Posted on 08/01/2020 1:30:39 PM PDT by Peter ODonnell
I wonder how many people might agree that some aspects of the global pandemic resemble historical cases of mass delusion or panic, where hundreds or thousands of people imagine that they have an illness or medical condition largely on the basis of frequent mention of it in the people around them.
There are historical examples of airliners full of healthy people where the notion of a fast-spreading illness led a significant number of passengers to imagine that they too were ill (some may have been), and then when taken to hospital after landing, it became apparent that most were not ill at all.
The parallel would be "asymptomatic positives" combined with some actually ill people who imagined they had the coronavirus when in fact they had some other condition entirely, but then with the apparently large spread of the asymptomatic COVID19, they tested positive and were counted as cases, when in reality, what brought them to medical care was an entirely unrelated illness.
I have the suspicion that mass delusion is playing a significant role in this event. An identifiable class of people can see benefits from the spread of the virus, in terms of political outcomes they favor, or inductive reasoning gains related to unrelated outcomes (e.g., fighting climate change).
As I walk around my home town (unmasked like 90% of the population) what I see of the masked individuals is that they all look very frightened, as if any passing stranger might end their lives. In that mental state, it would be easy to imagine that (for example) an allergy attack or a common cold was the onset of dreaded COVID19. Then a test might reveal the presence of the virus (despite not being the illness presenting). The large number of alternating positive/negative tests and the wide range of outcomes further confuses the situation.
Perhaps the best thing to do now would be to declare an end to this madness, identify the most vulnerable people still left alive and isolate them, otherwise, let this perhaps mild to non-effectual virus run its course and develop herd immunity.
The alternative approach of rolling the dice with the future of the economy and personal liberty seems far too strong a response to the actual threat. And that too is a sign of mass delusion, an over-reaction to a real but minor threat (an example would be, one person goes nuts and shoots up a Walmart, therefore a hundred million armed Americans could pose a huge risk to public safety; or, a few days turn out rather warm, therefore the weather/climate machine is broken and we need to take drastic action to fix it).
The auto-suggestion involved in climate change is fairly obvious to the political right but not to the mainstream or the left who blunder on into ever more bizarre responses. Carefully crafted media images (the setting sun over the ice pack, the heat waves distorting the image of the oil refinery) accelerate a sense of mass panic and lead to compliance from voters who have no real vested interest in the political madness being offered up to them.
I wonder then, how much is this also true of the COVID-19 phenomenon, a mix of actual illness and death with a wider sense of panic, mixed with resignation (this is now our destiny, things will never be the same, etc etc).
Check out other examples of mass delusions. This is far from being the first one. And a considerable number of them have a spiritual dimension (involving outbreaks of demonic possession).
It is a fact that with H1N1 it was the young people who got sick and died. I was there treating them. Those over 45-50 had protection from having the Hong Kong flu/swine flu in the 70s. Period.
THIS
How does it feel to be a sheep, manipulated by the mass media?
Right now, I wear a mask if I go into a store that is posted ‘masked required’. Our county health department has ordered such, although there is no real enforcement.
Many seem to think this outbreak is another effort to ‘take out’ President Trump. I have no illusions that our media will do whatever it can to achieve that end, including making this disease appear worse than it really is for most people. That said, real people are really dying from this thing, who would otherwise still be around.
However, this disease has struck much harder in Britain, France, and Italy and those three nations experienced lockdowns much tighter than any U.S. state that I’m aware of. One difference that I see in their press is that they are supportive of what their nation’s leaders are trying to do to curb the disease, instead of criticizing everything they do or don’t do.
Like your screen name suggests—I too live in the boonies. Lots of space between people and frankly I don’t ‘get to town’ all that much. Our schools are set to open in a few weeks, but with very altered schedules and procedures. Lunches in the rooms on paper plates, no gym or recess and only 15 kids per bus.
No.
Interesting range of responses. Obviously nobody thinks the whole thing is made up, but many feel that components of the overall situation are either substantially or even vastly exaggerated. Very similar to one of the airliner panics where a few people really were ill, another 20-30 per cent of the passengers then thought they were also ill, but were not.
On the flip side of this question, perhaps COVID-19 is capable of morphing into a worse disease over time.
I don’t rule anything out, the truth of this complicated matter seems to be that we have seen a considerable over-reaction, but whether that’s human nature, a co-ordinated plot in somebody’s interests, or a sign of a developing helicopter government syndrome where nobody may get sick or die, remains to be seen.
The duty of the conservative movement in all of this is to seek out the best balance between health care interests, economic survival, and liberty-retaining reality checks that reduce the interventionist impulse of the nanny state.
Up to the present time, no political movement has ever existed to demand absolute universal freedom from risk or illness in human life. If one did exist, it would be hopelessly utopian. That is how I see the response to COVID-19 overall, hopelessly utopian and mindless to economic and social realities. A price will be paid for this somewhere. Perhaps it will be in November.
On what?
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