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United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis
Psychiatrist Mark McDonald diagnoses our country as suffering from a mass delusional psychosis, driven by a pandemic of fear in response to COVID-19.
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, LA-based psychiatrist Mark McDonald grew increasingly concerned by the negative mental health effects he witnessed among his patients—and Americans nationwide. These 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 drove a hysterical overreaction from government in the form of draconian lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates of questionable value. But the fear did not abate and quickly took on a life of its own, becoming an unstoppable force in all our lives. At last McDonald began to speak out, explaining that America is actually suffering from two a viral one and a psychological one, a “pandemic of fear” that is in many ways more dangerous and damaging than the virus itself. Rooted in the natural anxieties of women on behalf of their children and families, inflamed and amplified by sensationalistic media, and driven over the top by hamfisted authoritarian measures from those in power, McDonald diagnoses the country at large as suffering from a mass delusional psychosis. This is not a metaphor. The malady itself is very real. Whether we can regain our collective sanity as a society remains to be seen.
“Mark McDonald has been a consistent voice of calm and reasoned thinking about the terrible effects of heavy-handed lockdowns on the nation's mental health. The toxic wave of fear produced by the media, public health experts, and government officials may turn out to be more dangerous and deadly than the pandemic itself. Dr. McDonald's illuminating book is must reading for all Americans concerned about the future of our country.”
—Simone Gold M.D., J.D., Founder, America's Frontline Doctors
“This book is a brilliant encapsulation of the dystopian world in which we have all been living since January 2020. Dr. McDonald writes with great clarity and substance. He accurately diagnoses that which is ailing our country. This book is accurate, eye opening, and entertaining - don't plan on putting it down until you are finished turning the pages. Purchase an extra copy to give away to your fear-based friends and family.”
—Dr. Jeffrey Barke, author of A Physician’s Take on the Exaggerated Fear of the Coronavirus
“A tour de force of scientific diagnosis, logic, detail and delightful/terrifying anecdote. There are places where (miraculously, given the subject) you made me laugh. Best of all is your notion of a pandemic of fear. It's concise and exact—and therefore...elegant.”
—Will Swaim, President, California Policy Center
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, LA-based psychiatrist Mark McDonald grew increasingly concerned by the negative mental health effects he witnessed among his patients—and Americans nationwide. These 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 drove a hysterical overreaction from government in the form of draconian lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates of questionable value. But the fear did not abate and quickly took on a life of its own, becoming an unstoppable force in all our lives. At last McDonald began to speak out, explaining that America is actually suffering from two a viral one and a psychological one, a “pandemic of fear” that is in many ways more dangerous and damaging than the virus itself. Rooted in the natural anxieties of women on behalf of their children and families, inflamed and amplified by sensationalistic media, and driven over the top by hamfisted authoritarian measures from those in power, McDonald diagnoses the country at large as suffering from a mass delusional psychosis. This is not a metaphor. The malady itself is very real. Whether we can regain our collective sanity as a society remains to be seen.
“Mark McDonald has been a consistent voice of calm and reasoned thinking about the terrible effects of heavy-handed lockdowns on the nation's mental health. The toxic wave of fear produced by the media, public health experts, and government officials may turn out to be more dangerous and deadly than the pandemic itself. Dr. McDonald's illuminating book is must reading for all Americans concerned about the future of our country.”
—Simone Gold M.D., J.D., Founder, America's Frontline Doctors
“This book is a brilliant encapsulation of the dystopian world in which we have all been living since January 2020. Dr. McDonald writes with great clarity and substance. He accurately diagnoses that which is ailing our country. This book is accurate, eye opening, and entertaining - don't plan on putting it down until you are finished turning the pages. Purchase an extra copy to give away to your fear-based friends and family.”
—Dr. Jeffrey Barke, author of A Physician’s Take on the Exaggerated Fear of the Coronavirus
“A tour de force of scientific diagnosis, logic, detail and delightful/terrifying anecdote. There are places where (miraculously, given the subject) you made me laugh. Best of all is your notion of a pandemic of fear. It's concise and exact—and therefore...elegant.”
—Will Swaim, President, California Policy Center
144 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 11, 2021
127 people are currently reading
565 people want to read
About the author
Mark McDonald
4 books19 followersBorn and raised in Los Angeles, Mark McDonald graduated from UC Berkeley before attending medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Trained in both adult and child and adolescent psychiatry at UCLA, he now works primarily with children in private practice in west Los Angeles. Dr. McDonald has lived and worked in Europe, Asia, and Central America. His opinions on topics such as the need to re- open America’s schools, and the pandemic of fear in the United States today, have been widely published in local and national news, including the Wall Street Journal and The Federalist.
Read his shorter works on Substack: https://markmcdonaldmd.substack.com/.
Read his shorter works on Substack: https://markmcdonaldmd.substack.com/.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
November 26, 2021
As one of only a few women I know that are actively vocal against the mask and vaccine mandates, this read helped me understand what is going on as a whole in our society today, what led us here, and how we can possibly get out of it.
April 26, 2022
It’s unintentionally one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. 3 hours of unhinged ranting around unscientific misinformation to do with masks, coronavirus and so called government overreach that has supposedly lead to people fearing something that according to the author is basically not that bad.
Imagine irrationally getting mad at someone for wearing a seatbelt or a helmet and then attempting to use cherry-picked stats or in some circumstances completely false information to try and convince them that they don’t save lives and in fact impose more harm then good. That’s basically what Mark does here only with the addition of incel-like bemoaning of women, feminism, falsehoods on gun laws and sprinkles of imagined scenarios that seem to plague the lives of the cranks and grifters that write this kind of garbage.
Not once does he cite a peer reviewed researched paper or even try to reference a broad array of epidemiologists or medical professionals, he just throws out debunked culture war talking points around ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, masks and supposed government tyranny that gave me a good giggle throughout. The real irony is the hyperbole surrounding the fear topic whilst he’s clearly afraid of a woman who can think for herself.
Imagine irrationally getting mad at someone for wearing a seatbelt or a helmet and then attempting to use cherry-picked stats or in some circumstances completely false information to try and convince them that they don’t save lives and in fact impose more harm then good. That’s basically what Mark does here only with the addition of incel-like bemoaning of women, feminism, falsehoods on gun laws and sprinkles of imagined scenarios that seem to plague the lives of the cranks and grifters that write this kind of garbage.
Not once does he cite a peer reviewed researched paper or even try to reference a broad array of epidemiologists or medical professionals, he just throws out debunked culture war talking points around ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, masks and supposed government tyranny that gave me a good giggle throughout. The real irony is the hyperbole surrounding the fear topic whilst he’s clearly afraid of a woman who can think for herself.
January 4, 2022
A Work of Truth
The author concisely disects the past and current societal models that has allowed American citizens and citizens of more authoritarian counties to live in fear flamed by many factors; and thus give up our rights and dignity to live life as we should. This is a vital and accurate work. It should be read by everyone, especially if a person is paralyzed by fear of the pandemic and the fear flamed by technocrats, Big Phama and public leadership that thrives on short term gains vs healthy long term planning. Great read. A compact work that is plainly written, but full of wisdom.
The author concisely disects the past and current societal models that has allowed American citizens and citizens of more authoritarian counties to live in fear flamed by many factors; and thus give up our rights and dignity to live life as we should. This is a vital and accurate work. It should be read by everyone, especially if a person is paralyzed by fear of the pandemic and the fear flamed by technocrats, Big Phama and public leadership that thrives on short term gains vs healthy long term planning. Great read. A compact work that is plainly written, but full of wisdom.
January 5, 2022
Fear is such a powerful emotion. You can get people to do anything if they are afraid. This book is a quick and worthwhile read that highlights how fear has been the thing that has led to the craziness we find ourselves in currently. He hits on a lot of points: who typically is most susceptible to fear, who has failed in their roles to calm fear, and who has stoked fear rather than calm it. It’s a small book but definitely worth the read.
January 7, 2022
Wish that everyone would read this book. It's a current and honest treatise on our country today and the alarming effects of living with the daily fear we're being fed.
January 31, 2022
100 pages of McDonald providing his opinion on the pandemic. It doesn't take a feminist to read his blatant misogyny. McDonald makes many claims in his book that anxious/hysterical women and effeminate men not standing up to them are to blame for the "pandemic of fear." I skimmed the last half of the book as the baseless assertions made were not worth my full attention.
February 20, 2023
Excellent read
Great read explaining very well what we have been experiencing last 2 years. I really enjoyed the clarity author explains how we got to this situation.
Great read explaining very well what we have been experiencing last 2 years. I really enjoyed the clarity author explains how we got to this situation.
January 5, 2022
This book pulls zero punches. You will probably be offended, but what the author has to say is desperately needed for a country in chaos and spiraling towards totalitarianism. A MUST READ.
January 8, 2022
A bit biased
This book paints a very good picture of the reality we face today. What I did not like was the excessive focus on women. Though I understand what the author is saying, it almost seems as if the main problems have been caused by women and weak men. Another issue I have with the book, and the reason I'm not passing it on to family members , is the reference to transgender teenage girls. My son is transgender, FTM , now 26 years old. He is certainly not part of a fad, nor is he confused. I had to fight long and hard to support him and to keep him alive and healthy. It's quite real, and I definitely don't appreciate the tone of dismissal of this very serious medical condition that does effect many and it's not something new. We're just able to talk about it today, thankfully, and to keep these kids alive . That said, I appreciate this book and hope that we can get folks to stand up and fight for all that's been taken from us !
This book paints a very good picture of the reality we face today. What I did not like was the excessive focus on women. Though I understand what the author is saying, it almost seems as if the main problems have been caused by women and weak men. Another issue I have with the book, and the reason I'm not passing it on to family members , is the reference to transgender teenage girls. My son is transgender, FTM , now 26 years old. He is certainly not part of a fad, nor is he confused. I had to fight long and hard to support him and to keep him alive and healthy. It's quite real, and I definitely don't appreciate the tone of dismissal of this very serious medical condition that does effect many and it's not something new. We're just able to talk about it today, thankfully, and to keep these kids alive . That said, I appreciate this book and hope that we can get folks to stand up and fight for all that's been taken from us !
January 15, 2022
Good. Bold. Full of common sense. McDonalds critique of feminism and the emasculated man is refreshing.
March 17, 2022
A very validating book. I see and saw much of this happening over the past two years. Fear has driven our country to the point of apathy in the people. I like his breakdown of women, men, media and government, and a way back to SANITY. There is much that could be elaborated on and it made for a great discussion book for a book group I run.
January 11, 2022
Sadly, the people who need to read this book will not.
March 27, 2022
Over the top
While mass formation psychosis is a very important subject matter and the public could benefit from reading about it, the author uses this book as an opportunity to interject his extreme right views, which don't add value to the book. Why bring up that he is pro-life, against trans people and anti-feminist? Half of the book is about how men need to be men and women need to essentially stay in the kitchen. I consider myself conservative but McDonald's inability to regulate his own emotions regarding these topics is not only ironic considering the subject matter but it serves to prevent the book from ever being shared or discussed for fear of judgement. "...Girls download and share videos on social media that legitimize transgenderism as the best explanation for common adolescent angst." Pick your battles McDonald, you certainly lost this one.
While mass formation psychosis is a very important subject matter and the public could benefit from reading about it, the author uses this book as an opportunity to interject his extreme right views, which don't add value to the book. Why bring up that he is pro-life, against trans people and anti-feminist? Half of the book is about how men need to be men and women need to essentially stay in the kitchen. I consider myself conservative but McDonald's inability to regulate his own emotions regarding these topics is not only ironic considering the subject matter but it serves to prevent the book from ever being shared or discussed for fear of judgement. "...Girls download and share videos on social media that legitimize transgenderism as the best explanation for common adolescent angst." Pick your battles McDonald, you certainly lost this one.
December 2, 2023
Genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. An utterly unhinged man blames hysterical women for pretty much anything he can think of, and shows a concerning lack of understanding of correlation and causation. Double the fun if you’re an actual mental health professional, see if you can spot the blatant ethical violations committed in his interactions with patients! Thank you Mark, for providing me with a uniquely entertaining afternoon of reading.
March 23, 2022
Very interesting take on how the pandemic inspired and even encouraged fear and irrational behaviors- and how the media as well as the USAs treatment of men and women condoned and exacerbated it. I really enjoyed it- it reiterated all that I have been learning through years of therapy - feelings are valid, but they are not reality.
April 23, 2022
Starts with referencing the “Chinese Wuhan Virus” and manages to keep digging from there.
September 30, 2022
Great book
Everyone should read this book and take heed to the warnings in it. Don't be afraid and stand up against tyranny
Everyone should read this book and take heed to the warnings in it. Don't be afraid and stand up against tyranny
December 2, 2024
Mark McDonald, an LA-based psychiatrist, wrote this pamphlet in the middle of the mass-induced psychosis otherwise known as the COVID pandemic. McDonald was on the front line dealing with patients who found themselves caught up by the hysteria, many of whom were affluent white liberal women. When this book was published in 2021, much of the country was winding down their most intense policies such as lockdowns, masking, and working from home. The same could not be said about California in general and blue cities like Los Angeles in particular. Political leaders like Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti were egged on by urban progressives to continue these policies, even when no evidence could be brought up to support them.
McDonald pulls no punches as to identifying who was responsible for these policies and those who failed to do anything to stop them. As much as McDonald criticizes liberal women for feeding the hysteria during this time, he criticizes men, who have become increasingly feminized over the past decades, for not doing nearly enough to counter it.
Reading this in late 2024, right after Trump was elected after an enormous propaganda campaign to stop him (and right after him nominating Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institute of Health), is a good reminder as to what insane policies were implemented in the name of public health. While the COVID madness was unfolding, it was difficult if not impossible to see this ending. It is encouraging to read the chronicles of this moment of recent history with the distance of time, however brief, even while it occasionally reminds me of the trauma this period induced.
There are other books that deal with this period with more depth than Dr. McDonald. Examples include Tom Woods' Diary of a Psychosis and JFK Jr's The Real Fauci. However, if you want to read about someone's first-hand experience during this unique time in American history, you simply can't go wrong with this book.
McDonald pulls no punches as to identifying who was responsible for these policies and those who failed to do anything to stop them. As much as McDonald criticizes liberal women for feeding the hysteria during this time, he criticizes men, who have become increasingly feminized over the past decades, for not doing nearly enough to counter it.
Reading this in late 2024, right after Trump was elected after an enormous propaganda campaign to stop him (and right after him nominating Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institute of Health), is a good reminder as to what insane policies were implemented in the name of public health. While the COVID madness was unfolding, it was difficult if not impossible to see this ending. It is encouraging to read the chronicles of this moment of recent history with the distance of time, however brief, even while it occasionally reminds me of the trauma this period induced.
There are other books that deal with this period with more depth than Dr. McDonald. Examples include Tom Woods' Diary of a Psychosis and JFK Jr's The Real Fauci. However, if you want to read about someone's first-hand experience during this unique time in American history, you simply can't go wrong with this book.
June 22, 2022
This is the historical book that I have been waiting for. As a psychotherapist, I refused to shut my doors and solely remain on line in March of 2020. I was amenable to my clients but did not enforce anything. Before too long, by summer of 2020, everyone wanted to be in my office anyway, they needed a human being face-to-face. At the same time, I was afraid I would be caught. Mr. McDonald is going very far in this book, demanding things that we took for granted when I was growing up. He is not writing an angry book here, which I appreciate, but a well-researched informational piece about this time in history that is either going to get worse or get better, depending on how WE THE PEOPLE behave.
My father came from Hungary, leaving in 1956 as an 18 year old, so many people understand what this means. I grew up learning what this life was like. This is why I understand and appreciate what Mr. McDonald is saying.
I met Mr. McDonald before I purchased and read his book. I heard him talk here in Columbus, Ohio. He struck me as a very down to earth man and this was enough for me to buy his book. I also enjoyed his talk. He was saying everything I had been waiting to hear from a professional, about this pandemic. By the time of meeting him, I had already been listening to Pam Popper locally, which was how I indirectly found out about Ohio Stands Up that brought Mr. Mc Donald to our state.
I never understood the term "Karen" until I read this book. It happened to me in New Albany, Ohio at the OSU gym. Only me and another woman were in a locker room. I was eating a Luna bar after a swim and getting dressed. We were divided by a wall of lockers. She harrassed me about not wearing a mask, eating, using my personal hair dryer in the winter (they closed up the hair dryer stations) and even told me to "Shut Up until I put my mask on and not talk to her." I complained to management who essentially empathized with her. However, I have not seen her since. This was sometime in 2020.
I agree with everything Mr. McDonald says. I have begun to share this with my friends, my clients who I know would appreciate this, my family, people I speak to in general. I am sure the liberal community will have odds with this book and I know why they would; especially the chapters about men and women. Women refuse to take responsibility for their wrong doing. I have always been devoted to Women's History, since I was a little girl and learned how to read. We are not perfect and some women's dedication to pretending we are is so ridiculous. It shows a lack of knowledge with women's history. I think all suffragists and suffragettes would agree with Mr. McDonalds book and what this world has come to. I know my personal ancestors would. I think our founding fathers would for sure. They did not create our country to be, what I knew it to be growing up, so that it would be destroyed with a virus, government and corporate America. I want to keep our country what it was. Safe and secure. I want to see my clients in healthy relationships. Especially since I work with survivors of Narcissists. Never have I known so many stories of men who feel entitled to be lazy, live off of others than criticize their partners or wives - because of their repressed shame, a lack of pride, and these women are beautiful, intelligent, wonderful people who are trapped in a trauma bond with these ne'er do wells.
Mr. McDonald, you are a brave man. You are showing us what we already know to be true and giving us the knowledge from your examples and research to help us have discussions. My women's group is going to be doing a book discussion at my home in September featuring your book. We are all looking forward to it and we aren't even a book group. Just like minded intelligent, professional women who are critical thinkers. Thank you!
My father came from Hungary, leaving in 1956 as an 18 year old, so many people understand what this means. I grew up learning what this life was like. This is why I understand and appreciate what Mr. McDonald is saying.
I met Mr. McDonald before I purchased and read his book. I heard him talk here in Columbus, Ohio. He struck me as a very down to earth man and this was enough for me to buy his book. I also enjoyed his talk. He was saying everything I had been waiting to hear from a professional, about this pandemic. By the time of meeting him, I had already been listening to Pam Popper locally, which was how I indirectly found out about Ohio Stands Up that brought Mr. Mc Donald to our state.
I never understood the term "Karen" until I read this book. It happened to me in New Albany, Ohio at the OSU gym. Only me and another woman were in a locker room. I was eating a Luna bar after a swim and getting dressed. We were divided by a wall of lockers. She harrassed me about not wearing a mask, eating, using my personal hair dryer in the winter (they closed up the hair dryer stations) and even told me to "Shut Up until I put my mask on and not talk to her." I complained to management who essentially empathized with her. However, I have not seen her since. This was sometime in 2020.
I agree with everything Mr. McDonald says. I have begun to share this with my friends, my clients who I know would appreciate this, my family, people I speak to in general. I am sure the liberal community will have odds with this book and I know why they would; especially the chapters about men and women. Women refuse to take responsibility for their wrong doing. I have always been devoted to Women's History, since I was a little girl and learned how to read. We are not perfect and some women's dedication to pretending we are is so ridiculous. It shows a lack of knowledge with women's history. I think all suffragists and suffragettes would agree with Mr. McDonalds book and what this world has come to. I know my personal ancestors would. I think our founding fathers would for sure. They did not create our country to be, what I knew it to be growing up, so that it would be destroyed with a virus, government and corporate America. I want to keep our country what it was. Safe and secure. I want to see my clients in healthy relationships. Especially since I work with survivors of Narcissists. Never have I known so many stories of men who feel entitled to be lazy, live off of others than criticize their partners or wives - because of their repressed shame, a lack of pride, and these women are beautiful, intelligent, wonderful people who are trapped in a trauma bond with these ne'er do wells.
Mr. McDonald, you are a brave man. You are showing us what we already know to be true and giving us the knowledge from your examples and research to help us have discussions. My women's group is going to be doing a book discussion at my home in September featuring your book. We are all looking forward to it and we aren't even a book group. Just like minded intelligent, professional women who are critical thinkers. Thank you!
Read
July 28, 2022review of
Mark McDonald M.D.'s United States of Fear
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 24, 2022
For the full review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticF...
I was raised in a conservative Republican Christian household. My parents hated each other's guts & separated by the time I was 9. I found them both to be completely delusional, self-serving, & in denial. I suspect that many of my peers had similar experiences & that that's partially why so many of us became radicalized. But everything changes all the time & what might've been more alert & aware in 1970 might've deteriorated into imbecility by 2020. W/ this in mind, I read this bk, as I have others recently, w/ an attitude of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In other words, while I have basic disagreements w/ it philosophically, I found other parts to be accurate & worth considering. In fact, I found it, at 1st, to keenly express my own feelings & observations.
"In the summer of 2020, the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy with ADHD declined to bring him to my office for his three-month medication follow-up visit. "We haven't been going out much recently,""
[..]
"After insisting that an in-person visit would be necessary for optimal care, I suggested she drop him off at the building instead. He was old enough to come upstairs by himself. This launched her into a hysterical rant about the dangers of her son walking through a public building and the health risk he would assume, not to mention the possibility of the family contracting a terrifying, highly contagious disease.
"Despite evidence to the contrary—that children are essentially immune to the Chinese Wuhan virus and even act as barriers to its spread—she insisted that I was uninformed, unreasonable, and cruel for demanding that her son come to my office in person to discuss his medications. A day later, I received another email, this one from her husband, apologizing on behalf of his wife, thanking me for helping care for their son all these years, but announcing that they would be seeking a new psychiatrist." - pp 1-2
This brief quote on its own opens multiple cans of worms for me. 1st, I question whether ADHD as a diagnosis isn't just another way of saying that a person has plenty of energy & very little focus. I don't think that's an illness & don't think it shd be medicated. I also think that medication adds a whole other set of problems. But that's really a different matter than what the story's about. SO:
2nd, I think that the mass media's fear-mongering has generated a fear of a pandemic that's just the usual thing, nothing to be afraid of. People grow & decline physically & mentally. Eventually, something comes along that pushes the physical decline over the edge into death. If you want to postpone that happening take better care of yourself: don't get fat, don't be addicted to anything. But you can't postpone it forever, eventually you're going to die. Get used to it, maybe it's just the way nature works & not really something to be afraid of.
3rd, That brings us to the mother who's apparently just another neurotic hypochondriac. Don't let people like this run yr life, they'll ruin it & make you sicker than anything they're exaggeratedly afraid of is ever likely to.
4th, I might as well mention that calling COVID-19 the "Chinese Wuhan virus" seems loaded on its own. I don't think viruses have nationalities. Whether COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China, I don't know & I don't care. If it exists at all in the way that we're constantly being told it does doesn't really matter. It's just another virus, it'll do what viruses do (if they even exist) & that'll be that. It doesn't matter where it came from.
"When fear no longer protects from harm but simply inhibits one from living fully, it ceases to be helpful. When fear becomes the primary driver of decision-making, the quality of our decisions begins to suffer." - p 4
"In the extreme, when fear spreads throughout an entire society, the effect is paralyzing. Decision-making becomes irrational and reactive. The sensationalizing of outlier events and the pursuit of safety supplants sound public policy. Media begin covering the "fear story" and serving it to their audience on a regular basis." - p 4
& it's w/ statements like these that the good doctor & I are on the same page.
"Children and adolescents, for example, suffer more anxiety today than when I began my career. Although there are multiple reasons for this, the most important one, from my perspective as a clinician, is the rise of social media. Regardless of the country studied, the adolescent population shows a predisposition to internet and cell phone addiction, which strongly correlates with sleep deficit, anxiety, stress, and depression." - p 5
& that, too, seems reinforced by my own observations. The next bk that I'll be reviewing is Jaron Lanier's Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now in wch I think he gives an excellent analysis of the way commercially-driven behavior modification affects social media users. But w/o even referring to Lanier's take on such things any further at the moment, I see social media as what I call the PEER PRESSURE COOKER. On the one hand, I think it's potentially wonderful that people can establish an international group of friends that they can share text & images & sound w/ so easily. On the other hand, these 'friendships' are superficial - if only b/c of the limits of technologically interfacing as opposed to actual in-person encounters - although I think the problem goes much deeper than that.
Humans, perhaps all living creatures, are herd or hive animals. It seems to me that conformist behavior is a sort of safety reflex - if one creaure runs from a possible danger, all of them do - but I doubt that any other creatures have developed a meta-awareness of this behavior & further developed a sense of how to manipulate it for reasons irrelevant to danger-avoidance. Some humans have: commercial interests know that if they change what's fashionable they can sell new clothes, commercial interests know that if they make people insecure about the quality of their appearance they can then sell them products like make-up & jewelry that're sold as making their user beautiful. The list goes on & on.. but what social media seems to do 'best' is offer people the 'security' of 'being on the right side': by conforming to mass opinions that seem to carry moral authority they're given the self-delusion that they, too, are on moral high ground. What the people thusly manipulated seem to miss is that being so thoughtlessly manipulable they can be pushed in any direction whatsoever as long as the delusion of moral high ground is maintained.
& here, I think, is where the anxiety & stress enters: the constant checking of social media accts on one's portable computer carries the danger that one might be 'on the wrong side', that one might be 'out of fashion', that one is somehow 'losing the competition'. A plunge off the precipice is always imminent & it's not always clear what 'has to be done' to prevent falling off into the abyss of being an unacceptable 'non-person'. Basically, the surest way of not falling into ignominy is to conform to whatever the majority opinions are, to not intentionally or accidentally express something that seems strange or unacceptable to one's immediate herd. This must be particularly hard on children & adolescents who're growing into socializing, just beginning to figure it all out. Adults have reached a somewhat rigid phase of socialization where their behaviors are more solidly in conformity w/ whatever social group that've developed into, the challenges are fewer b/c the fluidity is less.
"When the pandemic arrived in 2020, a new expression of fear emerged. Across the full patient spectrum, complaints of worry, insomnia, and drug cravings increased. Patients of mine who had been stable for months or years suddenly required medication dose changes. Former patients returned for therapy because they were struggling to cope. New patients nearly universally cited anxiety as their reason for seeking help." - p 6
& I've heard from an anxiety therapist friend of mine that GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) has indeed been on the rise since the quarantine. What I object to in the above is even referring to the "pandemic" instead of the lockdown &/or the quarantine b/c, IMO, it's the Draconian enforced restrictions on people's lives & the fear-mongering that's used to promote them that's the health problem. The so-called "pandemic", if there even is one, is of considerably lesser importance. It's no surprise that weak & impressionable people wd get bogged down in anxiety when every day they're barraged w/ nonsense about their being beseiged by something that's going to kill them if they aren't extremely vigilant. But, don't misunderstand, the author, McDonald, & I are basically in agreement, I'm only being nitpicky about the use of the word "pandemic".
"In April 2020, the director of the Didi Hirsch Suicide Prevention Center announced the hotline had received 1,800 calls in March compared to only twenty in February." - p 6
& if suicide hotlines were really interested in preventing suicide they'd've immediately launched major lawsuits against the fear-mongering mass media - b/c they're to blame - or, at least, made prominent public statements showing what bad affect all this pandemic publicity was causing. But, of course, these suicide prevention hotlines are part & parcel of the overall problem, not a solution to it.
"I noticed in my regular walks around the neighborhood that few people would greet or even acknowledge me. Many would avoid me entirely by abandoning the sidewalk in preference for using the street for their afternoon strolls. I never wore a mask outdoors, and I am certain this terrified them." - p 7
I remember walking thru my neighborhood early on (w/o a mask) when the stay-in-yr-homes mindset was strong & not seeing a single other person out on the streets. Even tho I was never paranoid enuf to think it was following me, for about 10 to 15 minutes of my walk a helicopter was flying overhead. That helicopter certainly added to the tension but I continued to walk to a park where I probably sat & read for awhile before returning home. There was a time when maybe 95% of the people I saw taking walks in the park wore masks even tho the most overkill health announcements didn't generally call for them when one was walking by oneself outside w/ no-one close around. The fear was preposterously exaggerated & completely unrealistic.
"Rather than explain the scientific basis for their decisions, politicians and unelected bureaucrats simply repeated empty slogans such as "Better safe than sorry" and "We're all in this together." In April 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo famously said, in defending his statewide lockdown policy, "If it saves just one life, I'll be happy."
"This absurd fallacy became the basis for many destructive policies to come , most of which accomplished little or nothing and, in fact, actually cost many American lives. In 2020, nearly 40,000 Americans died in traffic accidents according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report. Nearly all those lives could have been saved if we had reduced the speed limit to fifteen miles per hour. Of course, we would never do that because it would incapacitate the country." - pp 7-8
[..]
"In other words, there would be a cost. But the question of cost never came up when government officials chose to impose lockdowns." - p 8
& I agree w/ the author 100%. Imagine if we decided that the way to end crime was to strap everyone to a bed in a locked room & leave them there. They'd die but that sure wd lower the crime rate dramatically - except for the crime of confining them in the 1st place - &, to my mind, the imposition of the quarantine is a crime.
"Dr. Simone Gold, who went on to found America's Frontline Doctors, called me to ask if I would be interested in participating in a doctors' summit to bring attention to government and institutional mismanagement of the pandemic." - p 10
& these doctors were marginalized & ridiculed & censored but still managed to be widely listened-to anyway. I have a bk of Gold's that I intend to read & review eventually.
"One month later, I found myself standing alongside Dr. Gold and a dozen other physicians on the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., speaking to a live audience of millions on the viral pandemic and the growing catastophe of the government response to it." - p 12
"Later that night, the original recording and all re-posts were taken down by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. As this was occurring, President Trump and his son tweeted links to our talk. The tweets were taken down, and Don Jr.'s account was suspended." - p 13
& b/c Trump supported the Frontline Doctors they were more easily stigmatized as 'right-wing' - but since when is pointing out fear-mongering & manipulativeness by the government & mass media 'right-wing'?! If the so-called 'left-wing' were doing its job of resisting the police state it wd've been out there supporting them.
"Much of the nation had disconnected from basic reality. I began to call this condition a "mass delusional psychosis."" - p 14
& that's a description that I find wholly appropriate.
"People who feel a lack of agency over their own safety often resort to aggressive attempts to control those around them. Given that, the appearance of the "Karen" phenomenon in American society was not all that surprising. Countless videos were uploaded to social media showing angry, hysterical women screaming at others for not wearing a mask, often chasing them and even physically attacking them." - p 21
"There is a reason why the name "Karen" was chosen to describe people who accost strangers and shame them for "unsafe" behaviors such as standing too close or not wearing a mask outdoors: These people are overwhelmingly women." - p 27
"Wherever there was a mandate, there was a Karen. Two men were assaulted by a young woman outdoors in Manhatten Beach in August 2020 when she saw them without masks and threw coffee in one man's face. A month earlier, a woman in San Diego emptied a can of mace onto a couple eating hotdogs—maskless—at a dog park." - p 77
I can add my own story to those above:
"The other day I was at a big park & I saw an old guy, masked, walking his little
dog. He threw a little ball for the dog to chase. A woman, also masked, started
running toward the old guy, screaming at him something to the effect of "What do
you think you're doing?!" & flailing her arms as if she were going to beat him.
The old guy cringed and the woman stormed away. Then the old guy went back
to throwing the ball for his dog to chase. That was part of my inspiration to coin
the word "quarantiniac"." - pp 251-252, Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey Through the PANDEMIC PANIC ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... )
Note that I don't use the term "Karen", wch I was previously unfamiliar w/ before reading this bk. I suspect that the term is in more common use in 'conservative' political circles that I don't have much to do w/. Even tho my own "Karen" story features a woman as the attacker, I hesitate to generalize the phenomenon to being mostly women. After all, this one incident is probably the only one I personally witnessed. Hence, I'll stick w/ "quarantiniac" to mean a person driven insane by the quarantine.
"Meanwhile, with everyone stuck at home in front of a screen, media had a captive audience." - p 22
Another, IMO, completely valid & important point. & the media hammered out more ridiculous overkill sensationalist fear-mongering than I've ever witnessed before - all to keep as many people as possible addicted to this fake 'news' in order to up their advertising revenues. After all, people just had to tune into the next imaginary thing that was going to kill them!
"Nor was there any mention of outpatient treatment options unless they were being attacked as ineffective and dangerous.
"These attacks began in early 2020 with hydroxychloroquine, a fifty-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" - p 23
I 1st heard of hydroxychloroquine from my liberal neighbor who ridiculed it something along the lines of 'Trump has been telling people they can use something like household bleach for COVID. It gives them heart attacks!'. I had no idea what he was talking about. His story had obviously come from the mass media. Later, I investigated this more & reproduced some of an article on the subject in my PANDEMIC PANIC bk:
"How the World’s top medical journals were cynically exploited by Big Pharma
"Elizabeth Woodworth
"SUMMARY
"A publishing scandal recently erupted around the use of the anti-malarial drug
hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid 19. It is also known as quinine and
chloroquine, and is on the WHO list of essential medicines.
"The bark of the South American quina-quina tree has been used to treat malaria
for 400 years. Quinine, a generic drug costing pennies a dose, is available for
purchase online. In rare cases it can cause dizziness and irregular heartbeat.
In late May, 2020, The Lancet published a four-author study claiming that HCQ
used in hospitals to treat Covid-19 had been shown conclusively to be a hazard
for heart death. The data allegedly covered 96,000 patients in 671 hospitals on
six continents.
"After the article had spent 13 days in the headlines, dogged by scientific
objections, three of the authors retracted it on June 5."
[..]
"- https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/23/t..."
- pp 602-604, Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey Through the PANDEMIC PANIC ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... )
I have no idea whether hydroxychloroquine is of any use in treating respiratory problems but I do know that I wd've never recognized it as Quinine, something that I'd heard of many times, from my liberal friend's description.
For the full review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticF...
Mark McDonald M.D.'s United States of Fear
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 24, 2022
For the full review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticF...
I was raised in a conservative Republican Christian household. My parents hated each other's guts & separated by the time I was 9. I found them both to be completely delusional, self-serving, & in denial. I suspect that many of my peers had similar experiences & that that's partially why so many of us became radicalized. But everything changes all the time & what might've been more alert & aware in 1970 might've deteriorated into imbecility by 2020. W/ this in mind, I read this bk, as I have others recently, w/ an attitude of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In other words, while I have basic disagreements w/ it philosophically, I found other parts to be accurate & worth considering. In fact, I found it, at 1st, to keenly express my own feelings & observations.
"In the summer of 2020, the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy with ADHD declined to bring him to my office for his three-month medication follow-up visit. "We haven't been going out much recently,""
[..]
"After insisting that an in-person visit would be necessary for optimal care, I suggested she drop him off at the building instead. He was old enough to come upstairs by himself. This launched her into a hysterical rant about the dangers of her son walking through a public building and the health risk he would assume, not to mention the possibility of the family contracting a terrifying, highly contagious disease.
"Despite evidence to the contrary—that children are essentially immune to the Chinese Wuhan virus and even act as barriers to its spread—she insisted that I was uninformed, unreasonable, and cruel for demanding that her son come to my office in person to discuss his medications. A day later, I received another email, this one from her husband, apologizing on behalf of his wife, thanking me for helping care for their son all these years, but announcing that they would be seeking a new psychiatrist." - pp 1-2
This brief quote on its own opens multiple cans of worms for me. 1st, I question whether ADHD as a diagnosis isn't just another way of saying that a person has plenty of energy & very little focus. I don't think that's an illness & don't think it shd be medicated. I also think that medication adds a whole other set of problems. But that's really a different matter than what the story's about. SO:
2nd, I think that the mass media's fear-mongering has generated a fear of a pandemic that's just the usual thing, nothing to be afraid of. People grow & decline physically & mentally. Eventually, something comes along that pushes the physical decline over the edge into death. If you want to postpone that happening take better care of yourself: don't get fat, don't be addicted to anything. But you can't postpone it forever, eventually you're going to die. Get used to it, maybe it's just the way nature works & not really something to be afraid of.
3rd, That brings us to the mother who's apparently just another neurotic hypochondriac. Don't let people like this run yr life, they'll ruin it & make you sicker than anything they're exaggeratedly afraid of is ever likely to.
4th, I might as well mention that calling COVID-19 the "Chinese Wuhan virus" seems loaded on its own. I don't think viruses have nationalities. Whether COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China, I don't know & I don't care. If it exists at all in the way that we're constantly being told it does doesn't really matter. It's just another virus, it'll do what viruses do (if they even exist) & that'll be that. It doesn't matter where it came from.
"When fear no longer protects from harm but simply inhibits one from living fully, it ceases to be helpful. When fear becomes the primary driver of decision-making, the quality of our decisions begins to suffer." - p 4
"In the extreme, when fear spreads throughout an entire society, the effect is paralyzing. Decision-making becomes irrational and reactive. The sensationalizing of outlier events and the pursuit of safety supplants sound public policy. Media begin covering the "fear story" and serving it to their audience on a regular basis." - p 4
& it's w/ statements like these that the good doctor & I are on the same page.
"Children and adolescents, for example, suffer more anxiety today than when I began my career. Although there are multiple reasons for this, the most important one, from my perspective as a clinician, is the rise of social media. Regardless of the country studied, the adolescent population shows a predisposition to internet and cell phone addiction, which strongly correlates with sleep deficit, anxiety, stress, and depression." - p 5
& that, too, seems reinforced by my own observations. The next bk that I'll be reviewing is Jaron Lanier's Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now in wch I think he gives an excellent analysis of the way commercially-driven behavior modification affects social media users. But w/o even referring to Lanier's take on such things any further at the moment, I see social media as what I call the PEER PRESSURE COOKER. On the one hand, I think it's potentially wonderful that people can establish an international group of friends that they can share text & images & sound w/ so easily. On the other hand, these 'friendships' are superficial - if only b/c of the limits of technologically interfacing as opposed to actual in-person encounters - although I think the problem goes much deeper than that.
Humans, perhaps all living creatures, are herd or hive animals. It seems to me that conformist behavior is a sort of safety reflex - if one creaure runs from a possible danger, all of them do - but I doubt that any other creatures have developed a meta-awareness of this behavior & further developed a sense of how to manipulate it for reasons irrelevant to danger-avoidance. Some humans have: commercial interests know that if they change what's fashionable they can sell new clothes, commercial interests know that if they make people insecure about the quality of their appearance they can then sell them products like make-up & jewelry that're sold as making their user beautiful. The list goes on & on.. but what social media seems to do 'best' is offer people the 'security' of 'being on the right side': by conforming to mass opinions that seem to carry moral authority they're given the self-delusion that they, too, are on moral high ground. What the people thusly manipulated seem to miss is that being so thoughtlessly manipulable they can be pushed in any direction whatsoever as long as the delusion of moral high ground is maintained.
& here, I think, is where the anxiety & stress enters: the constant checking of social media accts on one's portable computer carries the danger that one might be 'on the wrong side', that one might be 'out of fashion', that one is somehow 'losing the competition'. A plunge off the precipice is always imminent & it's not always clear what 'has to be done' to prevent falling off into the abyss of being an unacceptable 'non-person'. Basically, the surest way of not falling into ignominy is to conform to whatever the majority opinions are, to not intentionally or accidentally express something that seems strange or unacceptable to one's immediate herd. This must be particularly hard on children & adolescents who're growing into socializing, just beginning to figure it all out. Adults have reached a somewhat rigid phase of socialization where their behaviors are more solidly in conformity w/ whatever social group that've developed into, the challenges are fewer b/c the fluidity is less.
"When the pandemic arrived in 2020, a new expression of fear emerged. Across the full patient spectrum, complaints of worry, insomnia, and drug cravings increased. Patients of mine who had been stable for months or years suddenly required medication dose changes. Former patients returned for therapy because they were struggling to cope. New patients nearly universally cited anxiety as their reason for seeking help." - p 6
& I've heard from an anxiety therapist friend of mine that GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) has indeed been on the rise since the quarantine. What I object to in the above is even referring to the "pandemic" instead of the lockdown &/or the quarantine b/c, IMO, it's the Draconian enforced restrictions on people's lives & the fear-mongering that's used to promote them that's the health problem. The so-called "pandemic", if there even is one, is of considerably lesser importance. It's no surprise that weak & impressionable people wd get bogged down in anxiety when every day they're barraged w/ nonsense about their being beseiged by something that's going to kill them if they aren't extremely vigilant. But, don't misunderstand, the author, McDonald, & I are basically in agreement, I'm only being nitpicky about the use of the word "pandemic".
"In April 2020, the director of the Didi Hirsch Suicide Prevention Center announced the hotline had received 1,800 calls in March compared to only twenty in February." - p 6
& if suicide hotlines were really interested in preventing suicide they'd've immediately launched major lawsuits against the fear-mongering mass media - b/c they're to blame - or, at least, made prominent public statements showing what bad affect all this pandemic publicity was causing. But, of course, these suicide prevention hotlines are part & parcel of the overall problem, not a solution to it.
"I noticed in my regular walks around the neighborhood that few people would greet or even acknowledge me. Many would avoid me entirely by abandoning the sidewalk in preference for using the street for their afternoon strolls. I never wore a mask outdoors, and I am certain this terrified them." - p 7
I remember walking thru my neighborhood early on (w/o a mask) when the stay-in-yr-homes mindset was strong & not seeing a single other person out on the streets. Even tho I was never paranoid enuf to think it was following me, for about 10 to 15 minutes of my walk a helicopter was flying overhead. That helicopter certainly added to the tension but I continued to walk to a park where I probably sat & read for awhile before returning home. There was a time when maybe 95% of the people I saw taking walks in the park wore masks even tho the most overkill health announcements didn't generally call for them when one was walking by oneself outside w/ no-one close around. The fear was preposterously exaggerated & completely unrealistic.
"Rather than explain the scientific basis for their decisions, politicians and unelected bureaucrats simply repeated empty slogans such as "Better safe than sorry" and "We're all in this together." In April 2020, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo famously said, in defending his statewide lockdown policy, "If it saves just one life, I'll be happy."
"This absurd fallacy became the basis for many destructive policies to come , most of which accomplished little or nothing and, in fact, actually cost many American lives. In 2020, nearly 40,000 Americans died in traffic accidents according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report. Nearly all those lives could have been saved if we had reduced the speed limit to fifteen miles per hour. Of course, we would never do that because it would incapacitate the country." - pp 7-8
[..]
"In other words, there would be a cost. But the question of cost never came up when government officials chose to impose lockdowns." - p 8
& I agree w/ the author 100%. Imagine if we decided that the way to end crime was to strap everyone to a bed in a locked room & leave them there. They'd die but that sure wd lower the crime rate dramatically - except for the crime of confining them in the 1st place - &, to my mind, the imposition of the quarantine is a crime.
"Dr. Simone Gold, who went on to found America's Frontline Doctors, called me to ask if I would be interested in participating in a doctors' summit to bring attention to government and institutional mismanagement of the pandemic." - p 10
& these doctors were marginalized & ridiculed & censored but still managed to be widely listened-to anyway. I have a bk of Gold's that I intend to read & review eventually.
"One month later, I found myself standing alongside Dr. Gold and a dozen other physicians on the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., speaking to a live audience of millions on the viral pandemic and the growing catastophe of the government response to it." - p 12
"Later that night, the original recording and all re-posts were taken down by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. As this was occurring, President Trump and his son tweeted links to our talk. The tweets were taken down, and Don Jr.'s account was suspended." - p 13
& b/c Trump supported the Frontline Doctors they were more easily stigmatized as 'right-wing' - but since when is pointing out fear-mongering & manipulativeness by the government & mass media 'right-wing'?! If the so-called 'left-wing' were doing its job of resisting the police state it wd've been out there supporting them.
"Much of the nation had disconnected from basic reality. I began to call this condition a "mass delusional psychosis."" - p 14
& that's a description that I find wholly appropriate.
"People who feel a lack of agency over their own safety often resort to aggressive attempts to control those around them. Given that, the appearance of the "Karen" phenomenon in American society was not all that surprising. Countless videos were uploaded to social media showing angry, hysterical women screaming at others for not wearing a mask, often chasing them and even physically attacking them." - p 21
"There is a reason why the name "Karen" was chosen to describe people who accost strangers and shame them for "unsafe" behaviors such as standing too close or not wearing a mask outdoors: These people are overwhelmingly women." - p 27
"Wherever there was a mandate, there was a Karen. Two men were assaulted by a young woman outdoors in Manhatten Beach in August 2020 when she saw them without masks and threw coffee in one man's face. A month earlier, a woman in San Diego emptied a can of mace onto a couple eating hotdogs—maskless—at a dog park." - p 77
I can add my own story to those above:
"The other day I was at a big park & I saw an old guy, masked, walking his little
dog. He threw a little ball for the dog to chase. A woman, also masked, started
running toward the old guy, screaming at him something to the effect of "What do
you think you're doing?!" & flailing her arms as if she were going to beat him.
The old guy cringed and the woman stormed away. Then the old guy went back
to throwing the ball for his dog to chase. That was part of my inspiration to coin
the word "quarantiniac"." - pp 251-252, Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey Through the PANDEMIC PANIC ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... )
Note that I don't use the term "Karen", wch I was previously unfamiliar w/ before reading this bk. I suspect that the term is in more common use in 'conservative' political circles that I don't have much to do w/. Even tho my own "Karen" story features a woman as the attacker, I hesitate to generalize the phenomenon to being mostly women. After all, this one incident is probably the only one I personally witnessed. Hence, I'll stick w/ "quarantiniac" to mean a person driven insane by the quarantine.
"Meanwhile, with everyone stuck at home in front of a screen, media had a captive audience." - p 22
Another, IMO, completely valid & important point. & the media hammered out more ridiculous overkill sensationalist fear-mongering than I've ever witnessed before - all to keep as many people as possible addicted to this fake 'news' in order to up their advertising revenues. After all, people just had to tune into the next imaginary thing that was going to kill them!
"Nor was there any mention of outpatient treatment options unless they were being attacked as ineffective and dangerous.
"These attacks began in early 2020 with hydroxychloroquine, a fifty-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" - p 23
I 1st heard of hydroxychloroquine from my liberal neighbor who ridiculed it something along the lines of 'Trump has been telling people they can use something like household bleach for COVID. It gives them heart attacks!'. I had no idea what he was talking about. His story had obviously come from the mass media. Later, I investigated this more & reproduced some of an article on the subject in my PANDEMIC PANIC bk:
"How the World’s top medical journals were cynically exploited by Big Pharma
"Elizabeth Woodworth
"SUMMARY
"A publishing scandal recently erupted around the use of the anti-malarial drug
hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid 19. It is also known as quinine and
chloroquine, and is on the WHO list of essential medicines.
"The bark of the South American quina-quina tree has been used to treat malaria
for 400 years. Quinine, a generic drug costing pennies a dose, is available for
purchase online. In rare cases it can cause dizziness and irregular heartbeat.
In late May, 2020, The Lancet published a four-author study claiming that HCQ
used in hospitals to treat Covid-19 had been shown conclusively to be a hazard
for heart death. The data allegedly covered 96,000 patients in 671 hospitals on
six continents.
"After the article had spent 13 days in the headlines, dogged by scientific
objections, three of the authors retracted it on June 5."
[..]
"- https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/23/t..."
- pp 602-604, Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey Through the PANDEMIC PANIC ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book202... )
I have no idea whether hydroxychloroquine is of any use in treating respiratory problems but I do know that I wd've never recognized it as Quinine, something that I'd heard of many times, from my liberal friend's description.
For the full review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticF...
June 20, 2023
An excellent guide to overcoming the continual fear pushed by the media, the government and the medical community. Using reason and logic the author, an LA based psychiatrist, shows the damage done over the past three years due to the Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccines. Using TRUE science and not the stuff Dr. Fauci has been pushing, he shows how the virus was blown out of all sense of proportion and the damage done was never necessary. Very early on in 2020 I wondered about many of the things we were being told. Not being a member of the medical profession I thought I must be wrong. This book showed me I wasn't and that we are not meant to live in fear. Use common sense in all things and don't put so much trust in people who have lied before and will again, including the media and "scientists". He also covers the damage being done by the liberal agenda that demonizes good men. The confusion being caused in this nation by people with twisted beliefs and the attacks on decent, loving, committed men is an atrocity. We need to return to the days when families were made up of a mother, father and children and parents took charge of their children and fathers were not just the financial support of the family, but a reassuring presence in the lives of their wives and their children.
February 17, 2022
I almost don’t have words to express my admiration and thanks for this book. This short (~100pp), small book is almost a broadside, but is so packed with clear thinking and food for thought that it is a giant among works. It’s a fast read with enough content to last a lifetime.
Dr. McDonald’s theory of the case is that the United States (and the world) has been gripped by an irrational, reactionary fear in the wake of the CCP virus pandemic (aka “Covid-19” etc.). How did we get here? It’s easy to point to biased and muzzled media, social media and other censorship, cancel culture . . . all of these strange, odd bedfellows stunted healthy, vigorous debate about what we are facing and how to deal with it. But is there something more than that?
Oh, yes indeed there is more, and it is this part that is ultimately riveting. I am not going to present a spoiler here because I would absolutely love it if everyone who shares a concern about the future of freedom, heroism and common sense reads it for themselves and draws their own conclusions. (Men are especially encouraged to grab a copy! 😊 )
Dr. McDonald’s theory of the case is that the United States (and the world) has been gripped by an irrational, reactionary fear in the wake of the CCP virus pandemic (aka “Covid-19” etc.). How did we get here? It’s easy to point to biased and muzzled media, social media and other censorship, cancel culture . . . all of these strange, odd bedfellows stunted healthy, vigorous debate about what we are facing and how to deal with it. But is there something more than that?
Oh, yes indeed there is more, and it is this part that is ultimately riveting. I am not going to present a spoiler here because I would absolutely love it if everyone who shares a concern about the future of freedom, heroism and common sense reads it for themselves and draws their own conclusions. (Men are especially encouraged to grab a copy! 😊 )
February 6, 2022
Here psychiatrist Mark McDonald argues that Covid has essentially become a religion for most people, with vaccines and masks being emblematic of compliance and fear. Dr. McDonald also derides the mainstream media and big tech for their role in pushing fear porn and censoring anything contrary to the acceptable narrative, resulting in (or perhaps caused by) “mass formation psychosis” (good luck Googling this term). A controversial read right now given today’s standards but it’ll be interesting if his contentions eventually turn out to be accepted as true a la Schopenhauer (I’m obviously biased).
July 26, 2022
Fear as the result of emasculation, nice!
What is novel about this book is not it’s position on COVID, as I suspect that most of those who read it are already on the author’s side of the argument. What is novel is the inclusion of the decline of masculinity as one of the main reasons for the state of fear that brought the COVID mandates, lockdowns and forced vaccination. As the total amount of masculine energy declines, women’s anxiety naturally rises as a primal response. And according to the author, It was that “free-floating” anxiety that was ultimately used by the mass media to scare people into submission.
What is novel about this book is not it’s position on COVID, as I suspect that most of those who read it are already on the author’s side of the argument. What is novel is the inclusion of the decline of masculinity as one of the main reasons for the state of fear that brought the COVID mandates, lockdowns and forced vaccination. As the total amount of masculine energy declines, women’s anxiety naturally rises as a primal response. And according to the author, It was that “free-floating” anxiety that was ultimately used by the mass media to scare people into submission.
July 9, 2022
A short book, but a worthy read. I like McDonald. He's a rational voice in an irrational world.
'This is where we are now - a small group of self-appointed masters giving orders to American citizens too consumed with fear to think for themselves. Will we simply cede our autonomy to a corrupt state that promises to reward the sacrifice of our liberties with eternal security? We can do better. We must do better. We must end the pandemic of fear - before it's too late.'
'This is where we are now - a small group of self-appointed masters giving orders to American citizens too consumed with fear to think for themselves. Will we simply cede our autonomy to a corrupt state that promises to reward the sacrifice of our liberties with eternal security? We can do better. We must do better. We must end the pandemic of fear - before it's too late.'
February 4, 2022
Excellent Analysis of How Society Allowed Fear to Prevail
This brief, yet thought provoking book is a fascinating account of the mass hysteria generated by governments and the media to control the population and stifle rational discourse. The massive and coordinated efforts to hide the truth have resulted in untold psychological damage from which this nation may never recover.
This brief, yet thought provoking book is a fascinating account of the mass hysteria generated by governments and the media to control the population and stifle rational discourse. The massive and coordinated efforts to hide the truth have resulted in untold psychological damage from which this nation may never recover.
June 18, 2022
This book succinctly and clearly defines, in laymans language, the social pathologies affecting the men and women in America. A must read for anyone wondering about the confusing, unnavigable dating world, the unprecedented rise of anxiety and stress disorders, the fear pandemic, and how to find our way back to normalcy. Only 3ish hours on audible.
December 24, 2021
Yet another essential book on how we lost our collective mind as a society during the “pandemic”. This book is important for other reasons too though, as it explains how we can reverse the trend. Highly recommended.
February 13, 2022
A true analysis of where we are right now in the pandemic written from a psychiatrist's perspective and what he saw in his LA practice. No matter on what side of politics you are on, I highly recommend you read this and see where you find yourself on the fear spectrum.
February 17, 2022
Excellent read! Author does a great job explain from his clinical perspective how we became a nation of fear. How we got to this place as a society. Quick easy read. He also gives his recommendations as a practicing psychologist how we can heal and become better.
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