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A Brief History of Disease Hysteria
epoch times ^ | 14 May A.D. 2023 | Bruce Davidson

Posted on 05/14/2023 3:12:37 PM PDT by lightman

For the past half-century or more, manufactured scares have been a recurrent part of life. Every year a very small number of people are killed (usually only 1) or injured by bears here in Hokkaido, Japan. However, the news media invariably plays up these incidents.

As a result, for a few weeks every year some hiking trails in Sapporo are ritually closed off to the public after some bear sightings. Many people I know have a great fear of bears, though the actual risk of being killed by a bear is extremely small. Their chances of dying in a bathtub are far, far greater.

On a grander scale, we have frequently observed the worldwide-scare phenomenon in recent history. The COVID panic should be viewed as simply part of a longer history of fear-mongering. Government officials, corporations, NGOs, and mainstream journalists often create and then exploit excessive fear, especially of diseases.

Thirty to forty years ago, the scary disease obsession was AIDS. Though AIDS is indeed a fearful, deadly malady that has taken a great number of lives, much needless panic sprang from the poorly informed, ideologically slanted treatment of the AIDS epidemic by news media, government officials, activists, and others. Inconsistently, many of them wanted the public to view gay men as uniquely victimized by AIDS and yet also to embrace the belief that AIDS was equally a threat to heterosexuals.

In his book “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS” Michael Fumento documented the distortion and politicization of HIV/AIDS by news media, politicians, activists, and bureaucrats such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, who exaggerated the threat to the general population. Unfortunately, Fumento’s book did not get the attention it deserved, in large part because gay rights activists often threatened news programs that scheduled interviews with him about the book and got them canceled.

In Japan the AIDS scare got a boost from the popular TV drama “Kamisama Mou Sukoshi Dake” (“God Please Give Me a Little More Time”). In this tearjerker series, popular actress Kyoko Fukada played a high school girl who contracts AIDS in a one-night stand.

By focusing on a case of heterosexual transmission, the drama helped to spread the popular misconception that AIDS was equally dangerous to heterosexuals, though such cases are much less common, for biological reasons. As a result of such media treatments, study-abroad programs in Japan suffered a great deal from the fear that Japanese exchange students would contract AIDS from foreigners.

From around 1996 another disease hysteria hit the world—BSE (“mad cow disease”). In its sensationalist coverage, the Daily Mail newspaper quoted one prediction of possibly 500,000 dead people in the UK as a consequence of BSE. The BSE panic is well documented in the book “Scared to Death: From BSE to Coronavirus: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth.” In Japan for a time many stopped eating beef altogether, including hamburgers.

The book describes how government officials and news organizations have made use of this and other scares to generate income and attention for themselves, while damaging broader economic well-being. In response to BSE, governments in the UK and elsewhere caused an immense amount of damage to their livestock industries from the slaughter of millions of animals. Japanese officials banned the import of all American beef.

Such extreme measures were taken in response to a disease that actually took very few human lives, if any at all. It was unclear whether there was any link between eating meat from BSE-infected cattle and a rare human malady named Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The authors of “Scared to Death” label this whole episode as “Mad Cows and Madder Politicians.”

The SARS panic in 2003 had an even greater worldwide impact, which foreshadowed many elements of the more recent COVID hysteria. Eventually, SARS hysteria came to be widely recognized as a lamentable overreaction, even within the CDC. For example, Japanese hospitals made elaborate preparations for a disease that never actually infected a single Japanese person.

Only a total of 774 people worldwide ever died from SARS. However, one might think otherwise judging from the treatment of the sickness by some news sources such as Newsweek, which featured a masked, frightened woman’s face on the cover of an issue about SARS. Asian economies suffered significantly from the SARS panic, especially to their tourism industries.

My own personal encounter with SARS hysteria came when I planned a trip to a Singapore academic conference. Our university’s president at that time and the head of its school of humanities pleaded with me to cancel my trip since Singapore was “very dangerous.” However, I had done my own research and discovered that Singapore had already been taken off the WHO’s watchlist of countries with a significant SARS danger.

Furthermore, there was actually only one SARS patient in Singapore at that time. I judged it to be safe and refused to cancel, so I was told that on my return I had to stay away from the campus for ten days. Despite my skepticism I took with me some face masks to wear in Singapore. On my arrival there, I was surprised to discover that no one was wearing them.

The next major disease panic was the Swine flu outbreak of 2009. Contrary to alarmist predictions of massive numbers of deaths, it never amounted to much. Compared to the usual yearly seasonal flu, a large number did not die, and the symptoms were usually mild for flu infection. The health minister of Poland, Ewa Kopacz, announced that Poland would not purchase any Swine flu vaccines, as many European nations were being urged to do. Only around 170 people died of the Swine flu there, far fewer than the usual number of flu deaths.

Responses to the Swine flu outbreak were eerily similar to some of the COVID measures now. A number of important soccer matches in Europe were held without spectators. My university fell in with the worldwide panic and prepared for the worst. For the university entrance examinations held on campus, the administration doubled the number of proctors, in case many were struck down with the Swine flu during that time. However, in the end there were no real difficulties.

Afterwards, it became clear that the WHO had played up the Swine flu threat under prompting from drug companies, which hoped to sell a lot of Swine flu vaccines worldwide. A 2010 article in the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed the WHO’s complicity and the gullibility of many of Europe’s leaders and news media.

At the end of the article, the writers concluded, “No one at the WHO [and other agencies] should feel proud of themselves. These organizations have gambled away precious confidence. When the next pandemic arrives, who will believe their assessments?” Well, as it turned out, in the case of COVID, quite a few people did believe, despite this earlier fiasco.

Finally, running throughout this period up to the present day, the Global Warming Scare also deserves mention. Before COVID, the title of Booker and North’s book was actually “Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming.” Without getting into the scientific aspects of this matter, here I will only note that the politicization of the theory of man-made climate change resulted in the topic being thoroughly propagandized and distorted.

This approach suits the purposes of many politicians, bureaucrats, “green” corporations, NGOs, and entities such as the U.N.’s IPCC. Among others, the famous SF author Michael Crichton warned about the dangers of the exploitation of politicized science in general, as well as global warming hysteria in particular, in his novel “State of Fear.” Likewise, a number of other environmental issues have been blown up into frightening, apocalyptic scenarios, as Patrick Moore explains in his book “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom.”

Clearly the COVID panic is only the latest chapter in a continuing chronicle of corruption, exaggeration, and hysteria. For those who were observant and thinking for themselves, it was not a big leap to conclude that something very fishy has been happening in recent years too.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: covid; covid1984; disease; hysteria; paranoia
I am of such vintage to have lived through the Hong Kong Flu, AIDs, SARS, and various Avian Flus.

In EVERY case the disease epidemic was accompanies by a FEAR epidemic; and in every case the fear epidemic was the one which proved the more destructive.

The GenZ maskerbators don't have enough life experience to know mass manipulation, much less to resist it.

1 posted on 05/14/2023 3:12:37 PM PDT by lightman
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To: lightman

Exactly. Fear is the media’s fuel. Both left and right


2 posted on 05/14/2023 3:21:07 PM PDT by DennisR (Look around - God gives countless clues that He does, indeed, exist.)
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To: lightman

Follow the money? Many in the media want to be a Bernstein& Woodward without any effort.

Many want their non-profit to get that new government grant and the establishment has all the grants for old diseases tied up...and the old money is small compared to money for a NEW disease.

Government bureaucrats are always looking for ways to grow their budget. That is their #1 goal.


3 posted on 05/14/2023 3:32:17 PM PDT by spintreebob (ki .h g)
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To: lightman

At least two more examples can be added, although the pool of victims is rather specific: Hantavirus and Transexuality.


4 posted on 05/14/2023 3:38:26 PM PDT by lee martell
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To: lightman

Yep. COVID wasn’t the first end of the world I’ve seen, and probably won’t be the last.


5 posted on 05/14/2023 3:40:33 PM PDT by HartleyMBaldwin
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To: lightman

I still remember how they worked up the VEE (Venezuelan equine encephalitis) fear in the early 1960s and the Swine Flu fear in the 1970s. More people dropped dead standing in line for the shot than actually contracted the flu.


6 posted on 05/14/2023 3:44:57 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”)
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To: lightman

Kinda related (including meowing nuns in the Middle Ages): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases


7 posted on 05/14/2023 3:50:35 PM PDT by Stosh
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To: lightman
"Hong Kong flu"? What, are you a RACIST? Didn't you know that CDC has renamed ALL past pandemics to avoid nasty racial connotations


8 posted on 05/14/2023 3:54:20 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (I don’t like to think before I say something...I want to be just as surprised as everyone else…)
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To: lightman

My absolute favorite: people who thought they were made of glass: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/mental-disorders/ridiculous-history-when-people-thought-they-were-made-glass.htm

Almost makes total goofs like Dylan Mulvaney seem less insane.


9 posted on 05/14/2023 4:02:39 PM PDT by Stosh
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To: lightman

I lived though the pyramid scream of the late 70s


10 posted on 05/14/2023 6:00:48 PM PDT by al baby (Yes he did he said how come i wasnt invited )
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To: lightman

I had a flu, either in the late 70s or early 80s. I was in bed for a week, alternating between sweats and chills. I remember the sheets were soaked.

The papers said that those born earlier were not at risk, because it had gone around before. My wife, who is 14 months older, was unaffected.

I seem to remember it being called either the Russian or Moscow flu. Looking it up now on the internet, there seems to be no record.

One possible upside of contracting the flu is that it seems to be hell on cancer cells. I suppose any fever would do.


11 posted on 05/14/2023 6:44:45 PM PDT by ChessExpert (Required for informed consent: "We have a new, experimental vaccine.")
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To: al baby

And MLMs: AMWay, MaryKay, Noevir...


12 posted on 05/14/2023 7:11:35 PM PDT by lightman (I am a binary Trintarian. Deal with it!)
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