by Howard Rotberg, NER DEC 23/21
“We having nothing to fear but fear itself. -Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing in association with the University of Minnesota, has a website called Taking Charge of your Health & Wellbeing. In our age of fear of Covid, this site has some great insights.
What is the effect on our physical, mental and spiritual health of living in fear? Is there something we can learn that can be applied to the exaggerated fear of a virus that has a modest fatality rate, especially among younger and healthier people? Why are we so fearful that we are vaccinating young children against a virus that hardly affects them, concerning which we have inadequate long-term studies on side effects for their lifetimes. Why are we equating these MNRA vaccines with polio vaccines of the ‘50s which were different in scientific terms and dealt with a much more serious illness for children and which were long studied before use?
Lately we have the media in a massive meltdown about something called the “Omicron variant.” However, doctors where the variant has surfaced report that while its transmissability is high, its symptoms seem to be mild. Our media does not much report on the real threat of omicron while at the same time warning us that our hospitals can be overwhelmed and our schools, religious organizations, and businesses must return to major lockdowns. I term this reaction Omicrophobia as the fear seems to be out of proportion with the actual threat. A phobia, of course, is an irrational fear.
The South African doctor who first reported the Omicron variant says that the world’s reaction to the new strain is “out of all proportion to its risks.” which are the risks associated with a mild flu.
Moreover, it seems that with each news-story, we are induced to put our faith in big government, which raises our fear level and then assuages us with new laws and regulations hurriedly prepared, often conflicting in nature, all requiring a fearful nation to take more handouts, which surely must be repaid by our children, the same children that we have kept out of schools and whose mental health seems to be affected by isolation, masking, and fear.
In years past, we often dealt with fear, not so much by turning to politicians and psychologists but by turning to our religious or spiritual leaders. However, in the West, once part of what was termed Christendom, the majority of people, especially among the young, no longer pray in organized religious services. Their God, then may be Big Government, and not the deity of the Judeo-Christian heritage. With no God, fear takes over. And let us examine what the University of Minnesota website, mentioned above, has to say about the consequences of this fear:
Regarding our physical health, fear is said to weaken that very immune system whose high-level functioning is exactly what we need when our bodies are trying to fight off a virus. The website also says that fear can cause cardiovascular damage, gastrointestinal problems such as ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome, and decreased fertility. It can lead to accelerated ageing and even premature death.
With respect to memory, the website says that fear can impair formation of long-term memories and cause damage to certain parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus. This can make it even more difficult to regulate fear and can leave a person anxious most of the time. To someone in chronic fear, the world looks scary and their memories confirm that. In addition, I feel that requiring children to wear masks and stay away from others exacerbates the fear and the symptoms of fear much more than with adults. I think that there is little more that can happen to so force our children into catastrophic thinking patterns which are the basis of clinical depression.
With respect to brain processing and reactivity, the University of Minnesota website says that fear can interrupt processes in our brains that allow us to regulate emotions, read non-verbal cues and other information presented to us, reflect before acting, and act ethically. This impacts our thinking and decision-making in negative ways, leaving us susceptible to intense emotions and impulsive reactions. All of these effects can leave us unable to act appropriately. Again, I feel that this is even more serious in children.
Accordingly this center for spirituality and healing addresses mental health consequences of long-term fear including fatigue, clinical depression, and PSTD.
In a brilliant piece by the American thinker, Heather MacDonald, in the New York Post, entitled “Omicron coverage reveals how the establishment, media keep us scared” she argues that the media and the government have created a “group norm of fear”. She states:
“The media want you to believe that everyone around you is scared out of his mind, and thus you should be, too. Man-on-the-street interviews quote Nervous Nellies exclusively. A Dec. 17 New York Times article headlined “As Virus Cases Surge, New Yorkers Feel a Familiar Anxiety” trotted out a parade of paralyzed city residents.”
She quotes a disease ecologist at Georgetown University who said. “Even if infection is mild in many individuals, it’s not going to be mild in everyone.”
But, says MacDonald, “that 100 percent mildness standard is unrealistic. There are outliers in any disease and any treatment; the question is: What is the predominant reality? The zero-risk, zero-harm standard for public policy adopted for the first time with COVID has proven a social, economic and public health disaster.”
I watch the news from Canada’s CBC public broadcasting system, and they have been featuring the same 5 or 6 public health experts who seem to me to be buttressing group fear with expert opinion, as Ms. MacDonald charges: “The only public health experts whom the media quote are those determined to put the most dire spin on Omicron. They stress worst-case hypothetical scenarios and dismiss actual good-case evidence. At best, they may grudgingly admit that Omicron symptoms are disproportionately mild, but rush to assert that there are still many as-yet-unrealized grounds for worry.
“Even if Omicron causes less severe cases, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems,” the director-general of the World Health Organization said.
I don’t want to compel the reader to follow me through all the statistics available on the number of cases and how they are misreported as deaths with Covid as opposed to deaths from Covid. Or the absence of serious cases among children and other healthy people. Nor do I need to list
What we should remember is how a corrupt media aided Democratic Party tactics to portray President Donald Trump as some kind of white supremacist and yahoo who supposedly colluded with Russia, despite being absolved of same by the Mueller Report, and therefore how a fear of another Trump four years motivated Americans to look to “good old Joe (Biden).” He supposedly was a safe known character, but who turned out to be a somewhat demented mouthpiece for the radical Democrats who supported open borders, catastrophic quick withdrawal from Afghanistan, BLM support, ruined energy independence, who did in fact, with his son, Hunter, collude with both China and Russia to use his position for huge personal gain. Huge public spending resulted in major public debt which in turn created massive inflation both of which will now constitute our legacy to our children.
Try having a reasoned conversation with a Trumpophobe or supporter of the radical Democrats who are now the party of Islamists, radical ecological activists, and you will see what fear has done to dignified public discourse. Name-calling, cancell culture and violence reflect the actions of a group living in fear and embracing the anti-liberal anti-democratic new totalitarianism, which Covid has surely exacerbated.
Another story that the New York Post has dared to publish at reveals that:
“The South African health minister delivered some encouraging news Friday about the rapidly spreading Omicron variant, citing a much lower rate of hospitalizations amid a milder form of the illness.
“Only 1.7 percent of COVID-19 patients were admitted in the second week of infections during the fourth wave of the pandemic, compared to 19 percent in the same week of the third Delta-driven wave, Joe Phaahla told reporters, Bloomberg News reported.
“We believe that it might not necessarily just be that Omicron is less virulent, but … coverage of vaccination [and] … natural immunity of people who have already had contact with the virus is also adding to the protection,” Phaahla said.
If your local media or other large leftist media of choice has not reported this, you might wonder if their motives include keeping you in a state of fear and anxiety so that you will passively accept the elites’ totalitarian agenda for eternal power and control.
In a book released in November 2021, United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis, Psychiatrist Mark McDonald diagnoses America as suffering from a mass delusional psychosis, driven by a pandemic of fear in response to COVID-19.
Dr. McDonald saw in his patients some very negative effects—stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, domestic violence, suicidal ideation—were all directly traceable to the climate of fear being stoked by public health authorities and irresponsibly amplified by national media.
These fears in turn, says Dr. McDonald drove a hysterical overreaction from government in the form of draconian lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates of questionable value. He argues that the fear and anxiety are rooted in the natural anxieties of women on behalf of their children and families.
With the release now of Miranda Devine’s important expose Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide, it is clear that the mainstream media, except of course for Devine, of the New York Post, has hidden the extensive and bizarre facts of Biden’s son’s corruption, and perhaps Joe Biden’s as well.
If the Democrats and their friends in media could clearly get the unfavorable evidence from the laptop hidden from public view, then the citizens have a justified fear of media corruption and what seems to be an extreme abuse of power. When citizens then understand how the elites have lied to them, then we have a justified fear of corruption of the American ideals and constitutional rights. Combining this fear with the fear of Covid sets up citizens for a passivity based on anxiety and depression. That passivity can lead to an acceptance of totalitarianism. Then on October 21st we have an interesting essay by an America doctor who chooses to write under a pseudonym out of fear of professional penalties and consequences.
In “Physicians and the Vaccine Tyranny” in American Thinker magazine, the doctor who writes under the name of Blaise Edwards M.D. said other Doctors need to be called out.
“From early in the pandemic, it was like a mass hypnosis or forgetfulness of everything we had learned in medical school. Immune system knowledge was shelved and replaced by government dictates. The thought of early outpatient treatment with “off label” drugs that could modulate the immune system was forbidden. We essentially told patients that they had to go home and wait until they were sick enough to be hospitalized, then treatment would begin. Imagine telling all diabetics that there is no metformin, Glucophage, or insulin. Would we really wait until patients are in diabetic ketoacidosis, and then treat them only at the hospital? It is medical malfeasance of a grand scale.
“We physicians gave up our training and our reasonable medical thought process. The reasons are multiple. First, it was the easy way out. Second, many of us are employed and fear reprisal. Third, despite what the public thinks, we physicians are not bold leaders, we tend to be sheep, and are afraid of having an entire institution ostracize us or our colleagues to think us crazy.”
Dr. “Edwards” says that “going so far as to encourage vaccination in children and pregnant women is crazy. There is blood on the hands of any physician who does this. With children, there is no benefit to the vaccine, only harm. They would serve themselves and society better with natural immunity. The vaccine hasn’t been studied on women and their babies. It is pregnancy category X (unknown) but being pushed wholesale on these poor women without proper studies. Shame on you, doctors who are doing this. I certainly have lots to answer for when I meet my maker, but this is on another level.”
Why are we risking unknown effects of the virus on our children who have nothing to fear if they get the virus and probably will be asymptomatic? Will we find out that parts of the vaccine end up affecting their organs, including ovaries and thus aid those crazies who call for “depopulation”?
The reason in my opinion is that we have become used to a type of war against children. The attributes of this war include leaving them a massive public debt as we enjoyed the benefits of excessive debt financing, that we do not even intend to pay off but rather impose on our children, who will see interest on the debt become a major part of government budgets. Also, the effect of school closings and online education in an isolated at home situation, not only robs our children of quality education but also injured their mental health; we are already seeing a spike in suicides. Inflation will hurt our children if it is not stopped by more prudent and responsible government spending. If baby boomers let inflation jeopardize their savings, how can they financially assist their children with downpayments on housing now inordinately expensive. We are also leaving our children an education system for the “woke” with critical race theory, transgender and sexual perversions, all to distract them from the study of science and history to allow them to compete against the increasingly powerful and educated Chinese.
Our children are being taught that a hamburger and fries are healthy and that pizza is a good alternative when parents have to stay late at work. Obesity is more dangerous health wise than Omicron.
We are leaving them a military as focused on political correctness as it is on military strength to defeat any enemies.
The bottom line is that we are leaving our children a society and a culture which lacks courage and hope, which are the foundations for a future of freedom, kindness and traditional values. The refusal of our government and public health barons like Anthony Fauci, to allow therapeutics like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine to drive the virus away by early treatment is something very sad. The vaccines don’t seem to be creating herd immunity as the virologists at one time advocated.
In an article that appeared on these pages on December 21st, titled “Compulsion for Its Own Sake?” the great writer and physician who writes under the pseudonym of Theodore Dalrymple, says: “Three facts have to be borne in mind: First, the vaccines protect against serious disease, hospitalisation, and death. Second, according to the latest research, they protect little against the spread of the disease, though further research might alter this finding, for science is not a body of fixed doctrine and its findings are provisional. Third, a large proportion of the population is only triflingly at risk of serious disease and death—though again, this could change.
If you put this all together, it argues against compulsion, for the onus is on those who would compel a population to do something to demonstrate the necessity for it.”
He concludes: “ In summary, I conclude that there is no reason to make vaccination against Covid compulsory, not even for subgroups of the population. To do so risks provoking civil unrest for no good reason. This conclusion is provisional: I do not exclude the possibility that one day compulsory vaccination might be justified, though I do not expect it ever to be so and think we are far from that situation now. Of course, governments love compulsion for its own sake: it lets the population know who is boss.” (my emphasis)
If the population of young men and women now being miseducated at the awful universities are ever to be compared to be the equal of their grandparents or great-grandparents who fought in the Second World War, they will have to cast off their wokeness, and hyper-sensitivity to words construed as offensive, and demonstrate some courage in all aspects of life. Fear is not an inevitable response to adversity.
Howard Rotberg writes on ideologies, political culture and values. He is the author of four books including Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed and The Ideological Path to Submission … and what we can do about it. He is the founder of Canada’s sole conservative values publishing house, Mantua Books – www.mantuabooks.com
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