Not so long ago in the Land of Modern Economics it was assumed that we humans were rational, critically thinking beings; masters of our own perceptions that would always make rational decisions. Funny what fear, uncertainty and panic can do to those now obsolete economic behavioral assumptions. Whether based on empirical evidence or long held, but false beliefs, perception is everything…

All I wanted was some bananas. It was the Saturday morning of the mid March weekend that the “shelter in place” national lockdown was announced. The yard sailing sucked. The local news radio was in overdrive describing the panic purchasing that was taking place all over LA and all over America. Panicking? Lockdown?! Over a flu virus?!! I was more amazed than stunned at the response of my fellow humans. The reality didn’t hit me until around 9 am when I went to my local Trader Joe’s to buy some bananas. A rushed Trader Joe’s employee told me go away, that the store would not be opening for another couple hours. Huh?! They regularly open at 8. I was hungry. All I wanted was some bananas. He suggested I come back in an hour or two. “What’s up?”, I asked. He stopped in mid rush and looked at me like I was Tujunga hillbilly from Mars and informed me the store shelves had been wiped clean by panic purchasers the day/night before and they had to restock before opening. Oh. When I returned a couple hours later, it was not in expectation of being able to purchase desired bananas… it was to take pictures, to document this panic moment in covid history. At this point it was about 10:30 am, two and a half hours after regular opening time and the line of anxious shoppers waiting to get in and continue their panic provisions shopping spree was now about fifty to seventy – six foot socially distanced – yards long!! As I’m about to take pictures, I overhear the very first person in line, an elderly gent with an air of bemusement, talking to the TJ’s employee in charge of managing entry and occasional customer outbursts. The elder gent is looking back at the massive line of shoppers waiting to get in and chuckles to the Trader Joe’s guy… “I’m a psychotherapist. This is going to keep me busy for years!” 

“Post Traumatic Covid Disorder” anyone?

As the media, psychotherapists, health professionals, Vedic yogis, advertising agencies and the psychological operations branch of the US military have known since long before the seminal publication of Edward Bernay’s “Propaganda” (1928), the manipulation and exploitation of perceptions, “perception management”, can be a very useful art and a disciple unto itself. And my absolute favorite area of study! Our proven tendency to fear first and ask questions later; to immediately buy into the media hype before digging into the source of the narrative, is something the propagandists and exploiters know very well. We humans are often too lazy and just too friggin busy to vet the story and/or apply critical thinking… something the exploiters rely on because it buys them time and allows for fine tuning on the fly. Just how vulnerable we are to the media’s keeping our focus on fear was unintentionally illustrated two years after Propaganda’s release when Orsen Welles’ “War of the World’s” was radio broadcast all over the east coast on Halloween Eve 1938. BOO! Many unsuspecting listeners, not realizing the broadcast to be an innocent exploration in the early days of scary radio theatre, panicked when they tuned in, especially if they happened to tune in mid broadcast in what they thought was a real time hostile Martian invasion of planet earth. Alas, no time for the panic purchasing of toilet paper and other Trader Joe’s essentials as a final prayer to one’s own personal god took on just a little more urgency.

The novelty of a martian invasion may not be that much different than the novelty of a global “deadly disease” pandemic for generating massive waves of fear… the fear of the unknown. Like the coronavirus, both are “novel” events and are especially conducive to our current exploitive, tabloid media’s tendency to capitalize on fear and negativity, whether premeditated campaigns or not. All the misleading comparisons of corona to the 1918 Spanish Flu (hygiene then vs. hygiene now, no comparison!) and the now infamously erroneous Ferguson modeling forecast promising as bad or worse… Fear! All the simultaneous Communist Chinese government’s carefully crafted images of the Wuhan wet market being hosed down/sterilized in early January by men in hazmat gear as entire streets were closed and twelve million people ordered to “shelter in place” to prevent spread of “novel” bat disease… Fear! And all the 24/7 indie and Murdoch media “deadly disease” scripted mentions on TV and cable news, over and over and over again, as images of Chinese hospital personnel inserting life saving respirator tubes down the throats of those severely covid infected… all in living, soon to be dying, FEAR inducing color. Smile! The message was clear: Be Scared! Be Very Very Scared!! Makes compliance with the soon to be announced “Shelter in Place” lockdown orders just a little easier, yes? Social Engineering 101? How about a little pre campaign “framing” to go along with the optics?

In “Pandemics and the Psychology of Uncertainty” (WEF 2018), Yale Assistant Professor Molly Crockett asks, “How can unpredictable global threats be communicated to most effectively guide our decision-making?… How could the Director General of the World Health Organization… motivate people to take costly but necessary actions to help limit the spread of the disease?” Or, to put it another way… how can people be persuaded to act as if “we’re all in this together”; that social distancing, the constant wearing of masks and “shelter in place” are all in societies best interest? Damn good question. Perhaps going heavy on fear and negativity would help, as the National Bureau of Economic Research just recently discovered…

“Consistent with the existing literature… our results suggest that U.S. major outlets publish unusually negative COVID-19 stories in response to reader demand and interest. The U.S. versus non-U.S. difference in negativity among major media outlets may stem from the lack of a major publicly owned player in the U.S. media or the absence of fair and balanced reporting regulations.” (Why is all Covid-19 news bad news? NBER 11/20)

“… response to reader demand and interest… the absense of fair and balanced reprting”? You don’t say? That can only mean one thing, we Americans are suckers for fear, negativity and sensationalism; the unwitting victims of the media monster we enable. Consequently, this makes us much more vulnerable to the Nocebo Effect.

During an interview aired on Letters and Politics/KPFA Berkley in 2020, Ms. Crockett mentioned how she and her team were assigned with the task of finding the most persuasive way to get people to comply with pandemic restrictions. That was in 2018, pre Covid 19. Exploring framing the issue before it’s necessary, prudent. She continues, “Luckily, it turns out there is another, more effective way to communicate uncertain threats like infectious disease. When uncertainty about human welfare is emphasized – for example, how much others might suffer from an infection – people strive to prevent the worst-case scenario… Focusing uncertainty on how our actions might impact others – for example, how much they might suffer – can inoculate us against selfishness.” Maybe. Assuming the danger is real, absolutely. But in the case of covid-19… as the grueling months slowly passed, the “deadly disease” danger seemed to be lacking the implied “body bags” on every corner and while the constantly changing “selective science” played in the background, the public’s perception tended to slowly drift towards subconscious cognitive dissonance… the increasing spread between speculative Ferguson/Empire College doomsday “science” and the empirical reality in our communities; wondering if this was a “cry wolf” over-reaction, especially when weighed against the rising tide of economic Main Street casualties. “All in this together”? That all depends on one’s point of reference. The reality is, this is all so subjective. Not all communities were affected equally which has a major effect on one’s confirmation biases and that needs to be recognized and just maybe respected if we are going to escape the divide and conquer bottleneck we just can’t seem to escape from.  

In December 2019 a second global pandemic dress rehearsal, “Event 201”, featuring corporate and political VIP’s from all over the world, had taken place just as covid came to China. Just a coincidence? I had no idea there was a first rehearsal, let alone a second! A couple months later I began to sense something was wrong with this picture. Ya see, my psy-op sensitivity meter got recalibrated in 2003 when presidunce Boy George Bush swore “Saddam’s got weapons of mass destruction! We’re all gonna die!!” (paraphrasing) to justify getting America in a bull shit war with Iraq. “Fool me once…” The death toll in China in early 2020 didn’t seem to justify, to me, what was now beginning to look like a global, pre-pandemic panic. Fear sells and everyone was placing their bids. I couldn’t help wondering what effect was this having on the ongoing Hong Kong protests which the Commie Chinese government seemed to be at an impatient loss to “stabilize” as all the world watched. Tiananmen solutions, no longer an option. But just maybe a dose of “deadly disease” covid pandemic and all the propaganda optics that go along with it might just be the work around that forces those uppity Honk Kong protestors into approved “Social Credit Score”, good commie behavior!! Brilliant. “In Hong Kong, the government cited the pandemic as a reason to delay legislative elections by an entire year, but the move was widely seen as part of a broader effort by Beijing to cement its elimination of Hong Kong’s remaining freedom and autonomy”, noted Freedom House last October.

And just maybe using the coronavirus for cover tactic could scale up to include all the world’s nations to the great satisfaction of Big-Tech and Big-Pharma with their similar “surveillance capitalism”, authoritarian/communist inspired aspirations. If that was the case, was the world witnessing a premeditated, slow motion chaos opportunity in action… the 2019 Event 201 in real time? And just what other surprises might be lurking in the bowels of this “novel” coronavirus Trojan Horse? Was covid actually adding to the death toll due to lockdown mandates that required people living in high density, close quarters housing to “shelter in place”? Opps. Was Big-Pharma capitalizing on the fear mongering media’ nocebo effect on the American population? Was the Corona Fear Campaign partly a covert effort to keep attention off the useful idiot in chief’s re-election momentum and twisted tweets just before his campaign devolved into “Stop The Steal” chaos? Is this Coronavirus Fear Campaign the latest attempt to divide society by creating hostility between the vaccination true believers and the vaccine skeptics/anti-vaxers? I know my bandana “mask” is absolutely useless for stopping a microscopic virus, as is any mask that is not properly fitted to the face. Is a mass society placebo effect taking place when everyone “mask’s up”, as all the asian countries have been doing to successfully mange their epidemics for the last twenty years? Hmmm. All the above? 

The Media Fear Campaign and the Nocebo Effect

You say Placebo, I say Nocebo! The two sides of the body/mind, perception coin. A society inundated with fear inducing negative news is going to be a sicker society due to the effects of stress and anxiety. Corporate/State media fear, chaos and confusion campaigns are lovely way to “make work” for the Medical Industrial Complex as Americans life expectancies continue their decline. If one perceives covid to be as “deadly” dangerous as the corporate and indie media claim it is (vs the .05 to 1.% reality fatality rate for those who contract it), down the negative feedback loop we go as our body/mind responds with fear, stress and anxiety, compromising our already weakened immune systems due to environmental toxins and our highly processed food diets. America’s increasing tendency to want more and more negative news makes us the perfect petri dish for any disease, whether covid or cancer, to exploit. Welcome to the Nocebo Effect where negative thinking and expectations yields negative body/mind results.

Could it also be that the massive media arm of the medical/pharmaceutical industry has been lining up it’s ducks over the last several years (Event 201, etc) in a last ditch effort to save it’s challenged industry by placing increasing emphasis on vaccinations for all things deadly or benign (annual flu vax) in order to slowly acclimate every man, woman and child to a savior vaccine mandated lifestyle, all at global government’s expense? We all know what Bill Gates would say, “We need to vaccinate everyone on the planet!”, the Holy Grail Big-Pharma fights for. Interestingly, the vaccine makers are not libel for damages done due to adverse reactions to their products as they are indemnified by the 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act. And you have been noticing more and more “vaccines save!” promotional campaigns over the last few years, yes? And that American school children are mandated to receive around 72 vaccine shots by the time they are 18, making the US possibly the most vaccinated country in the world (hmmm, and the sickest. A Connection?!!) Fear tills a societies psychological soil making us much more vulnerable to unquestioning acceptance of any savior solution Big-Pharma, etc presents us with… like a rushed to market “Warp Speed” vaccine. It appears that the fear inducing media that’s been cultivating our addiction to bad news has also been strategically priming our minds so that when the inevitable “pandemic” finally appears, whether truly deadly ebola or bad flu season covid, the coronavirus cottage industry would have all it’s duck’s dress rehearsed and ready to quack for the next phase of the vaccinate the world campaign… the WHO’s “Immunization Agenda 2030” which began this year.

The body/mind connection is an empirical given and can be embarrassingly easy to demonstrate… heh heh heh. But first, a review. The Placebo Effect, by way of Wikipedia, “a beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment.” Ahhh, beliefs, thoughts, perceptions! Woo-woo? The Nocebo Effect, “is said to occur when negative expectations of the patient regarding a treatment cause the treatment to have a more negative effect than it otherwise would have. For example, when a patient anticipates a side effect of a medication, they can suffer that effect even if the “medication” is actually an inert substance”. A “side effect of a medication”, like a vaccine! Field studies on the practice of voo-doo and voo-doo death reluctantly confirm this. Field studies on the practice of mass nocebo on entire nations? We’ll get to that.

Still skeptical about the body/mind connection? Good!! Gentlemen, drop yer drawers! (Ladies, feel free to leave/stay) To demonstrate the influence of thoughts on the body, we need not look any further than a horny male’s physiological response to erotic fantasy. Gentlemen… can you feel her, can you smell her, can you feel the warmth of her bare flesh against your… Take note how these naughty thoughts affect body mechanics, in this case the penis, as it rises to the occasion… using..  nothing..   but…    thought.  Body/Mind.  Fantasy. Perception. Belief. And without the aid of a partner. The male erection is the simplest way to demonstrate the influence of thoughts on our body, and our bodies inner working… our health. Interestingly, over all these years, with all the books I’ve read and teachers/gurus/personal growth coaches I’ve heard discussing the power of thought perception and attitude, why I have never, EVER encountered any mention of this example to illustrate the influence of thoughts on the multitude of systems in the body, remains a mystery to me. Embarrassing?! Where’s Wilhelm Reich when we need him?! Which begs the question, once again… Why do I have to do all the thinking around here?!!! 

When nocebo fear is weaponized and perceptions are manipulated and used against entire populations in an attempt to force desired social behavior of the conform-unist kind, you might find yourself asking, “How Do Nocebo Phenomena Provide a Theoretical Framework for the COVID-19 Pandemic?” (Frontiers in Psychology 10/20)

“During COVID-19, a possible nocebo response may be induced on a large scale due to negative information received from the media. These effects can be amplified by the environment, in particular by social isolation.” Shelter in place, anyone?… “The media provide dramatic and negative descriptions and often present conflicting sources of information, which can lead to physical and mental health problems… In addition, negative expectations can increase stress and anxiety levels, which can affect our health and well-being”, ie, making a person, and an entire population, much more vulnerable to disease, whether covid or not. 

The bottom line… “It is important to note that conflicting information are associated with increased stress… In particular, stress associated with negative expectations, which can be a fertile substrate for the onset of a nocebo effect, can produce significant physiological changes in the human body, including sleep disorders, respiratory complications, circulatory stress, digestive disorders, muscle tension, and pain. These symptoms are likely to further aggravate the prognosis of individuals (and societies!!) with COVID-19.” Nocebo, fear, “Doom Scrolling”… the propagandists friend.

Now that you’ve had a taste of nocebo, are you ready for some Super Nocebo? … recently discovered in a German cover-up, “The Panic Papers”!! Here’s an evil, mind blowing quote, “the “Panic Paper” calls for children to be made to feel responsible – and I quote – “for the painful tortured death of their parents and grandparents if they do not follow the corona rules”, that is, if they do not wash their hands constantly and don’t stay away from their grandparents.” Gee, does it get any more divide and conquer than that?

Who needs Covid when you’ve got a nose for nocebo fear campaigns? The quote above is from Reiner Fuellmich, the German lawyer who busted Volkswagen for diesel emissions fraud a few years ago. Regarding what he and the German Corona Investigative Committee refer to as the “Corona Scandal”, shall we cut to the chase?… “On a political level, everything must be done to make sure that no one will ever again be in a position of such power as to be able to defraud humanity or to attempt to manipulate us with their corrupt agendas… the greatest crime against humanity ever committed”, from Mr. Fuellmich’s qualified op-ed “Crimes Against Humanity”. Apparently, I’m not the only one who smelled a rat when the corona campaign got under way. Makes me feel so good! I wonder how Bill Gates and Mr. Tedros (WHO) are feeling now that the proceedings have begun?

Back in May 2019 and March 2020 as the covid 19 fear contagion was moving faster than a Southern California wild fire, a very peculiar series of events was taking place in Germany. What a refreshing breeze he brought to my sails when I heard he and his legal team also sensed some hanky panky hype concerning the novel coronavirus, in this case, at the top levels of the German government! Via lawsuits, they are now going after some of the people and institutions responsible for this Covid Fear Over-Reaction that damn near destroyed major portions of the global economy, stopped all swap meet and flea market activity in California (GRRRR!), and needlessly harmed and/or destroyed so many lives and livelihoods. And he’s not kidding about egregious “Crimes Against Humanity”, Nuremberg style. 

According to Mr. Fuellmich, it seems in early January 2020, the Swine Flu fear monger, german “Professor” Drosten, had come up with a new, improved, “novel” way to use the now infamous PCR test to detect the coronavirus and convinced the German health authorities his test was the new gold standard for covid testing after China confirmed his C-19 findings (Ha! Using a SARS virus, not the novel C-19 virus!! “Science”!!) His novel idea (“invention”?!) was to run the PCR test cycles hot, ie, to run it faster than the manufacturer of the machine suggested in the “instructions for use”, which was right around 25 cycles, to get a reliable reading. 

Running the PCR hot at Drosten’s suggested 45 cycles had the interesting effect (distortion) of creating many many more false positive readings than would have happened if the equipment was used at the manufacturer’s recommended setting, which eventually opened the door, as Event 201 “anticipated”, for Big-Pharma, Bill and Melinda and all the other global entities selling fear of “deadly disease” to promote the upcoming Magic Vax campaign as the only way out of the ensuing chaos, basically holding the entire world hostage to what seems to be their nefarious plan, an opinion held by myself and many many many others.

I really hope this helps illustrate why people can be so mistrustful of “science”. Kary Mullis, who got the Nobel Price for the invention of the PCR test device, made similar observations about the PCR’s unintended hot use. He strongly objected to it’s use as a diagnostic “test” during the 1980’s AID’s epidemic. It pissed him off then. Minor detail now, since it seems reliable readings were never the goal in either case. “Scientists are doing an awful lot of damage to the world in the name of helping it. I don’t mind attacking my own fraternity because I am ashamed of it”, he stated in an interview with Celia Farber in the 1990’s. Most interesting, Mr. Mullis did not have nice things to say about Mr. Fauci. According to Mr. Fuellmich, “contrary to the assertions of Drosten, Wieler and the WHO, which they have been making since the proclamation of the pandemic, a positive PCR-test result does not mean that an infection is present. If someone tests positive, it does NOT mean that they’re infected with anything, let alone with the contagious SARS-COV-2 virus.” PCR readings that intentionally lie, that generate fear, ie, all those extra false positive readings needed to support the global covid vaccine narrative to justify the urgency for Operation Warp Speed vaccination research and manufacture… that was the dirty little secret and intention all along! Getting world governments to pony up the big bucks to Big-Pharma, the billions of dollars necessary to “vaccinate every person on the planet” (Hi Bill!) in order to reach the arbitrary goal of “herd immunity” so we can finally allow ourselves the perception to feel socially safe enough to reopen schools, businesses, bars and get the Main Street economy going again.  Kinda sounds like some varient of extortion.

“These very people (German Gov/WHO officials, etc) called the shots in the proclamation of the worldwide corona pandemic, made sure that mass PCR tests were used to prove mass infections with Covid-19 all over the world, and are now pushing for vaccines to be invented and sold worldwide”, continues Mr. Fuellmich, confirming what me and a whole lot of other people were beginning to think right around springtime 2020. This has nothing to do with pro-vax, vax skeptic or anti-vax sentiments, this has everything to do with what seems to be the willful deceit of society, solely for the sake of Big-Pharma profits… and Big-Pharma, Big-Data CONTROL. (Covid meets surveillance post coming soon!)

Alas, it wasn’t until January 2021 that the WHO issued a statement advising all testing facilities using the PCR test to no longer use whatever cycle/amplification settings they had been advised to use (the hot 35 to 45 cycles) and refer to the manufacturers “instructions for use” (25 cycles) instead. How about that. Now ya tell us! And coincidentally, this off the radar announcement came right around the same time the post holiday covid death numbers were just starting to come down as the virus was naturally losing steam and the vaccines were beginning to roll out. Just in time to give all those RX PR propaganda/marketing people time to write their testimonies to the power of the Magic Vax, taking credit for what Mother Nature was already doing. 

As for all those folks all over the world who needlessly freaked out upon testing positive for the “deadly disease” and all the drama of self quarantine and sanitizing that went along with positive test belief… the PPE, the family disruption, the Holiday disruption, the Covid Absolutists/shamers, the damaged relationships… Damn!! And perhaps just as potentially criminal (manslaughter criminal due to deaths caused by Big-Pharma greed?)… all the corporate media’s collusion with The Medical Industrial Complex to immediately discredit and shame, as “covid deniers”, any and all practicing physicians who found early intervention protocols using established, proven, safe effective drugs, “off-label” (Ivermectin!!), to cure their patients of covid in the early stages of the disease. This “deadly disease” was highly manageable but the greedy, power lusting fuckers didn’t want anyone to know it! Criminal! If covid-19 had happened thirty years ago, pre-internet/social media spin, it would have been considered a bad flu season with no unnecessary lockdown’s, no shelter in place, etc… people doing what they ordinarily do by staying away from those who are ill (and telling/shaming them to stay home!), seeing to the comfort of those friends and family members who are, washing their hands, etc. It’s amazing how much the tabloid media fear machine has grown now that it has all these nifty tech, social media surveillance and psy-op tools at it’s disposal. I must admit though, it does give me some satisfaction witnessing the world wide push back to the Pharma Fear Campaign. And I find it very amusing that their hoped for habituation to the vaccine agenda might not be as easy as they thought. As the AP reported last August, “public fears that a vaccine is unsafe or ineffective could be disastrous, derailing the effort to vaccinate millions of Americans.” Alas, Big-Pharma gets a well deserved taste of it’s own fear based medicine and loses big bucks in the process. Whoda thunk? And now that Reiner Fuellmich and Co. are on the case, maybe it will soon be Big-Pharma and Associates that are in the cross-hairs of mortal danger. Karmic retribution? An eye for an eye! The repeal of the 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act might be a good first step towards restorative justice. This war against the pandemic of blatant greed and a lust for power ain’t over yet.

Connecting the dots with Dismal Dave Lancon © March 2021. All Rights Reserved. Part 3 of an ongoing coronavirus series.