Dooda Disinformation Disgrace

Later this week, a new England-wide lockdown of sorts will begin. Non-essential shops and businesses must close, travel is being advised only where necessary, and there are even calls for secondary schools to be closed, although for the moment these remain open. It has to be a national effort to suppress transmission of Covid-19. So what are those self-proclaimed patriots out on the right doing to support the lockdown?

As if you need to ask: they aren’t, and as usual, setting a less than shining example has been Murdoch property TalkRADIO and its self-promoting breakfast time host Julia Hartley Dooda. By complete coincidence, she had invited a whole series of guests to pontificate about the lockdown, and they all agreed with the line she wanted to push.

Like Richard Tice (again). “Richard Tice, Brexit Party chairman, tells Julia of the decision to rebrand the party as Reform UK: ‘We need to work to give confidence to people that there is another way to dealing’ with Covid. ‘If you have a dead economy, sadly you have dead people.’” He’s pushing the Great Barrington Declaration. Which is dangerous guff.

Then listeners got veteran Tory MP David Davis, who is reliably libertarian, so isn’t going to be in favour of a lockdown. “‘What we're signing up for is not a one month lockdown. It's more like a six month lockdown.’ Former Brexit secretary David Davis tells Julia his fear over the new coronavirus lockdown”. Get that scaremongering going!

And no anti-lockdown tirade would be complete without Carl Heneghan. “Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine Carl Heneghan says the government's 4,000-deaths-a-day Covid scenario is ‘out by a significant amount … The numbers are far lower than their doomsday predictions.’” Going to come back and repeat that when it gets worse?

Who else could be dredged up to pontificate on the lockdown on the basis of Very Little Knowledge At All? Tory MP Graham Brady, that’s who. “Tory MP Sir Graham Brady: ‘I find it astonishing that we’ve had this profound interference in people’s fundamental human rights and no comment on it. If this was going on in any totalitarian country in the world we would be condemning it.’” Never mind a few more stiffs - it’s all about FREEM!

What next? Whataboutery, that’s what, with Digby Jones, no less. “Former CBI director general Lord Digby Jones is against a national lockdown: ‘Why a business down in Cornwall should suffer because students wouldn’t behave themselves in Manchester is just beyond me.’” They don’t have Covid-19 infections in Cornwall?

Just in case that isn’t enough disinformation, “Mike Graham returns from 10am today with Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage joining him live from Washington, DC”. Mr Thirsty meets the Dribbling Bigot. Whoopee. Graham also rips up a copy of the Guardian live on air (again) while claiming everyone should get back to work.

Another day, another routine helping of Dooda Disinformation. So the seeds of doubt are sown, more people get sick and die, but remember, it’s all about FREEZE PEACH!

And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. This is more dangerous nonsense.

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