Technology and Fear

Edward Bernays (1891−1995) was the "the father of public relations" and a true pioneer in the science of propaganda, building on Freud's findings on how we are motivated by emotion not reason. The entire system of  modern propaganda works on fear that is promulgated via the electronic media: television, cell phones, and computers. It is pumped out non-stop and if you pay attention to MSM you'll see that they are all telling you the same thing, albeit with slightly different words.

Today’s news is dominated by the fear of coronavirus, a not particularly lethal illness that from its first appearance has been hyped everywhere you look, and is now becoming the perfect scapegoat for capitalism's new economic crisis on the horizon, one that follows so closely on the previous huge one that, were our attention not grabbed by this false narrative, we would be wondering if we shouldn't be looking for a different economic system to one that crashes every 4-7 years. Instead we are about to have very drastic limitations put on our liberties, particularly on those liberties that are extremely basic (the right to move around and to meet up with other people).

There are around lots of coronaviruses, accounting for most of our seasonal colds. Typically annual infection rates range from 2.8% to 26% in different age groups.

Here is a partial list of other diseases that since 2003 we were told loudly and repeatedly would become pandemics and decimate the human race. Diseases to be very afraid of since they were coming for you if you weren’t very vigilant and forgot to wash your hands, with governments along the way stockpiling at huge cost useless vaccines.

2003 SARS
2005 Avian Flu
2009 Swine Flu
2012 West Nile Virus
2014 Ebola
2015 Mers
2016 Zika
2018 Ebola

Apparently, supermarkets are running out of toilet paper and liquid soap because, along with the abandonment of the most basic common sense, we have forgotten that the most important thing for us is that others wash their hands and keep clean as well. Despite the advice from health authorities to wash our hands all the time (we should of course wash our hands several times a day anyway), for all coronaviruses, transmission likely involves close contact and inoculation of the respiratory tract with infectious secretions via large droplets, ie beware of people coughing or sneezing all over you.

The UK's government's worst scenario would mean half a million people dying from the virus. Really? How would we know anyway, as victims are almost all old and infirm in any case?

AGE	DEATH RATE confirmed cases	DEATH RATE all cases
80+ years old	21.9%	14.8%
70-79 years old		8.0%
60-69 years old		3.6%
50-59 years old		1.3%
40-49 years old		0.4%
30-39 years old		0.2%
20-29 years old		0.2%
10-19 years old		0.2%
0-9 years old		no fatalities

In the US, where universal healthcare is, they're told, just too expensive, the Senate approved 8.3 BILLION dollars in emergency spending for the coronavirus (56 million dollars per infected US citizen, as of when this was written).

But don't dash out to get yourself vaccinated. The US CDC (Centre for Disease Control) gives an optimistic 29% for flu vaccine efficacy (and it does have considerable side effects). Vaccines are Big Business: total revenue from influenza vaccines is estimated by the WHO to have been about $2.2 billion in 2018.

Meanwhile, stock markets are crashing, business activity is down in many sectors, and there will be a new economic crash, though not caused by the coronavirus itself. What sort of economic system do we have that is crashed by an illness killing some 4,000 people in a world of nearly 8 billion? To put this in perspective, there are nearly one-and-a-half million road deaths per year in the world and some 9 million people die of hunger, and in both these cases the victims are not specifically at the end of their natural life expectancy.

There is not much difference between the coronavirus scare and the hyping up nearly two decades ago of the false "Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction" story, leading to the US and its allies invading Iraq in 2003. In 2001,  Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary admitted that $2.3 trillion (you could throw a dollar out the window every second for 73,000 years) could not be accounted for. And never would be, because just one day later the twin towers were brought down and the Pentagon accounts department was impacted by a missile, or an impossible plane (your choice), and its entire archive was destroyed. All of which was used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Is there anything we should be afraid of? Here are some things - not in any particular order - that are not talked about so much, but are much more likely to make our lives short and painful, and which are very interconnected:

• Sophisticated modern technology in the hands of corporations and the governments they control that destroy privacy, and poison people and the Earth
• Outrageous wealth in the hands of very few, allowing them total control over us
• Digital dementia, which is a term coined by neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer to describe an overuse of digital technology resulting in the breakdown of cognitive abilities
• The medicalization of our minds and bodies
• Ubiquitous and pervasive propaganda
• Endless wars
• The degradation and contamination of our food supply
• Mass extinction
• Climate change
• Nuclear and biological weapons

Follow the money.