Reject the culture of fear

Fear has its place, but we can’t let it dominate our lives.

There Are Better Ways to Keep Our Society Safe Than Creating a Culture of Fear | Epoch Times | Cory Morgan:

June 21, 2024 - "A culture of fear develops when everything is an emergency and danger lurks around every corner. To watch a full newscast these days is to immerse oneself in stories of violence, anarchy, and a plethora of unseen viral and climatic dangers. The trend is harming our collective psyche and will create a generation of introverts afraid to leave the safety of their homes.... We live in one of the safest places on earth during the safest period in human history.... However, you wouldn’t know it to listen to some media outlets, activists, and politicians.... 

"Fear is a strong motivator. It’s hard to raise funds for an environmental cause when telling somebody, 'The earth’s temperature may rise a degree in the next 50 years due to emissions.' When an activist describes a looming 'heat dome' or 'atmospheric river' that may kill seniors in their homes or cause flash flooding putting their children at risk on the way to school, the wallets of donors open.... 

"When a campaigner promises to protect people from a foreign invasion from a distant, hostile land, the votes come their way. A politician campaigning on law and order is motivated to highlight every violent crime while one promising to fight climate change will paint every weather event as extreme. Small protests are described as budding, violent revolutions, and fringe groups on every side of the political spectrum are presented as potential risks to us all. The real risks are minimal, but the political benefits of exaggerating those risks are real.

"Media has always been in the business of reporting the negative. The [phrase] 'if it bleeds, it leads' has been used for over a century. The eyes of readers and viewers are instinctively drawn toward sensational, dangerous, and frightening stories. In today’s hypercompetitive and financially challenged media world, reporters and writers are being trained, even if unconsciously, to find shocking or fearful stories to draw the attention of the public. When clicks and views are so easily measured, it becomes clear that fear provides the low-hanging fruit of garnering traffic.

"Weather reports used to be about as dull and innocuous as it gets.... Now though, ... maps are coloured in deep, dangerous reds implying fiery, perilous heatwaves even when reporting on typical weather conditions.... A short period of temperatures a little above normal in Ontario recently led to ominous fearful reporting for a week. Stories abounded of the hazards for seniors, the risk of fires, and even tied into social justice and wealth inequity, as one media outlet wrote on how renters were at a higher risk of 'heat death' than homeowners. The few days of heat came and went with little consequence. 

"The City of Calgary has declared a state of emergency due to a broken water line, while Niagara declared a state of emergency over an eclipse....

"The COVID-19 pandemic was the granddaddy of fear events. The world wrapped itself into a state of emergency coupled with the most fearful and negative reporting ever seen. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that while the virus was harmful, the number of people permanently harmed was tiny. The fear caused much more societal damage than COVID itself ever could....

"We should embrace the good things and not allow baseless fear to creep into our lives. Don’t worry about the bird flu and focus on the one man who died of it. Try to remember that 8 billion people didn’t die of it.... Get out and enjoy life and be sure to click on those good news stories now and then. It encourages the writers to stay optimistic. Fear has its place, but we can’t let it dominate our lives. The culture of fear can be avoided if we try."

Read more: https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/cory-morgan-there-are-better-ways-to-keep-our-society-safe-than-creating-a-culture-of-fear-5673052

How stress shuts down reasoning

Dr. David Potter, Stress and Coping Skills, 2013. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Neural circuits responsible for conscious self-control are highly vulnerable to even mild stress. When they shut down, primal impulses go unchecked and mental paralysis sets in | Scientific American - Amy Arnsten, Carolyn M. Mazure, & Rajita Sinha:

April 2012 - "For decades scientists thought they understood what happens in the brain during testing or a battlefront firefight. In recent years a different line of research has put the physiology of stress in an entirely new perspective. The response to stress is not just a primal reaction affecting parts of the brain that are common to a wide array of species ranging from salamanders to humans. Stress, in fact, can cripple our most advanced mental faculties....

"Older textbooks explained that the hypothalamus, an evolutionarily ancient structure lodged at the base of the brain, reacts to stress by triggering the secretion of a wave of hormones from the pituitary and adrenal glands, which makes the heart race, elevates blood pressure and diminishes appetite. Now research reveals an unexpected role for the prefrontal cortex, the area immediately behind the forehead that serves as the control center that mediates our highest cognitive abilities — among them concentration, planning, decision making, insight, judgment and the ability to retrieve memories.... The new research demonstrates that acute, uncontrollable stress sets off a series of chemical events that weaken the influence of the prefrontal cortex while strengthening the dominance of older parts of the brain. In essence, it transfers high-level control over thought and emotion from the prefrontal cortex to the hypothalamus and other earlier evolved structures....

"The prefrontal cortex is so sensitive to stress because of its special status within the hierarchy of brain structures. It is the most highly evolved brain region, bigger proportionally in humans than in other primates, and makes up a full third of the human cortex. It matures more slowly than any other brain area and reaches full maturity only after the teen years have passed. The prefrontal area houses the neural circuitry for abstract thought and allows us to concentrate and stay on task, while storing information in the mental sketch pad of working memory.... As a mental-control unit, the prefrontal area also inhibits inappropriate thoughts and actions.

"The neurological executive center functions through an extensive internal network of connections among the triangular-shaped neurons called pyramidal cells. These neurons also send out connections to more distant reaches of the brain that control our emotions, desires and habits.... Keeping this network firing as it should can be a fragile process — and when stress hits, even small changes in the neurochemical environment can instantly weaken network connections. In response to stress, our brain floods with arousal chemicals such as norepinephrine and dopamine, which are released by neurons in the brain stem that send projections throughout the brain. Elevated levels of these signaling chemicals in the prefrontal cortex shut off neuron firing, in part by weakening the connection points, or synapses, between neurons temporarily. Network activity diminishes, as does the ability to regulate behavior. These effects only worsen as the adrenal glands near the kidneys, on command from the hypothalamus, spritz the stress hormone cortisol into the bloodstream, sending it to the brain....

"Our research clarifying how easily the prefrontal cortex can be shut down started about 20 years ago. Studies in animals by one of us (Arnsten), along with the late Patricia Goldman-Rakic of Yale University, were among the first to illustrate how neurochemical changes during stress can rapidly switch off prefrontal function. The work showed that neurons in the prefrontal cortex disconnect and stop firing after being exposed to a flood of neurotransmitters or stress hormones. In contrast, areas deep within the brain take a stronger hold over our behavior. Dopamine arrives at a series of deep-brain structures, collectively called the basal ganglia, that regulate cravings and habitual emotional and motor responses. The basal ganglia hold sway not only when we ride a bicycle without falling but also when we indulge in addictive habits....

"After dopamine and norepinephrine switch off circuits in the prefrontal area required for higher cognition, enzymes normally chew up the neurotransmitters so that the shutdown does not persist. In this way, we can return to our baseline when stress abates. Certain forms of a gene can weaken these enzymes, making people more vulnerable to stress and, in some cases, mental illness. Similarly, environmental factors can increase vulnerability; for example, lead poisoning can mimic aspects of the stress response and erode cognition.

"Still other research focuses on what happens when the assault on the prefrontal cortex lasts for days or weeks. Chronic stress appears to expand the intricate web of connections among neurons in our lower emotional centers, whereas the areas engaged during flexible, sustained reasoning — anything from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant to calculus — start to shrivel. Under these conditions, the branching, signal-receiving dendrites in the primal amygdala enlarge, and those in the prefrontal cortex shrink. John Morrison of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and his colleagues have shown that prefrontal dendrites can regrow if the stress disappears, but this ability to rebound may vanish if the stress is especially severe.... This chain of molecular events makes us more vulnerable to subsequent stress and most likely contributes to depression, addiction and anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress....

"One question that still perplexes researchers is why the brain has built-in mechanisms to weaken its highest cognitive functions. We still do not know for sure, but the triggering of these primal reactions may perhaps have saved human lives when a predatory wild animal was lurking in the bushes.... Absent our slow, deliberate higher-brain networks, primitive brain pathways can stop us on a dime or ready us to flee. These mechanisms may serve a similar function when we face danger in the modern world — say, when a reckless driver cuts us off and we need to slam on the brakes. If we remain in this state, though, prefrontal function weakens, a devastating handicap in circumstances where we need to engage in complex decision making about a loved one’s serious medical condition or organize an important project on a tight deadline."

Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4774859/

Covid19 a 'pandemic of fear' (in Canada, too)

COVID-19 a Pandemic of Fear ‘Manufactured’ by Authorities: Yale Epidemiologist | Epoch Times -Isabel Van Brusen & Jan Jekielek: 

December 6, 2021 - "The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of fear, manufactured by individuals who were in the nominal positions of authority as the virus began to spread across the globe last year, according to Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch. In an appearance on Epoch TV’s American Thought Leaders program, Risch, an epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, argued ... what has characterized the ... pandemic has been a 'degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.'

'''Overall, I’d say that we’ve had a pandemic of fear. And fear has affected almost everybody, whereas the infection has affected relatively few,' said Risch. 'By and large, it’s been a very selected pandemic, and predictable. It was very distinguished between young versus old, healthy versus chronic disease people. So we quickly learned who was at risk for the pandemic and who wasn’t. However, the fear was manufactured for everybody. And that’s what’s characterized the whole pandemic is that degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.'

"Risch has authored more than 300 original peer-reviewed publications and was formerly a member of the board of editors for the American Journal of Epidemiology. 

"The epidemiology professor suggested that individuals who held the nominal positions of authority during the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 initially spread a much worse picture of the 'dire nature' of the virus than was warranted. That included the message that everybody was at risk, anybody could die from contracting the virus, and everybody needed to stay in their homes to protect themselves.... 'People were quite afraid of that message, as anybody would be … with the government, with authorities, with scientists, scientific people, with medical people in authority in the public health institutions, all saying the same message starting in about February, March of last year'.... 

"Risch said that the types of messages issued by authorities led to widespread heightened anxiety levels. 'All of our anxiety levels were raised, and we all made decisions to curtail, to various degrees, our exposures to other people, some more than others, but I think everybody had levels of anxiety that really affected how they carry out their life at that time,' he said."

Watch the full interview with Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch": https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/covid-19-a-pandemic-of-fear-manufactured-by-authorities-yale-epidemiologist_4106244.html

Military leaders saw pandemic as unique opportunity to test propaganda techniques on Canadians, Forces report says | Ottawa Citizen - David Pugliese:

September 27, 2021 - "Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test out propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public, a newly released Canadian Forces report concludes. 

"The federal government never asked for the so-called information operations campaign, nor did cabinet authorize the initiative developed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, then headed by Lt.-Gen. Mike Rouleau. But military commanders believed they didn’t need to get approval from higher authorities to develop and proceed with their plan, retired Maj.-Gen. Daniel Gosselin, who was brought in to investigate the scheme, concluded in his report.

"The propaganda plan was developed and put in place in April 2020.... A copy of the Dec. 2, 2020, Gosselin investigation, as well as other related documents, was obtained by this newspaper using the Access to Information law.

"The plan devised by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, also known as CJOC, relied on propaganda techniques similar to those employed during the Afghanistan war. The campaign called for 'shaping' and 'exploiting' information. CJOC claimed the information operations scheme was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic and to bolster government messages about the pandemic.

"A separate initiative, not linked to the CJOC plan, but overseen by Canadian Forces intelligence officers, culled information from public social media accounts in Ontario.... Senior military officers claimed that information was needed to ensure the success of Operation Laser, the Canadian Forces mission to help out in long-term care homes hit by COVID-19 and to aid in the distribution of vaccines in some northern communities."

Read more: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/military-leaders-saw-pandemic-as-unique-opportunity-to-test-propaganda-techniques-on-canadians-forces-report-says

Omicron variant sets off renewed Covid hysteria

Headline courtesy CNN News, Nov. 27, 2021.

Are We Overreacting to Omicron? | Brownstone Institute - Dr. Paul Elias Alexander:

November 26, 2021 - "With natural exposure immunity and early outpatient treatment and when combined with no reports of increased lethality, the WHO’s reaction of generating panic toward 'Omicron' is causing needless fear.... So too with the Biden administration’s newly imposed travel restrictions, which will achieve nothing and will once again disrupt trade and violate human rights. 

"The WHO has said that the Omicron variant can spread more quickly than other variants. Likely true. The virus is behaving just like how viruses behave. They are mutable and mutate and via Muller’s ratchet, we expect this to be milder and milder mutations and not more lethal ones.... The virus will mutate downward so that it can use the host (us) to propagate itself via our cellular metabolic machinery. The Delta has shown us this: it is very infectious and mostly non-lethal. Especially for children and healthy people. So is the WHO panicking the globe needlessly? Is this Covid-19 February 2020 once again? 

"The problem with South Africa as is with Australia and New Zealand and even island nations like Trinidad is ... low natural immunity to SAR-Cov-2. This is because, as we witnessed over the last year and more, if you lock down your society too long and too hard, you deny the nation and population from inching closer to population-level herd immunity. And you have no economy or society [into] which to  reemerge. You devastate your society for a pathogen that is largely harmless to the vast majority of people especially children.... 

"These nations thought that they could stay locked down and wait for a vaccine. This is a reasonable view though I was against lockdowns as they would and did cause crushing harms on especially poor persons and children. The problem is there was an opportunity cost because the vaccine we were waiting on was suboptimally developed without the proper safety testing or assessment of effectiveness. 

"We have data that the Pfizer vaccine loses 40% of antibodies per month, meaning in 3 months post-shot, you have low effective vaccinal immunity.... For example, the vaccine has failed to stop infection and spread against Delta. We have research findings by Singanayagam et al. (fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts), by Chau et al. (viral loads of breakthrough Delta variant infection cases in vaccinated nurses were 251 times higher than those of cases infected with prior strains early 2020), and by Riemersma et al. (no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine 'breakthrough' infections and if vaccinated individuals become infected with the delta variant, they may be sources of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to others) that reveal the vaccines have very suboptimal efficacy. 

"This situation of the vaccinated being infectious and transmitting the virus has also emerged in seminal nosocomial outbreak papers by Chau et al. (HCWs in Vietnam), the Finland hospital outbreak (spread among HCWs and patients), and the Israel hospital outbreak (spread among HCWs and patients). These studies have also revealed that the PPE and masking were essentially ineffective within the healthcare setting. All of the HCWs were double-vaccinated yet there was extensive spread to themselves and their patients. 

"In addition, Nordström et al. (vaccine effectiveness of Pfizer against infection waned progressively from 92% day 15-30 to 47% day 121-180, and from day 211 and onwards no effectiveness), Suthar et al. (a substantial waning of antibody responses and T cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, at 6 months following the second immunization), Yahi et al. (with Delta variant, neutralizing antibodies have a decreased affinity for the spike protein, whereas facilitating antibodies display a strikingly increased affinity), Juthani et al. (higher numbers of patients with severe or critical illness in those who received the Pfizer vaccine), Gazit et al. (SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant, and substantially elevated risk of symptomatic Covid and hospitalization), and Acharya et al. (no significant difference in cycle threshold values between vaccinated and unvaccinated, asymptomatic and symptomatic groups infected with Delta) collectively reveal the poor efficacy and even negative efficacy of the Covid vaccines. Levine-Tiefenbrun et al. reports that the viral load reduction effectiveness declines with time after vaccination, 'significantly decreasing at 3 months after vaccination and effectively vanishing after about 6 months.'

"As an example, the Swedish study (retrospective with 842,974 pairs (N=1,684,958) is particularly alarming for it shows that while the vaccine provides temporary protection against infection, the efficacy declines below zero and then to negative efficacy territory at approximately 7 months, underscoring that the vaccinated are highly susceptible to infection and eventually become highly infected (more so than the unvaccinated). A further example emerges from Ireland whereby reporting suggests that the Waterford city district has the State’s highest rate of Covid-19 infections, while the county also boasts the highest rate of vaccination in the Republic (99.7% vaccinated). Reports are that the U.S. Covid-19 deaths for 2021 surpassed the deaths from 2020, leading some to state that 'more people have died from COVID-19 in 2021, with most adults vaccinated and nearly all seniors), than in 2020 when nobody was vaccinated.' 

"Thus these nations that locked down and stayed that way are in a quandary for they do not know what to do now. If you open you will get surges in infection. Where is the money that was to go to hospital preparation?....

"We have a lot of natural immunity in the US, e.g. near 65-70% of the population. The open states (those that did not lock down too long and too hard and opened quickly) will likely do very well with this Omicron or any new variant. This also is the power of natural immunity. And we need not forget the potency of the overlooked ‘innate’ immunity with the innate antibodies and innate natural killer cellular compartment. This innate response is particularly potent in children (our first line of defense against pathogens) and is what has spared children from Covid and how children typically stave off pathogens, especially young children still laying down immunological memory. 

"Moreover, there is no reporting of increased virulence/lethality of this new Omicron variant. As yet this will remain the case based on Delta and prior variants. There are no guarantees but we operate based on risk and all things point to the same for this new variant. Just because there is a wave in SA does not mean that there will be waves in the US or Israel or other places with greater natural immunity. This was the prize of letting people enjoy day-to-day living. The nations that have ended lockdowns are likely to move past this new variant scare.... This is more of an overreaction by the WHO and governments and much ado about nothing."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/are-we-overreacting-to-omicron/ 

Dr Alexander ... PhD. ... has experience in epidemiology and in the teaching [of] clinical epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, and research methodology. Dr Alexander is a former Assistant Professor at McMaster University in evidence-based medicine and research methods; former COVID Pandemic evidence-synthesis consultant advisor to WHO-PAHO Washington, DC (2020) and former senior advisor to COVID Pandemic policy in Health and Human Services (HHS) Washington, DC (A Secretary), ... currently a COVID-19 consultant researcher in the US-C19 research group.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Mental disorders rose globally during lockdowns

Covid Anxiety Is a Health Problem Too | Wall Street Journal - Dr. Marc Siegel:

October 15, 2021 - "In New York City, I often see people walking down the sidewalk, masks hanging low over their chins, looking fearful and dodging one another. The health benefit from these wary rituals is minimal to nonexistent, and they illustrate the toll that fear of Covid-19 has taken on mental health.

"A new global study published in the Lancet examines 48 data sources in an attempt to quantify that toll. The authors report a world-wide increase of more than 129 million cases of major depression and anxiety disorders compared with pre-pandemic figures. They attribute this to the 'combined effects of the spread of the virus, lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, decreased public transport, school and business closures, and decreased social interactions, among other factors.'

"The rise in mental-health problems was correlated with both infection rates and restrictions on personal behavior: 'We estimated that the locations hit hardest by the pandemic in 2020, as measured with decreased human mobility and daily SARS-CoV-2 infection rate, had the greatest increases in prevalence of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders'....

"As in previous studies, the mental-health effect was most severe on younger people, likely because their need for social interactions is stronger and their social lives depend more on people outside the household. They are also at considerably less risk of severe disease, so restrictions pose a relatively heavy burden on them primarily for the benefit of their elders.

"From the beginning of the Covid outbreak in China, studies have found a connection between the severity of lockdowns and depression rates.... In most states, the average anxiety and depression scores increased during the late summer, fall and winter of 2020, while lockdowns were still in place. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, almost a third of adults in the U.S. reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder in late April and early May 2021, triple the number in 2019 before the pandemic started. But in South Dakota, which has had very few restrictions, the numbers were lower, with 24% reporting these symptoms.

"Government overreach in closing schools has caused a great mental health tragedy among our young. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has declared the Covid-19 pandemic the most severe disruption to education in history, with 1.6 billon learners in more than 190 countries out of school at some point in 2020.... A University of Washington study published last month by the Journal of the American Medical Association surveyed more than 2,300 American parents and found that remote learning negatively affected mental health and that 'older and Black and Hispanic children as well as those from families with lower income who attend school remotely may experience greater impairment to mental health than their younger, White, and higher income counterparts.'

"Badly conceived methods for stopping infection can be harmful to public health. Lockdowns and business closures were based on a model that ... proved ineffective at containing SARS-CoV-2, ... while causing enormous psychic damage. Even many people who didn’t get sick with Covid-19 will never be the same again."

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-anxiety-health-problem-isloation-school-youth-mental-lockdown-social-distancing-11634324802

Read study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02143-7/fulltext

Portrait of a Covid charlatan

The Impersonator: Eric Feigl-Ding, COVID-19, and an implicit far-left agenda | Substack - Jordan Schachtel, The Dossier:

October 26, 2020 - "If you’re on social media and you follow news related to the coronavirus pandemic, chances are you’ve stumbled upon some panicked pandemic posts coming from a man named Eric Feigl-Ding,* a nutritionist and longtime democrat political operative who has succeeded in impersonating a medical professional, and is generating a cult following in the process. With one hysterical tweet after another, Feigl-Ding went from having a small social media following to accumulating a massive army of influence. Feigl-Ding’s consistent elevation of fear and panic, doom and gloom, and his relentless themes of chaos and destruction ,,, brought his accounts millions of clicks and views, and hundreds of thousands of new followers. And he did it all without having a clue what he’s talking about.

"At the beginning of 2020, Feigl-Ding was an unpaid, visiting scientist in Harvard’s nutrition department. His academic research centered entirely around nutrition, diet, and exercise. If Eric Feigl-Ding was interested in pandemics and the study of viruses, his research and academic credentials did not reflect that. When the coronavirus pandemic began to make waves in the media, everything changed. Feigl-Ding, an aspiring politician, appeared to see an opening to influence the masses and build up his brand....

"But ... Feigl-Ding’s frequent use of Harvard-associated credentials to elevate his baseless COVID-19 proclamations greatly upset some of his colleagues (despite many of them advocating for the same draconian measures proposed by Feigl-Ding to 'combat' the virus), and landed him in hot water.... Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, described him as a 'charlatan exploiting a tenuous connection for self-promotion.' The Association of Health Care Journalists also took notice, reporting that he has 'precisely zero experience in infectious diseases.' An unnamed source at Harvard told the Chronicle on Higher Education in April [2020] that Feigl-Ding has 'been asked many times to stop promoting himself as having specialized knowledge.' In [the second half of 2020], Feigl-Ding updated his profile to show that he is no longer associated with Harvard.... 

"In order to sell his purported expertise on COVID-19, Feigl-Ding has repeatedly misrepresented his credentials.... [P]rior to the pandemic, Ding clarified that he was a PhD nutritionist, and not a medical doctor. He has since removed the PhD label from his account.  [He] has continued to muddy the waters surrounding his credentials, taking it to new heights ... in a pro-Biden Super PAC (funded by Silicon Valley billionaires) ad about the coronavirus pandemic. It features 'Dr' Feigl-Ding in a lab coat with tie ensemble that is associated with the attire worn by a medical doctor.... 'Joe Biden has a plan,' Feigl-Ding says in the ad. 'He listens to medical experts. Joe Biden will do what needs to be done so we can live a healthy, normal life again.' Many reporters were falsely led to believe that Feigl-Ding was one of the medical doctors featured in the ad spot.....

"Feigl-Ding has long been a far-left activist who advances his agenda under a healthcare reform label. In 2018, he ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat in Pennsylvania. Universal healthcare and medicare for all, or socialized medicine, was the centerpiece platform of his congressional run. According to Science Magazine, Feigl-Ding was supported in his run by political networks associated with far-left democrat mega donor George Soros, and FEC records reflect that. Feigl-Ding’s ties with Soros go back many years. In 2008, he received a Soros scholarship for his medical school studies (he would later drop out).... Feigl-Ding finished an unimpressive third place in the PA-10 2018 Democratic Primary. 

"Feigl-Ding remains closely connected to the Soros network. He currently serves as Treasurer of the The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellows Association (PDSFA). And through his Twitter and Facebook feeds, Feigl-Ding has utilized his unwarranted credential as a 'COVID-19 health expert' to promote his far-left politics, disguised as healthcare expertise, to hundreds of thousands of people....

"Feigl-Ding’s political aspirations did not cease with his failed congressional run. During [the 2020] election cycle, he ... contributed over $110,000 of his own money to a non-profit he founded called Health Justice For All. His organization’s website claims to be 'building a grassroots network to expose Big Pharma, to fight for affordable medications, and to elect a bold new generation of leaders who will not stop fighting Big Pharma until there is health justice for all.' However, there is nothing particularly health oriented about this organization. FEC records show that Feigl-Ding uses Health Justice for All to run attack ads against Republicans and supportive ads for Democrats.

"Social media’s foremost COVID-19 hysteric has leveraged his baseless pandemic panic promotion to achieve newfound fame. [During the presidential race last year] the hyper-political nutritionist turned 'COVID-19 expert' ... dedicated his social media feed to nonstop promotion of Joe Biden’s candidacy for president. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but it’s safe to say that Eric Feigl-Ding’s rise to 'public health' stardom has delivered plenty of opportunities to resurface as a true contender in the future political arena."

Read more: https://dossier.substack.com/p/the-impersonator-eric-feigl-ding

* signatory of the John Snow Memorandum

Covid unvaccinated face anger and blaming

As Virus Cases Rise, Another Contagion Spreads Among the Vaccinated: Anger | New York Times - Roni Caryn Rabin:

July 27, 2021 - "As coronavirus cases resurge across the country, many inoculated Americans are losing patience with vaccine holdouts who, they say, are neglecting a civic duty or clinging to conspiracy theories and misinformation even as new patients arrive in emergency rooms and the nation renews mask advisories.

"The country seemed to be exiting the pandemic; barely a month ago, a sense of celebration was palpable. Now many of the vaccinated fear for their unvaccinated children and worry that they are at risk themselves for breakthrough infections. Rising case rates are upending plans for school and workplace reopenings, and threatening another wave of infections that may overwhelm hospitals in many communities....

"The rising sentiment is contributing to support for more coercive measures. Scientists, business leaders and government officials are calling for vaccine mandates — if not by the federal government, then by local jurisdictions, schools, employers and businesses.

"On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City ordered that all municipal workers be vaccinated against Covid-19 by the time schools reopen in mid-September or face weekly testing. Officials in California followed suit hours later with a similar mandate covering all state employees and health care workers. 

"The Department of Veterans Affairs on Monday required that 115,000 on-site health care workers be vaccinated in the next two months, the first federal agency to order a mandate. Nearly 60 major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association, on Monday called for mandatory vaccination of all health care workers.

"'It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks,' a frustrated Gov. Kay Ivey, Republican of Alabama, told reporters last week....

"As a result of lagging vaccination and lifted restrictions, infections are rising. As of Sunday, the country was seeing 52,000 new cases daily, on average, a 170 percent increase over the previous two weeks. Hospitalization and death rates are increasing, too, although not as quickly.

"Communities from San Francisco to Austin, Texas, are recommending that vaccinated people wear masks again in public indoor settings. Citing the spread of the more contagious Delta variant of the virus, the counties of Los Angeles and St. Louis, Mo., have ordered indoor mask mandates. For many Americans who were vaccinated months ago, the future is beginning to look grim."

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/health/coronavirus-vaccination-hesitancy-delta.html

Invasive ventilation

'First Choice': How China and the WHO created mass ventilator hysteria | The Dossier - Jordan Shachtel:

September 30, 2020 - "Mechanical ventilators have long been considered a last resort solution for treating patients with respiratory illness.... In treating respiratory ailments, the highly invasive, high-risk maneuver that is mechanical ventilation is usually prefaced by less invasive measures, such as positive airway pressure machines like CPAP or BiPAP devices, or simple oxygen delivering nose prongs. But when COVID-19 hit, the long established scientific guidance on proper patient care was tossed out the window, along with other established norms....

"In early March, when COVID-19 was ravaging western Europe and sounding alarm bells in the United States, the WHO [World Health Organization] released COVID-19 provider guidance documents to healthcare workers. Citing experience 'based on current knowledge of the situation in China,' the WHO recommended mechanical ventilators as an early intervention for treating COVID-19 patients. The guidance recommended escalating quickly, if not immediately, to mechanical ventilation. In doing so, they cited the guidance being presented by Chinese medical journals, which published papers in January and February claiming that 'Chinese expert consensus' called for 'invasive mechanical ventilation' as the 'first choice' for people with moderate to severe respiratory distress.

"The WHO further justified this approach by claiming that the less invasive positive air pressure machines could result in the spread of aerosols, potentially infecting healthcare workers with the virus. The aerosol spread problem, however, is more or less a very  loose hypothesis. There remains questionable evidence that COVID-19 spreads through aerosols from airway pressure or oxygen devices. And there are established protocols for protecting medical workers from potential aerosol infection when using these devices....

"Seeing the situation in Wuhan unfold, and evaluating the guidance passed on from China and the WHO, U.S. 'public health experts' became convinced that ventilators were an absolute necessity, and that we needed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands more of these devices, to stave off the disease. Hysterical epidemiological modelers, the same ones that had just claimed millions of people were about to die from COVID-19 in the United States, took to claiming that there was a mass ventilator shortage in the United States. Governors across the country were now demanding ventilators by the boatload.

"After much bipartisan insistence from Congress, the president ordered U.S. manufacturers to build ventilators under the Defense Production Act. Based on the Wuhan experience, the United States was taking China and the WHO at its word, and reorienting some of our private industry economic engines towards building medical devices. Meanwhile, ... China was now exporting ventilators in incredible quantities. Under the guise of humanitarian behavior, China was making a fortune off of manufacturing and exporting ventilators (many of which did not work correctly and even killed patients) around the world.

"Meanwhile, as COVID-19 case growth exploded in New York City, some doctors began to notice that something was horribly wrong with the way patients were being treated for the disease. The COVID-19 guidance coming out of China, and being distributed in English by the World Health Organization, wasn’t working. In New York City, early and often ventilator use became a common theme, and it had devastating consequences for infected patients caught in the middle of the hysteria.

"On March 31, Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, who had been caring for ICU patients at one of the hardest-hit hospitals in the city, sounded the alarm about the ventilator issue. He took to YouTube and became something of a ventilator whistleblower.... An April Reuters interview with dozens  of medical specialists made it clear that mechanical ventilator overuse had become a global issue.... By May, it was common knowledge in the medical community that early ventilator use was hurting, not helping COVID-19 patients, and that less invasive measures were in fact very effective in assisting recoveries. However, by then, the damage had already been done....

"The 'early action' ventilator guidance from China, which was distributed to the world by the WHO, very likely resulted in many lives taken from us far too soon. To my knowledge, neither WHO nor the Chinese government (which controls its medical associations) has acknowledged this catastrophic misstep."

Read more: https://dossier.substack.com/p/first-choice-how-china-and-the-who

Never Let a Plague Go to Waste

Never Let a Plague Go to Waste | Toronto Sun - Victor Davis Hansen: 

June 3, 2021 - "During America’s first-ever national lockdown, thousands of unelected bureaucrats, as well as federal and state governments, assumed enormous powers not usually accorded to them. They picked and chose which businesses could stay open without much rationale. They sent the infected into nursing homes occupied by the weak and vulnerable. Their rules for prosecuting those who violated social distancing, sheltering in place, mask wearing or violent protesting often hinged on political grounds. Their spending measures ... were excuses to lard up redistributive entitlements.

"Conservatives moaned that left-wing agendas were at work beneath the pretenses of saving us from the pandemic. And the giddy left bragged that it was true.

"After the 2008 financial meltdown, Barack Obama spoke of 'fundamentally transforming' the country. Now he’s back, weighing in on the panic-driven, multitrillion-dollar spending that has pushed America’s debt to nearly $30 trillion. 'There’s a teachable moment about maybe this whole deficit hawk thing of the federal government,' Obama said in a recent interview with Ezra Klein of The New York Times. “Just being nervous about our debt 30 years from now, while millions of people are suffering — maybe that’s not a smart way to think about our economics'....

"Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted about leveraging California’s statewide quarantine. 'There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism,' Newsom said. 'So yes, absolutely, we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.'

"Hillary Clinton said something similar early in the pandemic: '… This would be a terrible crisis to waste as the old saying goes'.... The 'old saying' she cited was actually a recycled quote from Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s chief of staff. His exact quote was: 'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste'....  Emanuel clarified that crises allow radical changes that had never been considered or were considered impossible....

"The Davos crowd responsible for the World Economic Forum has talked of using the global crisis to push 'the Great Reset.' These self-appointed guardians wish to create global rules governing the world’s economy, energy, transportation, education, climate, wealth distribution and media. In other words, a few elites will seek to override local laws.

"What do all these efforts have in common? One, they are all top-down agendas. Polls show that average Americans are worried about massive borrowing. They fear the government gaining new powers under the pretext of a pandemic. Two, our elites are anti-democratic. They talk of forcing change down the throats of citizens through edicts, executive orders, court decisions or bureaucratic directives. Obama, Newsom, Clinton and the Great Resetters don’t want to put up their agendas for discussion before the people and their elected representatives. 

"Three, behind fancy slogans about not wasting crises, teachable moments and resets is the panic-porn reality that these initiatives are not popular in normal times.... Four, our rich revolutionaries have no record of policy success. Massive borrowing, increasing government powers, restrictions on personal freedoms, higher taxes and more regulations don’t appeal to most Americans. Brexit and pushbacks against the European Union suggest that the same is true abroad.

"Many members of the left-wing elite became wealthy by monetizing their political careers through lucrative insider networking. A cynic might conclude they didn’t go full reset until they first got filthy rich — allowing them not to live like, think like or listen to the rest of us."

Read more: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/hanson-never-let-a-plague-go-to-waste

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (1)

China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign | The Tablet - Michael P. Senger: 

September 15, 2020 - "In Wuhan in late December, Dr. Li Wenliang warned his friends that a new SARS-like illness had begun spreading rapidly. Li’s message inadvertently went viral on Chinese social media, causing widespread panic and anger [within] the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]. On Jan. 7, Xi Jinping informed his inner circle that the situation in Wuhan would require their personal supervision. Two weeks later, Xi personally authorized the lockdown of Hubei province.... The World Health Organization [WHO]’s representative in China noted that 'trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science … The lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history, so it is certainly not a recommendation the WHO has made.'

"The CCP confined 57 million Hubei residents to their homes. At the time, human rights observers expressed concerns. As one expert told The New York Times, 'the shutdown would almost certainly lead to human rights violations and would be patently unconstitutional in the United States.' Regardless, on Jan. 29, WHO Director Tedros Adhanom said he was 'very impressed and encouraged by the president [Xi Jinping]’s detailed knowledge of the outbreak' and the next day praised China for 'setting a new standard for outbreak response.' Yet only six days in, the lockdown — 'unprecedented in public health history' — had produced no results, so Tedros was praising human rights abuses with nothing to show for them.

"International COVID-19 hysteria began around Jan. 23, when 'leaked' videos from Wuhan began flooding international social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — all of which are blocked in China — allegedly showing the horrors of Wuhan’s epidemic and the seriousness of its lockdown. Viral videos claimed to show residents spontaneously collapsing in the streets.... But in hindsight, this crisis theater is somewhat comical; in [one] infamous video, the 'spontaneously collapsing' man extends his arms to catch himself. Official Chinese accounts widely shared an image of a hospital wing supposedly constructed in one day, but which actually showed an apartment 600 miles away.... 

"In a viral tweet on Jan. 25, an epidemiologist with little background in infectious disease wrote, 'HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!! How bad is that reproductive R0 value? It is thermonuclear pandemic level bad.' This was the first of a monthslong series of dubious, widely shared tweets by the previously unknown Eric Feigl-Ding, prompting a prominent Harvard colleague to denounce him as a 'charlatan.' 

"And then — success! Beginning in February, the CCP reported an exponential decline in coronavirus cases, until March 19 when they announced their lockdown had eliminated domestic cases entirely. In its Feb. 24 report, the WHO waxed rhapsodic about China’s triumph: 'China’s uncompromising and rigorous use of non-pharmaceutical measures to contain transmission of the COVID-19 virus in multiple settings provides vital lessons for the global response'....

"Scientists quickly began drafting plans in many languages to imitate China’s lockdowns. The New York Times immediately cited WHO’s report, forming a pro-lockdown stance it has clung to for months with surprisingly little introspection: 'China "took one of the most ancient strategies and rolled out one of the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease-containment efforts in history."'

"On Feb. 26, WHO’s Bruce Aylward of Canada — who later disconnected a live interview when asked to acknowledge Taiwan — put it bluntly: 'Copy China’s response to COVID-19.' In April, Canada’s parliament summoned Aylward for questioning, but the WHO has forbidden him from testifying.

"Within China, the CCP has long paid hundreds of thousands of social media propagandists and also pays for posts on an a la carte basis, totaling hundreds of millions of propaganda comments each year. More recently, these activities have gone global and escalated dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic. Social media companies have proven somewhat unserious about the gravity of the problem. When the State Department provided a sample of 250,000 accounts likely involved in coronavirus disinformation, Twitter refused to take action. These activities affect countries with little say in social media governance; a recent study found thousands of inauthentic accounts still promoting Serbian-Chinese friendship after Twitter deleted thousands of others. A former Facebook employee wrote 'I have blood on my hands' due to the company’s routinely discounting malicious political activity despite its 'disproportionate impact.'"

Read more: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-covid-lockdown-propaganda

Do You Know the Scientific History of Lockdowns? - video by Ivor Cummins

Also read:

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (2)

Disinformation pushed world into lockdowns (3) 

There's nothing novel about pandemic hysteria

Fever pitch | The Guardian - David Aaronovitch [Note: This article is more than 17 years old]:

April 6, 2003 - "There are no poisonous snakes on Hampstead Heath.... So why, walking on the Heath last weekend, did I levitate at the sight of a twisted green stick across my path – I, who have never even seen a snake in the wild? It must, I reckoned, have been one of those rare appearances by the Old Animal inside, a sudden throwback to our hairy days of roaming the rift valley, alert to danger.

"I think something similar happens when – as last week – we hear about yet another deadly disease, which has killed someone in China. Boats or planes are, even now, carrying a new strain of pneumonia from the teeming Asian continent to the heart of Europe and the United States. The Old Animal, recalling past pandemics, sounds the alarm.... 

"Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) should not be confused with Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which was an African flu epidemic from last autumn and – frankly – is so last year (I presume that next year's epidemic will, because of this name inflation, have to be called something like Bloody Terrible Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.) A health website describes the main symptoms of Sars as being 'high fever, dry cough, shortness of breath or breathing difficulties. Sars may be associated with other symptoms, including headache, muscular stiffness, loss of appetite, malaise, confusion, rash and diarrhoea'. All of which, as I write this, I am currently suffering from, save lack of appetite. Oh, and a rash.

"If I have somehow picked up the coronavirus behind the disease, and am not just suffering from a spring cold,... [i]t would be about time. In 1997 I avoided the Hong Kong chicken virus, which killed six people when a strain of the virus somehow 'jumped the species barrier' for the first time. A million Chinese chickens were slaughtered, and the disease was stopped. Three years later I survived the emergence of the West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne infection that led to the whole of New York being sprayed with pesticide. Since then there have been 4,003 cases of West Nile virus and 263 deaths. Nothing, however, gives me as much relief as having been spared Ebola virus, which a few years back (and courtesy of Hollywood and Dustin Hoffman) was poised to sweep the world.

"Ever since we settled down in cities and communities, we have been open to the possibility of communicable disease. And, in our folk history, most of this arises in the East, a treacherous result of trade and modernity. The Black Death is supposed to have originated variously in the Gobi desert, in Manchuria, or (best of all) 'in the depths of Asia', reaching Dorset in August 1348. The cholera pandemic that swept across England in 1832 was supposed to have entered on a ship from Hamburg, but to have started in Bengal. Latterly Africa has been fixed upon as an alternative starting place for terrible diseases. Teeming Asia or the Heart of Darkness - take your pick of which most frightens you.

"This fear of epidemics and pandemics is interesting. In psychological terms it is a way of externalising evil and badness; the nastiness is placed outside us. And there are, of course, other outside threats to our continued survival, ranging from mega-tsunamis (tidal waves which will drown New York), the currently vogueish killer asteroids and - at an individual level - alien abduction.... But none of this sci-fi stuff has quite the power of an authentic health scare. It is many millions of years since we last struck by a huge asteroid, yet within the lifetime of a centenarian we have seen one pandemic and one epidemic; Spanish flu and Aids respectively. And, in any case, our own health and its susceptibility to external threat, is a very big part of our inner lives....

"For all kinds of reasons, we are living through a pessimistic moment, and we constantly expect to be assailed by external devils. So everyone is worried despite the fact that Sars appears to be less infectious than ordinary influenza, and that the World Health Organisation expects a treatment for Sars to be available in weeks rather than months. Even so there were mutterings this weekend about what would happen if the infection enters a country like Brazil, where the health system may not be able to cope. My guess, however, is that we will be talking about Sars in five years time in the same way that we now mention chicken flu. And yet, at some point in the next couple of years, there'll be another scare....

"We are consciously creating what one sociologist, Peter Berger, has described as a 'cultural climate of pervasive anxiety'. In this climate certain groups become over-sensitive to alarms about health and lifestyle, and end up trying to do things that actually contradict each other.

"It is hard not to think about the story of the boy who cried 'Wolf!' Every now and then an Aids epidemic or an established link (such as that between lung cancer and smoking) comes up and demands action. But by then we will have stayed at home because of virtually non-existent viruses, banned GM foods on the flimsiest of evidence and taken ill-advised exercise under the supervision of ignorant trainers - and so we won't believe what we are being told. This is, I fear, becoming a time when we are all scared of the wrong-shaped sticks."

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/apr/06/publichealth.comment

Alberta MD condemns Covid "hysteria"

Dr. Roger Hodkinson says the virus is no worse than a “bad flu”, that masks are “useless”, and that lockdowns are driving suicides. | Western Standard:

November 17, 2020 - "A top Edmonton doctor in virology says Albertans 'are being led down the garden path' by government health officials in their efforts to stop the COVID-19 virus. Dr. Roger Hodkinson says the virus is no worse than a 'bad flu.'

"Hodkinson is the CEO of Western Medical Assessments, and has been the company’s medical director for over 20 years. He received his general medical degrees from Cambridge University in the U.K., and then became a Royal College certified pathologist in Canada (FRCPC) following a residency in Vancouver. He also taught at the University of Alberta and runs MutantDx, a molecular diagnostics company in North Carolina.

"'What I am going to say is lay language and blunt,' Hodkinson said during an Edmonton City Council Community and Public Services Committee meeting, audio of which is currently making the rounds on YouTube. 'There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians. It’s outrageous. This is the greatest hoax every perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.

"'There is absolutely nothing to be done to contain this virus other than protecting your more vulnerable people.... This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS. It’s politics playing medicine. And that’s a very dangerous game. Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence based on their effectiveness whatsoever. Seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge…putting the masks on.'

"Hodkinson said social distancing is also 'useless' because the virus can travel up to 30 m before landing. He said positive tests, which do not accurately reflect whether you have the virus, are driving 'public hysteria,' adding testing should stop unless you show up at a hospital with respiratory problems. He called for residents of long term care homes to be given daily doses of Vitamin D which can help battle the virus.

"Hodkinson said the risk of death from COVID-19 to Albertans under 65 is 1 in 300,000. He also blamed businesses closures for a spate of suicides and other social problems.

"'It’s just another bad flu, and you have to get your minds around that. You’re being led down the garden path by the chief medical officer of health (Dr. Deena Hinshaw) in this province.,' he said. 'I am absolutely outraged that it has reached this level.'"

Read more: https://www.westernstandardonline.com/2020/11/senior-doc-says-alberta-politicians-playing-medicine-media-driving-hysteria/

Fear, not facts, behind new UK leap into lockdown

Britain's government is exploiting fear to suit its actions, whether on Covid or terrorism | The Guardian - Simon Jenkins:

November 6, 2020 - "The politics of fear is famously the most cynical politics of all. It is now rampant on both sides of the Atlantic. As the sociologist Frank Furedi has written, spreading fear is the 'politics of denial … a manipulative project to immobilise public debate'. It has long lain at the origins of populism.

"With Covid-19, Boris Johnson, very reasonably, initially opposed a return to the blanket lockdown policy. But when his scientists had him in a corner last week he had to turn to fear to justify his U-turn. He threatened that 'several thousand people a day would die' – 4,000 was widely quoted – if he did not proceed to a lockdown across England. This worst-case scenario figure was subsequently shown to be based on a projection inflated by a factor of more than four.... 

"Oxford professor of evidence-based medicine Carl Heneghan, speaking on the BBC on Monday, as good as called it a lie, since modelling 'beyond two weeks carries a huge margin of error'. On Tuesday the government chief scientist, Sir Patrick Vallance, retreated and regretted the figure, slashing it by four. He denied he was trying to scare people and drew a distinction between a 'reasonable worst case scenario', a model and forecast – a distinction lost on the public when threatened with thousands of dead bodies.

"At such times evidence matters. Johnson never revealed figures from the Health Service Journal, confirmed by the BBC, that British hospital bed occupancy is still at or below its seasonal normal.

"We are never reminded that three-quarters of deaths in the first wave of the virus were confined to 5% of the population judged to be at the highest risk, since that might argue for a 'shielding' rather than a 'blanket' lockdown. Certainly there was not the vaguest mention of the stupefying cost of resumed lockdown. Johnson had merely lost patience with localism and had to scare London so as not to seem unfair to Manchester.

"These are desperate issues for people on all sides of the argument, but the public is left floundering between unresolved conflicts over figures and politicians pounding away at anyone’s natural fear of death. There is no sense of a balance of miseries. As with the earlier neglect of care homes, we have one sector of the welfare state, the NHS, exploiting fear – nightly on BBC television news – to guard its own corner. That is what the security industry does in the case of terrorism.... Specialists are naturally eager to protect their professions and deliver on their chosen targets. That applies as much in the realm of national security as in national health; as much in mental health and family care as in schooling, jobs and trade. In these arguments there are no absolutes, only competing interests.

"Johnson’s speech announcing a new lockdown on Saturday reminded me of how Tony Blair deployed fear to justify drastic state action over foot and mouth disease, and – warning that Saddam Hussein’s arsenal put the UK '45 minutes from doom' – in support of the Iraq war. It is the same blind fear exploited in every debate.... There is little sign of evidence calming emotion. We just get Patel on terror and Johnson on Covid, marshalling that last refuge of the populist, the politics of fear."

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/06/britain-government-terrorism-covid-priti-patel-boris-johnson

The COVID Cult

The Covidian Cult | Off-Guardian - CJ Hopkins:

October 13, 2020 - "One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative ... that has little or no connection to reality and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts. Nazism and Stalinism are the classic examples, but the phenomenon is better observed in cults.... What many people fail to understand is that to those who fall prey to them (whether individual cult members or entire totalitarian societies) such narratives do not register as psychotic. On the contrary, they feel entirely normal. Everything in their social 'reality' reifies and reaffirms the narrative, and anything that challenges or contradicts it is perceived as an existential threat.

"These narratives are invariably paranoid, portraying the cult as threatened or persecuted by an evil enemy or antagonistic force which only unquestioning conformity to the cult’s ideology can save its members from.... The point is not the identity of the enem. The point is the atmosphere of paranoia and hysteria the official narrative generates, which keeps the cult members (or the society) compliant.... In addition to being paranoid, these narratives are often internally inconsistent [and] illogical.... This ... forces their adherents to attempt to reconcile their inconsistency and irrationality ... in order to remain in good standing with the cult. Such reconciliation is of course impossible, and causes the cult members’ minds to short circuit and abandon any semblance of critical thinking, which is precisely what the cult leader wants. Moreover, cult leaders will often radically change these narratives for no apparent reason, forcing their cult members to abruptly forswear (and often even denounce as 'heresy') the beliefs they had previously been forced to profess, and behave as if they had never believed them, which causes their minds to further short circuit, until they eventually give up even trying to think rationally, and just mindlessly parrot whatever nonsensical gibberish the cult leader fills their heads with....

"If all this sounds familiar, good. Because the same techniques that most cult leaders use to control the minds of the members of their cults are used by totalitarian systems to control the minds of entire societies: Milieu Control, Loaded Language, Sacred Science, Demand for Purity, and other standard mind-control techniques. It can happen to pretty much any society, just as anyone can fall prey to a cult, given the right set of circumstances. It is happening to most of our societies right now. An official narrative is being implemented. A totalitarian official narrative. A totally psychotic official narrative, no less delusional than that of the Nazis, or the Manson family, or any other cult. Most people cannot see that it is happening, for the simple reason that it is happening to them....

"And this is why so many people — people who are able to easily recognize totalitarianism in cults and foreign countries — cannot perceive the totalitarianism that is taking shape now, right in front of their faces (or, rather, right inside their minds). Nor can they perceive the delusional nature of the official “Covid-19” narrative, no more than those in Nazi Germany were able to perceive how completely delusional their official 'master race' narrative was. Such people are neither ignorant nor stupid. They have been successfully initiated into a cult, which is essentially what totalitarianism is, albeit on a societal scale.

"Their initiation into the Covidian Cult began in January, when the medical authorities and corporate media turned on The Fear with projections of hundreds of millions of deaths and fake photos of people dropping dead in the streets. The psychological conditioning has continued for months. The global masses have been subjected to a constant stream of propaganda, manufactured hysteria, wild speculation, conflicting directives, exaggerations, lies, and tawdry theatrical effects. Lockdowns. Emergency field hospitals and morgues. The singing-dancing NHS staff. Death trucks. Overflowing ICUs. Dead Covid babies. Manipulated statistics. Goon squads. Masks. And all the rest of it.

"Eight months later, here we are. The Head of the Health Emergencies Program at the WHO [World Health Organization] has basically confirmed an IFR [infection fatality rate] of 0.14%, approximately the same as the seasonal flu.... The 'science' argument is officially over. An increasing number of doctors and medical experts are breaking ranks and explaining how the current mass hysteria over 'cases' (which now includes perfectly healthy people) is essentially meaningless propaganda, for example, in this segment on ARD, one of the big mainstream German TV channels. And then there is the existence of Sweden, and other countries which are not playing ball with the official Covid-19 narrative, which makes a mockery of the ongoing hysteria. 

"The point is, the facts are all available.... From mainstream outlets and medical experts. From the Center for F*cking Disease Control. Which does not matter in the least, not to the members of the Covidian Cult. Facts do not matter to totalitarians and cult members. What matters is loyalty to the cult or the party. Which means we have a serious problem, those of us to whom facts still matter, and who have been trying to use them to convince the Covidian cultists that they are wrong about the virus … for going on eight months at this point.

"While it is crucial to continue reporting the facts and sharing them with as many people as possible — which is becoming increasingly difficult due to the censorship of alternative and social media — it is important to accept what we are up against. What we are up against is not a misunderstanding or a rational argument over scientific facts. It is a fanatical ideological movement.... Instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it."

Read more: https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/13/the-covidian-cult/

Panic as Beijing reimposes Level II lockdown

Flights canceled, communities fenced off as coronavirus' return plunges Beijing into "soft lockdown" | CBS News - Grace Qi:

June 17, 2020 - "The new outbreak of coronavirus in the Chinese capital prompted authorities to raise their official emergency response back to Level II on Tuesday night, as they race to stem what one called an 'extremely severe' situation. The adjustment to Beijing's response level came just 10 days after it was downgraded to Level III.

"Beijing has bolstered measures to stop the virus spreading as the cluster of new infections, centered on the Xinfadi wholesale food market, grew by another 31 cases over the course of Tuesday. China's government has now officially tallied 137 cases in the capital city since the first patient in this new wave of infections was diagnosed last week.

"Now flights are being canceled, schools have been told to shut back down, and entire communities near the market, or with known COVID-19 cases, have been closed off and their residents barred from leaving. So far 29 neighborhoods have been completely fenced off. Across much of the capital, residents have found themselves under what many are calling a 'soft lockdown.'

"More than 1,200 inbound and outbound flights from Beijing's two airports were canceled on Wednesday, accounting for almost 70% of scheduled trips, according to aviation tracking website Variflight. The national railway operator is allowing passengers to and from Beijing to refund their tickets without fees. All outbound taxi and car-hailing services and most long-distance bus routes from Beijing were canceled. City officials have limited public places such as libraries, museums, art galleries, and parks to 30% capacity.

"The rest of Beijing's ... residents have been told to avoid 'non-essential' travel outside city. If it is deemed 'absolutely necessary' to travel, residents have to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test result from within the past seven days, but appointments for testing aren't to be had quickly or easily right now, and other parts of China aren't eagerly welcoming arrivals from Beijing.

"The return of strict control measures in the capital, even if only in some parts, has sparked panic and anxiety among some Beijingers. Social media is flooded with residents' concerns, including some complaining that the government is trying to soften the perception of the new lockdown by simply not using the word in news conferences, even as it brings back the restrictions."

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-china-beijing-soft-lockdown-limited-outbreak/