Back in 2020 When “No One Was Safe”

Matt Orfalea takes us back to March 2020:

Across the media landscape, the already hyperbolic phrase was often cut short to “Nobody is safe.”

“Nobody is safe.” - Chris Cuomo, CNN (10/23/20)

“Nobody is safe.” - Rob Scmitt, Fox News (3/30/20)

“This virus is raging everywhere and no one is safe” - Senator Bob Casey, CNN (11/20/20)

By August 2021, NPR’s Tamara Keith told CBS News that the phrase had “almost become cliche”.

While the world was told “Nobody is safe from COVID-19” the actual infection fatality rate (IFR) was less than 0.5%. In other words, the natural immune systems of approximately 99.5% would defeat the original Alpha COVID variant without a vaccine. For children, the risk of dying is 0.0%. But the constant “Nobody is safe” mantras led citizens to believe the virus was more deadly than it actually was, spreading a man-made pandemic: a hyperpolarizing pandemic of fear.

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Anthrax and COVID

Glenn Greenwald and Saagar Enjeti independently took deep dives to investigate the bizarre and, in fact, highly suspicious, behavior of the U.S. regarding the 2001 anthrax attacks. They discussed their conclusions together on Rumble:

Here's an excerpt of the transcript from their interview:

G. Greenwald: We've been planning the anthrax program we did last night to kind of walk through and remind people of exactly what that attack was, why it was so significant, but also the multiple mysteries embedded within it. And out of the blue, not without knowing I was working on it. You came to me and said, I've currently fallen into this anthrax rabbit hole. And as a result, I've run into a lot of the stuff that you're writing about because I wrote about it almost nonstop for two years in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Tell me what it was that kind of attracted your interest to it? Like what has made you so fascinated by this topic?

Saagar Enjeti: Glenn, for me, it was a lab leak. I mean, at the very beginning, you know, of course, we've done our best to try and dig as deep into lab leak as possible. So, at the very beginning, we started with the Wuhan lab. So obviously we have the Wuhan lab, I think at this point is basically, I mean, I don't really know anybody who doesn't believe that it came out of there. If we can rehash that evidence at a later time, I'll […]

G. Greenwald: I'll tell you some people if you want to find out. But anybody rational does not believe that any longer.

Saagar Enjeti: Yes, there is. There is a tremendous amount, an overwhelming amount of evidence to say that Covid leaked from the Wuhan lab. Then you peel back one layer that's almost boring now at this point. And we look at the U.S. funding. We have Dr. Fauci, Dr. Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance. All of that is now well-established. I wanted to keep going back even more layers. So, then we go to the overall arc of gain-of-function research. Then, I decided to go even higher than gain-of-function research to say, where the hell did this vast amount of money being pumped through the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, even come from? That leads me to the 2007 Review of the Government Accountability Office about specifically the bioterrorism initiatives that were sparked by the anthrax attacks of 2001. And what I realized, Glenn, is that the 2001 anthrax attacks opened the door and changed completely the way that we handled dangers not just here in the United States, but all across the world. And our dirty fingers are all over gain of function, research opportunities all over funding people who are going into caves, which no human being ever would be in in the first place, getting covered in bat poop and then getting bitten, going back into a lab and being like, “Hey, we found this one thing and tried to develop a vaccine for it just in case that somebody ever does go into that.” And instead, we now have actually vast and ample amounts of evidence. Not only did COVID leak from the Wuhan lab but actually it looks like Ebola. There is a very good case to say that the Ebola outbreak in the mid-2010s also came from the lab. Then you go back even further. And so really what I became interested in is your reporting specifically around the anthrax attacks, because the more I realized that it all started with anthrax and the fact was that everyone was ignoring me on it, I was like, oh, well, they solved that one, right? No, actually, not at all. The FBI accused the wrong man, the person that they pinned it on. They just blamed it on him with no due process at this point. I think you have to be an idiot to think that Bruce Ivins was the person responsible for the anthrax. I mean, many of the people who were even involved in the investigation would tell you that. And so actually, I was saying I can't believe Glenn has been so right for so long.

When he mentioned his own anthrax episode, Glenn was referring to the previous night's show, where he connected bizarre and incriminating behavior by the U.S. in the 2001 anthrax attacks to what appears to be dangerous biological weapon experimentation by the U.S. ever since, leading up to what appears to be the U.S. misconduct related to the release of COVID in Wuhan. It is a long, detailed, gripping and convincing episode.

[More . . . ]

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Parents Pushing Back Against Smart Phones as Devices that Enable Social Contagion and Emotional Damage

Parents are pushing back against smartphones for their children, as described by Olivia Reingold, in "The Parents Saying No to Smartphones in her article at The Free Press: ‘How you help them learn to be present, in a task or with a relationship, is one of the top challenges of our generation. Part of that is going to be saying no.’

Nicholas Kardaras specializes in treating young adults aged 17 to 25 with screen addictions at the Omega Recovery treatment center in Austin, Texas. Kardaras says the first hurdle is often convincing patients they’re actually addicted.

“They don’t realize that they have a problem even though they’re on their device for 18 hours a day and flunking out of school because most addicts don’t see their addiction as a problem when they’re in the middle of it,” he tells me.

Kardaras says his patients are often convinced they’re dealing with other issues, like Tourette syndrome or borderline personality disorder, which they’re introduced to through “psychiatrically unwell influencers” on social media.

He said he knows these patients are actually suffering from “social contagion” instead, because the treatment—forbidding access to cell phones and the internet for a short period of time—is usually the cure, which “shouldn’t really happen with genuine borderline personality disorder or genuine gender dysphoria.”

Paradoxically, Kardaras says that almost all of his young patients were raised by “helicopter parents,” many of whom did their best to keep their kids away from smartphones or heavily monitored their internet use.

“A lot of the young people I’ve worked with will say, ‘I don't feel a sense of control in my life,’ ” he says. “They feel like they’re being smothered and being told what to do all the time. But if they take out their phone, and maybe go on a gaming platform, then they feel like they’re conquering fantasy worlds. They feel a sense of empowerment and control.”

The above article links to Ronald Riggio's 2022 article on social contagion: "Social Contagion: How Others Secretly Control Your Behavior: We are often unaware of how others can influence us." Here's an excerpt:

Social contagion is the subtle and sometimes unwitting spread of emotions or behaviors from one individual to others.

Emotional contagion is the spread of emotions through crowds and is the reason why a movie seems funnier if we are in a crowded theater as opposed to watching it alone–our mood is influenced by those laughing around us. The same process would cause a stampeding wave of fear if someone were to suddenly yell “Fire!” in the crowded theater.

A study by Friedman and Riggio (1981) found that emotionally expressive individuals–persons who displayed high instances of nonverbal cues of emotion (primarily facial expressions)–were able to “infect” the emotions/moods of others in the room without any verbal interaction. Subsequent research found that certain individuals are more prone to emotional contagion processes (Doherty, 1997).

Reggio's article did not specifically mention transgender ideology, but he does provide a taxonomy of social contagion includes: "Deliberate Self-Harm. Such as “epidemics” of self-cutting, eating disorders, and suicides." Consider also Abigail Shrier's writings on transgender ideology and social contagion, for which she was viciously attack, even though transgender ideology would clearly be a prime candidate for social contagion.

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