COVID Psychological Manipulation: Unpacked

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I learned to distrust authority from early on. In the medical field the seeds of doubt were born maybe when I got appendicitis. I had often had pains in the groin which I ignored until one day when it got really bad – about age 21. I went to see a well regarded doctor. After the examination and some lab tests he diagnosed appendicitis. This conversation followed:

Dr. ‘It’s not urgent. Let me know when you want it operated.’
Denny ‘Carnival is coming up, after the holidays.’
Dr. ‘OK but you can’t leave town and you can’t drink (alcohol)."
Denny "Dr. I understand not leaving town but what does drinking have to do with it?’
Dr. ‘With the infection you’ll get drunk wth just a glass of whiskey.’
Denny ‘In that case I might as well get operated tomorrow.’

The operation was a success and IBM picked up the tab. The doctor told me that it was really good that I had the operation at once because the appendix was about to rupture. Why did the doctor miss it when he examined me? Probably (my guess) because I had very low symptoms from a case of chronic appendicitis.

Chronic appendicitis is a rare condition involving appendiceal inflammation as these conditions typically present acutely and are treated with appendectomy. However, in a small minority of patients, appendicitis can have a mild presentation and become recurrent or chronic appendicitis. Due to the acute nature and immediate treatment of patients presenting with typical symptoms of appendicitis, chronic appendicitis has been often overlooked and/or misdiagnosed.

Chronic Appendicitis, the Lesser-Known Form of Appendiceal Inflammation: A Case Report - PMC.

Denny lucked out! My Guardian Angel has been fabulous! I get to tell all these stories.

As I was coming out of the anesthesia I demanded a phone to call a Chinese girl I had met a few days prior who was more beautiful than Suzie Wong. The doctor was right, I had a couple of whiskies at the party and they sure made the girl look beautiful.

I’ve already have told the story how i reversed a bunch of supposedly chronic diseases by eating right.

In Portugal they announced the Covid lockdowns like everywhere else and it was frightfully stifling but being a Latin culture and a low population density area where I live I managed to get in my daily walks with no bad consequences. The Latin culture has civil disobedience built in. I like it!

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COVID Psychological Manipulation: Unpacked

Ros Nealon-Cook, a psychologist from Australia, had her license suspended for sounding the alarm about the harms to children from government pandemic policy. Ros has joined forces with a number health professionals from around the world who were similarly censored and silenced. Together, they have created The Cape Byron Lighthouse Declaration to raise awareness about the widespread propaganda and censorship of expert scientific opinion. You can read and sign the declaration here: www.lighthousedeclaration.world – adding your signature will take less than a minute.

The Captain

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COVID vaccines were tested in double-blind clinical trials in multiple countries, and since then billions of doses have been administered across the globe.

My question for these anti-vaxxers is what level of evidence is required before they stop saying COVID vaccines are unproven and untested?

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Expert scientific opinion is always trumped by average scientific data.

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As offered before, I decided, long ago, that organized religion was “psychological manipulation” as in “do as you are told, because the all seeing, all knowing, invisible man in the sky will punish you”. From there, organized religion branched out to organized bigotry: “our bunch has it right. everyone else is wrong. do as we say, and hate the others, for not doing it right, or the invisible man in the sky will punish you”.

Steve

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I would add that if your opinion is trumped by one of the largest, maybe the largest, scientific data sets in human history, your opinion isn’t expert. Your opinion is crackpot.

Pretending to be oppressed because you are a crackpot doesn’t make you less of a crackpot.

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I seriously doubt such a level of evidence exists. You only have to look at the resistance of anti-vaxxers to every new study/analysis of data investigating the alleged link between the MMR vaccine and autism. No matter the size of the data base used or the resources committed or how unequivocal the findings of zero link might be, the squawks of the antivaxxers remain the same…we need more evidence :thinking:

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That’s generally a sign of the religion being perverted or misused. And yes, that misuse often is for the purpose of manipulation.

If I were to summarize the three major monothestic religions into three words, they all boil down to “Love each other.” I’m less familiar with other religions (generally those of the far east), but I’d guess that wouldn’t be a bad summary of them, either. But I’ll have to defer to the adherents of those religions for further comment or correction. And that love isn’t limited to only those who claim to adhere to the religion, is it for everyone in the world - believer or not.

If you are loving each other, you aren’t manipulating each other. You are helping each other be better people, not mindless slaves.

I will not - I can not - defend many of the things done in the name of religion. From the Crusades through the Inquisition and on to modern times, horrific things have been done in the name of religion. But if you start digging, you’ll usually find that there were followers of that religion denouncing these terrible things at the time they were happening, and working in some way to stop these bad things.

So I think it’s wrong to dismiss religion outright. I’m not asking you - or anyone else - to follow any particular religion. All I ask is that you at least learn a little about the religion before dismissing it as “psychological manipulation” with no redeeming value.

–Peter

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I have told these stories before:

-I have been verbally attacked by Catholics, for not making a big production out of lent. It was a Baptist lodge that tried to “save” me, 60 odd years ago. Baptists don’t do lent, but those two Catholics didn’t care about doctrinal differences. I didn’t do lent, so I was a bad person, as far as they were concerned.

-Catholics make a bid deal out of confession. A Baptist will tell you that your relationship with God is personal, that no human has authority to absolve you of your sins, and a Catholic priest saying he has that authority is wrong, Wrong, WRONG!!! (wherever Baptists call it, heresy, or sacrilege, or whatever)

-remember when Pope Benedict said the Catholic church is the only church. The other denominations are not churches? Bigotry dressed up in fancy clothes and mumbo-jumbo.

Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches.

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Doesn’t every religion believe that their way is the ‘true way’?

intercst

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Of course. Thinking they are right, and everyone else is wrong, is their only reason for existence.

Steve

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That is not the fundamental issue even if it’s the most visible one. The fundamental issue is the right to question. Once we get authoritarian governments, like the Covid lockdowns and mandatory vaccination, your right to question has been squashed.

Portugal never made vaccination mandatory! I weighed the pros and cons as best I could and decided that vaccination was safe enough.

Somebody in the thread is talking about Crackpots. How scientific is that? More like burning Crackpots (a religious cult) at the stake. Now we just ruin their lives (call it cancel) and let them live in misery.

The Captain

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Whose lives are being ruined/canceled? There have been a lot of “outside the box thinkers” who’ve questioned every aspect of the factual nature of SARS-COV-2 and the subsequent disease and it’s consequences without actually understanding what’s inside the box. There’s nothing particularly special about a strong background in, say, virology, immunology, epidemiology and all the other “ologies” associated with infectious disease…unless you’re dealing with a highly infectious disease. A novel one at that.

Since the very start of the pandemic denialists from all walks of life have taken to YouTube and various social media outlets to make the sort of claims denialists make…anyone who’s spent time on both the old H&N and Pandemic boards will attest to this. None of these speculative claims (the pandemic will burn itself out in a month/2 months for intance) have aged well…and those who made them have drifted back into obscurity. Except for a handful of folk, driven by goodness knows what, have persisted with the more preposterous that cannot be refuted so quickly and easily…oftentimes with professional credentials that imply a knowledge-based that ought to be listened to.

“Dr” John Campbell (the host of the YouTube vid providing a platform for this psychologist who’s allegedly been “caneled”) is one of these. A well viewed site, apparently, but given to misinformation and outright distortion of facts that the credulous and those who mistrust science (or find TWiV a bit too hard to follow) find appealing.

The question I ask myself is exactly why this individual and her two co signatories of the declaration mentioned in the video lost or had their license suspended. Seems it was in the early days of the pandemic, something to do with the psychological effects on children of lockdowns, and in Australia. Anyone who’s is of a questioning disposition (and not just of real expert opinion and evidence) might be forgiven for thinking "there’s more to this than meets they eye":thinking:

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While I would say this is correct in essence, it comes across now as quaint in our current geopolitical environment. It’s not the “love one another” part that is the issue of course: it’s all the other dicta and proscriptions that are used by various religions to promote their views that are the problem. If they all stuck to the basic message, we’d be much better off. That they do not makes for irreconcilable interests and the consequent violence and turmoil of religion.

Pete

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Steve, the next time you are “verbally attacked” by anyone of your religious (or non-religious) beliefs, ask them if they have read Romans chapter 14. The apostle Paul writes extensively about not judging others.

I personally believe you are wrong, but your beliefs are your beliefs. The only way I can ever convince you is to live my life as an example, not by lecturing.

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Interesting that Covid abuse inspired a thread about religion. There are, indeed, parallels. The Voice Almighty!

The Captain

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The conflict was fact vs superstition. Facts that precautions lower the probability of infection, vs superstition that the plague will go away on it’s own and no precautions are needed.

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Apparently the Swedes proved that the “superstition” actually worked quite well.

While supported by the majority of Swedes, this approach faced rapid and continuous criticism. Unfortunately, the respectful debate centered around scientific evidence often gave way to mudslinging. However, the available data on excess all-cause mortality rates indicate that Sweden experienced fewer deaths per population unit during the pandemic (2020–2022) than most high-income countries and was comparable to neighboring Nordic countries through the pandemic.

The Swedish COVID-19 approach: a scientific dialogue on mitigation policies - PMC.

Would never have happened had the Swedes been under the thumb of the Exceptional nation or Red China.

The Captain

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My drug recovery program does not allow me to participate in cults.

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There was no “Magic Swedish Way” and there was no “Those stupid Americans, there they go again” screwing it up by the numbers. Unknown situation. Unknown everything. You have a meeting, get the facts you do know, try to compare it to something familiar and review what was done/not done/ results/ impute a series of possible outcomes for this time. Give no credit to Swedes who knew nothing more than anyone else. They just weighed the odds and tried something else.

What I want to know is… what exactly did we know and when did we know it?! How much did the government and doctors and scientists and pharma companies lie about or cover up and why? Profit? That psycho-manipulation? Incompetence? Earnest, faultless human mistakes followed by rank opportunism? The book is not finished being written

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Depends on what you mean by “proved” and “superstition.” The COVID death rate in Sweden was much higher than its peer nations until about May 2021, when vaccines became widely available. Sweden had an outstanding vaccine distribution program that prioritized the elderly populations first, and then rolling out to the general population as quickly as possible. Sweden’s COVID vaccine uptake was better than its peer nations except Iceland, and better than the EU averages.

So if the “superstition” is that COVID vaccines save lives, Sweden proved that astonishingly well.

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