MASS HYSTERIA
There is already a paper on people going nuts: COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria by Bagus et al.
Abstract (with added paragraphifications by me):
In this article, we aim to develop a political economy of mass hysteria. Using the background of COVID-19, we study past mass hysteria. Negative information which is spread through mass media repetitively can affect public health negatively in the form of nocebo effects and mass hysteria.
We argue that mass and digital media in connection with the state may have had adverse consequences during the COVID-19 crisis. The resulting collective hysteria may have contributed to policy errors by governments not in line with health recommendations.
While mass hysteria can occur in societies with a minimal state, we show that there exist certain self-corrective mechanisms and limits to the harm inflicted, such as sacrosanct private property rights. However, mass hysteria can be exacerbated and self-reinforcing when the negative information comes from an authoritative source, when the media are politicized, and social networks make the negative information omnipresent.
We conclude that the negative long-term effects of mass hysteria are exacerbated by the size of the state.
Says it all, n’est-ce pas?
MASK HYSTERIA
The CDC, now losing relevance since coronadoom deaths are dropping, decided to get on the double-mask train.
Now any idiot with no scientific training whatsoever knows that one mask restricts breathing, and that two restricts it more. Air flow is twice as impeded, or whatever. Three masks impede it more, and so on.
There is therefore no reason in the world to do a “study” to, well, study this. It is pure scientism of the first kind, if it happens.
The CDC made it happen.
“Made what happen, Briggs?”
Science, dear boy. Science.
In this episode of Science, they hooked masks to some dummies—no, not politicians—mannequins and discovered, lo, two masks blocked air flow more than one mask.
What’s that got to do with how people actually wear masks in public, due to making masklessness a crime?
Not a damned thing.
They did it anyway, however, to use as a tool to browbeat you into more mass hysteria, to continuing the panic. To keeping the madness going.
The best experiment was the Danish one, which tracked how people actually use masks, even the best masks, even after being instructed in their proper use. Results?
Don’t bother wearing a mask. Read all about that here.
We have a century of papers of observations, not models, showing mask use in the general public don’t work. This evidence is ignored in favor of models and theory that insist masks do work.
Now I’ve said it more times than you can to hear, but—
“Say it again, Briggs. You know how much we like to hear it.”
Well, okay. Here it is again. All models—
“Does that all mean all, Briggs?”
It do. All models, and all theories, only say what they’re told to say. So that if a model is told to say two masks are better than one in theory, then that’s what it’ll say. It is not a finding.
It is further not a “finding” or discovery to learn more masks block more air flow.
Anyway, never mind. The Cult of the Mask is maybe even stronger than the Cult of Diversity. Your immune system is nothing. Everybody who ever caught a disease before 2019 died of it, until we learned the glory of masks.
“It’s Science!”
It is.
FABULOUS FAUCI FETED
Fauci Awarded $1 Million Israeli Prize For 'Speaking Truth To Power'
In other words, he got his bonus for helping the tyrants destroy your business and life.
They hate you and mock you which is why they throw this in your face. https://t.co/XMo02VXfaM
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) February 15, 2021
If these million reasons aren’t enough to convince you of the madness of it all, then you are lost.
And it’s wonder they don’t love DeSantis:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis explains how his state – with one of the nation's largest elderly populations – avoided the fate of New York and New Jersey's nursing homes. pic.twitter.com/FzctAAclm0
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) February 16, 2021
GOVERNMENT SOLUTIONS KILL
Headline: While ER visits were down last year, drug overdoses increased amid pandemic
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied more than 180 million ER visits from Dec. 30, 2018, to Oct. 10, 2020, and found that weekly counts of all drug overdoses were up to 45% higher in 2020 than in 2019, according to the study published Feb. 3 in the peer-reviewed JAMA Psychiatry. Opioid overdoses, specifically, increased about 29% compared with before the pandemic.
Government “solutions” caused these deaths.
The study didn’t say “solutions”, they just said the bug. But there is no causal connection between the bug and suicide. There is, though, a direct connection in government calling you inessential.
Keep this in mind when you see the all-cause and “excess” death numbers. The “excess” deaths are NOT all coronadoom deaths. They include solution-deaths, too.
Madness.
MODEL MADNESS
All computer models — every damned one of them: no exceptions — only say what they are told to say.
A computer model developed by Imperial College forecasts a significant wave of deaths as early as this summer if we fully ease restrictions in July. https://t.co/miXUg1xirB
— ITV News (@itvnews) February 15, 2021
My wish is that people remember that if they remember nothing else.
BOOK
Interview with a co-author of "The Price of Panic," which I finished reading last week. It's on lbry, because of course YouTube has been deleting interviews with people who disagree with The Official Narrative on COVID policy.https://t.co/npoIZ79a6W
— Tom Naughton (@TomDNaughton) February 9, 2021
Website of similar name: price of panic.
THE NUMBERS
Sources: daily tests, CDC official toll number one, number two (the old weekly file, now suspect). Deaths by age. Covid & flu. WHO flu tracker. All current as of Monday night.
Daily tests:
Testing still on the way down, which is good.
Every positive test the media falsely calls a “case”, when it is only an infection with varying degrees of seriousness—and most are not serious. The media really does not know how to tell the truth.
Positivity rate of the tests. You’ll recall three weeks ago we discussed how the WHO told people to lower the PCR Ct rates, which should produce fewer positives—and fewer false positives.
Notice carefully this chart has nothing to do with the number of tests. Positivity wouldn’t, per se, fall because testing fell.
Something else, not testing, is making this disease fade into the background—there, to join all the other ones which have plagued us since Eve first said, “Equality!”
Fewer official positive tests mean, necessarily, fewer attributed coronadoom deaths, and also fewer “cases” (infections).
What is causing this? The lowered Ct is certainly part of this. Also the weather. Deaths of all diseases always drop starting the end of January. The vaccines, even though not widely administered, likely accounts for some of the drop, too.
CDC weekly ALL CAUSE death counts, or the Perspective Plot, from late 2009 until now. The late drop off is late counting: it takes up to eight weeks to get all data. We need to look at all cause deaths because we can’t quite trust the attributed COVID numbers.
The black line is deaths of any kind. The red is COVID. The blue line is flu+pneumonia (it’s the pneumonia that kills most flu patients). The blue is estimated starting mid year 2020 because CDC stopped separate reporting on flu. The suspicion is some flu and pneumonia deaths are being attributed to COVID.
The early 2020 all-cause peak was larger than the late peak, but the early coronadoom peak was smaller than the latter. Makes one wonder how many over-attributions there are.
DEATHS ALWAYS PEAK IN MID JANUARY, THEN DROP. EVEN WITHOUT GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION. PLEASE PASS THIS INFORMATION ON!
The January peaks are caused when we enter our voluntary lockdowns in winter, spreading bugs. This is also the “solution” governments hit upon to stop the spread of bugs. Lockdowns kill.
Here is the CDC deaths “involving” COVID.
Even with late counting it’s clear attributed deaths are on their way down—as non-experts have been predicting.
Here is another way to look at all deaths, the week-of-the-year all-cause deaths.
The 2020 estimated “excess” deaths (using my extrapolation model) are closing in. About 475 thousand. This will rise a bit with late counts. Rose about 12,000 since last week, and slowing.
MOST IMPORTANT: these are not all COVID deaths! They include deaths from the “solution” to COVID, too. Plus increased suicides, septicemia and other iatrogenic kills, cancers, heart attacks, and everything else due to lockdowns. Like car crashes, as we saw above. Plus, there were over 80,000 drug overdose deaths last year. This point cannot be over-emphasized.
The green line at the left are 2021 numbers; obvious under-counts for the last three weeks.
Flu is still missing. Here is the WHO’s global flu tracker, which still shows flu has gone missing everywhere:
Flu is still gone the whole world over.
Here is the CDC official population mortality rates for the all causes other than COVID, and “involving” COVID (with and of; “involving” is CDC’s word).
Here are the same population fatality rates in tabular form:
POPULATION FATALITY RATES
Age COVID OtherCause
1 Under 1 year 0.0000120 0.00510
2 1–4 years 0.0000015 0.00022
3 5–14 years 0.0000017 0.00014
4 15–24 years 0.0000150 0.00085
5 25–34 years 0.0000610 0.00160
6 35–44 years 0.0001800 0.00240
7 45–54 years 0.0005000 0.00440
8 55–64 years 0.0012000 0.00970
9 65–74 years 0.0030000 0.02000
10 75–84 years 0.0077000 0.04700
11 85 years and over 0.0210000 0.14000
I say this every week, yet I don’t believe it is much heard: No matter what age, there is at least about a 10 times or larger chance of dying from something else then COVID. If you’re under 44, the COVID risk is tiny. Our level of fear is in not in line with the actual risk for the majority of the population.
About masks in depth, see this article and this one. I am also working on a comprehensive article about masks. Hint: they do not work.
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Regarding Imperial’s doom forecast: They admitted to not taking seasonality into account in their model. Lots of science going on there…
“Fauci Awarded $1 Million Israeli Prize For ‘Speaking Truth To Power'”
Fauci … ‘Speaking Truth To Power’
As usual, our rulers give us not just lies, but the exact opposite of reality.
What the world needs now is a study on how government advice wrapped in fear and supported by “science” can defeat reality and most folks common sense.
According to the official government stats (which can’t possibly be wrong, or made up), our county’s total Covid deaths jumped from 6 to 21 over the weekend. Right. Sure it did. According to the news, we haven’t had 15 people die in the last week, just four (from all causes).
Okay, now I’m okay with people hating Isreal. They earned it with that last piece of garbage. What a bunch of evil twits. Methinks they are NO LONGER God’s chosen people, what with a Ministry of LIES. (This has nothing to do with anti-semitism, just anti-stupidity. They would deserve hatred if they were any group promoting lies.)
Double-masking is the government smothering you with a pillow. Fight back or die.
Think of Fauci in a loin cloth with a feather headdress, face paint, bare feet, shaking goard rattles and dancing around like someone dancing on hot coals, the witch doctor of a COMPLETELY UNSCIENTIFIC ERA. He’s nothing more than a witch doctor. Despise him, and picture him as what he truly is–a primitive superstitious shaman, who kills more than they save. Keep that picture in your mind. Remember that following his advice makes you one of the stupid, superstitious PRIMITIVES and if you’re eaten by your own tribe, you had it coming.
The press here in Western Massachusetts has switched from using the term “cases” to “active cases”, presumably because it sounds scarier. Umass has locked their students in their dorm-rooms because of the uptick in “active cases” said to be 600, which to the average jamoke implies 600 people sick with coronadoom, of course, were that true, the UMass health services and local ERs would be overrun. They are not. Umass has alo sent reps around employers to tell them that their Umass student employees are not allowed to work. Everyone around here , except yours truly wears a mask- walking alone, biking alone, jogging alone; I see a substantial number of people driving alone all masked up. Madness
“Fourth, negative news from an authoritative source produces anxiety and is particularly harmful for psychological health”
From that paper which was very good. So the people that stay psychologically healthy are the ones that don’t believe the media and the state have any authority anymore. That actually tracks with my personal and observed experience.
That conclusion can also be told in the form of a joke.
A carpenter was working with n Amish guy building a house and he asked the amish guy how his community was doing dealing with all the covid stuff. And the Amish guy replied “oh, we’re immune.” And the carpenter said “How?! How are you immune?!” And the Amish guy said “We don’t have TVs.”
My wife has been a mask wearer not because she fears The Coronadoom, but because she wants to avoid conflicts at stores. She also says people are afraid so they should wear a mask if it makes them feel good. However, she had an epiphany this weekend. She met some friends for a walk on the beach. A couple of her friends are scared to death of the C-doom. They are afraid the virus is lurking everywhere just waiting to take them out. They have already had their second dose of the “vaccine”. Everyone except my wife was wearing their masks and ensuring they were all six feet apart as they walked on the beach. At the end of the walk there are about 5 flights of stairs to the top of the cliff over the beach. All these people exercise (they are on an adult swim team), but my wife said they were all huffing and puffing, and sweating profusely. They had to stop at the top of the stairs to catch their breath. My wife did not understand why they were all wearing their masks outside, especially when they could not breathe while doing a simple walk… and they all had the “vaccine”.
Her ah-ha moment was after the walk they all went to a cafe to grab some coffee. Five people sat at a 36″ round table, took their masks off, and socialized for an hour. She came home incredulous. “They wear a mask and stand 6′ apart on the beach, but then they sit 1′ apart at a small cafe table with their masks off. Don’t they see how stupid that sounds?”
Here in the great white north, it’s the colour of your skin that matters to the virus:
“The new recommendations prioritize racialized adults from groups disproportionately affected by the pandemic ahead of some older non-racialized people.”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/racialized-adults-on-revised-federal-covid-19-vaccination-priority-list-1.5309696
Has anyone ventured a preliminary estimate of lockdown deaths ? Briggs’ excess deaths estimates is reaching a point where it is hard to fathom the numbers, that lockdown has to have claimed, that won’t give Coronadoomers ammunition to say, “See ? If anything, Covid deaths are UNDERestimated!”
I wear a mask so as not to get businesses I patronize jammed up- the nice and friendly girls where I get my bagel in the morning don’t make policy- I never wear one outside- even in the part of our town where they are mandatory.
In Maskachusetts high school hockey and hoops players have to wear masks while they play!
I saw that Fauci award news while eating dinner and about threw up! What a sick joke. Anyone who’s looked into Fauci’s role in AZT, ties to Big Pharma, Gates, etc., over the years knows he’s a fraud who’s 95% bureaucrat/politician and only about 5% scientist, mainly using science as a means to power and wealth, not some altruistic concern for truth and mankind’s health and well-being. And his constant flip-flopping on Covid policies, especially masks (first against, then for – and says he lied at first on purpose! – then says 2 masks bad, now supports, etc.) make the idea that he’s been some “leader” of distinction on Covid policy an even worse joke than Care-Home Killer Cuomo writing a book on “leadership lessons from Covid.”
Deplorable: The saddest part about your wife’s story’s conclusion is that it is all too typical these days, and the right conclusion to draw from it will probably be completely lost on her friends.
I saw a video yesterday from Australia where they were transporting people from a quarantine hotel (not sure where to – perhaps another hotel, or hospital) and literally had black plastic garbage bags over the peoples’ heads (why not just normal masks?) while moving them through a cordoned-off area from the hotel to the van at the side of the road. Unbelievable (and it’s not clear these people were actually sick or even PCR tests positive – Australia’s quarantine rules are so insane that anyone coming into the country or traveling from one part of Australia to another is locked up for two weeks, even if showing no symptoms of anything).
But this gives me an idea: All the mask cultists, especially the double-maskers, should also add plastic garbage bags to their attire (cinched as tightly as possible). This may help cull the worst elements of society and allow for the return of public sanity and an end to irrational paranoia over a flu bug.
Paul: What on earth are “racialized adults” and “non-racialized people” that article refers to?
The abuse of language and common sense by the race and gender obsessed is just beyond insane at this point. And that’s all media seems to be about any more – just endless race and gender pandering and obsessing, propaganda pushing normalization of every possible sexual paraphilia, coupled with intense hatred of anything white – “whiteness,” and European and Christian history and culture are the only things allowed to be demeaned and hated with impunity in the academy, media, and politics.
Dennis: The black plastic garbage bags may have been to disquise the identity of the patients. It was a reported a woman in Africa took care of her sick parents who had ebola, wearing only garbage bags for protective gear, plus a mask. They recovered and she never got sick.
You can forget word definitions. They change almost daily. It’s part of the “destroy reality cult”.
I’m still mystified by the total disappearance of influenza. Worldwide.
Various hypotheses have been offered, such as it’s the masks, distancing, and lockdowns that eliminated the flu. But they didn’t eliminate Wuhan Lab GMO virus. Moreover, those restrictions are widely violated. Yet there is no flu.
It could be bad reporting, in that every flu case is called a Covid case. But the flu infects the young as well as the old, which Covid does not. Youth viral respiratory fever coughs aren’t called Covid — if they were the youth count would be higher. Unless youth aren’t getting the flu this year.
It could be school closures. Flu is notorious for spreading in schools. But not all schools have been closed. Parochial, private, and public schools in some states and countries have been open all winter. Yet no flu.
I suspect a conspiracy, but I’m not sure who or how. Or it could be a miracle. Either way, it’s curious that almost no one is curious about the missing flu, especially the Medical Establishment.
Sheri: Even if identity protection were the reason (but why? Is Covid some shameful, hideous thing requiring one to hide like some ancient leper?), could they not find something less demeaning and (and less dangerous!) than putting plastic garbage bags over peoples’ heads?
I’m still baffled by this “racialized/non-racialized people” thing in Canada. Is there a people without race? How is one “racialized”? Or is that just their euphemistic way to refer to non-whites, the way some in the US use “people of color” to refer to non-whites (as if white is not also a color)? Bizarre.
Uncle Mike,
I agree that the lack of curiosity about the flu is the most mysterious part. When doctors admit that it has disappeared it is always brushed away (ex. “I guess that shows that masks work!”) and then forgotten about.
But you would expect doctors to be interested in the near eradication of a disease which has consistently plagued humanity for all of recorded history. Let’s say that it really was vanquished by masks and social distancing and the like. Wouldn’t we expect doctors to be trumpeting this from the rooftops? Even if you think that they are dishonest, it would still make sense for them to do this. They could simultaneously talk about the effectiveness of their measures, make it clear that COVID is not “just the flu” (since even measures that eradicate the flu cannot stop it) and guarantee that their restrictive measures can stay in place forever (to prevent the flu from coming back, regardless of what happens with COVID). And of course if doctors were honest we would also expect them to be talking about this dramatic new breakthrough.
But it’s hardly even mentioned. I suspect that one of two things is going on: either those in charge are planning something that would be sabotaged by talking about the flu, or else they suspect that talking about the astonishingly low statistics would trigger the BS detectors of even the most low information of citizens.
Uncle Mike, I share your puzzlement over the “Amazing Disappearing Flu”. I mean talk about the 800 lb. gorilla in the room – there it is, right in front of us, but no one seems to think it’s that extraordinary?
At this point I would vote for conspiracy, but what do I know?
On the use of masks, I worked for the government (Department of Agriculture) and was close enough to the various programs there that required mask usage to know that to be effective in any way, masks had to be fitted to the wearer – it wasn’t a one-size-fits-all deal. Facial hair was a no-no as well.
Anything that caused the mask to not have a seal around it rendered it useless.
So when I see all the yahoos that think they are superior in their noble concern for my deplorable health, I have to chuckle. Clueless. Witch doctors would be a step up.
Karl Denninger has a great post reviewing the effectiveness of various COVID mitigation methods, and cheap therapeutics:
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=241595
He makes a convincing case that the Overlords are vicious terrorists mass-murdering people in the mad pursuit of political power.
Meanwhile, our socialist debased friends at Main Lame Stream Media keep on gaslighting the Corona Doom narrative to tamp down everybody to their woke-commie misery. It just makes them angry to see people who want to get on with a normal life. Do not despair comrades, out of bad comes good. With Trump out of the way, just like magic; Corona Doom is plateauing (according to Dr. Fauci) while the debased woke governors drop restrictions. Moreover, it is also very curious why we get a loosening of some unconstitutional restrictions while at the same time we hear about the CCP-Corona variant with its increased virulence. Oh, how we forget, Trump is out of the way, we can talk about normalcy. The Commie type that is.
The sudden focus on variants has been the most transparent bit of doom mongering by the media. There will always be variants of any disease and there had been talk of at least two variants for COVID-19 since the time it arrived in the US. Yet none of that showed up in the media, until the point where the “numbers” started to look better and restrictions started to be loosened. What’s more they shameless reused disproven narratives with the excuse that while they are not true for mainline COVID-19, maybe they are true for the variants (ex. maybe it stays on surfaces forever, maybe it has a high kill rate for children, maybe it lets no one escape without horrific lifetime damage, etc.)
But yes, the confusing thing is that this doesn’t seem to line up with the other things going on in the mainstream. With Biden in office having the nation in chaos from a disease is less politically useful. One main big reason why the “numbers” are going down is a decrease in testing and changes to testing protocols, both of which suggest that the people who actually understand statistics now find it desirable for COVID-19 to look less severe. And many of the governors who are starting to loosen up on restrictions are even hardline democrats.
Just like with the fact that no one talks about the flu, it’s weird because you’d expect the behavior to be otherwise if they were honest or dishonest. If they were honest they wouldn’t make things up about the variants, but if they were dishonest you would expect them to go with the party line.
However in this case it might simply be that the media is willing to break ranks for more fear mongering just to drive up ratings. There’s no doubt that they’ve been willing to lose money to push a message. But with Trump out of office their ratings have taken a big hit and they might be too desperate to put party loyalty first.
Speaking of variant panic porn: UK scientists now fearful vaccines themselves will cause more variants (https://www.rt.com/uk/515824-covid19-vaccines-variants-oxford/), necessitating…guess what?…More vaccines and more lockdowns! It’s a never-ending cycle, entirely political and media-driven (and fueled by Big Pharma’s desire for new and improved streams of vaccine income).
The real pandemic in terms of genuine medical threat (and even then more just fear of “unknowns” about the virus, which are now “knowns,” most especially that it is really not that deadly or any great historically unprecedented health catastrophe) has been over since late last spring, but the “pandemic” as political and social means of control and fearmongering won’t end until people simply wake up and finally just stop playing along.
Nice article today in Australia’s Quadrant Online on “The ‘Covid-Normal’ Notion of Liberty”: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/02/the-covid-normal-notion-of-liberty/
>>> Even with late counting it’s clear attributed deaths are on their way down
That’s pretty much what you said last year, in update XX:
“The crisis, at least with respect to deaths, appears to be over.”
Briggs may have already noticed, but here in NYC, double-masking is starting to break out. I was on an uptown First Ave. bus on Saturday Feb 6, noticing one woman doubled-up. My GF noticed last week several women 2X. Seems it’s a fashionable thing, to signal one is au courant with the “trend.”
For some “fun” have a look at the official “Update on COVID-19 in Canada: Epidemiology and Modelling”
https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/phac-aspc/documents/services/diseases-maladies/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/epidemiological-economic-research-data/update-covid-19-canada-epidemiology-modelling-20200922-eng.pdf
Scroll down to Page 12, “Long range forecast – Canada is at a crossroads and individual action to reduce contact rates will decide our path” and behold the hockey stick produced by torturing the data. This item is from September 2020, but they are circulating a similar chart now to justify more restrictions and lockdowns.
“We have a century of papers of observations, not models, showing mask use in the general public don’t work. This evidence is ignored in favor of models and theory that insist masks do work.”
Could you point out those studies? From what I have read, different studies gave different studies, but majority of pre-2020 studies has indicated that there is reduced transmission (while some have also pointed out that masks protect – but this is irrelevant, since avoiding transmission (i.e. avoiding the spread from masked infected guy to others) is, when it comes to public policy, more important than protection).
Also, it seems that Danish study isn’t that relevant since it focuses exclusively on protection of a masked person, rather than on avoiding transmission…
According to this site, https://www.openvaers.com/covid-data?start=30, there were 632 deaths in age group 66 and above within @ 16,000 cases of vaccination, which is a death rate of .039, exceeding the general stat provided by Briggs above of .005 (rounded off in not the best math) “caused” by covid-19.
Can anyone provide some insight into this matter?