November 1, 2022
Dear Friends and Family,
Shortly after becoming CDC Director, Dr. Rochell Walensky stated, “We were not ready for this pandemic.” Natural fear existed because of the virus. The lack of readiness resulted in bad diagnoses, grossly inaccurate projections, and misinformation. The ensuing chaos perpetuated the natural fear which was further promoted by media hysteria.
A political opportunity was created, and edicts became commonplace enhancing the promoted fear. Enhanced to the point that mitigation of the virus became our sole focus. Those who thought more broadly and challenged the narrative were ridiculed and demeaned. So, we stayed in our cocoon, awaiting a vaccine to spring us. The entire pandemic was over-hyped and oversold to the point that the authors of these excerpts say the Covid pandemic should be changed to the “Pandemic of Fear.”
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
Shortly after becoming CDC Director, Dr. Rochell Walensky stated, “We were not ready for this pandemic.” Natural fear existed because of the virus. The lack of readiness resulted in bad diagnoses, grossly inaccurate projections, and misinformation. The ensuing chaos perpetuated the natural fear which was further promoted by media hysteria.
A political opportunity was created, and edicts became commonplace enhancing the promoted fear. Enhanced to the point that mitigation of the virus became our sole focus. Those who thought more broadly and challenged the narrative were ridiculed and demeaned. So, we stayed in our cocoon, awaiting a vaccine to spring us. The entire pandemic was over-hyped and oversold to the point that the authors of these excerpts say the Covid pandemic should be changed to the “Pandemic of Fear.”
Happy Learning,
Harley
COVID PANDEMIC CRITIQUE – SEGMENT 12
COVID FEAR – EXCEPTS
THE GENERATION OF FEAR: On the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., speaking to a live audience of millions the viral pandemic and the growing catastrophe of the government response to it. In my remarks, I focused on the closure of America’s schools calling it “the greatest mistake in the government response to the pandemic.” I went on to explain how America was indeed suffering from a pandemic, but not a medical one. Instead, it was a pandemic of fear. This fear pandemic was taking a far greater toll on our lives than any virus ever could. And I stated that it was up to all of us to acknowledge our fear and act in spite of it. This live internet broadcast reached over 2 million people in under an hour and nearly 15 million more in the hours that followed. None of us had expected such an overwhelming response.
America’s Frontline Doctors had clearly hit a nerve. We had told the truth about the pandemic and the failure of our government to properly respond to it. Our punishment was universal censorship. Everything we had said was factual, medically sound, and backed up by empirical evidence, but we had challenged the pandemic narrative, and that was not allowed. I returned to L.A. with first-hand experience of the seriousness of the crisis – not a medical crisis, but a crisis of misinformation, censorship, and government overreach. For the first time in my life, I saw the removal of civil liberties occurring under the guise of safety -- fear was fueling it.
It's one thing to reflexively respond to a new threat by panicking and withdrawing from society. This was the basis for the “fifteen days to slow the spread” policy announcement. By summer we knew hospitals were not overwhelmed, healthy people were not dying in large numbers, and anyone who received early treatment invariably survived. This was self-evident, yet a large segment of society continued to voluntarily sequester at home, wear masks outdoors, and wipe down Amazon deliveries with bleach. These behaviors were not limited to a handful of people. Much of the nation had disconnected from basic reality, I began to call this condition a “mass delusional psychosis.”
This can happen when everyone become hyper-focused on one issue, when fear becomes the predominant emotion, and rational faculties become paralyzed en masse. This is exactly what happened to Americans in 2020. Delusions often feature prominently in psychotic disorders. Simple put a delusion is a fixed false belief that runs counter to reality. All delusions are by definition irrational. This is what makes them pathologic. The harm they bring to the individual who holds them come from a diminished capacity to live with reality. They are also impervious to reason, otherwise, they would simply be wrong-headed opinions that change once confronted with reality. As I continued to observe my patients and the people around me, it became undeniable that a shared state of irrationality had arisen from the underlying pandemic of fear. This mass delusional psychosis was rooted in fear but organized around a perverse worship of safety. To secure that safety, no sacrifice was too great: canceling graduations and proms, depriving individuals of their ability to make a living, masking children, banning Easter, order ailing nursing home patients to die alone and then prohibiting their grieving family members from holding funerals.
Whenever I would offer objective information to reassure them that their beliefs were misinformed and that their behaviors were not only unnecessary but harmful to themselves and others, they would largely refuse to accept the truth of what I had told them. This social contagion of psychotic thinking and behavior had spread throughout the population, sparing no demographic. It did appear less prevalent, though, in rural America and among those who described themselves as politically conservative.
Democrat-controlled cities and states largely followed the fast and hard lockdown approach, while the response by Republicans trended toward greater liberty and personal choice. Based on this, it would be reasonable to conclude that, as a group, liberals prefer the promise of safety to liberty, even when those promises cannot be supported by rational arguments. Conservatives, on the other hand, are far more willing to assume personal risk to retain the power to make their own decisions. Net, it appeared that irrational thinking predominated in urban, liberal locales.
Every day, print, cable, and online news media made a point to announce how many more people had tested positive, been hospitalized, or died of the virus. Every day the running tally would increase. There was never any mention of preventative measures one could take against the infection, other than fear-reinforcing behaviors such as mask-wearing and social isolation. These attacks began in early 2020 with hydroxychloroquine, a 50-year-old medication that had been used safely and effectively throughout the world to prevent malaria in infants, pregnant and breast-feeding women, and the elderly. Any positive news of hope from this treatment was ridiculed, and fearful behaviors were reinforced with constant reminders that one was “safer at home,” “masks saved lives,” and we should all “do our part by staying apart.” By focusing not on real news but instead promoting isolation and fear, American media guaranteed an audience eager to have its hysteria reinforced by terrifying statistics and predictions of mass.
Apparently, the advance of government control over all of our lives, using “safety” as the sole justification, knows no end. The cancellation of social activities, home sequestration, instituting masks and hand sanitizers, and now the mad rush for universal vaccination with an experimental biological agent with no safety record but growing evidence of significant physical harm – are all irrational, delusional, psychotic practices born of safetyism. The demand for government control over every aspect of our lives had increased a hundredfold over the past year and a half, driven largely by anxiety and fear. Women, in particular, have been willing agents in this movement because their traditional source of security – men—has largely disappeared. Government has replaced it, in the midst of a pandemic of fear any hysteria, reassuring them that their only hope for safety is to dutifully obey and comply with its orders.
THE WAY FORWARD: WORKING OUR WAY BACK TO SANITY: The United States is now made up of two distinct classes of individuals: the rational and the irrational. Rational individuals are largely fearless, while the irrational tend to be living in tremendous fear. Unfortunately, the rational cannot rescue the irrational. The irrational must first commit to confronting their irrational beliefs and overcome them. The path forward will be different for each person, but several recurring themes will almost certainly emerge. For men, it will require a display of courage. They will need to stand up to hysteria and refuse to allow it to drive decision-making. Self-emasculation must end. For women, it will require emotional restraint. They will need to confront, to the extent they have succumbed to it, the Hyper-emotionality that has led them to respond to the current crisis in unhealthy ways.
Finally, to properly address the ongoing damage being done to children, men and women will need to cooperate in this shared endeavor. Children have been victimized by often well-intentioned but thoroughly misguided adults who have abdicated their responsibility to protect their children from harm. More generally, individual accountability must be found before repair can begin at the group, community, and national levels. Only then can we make full use of organizational and institutional change, which is critical for returning the nation to a state of health for the long term.
The most effective tool I have found to help these children over the past couple of years has been challenging fathers to assert themselves. Once they begin to rationally and firmly address the fears of their wives, the entire atmosphere in the household changes. The children feel safe once again, as they no longer need to take care of the anxiety of their parents.
Common with all dictatorships, the justification for censorship starts with the announcement of a crisis. In 2020, that crisis was the viral pandemic. That has been the basis for banning speech and publication that questions the crisis or the government response to it in any way. All the social media giants – Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter – have admitted without apology that they will not tolerate dissent against current government policy.
Untold harm was done to individuals, society, and to science itself by the decision of the media and big tech companies to censor speech that questioned the official view of the proper mitigation and treatment of the virus. In August 2021, You Tube took down a video interview of United States Senator Rand Paul – a medical doctor – after he questioned the efficacy of using masks to prevent the transmission of respiratory virus, citing actual scientific studies to support his position. Preventing an elected representative of over four million Americans from speaking is not consistent with the values of a free country – it is a dictatorship. When ordinary citizens, journalists, and elected officials can no longer count on their privacy rights being respected by the government, or their first amendment rights being honored, we no longer live in a free country.
Leaders and officials empowered by societal fear exhibit clear dictatorial tendencies. Mayors and governors gave themselves extraordinary powers during the pandemic and show no signs of being willing to let go of this untrammeled power. Instead, they continue to impose irrational mandates on their citizens without even a pretense of consultation with experts or legislative oversight. Last year, it was masks and “social distancing.” This year it is mandatory experimental vaccination. What will it be next year?
Source: United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis: by Mark McDonald, M.D. (2021)
CONFIRMING FACTS: An online tracking poll from the University of Southern California showed how out of touch with reality people’s fears had become. The poll surveyed 9,000 Americans who were chosen to represent a good demographic match for the entire country. By early April 2020, Americans said they believed they had a 25% chance of dying from the coronavirus if they were infected. That was about 100 times their actual risk. While their perceived risk fell slightly over time, it remained around 12% until the poll ended in June 2021. Women, who were less likely to die than men, believed their risk was higher.
Even more stunning, people under 49 said they believed their risk of death was about one in five. For most of them, that estimate was off by a factor of at least 10,000. Healthy people under 30 had a risk of death from the virus that was almost too low to measure. Even in their 30s, people who were not seriously overweight had a risk significantly less than 0.01%, or one in ten thousand, according to a peer-reviewed paper that examined Covid outcomes in a group of 7,000,000 British people in 2020.
Source: Pandemia by Alex Berenson (2021)
CONCLUSION: We had no control at first. We were petrified. We had few tools to fight it. No treatments. No vaccines. Our testing was delayed so we were unable to properly isolate cases and test contacts and the contagion soon became a pandemic and sped out of control. In March we reached for an anti-malarial/arthritis drug hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic zithromax based on anecdotal evidence and studies in the lab and broad population studies. My own father – age 96 – was saved by it. But when President Trump endorsed the treatment and later admitted to taking it as a preventative measure, it became a political hot potato, and several studies showed it didn’t work late in the hospital course of COVID patients. Unflawed randomized studies for early or prophylactic use were still not done (and it wasn’t properly studied with zinc) but it soon became difficult to prescribe it without scrutiny (off label) amidst the politics of fear.
Convalescent plasma extracted from people who had recovered from COVID not only had a somewhat positive impact on hospitalized patients but were also heartwarming because it meant people were giving to others, the right message to be sending to calm pandemic fears, as it is difficult to be caring and afraid at the same time. Synthetic monoclonal antibodies which targeted the SARSCoV2 virus were also emerging in the late summer which had the potential to help in serious cases. Of course, even convalescent plasma, otherwise known as antibodies, to provide passive immunity, became a political football with the election approaching in late August 2020. All of this politicking around the rapidly emerging science for COVID spread more fear and uncertainty.
For prevention, we relied on a public model from 1918 even though many tried to believe it was new science. We blamed others for non-compliance to these old-style public health methods and we blamed our leaders including President Trump for putting us in this position of millions of cases and over hundred fifty thousand deaths by August, but we failed to blame a true culprit, the uneven unprepared patchwork response of the entire health care system. We were simply unprepared for anything of this magnitude, a reality which we all knew deep down, a reality which generated more fear.
Instead, it was the politics of fear, across the board. Hydroxychloroquine? Rejected by the left, endorsed by the right. Prospective double blinded placebo controlled randomized trials not done.
Masking? Rejected by the right, endorsed by the left. Prospective double blinded randomized trials not done.
Effect of protests on viral spread? Endorsed by the left, rejected by the right. Prospective double blinded randomized trials not done.
Convalescent plasma? Endorsed as lifesaving by the right, rejected by the left for supposed lack of proof. Prospective double blinded placebo controlled randomized trials not done.
Late night comedians and political pundits drove ratings through mockery and the public listened.
At the time of this writing in late August we were still captivated by the virus, we were learning more every day about long term complications, and we still lived in a world of fear. Taking the high road provided a vaccine, not for the virus but for the fear it spawned.
Source: COVID: The Politics of Fear and the Power of Science by Marc Siegel, M.D. (2020)
COVID FEAR – EXCEPTS
THE GENERATION OF FEAR: On the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., speaking to a live audience of millions the viral pandemic and the growing catastrophe of the government response to it. In my remarks, I focused on the closure of America’s schools calling it “the greatest mistake in the government response to the pandemic.” I went on to explain how America was indeed suffering from a pandemic, but not a medical one. Instead, it was a pandemic of fear. This fear pandemic was taking a far greater toll on our lives than any virus ever could. And I stated that it was up to all of us to acknowledge our fear and act in spite of it. This live internet broadcast reached over 2 million people in under an hour and nearly 15 million more in the hours that followed. None of us had expected such an overwhelming response.
America’s Frontline Doctors had clearly hit a nerve. We had told the truth about the pandemic and the failure of our government to properly respond to it. Our punishment was universal censorship. Everything we had said was factual, medically sound, and backed up by empirical evidence, but we had challenged the pandemic narrative, and that was not allowed. I returned to L.A. with first-hand experience of the seriousness of the crisis – not a medical crisis, but a crisis of misinformation, censorship, and government overreach. For the first time in my life, I saw the removal of civil liberties occurring under the guise of safety -- fear was fueling it.
It's one thing to reflexively respond to a new threat by panicking and withdrawing from society. This was the basis for the “fifteen days to slow the spread” policy announcement. By summer we knew hospitals were not overwhelmed, healthy people were not dying in large numbers, and anyone who received early treatment invariably survived. This was self-evident, yet a large segment of society continued to voluntarily sequester at home, wear masks outdoors, and wipe down Amazon deliveries with bleach. These behaviors were not limited to a handful of people. Much of the nation had disconnected from basic reality, I began to call this condition a “mass delusional psychosis.”
This can happen when everyone become hyper-focused on one issue, when fear becomes the predominant emotion, and rational faculties become paralyzed en masse. This is exactly what happened to Americans in 2020. Delusions often feature prominently in psychotic disorders. Simple put a delusion is a fixed false belief that runs counter to reality. All delusions are by definition irrational. This is what makes them pathologic. The harm they bring to the individual who holds them come from a diminished capacity to live with reality. They are also impervious to reason, otherwise, they would simply be wrong-headed opinions that change once confronted with reality. As I continued to observe my patients and the people around me, it became undeniable that a shared state of irrationality had arisen from the underlying pandemic of fear. This mass delusional psychosis was rooted in fear but organized around a perverse worship of safety. To secure that safety, no sacrifice was too great: canceling graduations and proms, depriving individuals of their ability to make a living, masking children, banning Easter, order ailing nursing home patients to die alone and then prohibiting their grieving family members from holding funerals.
Whenever I would offer objective information to reassure them that their beliefs were misinformed and that their behaviors were not only unnecessary but harmful to themselves and others, they would largely refuse to accept the truth of what I had told them. This social contagion of psychotic thinking and behavior had spread throughout the population, sparing no demographic. It did appear less prevalent, though, in rural America and among those who described themselves as politically conservative.
Democrat-controlled cities and states largely followed the fast and hard lockdown approach, while the response by Republicans trended toward greater liberty and personal choice. Based on this, it would be reasonable to conclude that, as a group, liberals prefer the promise of safety to liberty, even when those promises cannot be supported by rational arguments. Conservatives, on the other hand, are far more willing to assume personal risk to retain the power to make their own decisions. Net, it appeared that irrational thinking predominated in urban, liberal locales.
Every day, print, cable, and online news media made a point to announce how many more people had tested positive, been hospitalized, or died of the virus. Every day the running tally would increase. There was never any mention of preventative measures one could take against the infection, other than fear-reinforcing behaviors such as mask-wearing and social isolation. These attacks began in early 2020 with hydroxychloroquine, a 50-year-old medication that had been used safely and effectively throughout the world to prevent malaria in infants, pregnant and breast-feeding women, and the elderly. Any positive news of hope from this treatment was ridiculed, and fearful behaviors were reinforced with constant reminders that one was “safer at home,” “masks saved lives,” and we should all “do our part by staying apart.” By focusing not on real news but instead promoting isolation and fear, American media guaranteed an audience eager to have its hysteria reinforced by terrifying statistics and predictions of mass.
Apparently, the advance of government control over all of our lives, using “safety” as the sole justification, knows no end. The cancellation of social activities, home sequestration, instituting masks and hand sanitizers, and now the mad rush for universal vaccination with an experimental biological agent with no safety record but growing evidence of significant physical harm – are all irrational, delusional, psychotic practices born of safetyism. The demand for government control over every aspect of our lives had increased a hundredfold over the past year and a half, driven largely by anxiety and fear. Women, in particular, have been willing agents in this movement because their traditional source of security – men—has largely disappeared. Government has replaced it, in the midst of a pandemic of fear any hysteria, reassuring them that their only hope for safety is to dutifully obey and comply with its orders.
THE WAY FORWARD: WORKING OUR WAY BACK TO SANITY: The United States is now made up of two distinct classes of individuals: the rational and the irrational. Rational individuals are largely fearless, while the irrational tend to be living in tremendous fear. Unfortunately, the rational cannot rescue the irrational. The irrational must first commit to confronting their irrational beliefs and overcome them. The path forward will be different for each person, but several recurring themes will almost certainly emerge. For men, it will require a display of courage. They will need to stand up to hysteria and refuse to allow it to drive decision-making. Self-emasculation must end. For women, it will require emotional restraint. They will need to confront, to the extent they have succumbed to it, the Hyper-emotionality that has led them to respond to the current crisis in unhealthy ways.
Finally, to properly address the ongoing damage being done to children, men and women will need to cooperate in this shared endeavor. Children have been victimized by often well-intentioned but thoroughly misguided adults who have abdicated their responsibility to protect their children from harm. More generally, individual accountability must be found before repair can begin at the group, community, and national levels. Only then can we make full use of organizational and institutional change, which is critical for returning the nation to a state of health for the long term.
The most effective tool I have found to help these children over the past couple of years has been challenging fathers to assert themselves. Once they begin to rationally and firmly address the fears of their wives, the entire atmosphere in the household changes. The children feel safe once again, as they no longer need to take care of the anxiety of their parents.
Common with all dictatorships, the justification for censorship starts with the announcement of a crisis. In 2020, that crisis was the viral pandemic. That has been the basis for banning speech and publication that questions the crisis or the government response to it in any way. All the social media giants – Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter – have admitted without apology that they will not tolerate dissent against current government policy.
Untold harm was done to individuals, society, and to science itself by the decision of the media and big tech companies to censor speech that questioned the official view of the proper mitigation and treatment of the virus. In August 2021, You Tube took down a video interview of United States Senator Rand Paul – a medical doctor – after he questioned the efficacy of using masks to prevent the transmission of respiratory virus, citing actual scientific studies to support his position. Preventing an elected representative of over four million Americans from speaking is not consistent with the values of a free country – it is a dictatorship. When ordinary citizens, journalists, and elected officials can no longer count on their privacy rights being respected by the government, or their first amendment rights being honored, we no longer live in a free country.
Leaders and officials empowered by societal fear exhibit clear dictatorial tendencies. Mayors and governors gave themselves extraordinary powers during the pandemic and show no signs of being willing to let go of this untrammeled power. Instead, they continue to impose irrational mandates on their citizens without even a pretense of consultation with experts or legislative oversight. Last year, it was masks and “social distancing.” This year it is mandatory experimental vaccination. What will it be next year?
Source: United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis: by Mark McDonald, M.D. (2021)
CONFIRMING FACTS: An online tracking poll from the University of Southern California showed how out of touch with reality people’s fears had become. The poll surveyed 9,000 Americans who were chosen to represent a good demographic match for the entire country. By early April 2020, Americans said they believed they had a 25% chance of dying from the coronavirus if they were infected. That was about 100 times their actual risk. While their perceived risk fell slightly over time, it remained around 12% until the poll ended in June 2021. Women, who were less likely to die than men, believed their risk was higher.
Even more stunning, people under 49 said they believed their risk of death was about one in five. For most of them, that estimate was off by a factor of at least 10,000. Healthy people under 30 had a risk of death from the virus that was almost too low to measure. Even in their 30s, people who were not seriously overweight had a risk significantly less than 0.01%, or one in ten thousand, according to a peer-reviewed paper that examined Covid outcomes in a group of 7,000,000 British people in 2020.
Source: Pandemia by Alex Berenson (2021)
CONCLUSION: We had no control at first. We were petrified. We had few tools to fight it. No treatments. No vaccines. Our testing was delayed so we were unable to properly isolate cases and test contacts and the contagion soon became a pandemic and sped out of control. In March we reached for an anti-malarial/arthritis drug hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic zithromax based on anecdotal evidence and studies in the lab and broad population studies. My own father – age 96 – was saved by it. But when President Trump endorsed the treatment and later admitted to taking it as a preventative measure, it became a political hot potato, and several studies showed it didn’t work late in the hospital course of COVID patients. Unflawed randomized studies for early or prophylactic use were still not done (and it wasn’t properly studied with zinc) but it soon became difficult to prescribe it without scrutiny (off label) amidst the politics of fear.
Convalescent plasma extracted from people who had recovered from COVID not only had a somewhat positive impact on hospitalized patients but were also heartwarming because it meant people were giving to others, the right message to be sending to calm pandemic fears, as it is difficult to be caring and afraid at the same time. Synthetic monoclonal antibodies which targeted the SARSCoV2 virus were also emerging in the late summer which had the potential to help in serious cases. Of course, even convalescent plasma, otherwise known as antibodies, to provide passive immunity, became a political football with the election approaching in late August 2020. All of this politicking around the rapidly emerging science for COVID spread more fear and uncertainty.
For prevention, we relied on a public model from 1918 even though many tried to believe it was new science. We blamed others for non-compliance to these old-style public health methods and we blamed our leaders including President Trump for putting us in this position of millions of cases and over hundred fifty thousand deaths by August, but we failed to blame a true culprit, the uneven unprepared patchwork response of the entire health care system. We were simply unprepared for anything of this magnitude, a reality which we all knew deep down, a reality which generated more fear.
Instead, it was the politics of fear, across the board. Hydroxychloroquine? Rejected by the left, endorsed by the right. Prospective double blinded placebo controlled randomized trials not done.
Masking? Rejected by the right, endorsed by the left. Prospective double blinded randomized trials not done.
Effect of protests on viral spread? Endorsed by the left, rejected by the right. Prospective double blinded randomized trials not done.
Convalescent plasma? Endorsed as lifesaving by the right, rejected by the left for supposed lack of proof. Prospective double blinded placebo controlled randomized trials not done.
Late night comedians and political pundits drove ratings through mockery and the public listened.
At the time of this writing in late August we were still captivated by the virus, we were learning more every day about long term complications, and we still lived in a world of fear. Taking the high road provided a vaccine, not for the virus but for the fear it spawned.
Source: COVID: The Politics of Fear and the Power of Science by Marc Siegel, M.D. (2020)
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