christmas Lectures “Going Viral: How COVID changed science forever.”
Someone should really tell her that’s a very bad move.
So, Julia Gog and the rest of the maths team were kept busy in early
2020 producing many reports using the BBC Pandemic dataset collected
from volunteers for the 2018 TV show. Here is one example…
“Using
BBC Pandemic data to model the impact of isolation, testing, contact
tracing and physical distancing on reducing transmission of COVID-19 in
different settings”
All of the maths team authored this one, including Hannah Fry, and another familiar name “John Edmunds”.
Prof John Edmunds is one of the media’s heavily favoured “go-to”
experts, much in demand, particularly by the BBC. He can always be
relied upon to stay “on message”, and do his bit to keep the TV
watching population in a perpetual state of fear and confusion. He
always looks unwell to me… not exactly a ringing endorsement of the
jib-jabs he so diligently promotes.
[SCROLL THROUGH THE REPORT]
This report, and the others I’ve found, are very thorough and detailed.
The team has clearly gone to a lot of time and trouble to put them
together, but in truth, it hardly matters what is in them… because
their purpose was always to merely provide “expert cover” for the
Johnson government to hide behind as they rolled out their pre-planned
agenda.
CONCLUSION
Is it really possible that the entire Covid pandemic is just an
elaborate piece of theatre, eerily foretold by an obscure TV programme
shown on a backwater channel in 2018?
Well, my answer is “yes”, that’s exactly it, and I now understand how
this particular domino was set up in time for the big topple.
First, the BBC Pandemic maths team, and Hannah Fry, were purposely
selected and brought together to work on the BBC Pandemic simulation
experiment in 2017. As expected, they formed a geeky clique during the
filming of the TV show, and then they were successfully manoeuvred into
position onto the SPI-M team nicely in time to carry out the NEXT
pandemic simulation experiment in 2020. As an added bonus, they
willingly swelled the numbers in the chorus-line of “experts” for the
upcoming 2020 Corona Show. And it has to be said that they performed
beautifully in those first crucial weeks – it really couldn’t have gone
better for whoever was behind the scenes pulling the strings.
For what it’s worth, I believe that a novel coronavirus really was
circulating the globe by the autumn of 2019, and that community
transmission was well established in the UK by February 2020. But
that’s neither here nor there because the pandemic itself was entirely
contrived, and the clue to this lies in the word “simulation.”
Dictionary.com defines “simulation” as…
-imitation or enactment, as of something anticipated or in testing.
-the act or process of pretending; feigning.
-an assumption or imitation of a particular appearance or form; counterfeit; sham.
Which
describes the chicanery of epidemic modelling to a tee, and it doesn’t
take much in the way of investigative powers to expose this.
Take, for example, this paper, published in the prestigious journal “Nature Medicine” on 07 August 2020.
“Using a real-world network to model localized COVID-19 control strategies”
The “real-world” network in question is, of course, the BBC Pandemic dataset.
Typing the word “simulation” into the search box brings up 42 entries… and the word “simulate” occurs 23 times.
So, data harvested from thousands of volunteers for an entertaining BBC
TV show, and trumpeted by the authors as “real-world”, has been used
once again to simulate a pandemic… this time passing it off as the
genuine article. But digging deeper into the paper I found this…
“The high-resolution data
collection focused on residents of the town of Haslemere, where the
first evidence of UK-acquired infection with SARS-CoV-2 would later be
reported in late February 2020 (ref. 19).”
“This dataset is
structurally relevant to modeling disease spread and hence holds
substantial potential for understanding and controlling the spread of
real-world infectious diseases.”
Which
means that the fictional Haslemere “Patient Zero” scenario, set up by
the BBC, has actually been incorporated into this very model. And look
what comes up when I click on the link to “Reference 19”…
It’s the BBC news article from 29th February 2020 which broke the “spooky Haslemere coincidence” story.
Now, I explored this report for an earlier video, and it didn’t take me
long to expose it as an elaborate charade. It was commonly acknowledged
at the time that community transmission of COVID was already
established in the UK, making the “Haslemere coincidence” nothing more
than a pernicious piece of theatre.
Could
the umpteen authors of this paper really have been hoodwinked by such
barefaced deception? Amazing as it may seem, I believe they were…
spellbound by the same propaganda fear-porn as the rest of the
population, they were compelled to dance to an unknown tune, and in
doing so they played their role in seeding the biggest global psy-op of
all time.
Closing
music: "Spellbound" by Siouxsie and the Banshees
|
