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COVID 19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria

CoastalVADawg

Pillar of the DawgVent
Gold Member
Dec 3, 2019
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This paper is worth reading in its entirety.

 
Good stuff. Like this quote:
"Another factor that may make modern societies more receptible to mass hysterias is that the role of religion in society has been reduced. The fear of death is usually alleviated by religion because religions typically consider that there is a life after death. The state and democracy has been elevated to a quasi-religious level. The state appears as an alternative to God [96] without the promise of an afterlife. When turning away from religion, people start to fear death more, and a strong fear of death is another factor that contributes to panics, disorders, and mass hysteria."
 
Thanks for sharing. You can't read this and not think about all the dark forces perpetrating this evilness against humanity.


I liked this as well:
Psychological research on risk perception has found that some mental rules that people apply in an uncertain world create persistent and important biases. Biased media coverage, incomplete and asymmetric information, personal experiences, fears, inability to understand and interpret statistics, and other cognitive biases lead to distorted risk judgments. Risk perceptions may be particularly biased when risks are viewed as unfair, uncontrollable, unknown, frightening, potentially catastrophic, and impacting future generations
 
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This was particularly eye-opening:

“...the state may actively want to instill fear in the population, thereby contributing to the making of mass hysteria. Illustrating this point is the leakage of an internal paper of the German Department of the Interior during the first weeks of the COVID-19 crisis [101]. In the paper, the state experts recommended that the government should instill fear in the German population. In order to spread fear, the paper endorsed three communication strategies. First, the state authorities should stress the breathing problems of COVID-19 patients because human beings have a primordial fear of death by suffocation [102,103], which can easily trigger panic [104]. Second, the experts emphasized that fear should also be instilled in children, even though there is next to no risk to children´s own health. However, children could get easily infected by meeting and playing with other children. According to the report, children should be told that when they infect their parents and grandparents in turn, they could suffer a distressful death at home. This communication advice intended to invoke anxiety and feelings of guilt. Instilling guilt is another measure used by governments to make the population more supportive [105]. The recommended message instills fear of being responsible for infecting others who die a distressful death. Third, the German government was advised to mention the possibility of unknown long-term irreversible health damage caused by a SARS-CoV-2 infection and the possibility of a sudden and unexpected death of people who were infected. All these communication recommendations were intended to increase fear in the population. Fear, at the end, is an important foundation of a government’s power. As Henry H. Mencken put it: “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” [106] The overreaction of government to a perceived threat then fosters anxiety.”
 
This was particularly eye-opening:

“...the state may actively want to instill fear in the population, thereby contributing to the making of mass hysteria. Illustrating this point is the leakage of an internal paper of the German Department of the Interior during the first weeks of the COVID-19 crisis [101]. In the paper, the state experts recommended that the government should instill fear in the German population. In order to spread fear, the paper endorsed three communication strategies. First, the state authorities should stress the breathing problems of COVID-19 patients because human beings have a primordial fear of death by suffocation [102,103], which can easily trigger panic [104]. Second, the experts emphasized that fear should also be instilled in children, even though there is next to no risk to children´s own health. However, children could get easily infected by meeting and playing with other children. According to the report, children should be told that when they infect their parents and grandparents in turn, they could suffer a distressful death at home. This communication advice intended to invoke anxiety and feelings of guilt. Instilling guilt is another measure used by governments to make the population more supportive [105]. The recommended message instills fear of being responsible for infecting others who die a distressful death. Third, the German government was advised to mention the possibility of unknown long-term irreversible health damage caused by a SARS-CoV-2 infection and the possibility of a sudden and unexpected death of people who were infected. All these communication recommendations were intended to increase fear in the population. Fear, at the end, is an important foundation of a government’s power. As Henry H. Mencken put it: “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” [106] The overreaction of government to a perceived threat then fosters anxiety.”
They really havent moved very far away from 1933 have they.
 
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