Wake Up Neo...A Pandemic Diary : The Book Intro

This book is about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the American people, from the perspective of a psychiatric clinician. The focus is not on the physical illness caused directly by the virus but rather on the mental health consequences that resulted from the pandemic measures/strategy chosen and enforced/mandated by governmental authority in anticipation of the coming/pending/predicted flu.

In the name of protecting the public’s health, those in command inflicted far more damage than the virus would have done. They destroyed/diminished/suspended the civil institutions that create social capital and form the social safety nets that create/fosters resilience in individuals, families and communities. Two years and 100 billion dollars later, life for most Americans continues to be disrupted/curtailed and stressful with ongoing cycles of infections and restrictions.

Despite the obvious failure, they have not (changed the strategy) devised a more effective strategy to end pandemic measures and restore normalcy. Therefore I have to conclude that our leaders are not interested in restoring normalcy but rather to establish a permanently reduced world, what they call/label the “new normal”. Evidence suggests that their actions are motivated by personal gain and hidden agendas rather than the welfare and well-being of the general public. (Nefarious intent)

Severe prolonged stress, hardship, adversity, trauma are at the root of most psychiatric disorders. Chronic and severe adversity is even more damaging when it occurs in childhood and adolescence because those are years of rapid and profound brain development. Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) was first studied in the 1990’s and is recognized to have damaging effects on learning, behavior and physical health across the lifespan.

Adults with ACE characteristically present with depression, anxiety, panic, mood swings, anger, impulsivity, suicide and addiction. ACE correlates with higher rates of medical problems in adulthood, including obesity, HTN, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, cancer, and gastrointestinal disorders.

The most effective intervention is to treat symptoms and underlying causes as early as possible, or better yet to prevent trauma in the first place. Prolonged exposure (Longer durations of) to stress and adversity correlates with more extensive and severe damage that is more resistant to conventional treatments and causes increased morbidity/functional impairment and emotional distress in the individual.

Two years of reduced existence/disrupted life, with suspension of (normal) civil institutions and  daily predictions of danger and doom, is a significant percentage of a human life at any age, but especially in young people. In March 2020, if the strategy had been to distribute vitamins, thermometers and cold medicines, and to guarantee every American 4 weeks of paid sick leave/ family leave, then the flu would have swept through the population and we’d have been done with it by September.

Instead, the powers that be chose to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. They ordered a sudden halt to every aspect of normal civilian life, including education and the economy. They mandated lockdown and social distancing, causing panic, fear, confusion and chaos. Empty store shelves magnified and reinforced the sense of doom. Over the next two years, daily front page news in the corporate media ignited and stoked fear of widespread illness and death on a catastrophic scale. They intentionally boosted these fears by publishing anecdotal stories of personal loss, photos of over-crowded emergency rooms, and predictions of city morgues overflowing with bodies. 

America’s rulers not only disregarded the mental health of the public but failed to approve any measures that would have helped to preserve physical health and mitigate bad outcomes from COVID infection. Passage of Medicare for all (to provide free health, dental and optical care, plus free prescriptions), mandated paid family/sick leave, and an ambitious initiative to build community health clinics and hospitals in underserved areas, would have been an effective strategy to bolster the system’s capacity to prevent complications from COVID infection.

If the government cared so deeply about its people, it would have passed additional legislation- to establish a $15 minimum wage; provide relief from high interest loans that are crushing/burdening millions of people; allocate money to modernize existing public schools and universities; build thousands of new schools to reduce overcrowding; expand access to and improve the quality of senior care; solve rampant homelessness; build millions of units of safe and affordable housing; renovate aging public transit infrastructure; reduce pollution at its source and ensure the public’s access to clean water and air as well as healthy foods; and expand systems of public parks and athletic/recreational facilities to promote healthy bodies and minds.

None of this occurred. Meanwhile it was business as usual for the military industrial complex, the fossil fuel industry, the Wall Street financial industry, and the Big Agriculture/chemical/meat industry. Certain industries saw colossal increases in profits due to the pandemic measures. Big Pharma and health technology industries enjoyed a huge boom in profits, as did the Big Tech/computer/internet industry, including tech manufacturers, social media platforms such as Facebook, and online retail giants like Amazon.

In 2021, while Washington stonewalled on domestic spending, a $768 billion military budget, $25 billion more than requested by the White House, sailed through Congress with bipartisan support. This included $27.8 billion for nuclear weapons programs, also $25 billion to buy 85 F-35 fighter jets, 2 destroyers, and 13 battle force ships including 2 attack submarines. Government readily bailed out big corporations with $532 billion in forgivable loans and $513 billion in tax benefits. Somewhere near $21 billion was given to Big Pharma to develop a patent-protected vaccine, with promises to purchase millions of doses, and $73 billion allocated for COVID testing.

Government pandemic measures further divided the public, exacerbating the existing antagonism between "conservative" and "liberal", Republican and Democrat, Red state and Blue. Already suspicious of government and their “experts”, millions living in Red states railed against imposed mandates and restrictions. People in Blue states, who displayed more trust in the prevailing establishment and the “science experts”, complied more readily with restrictions, are were often harshly judgmental and shaming towards skeptics among them.

Many people fail to recognize that private industry and the super-rich actually control government. This has become even more true/extreme (especially) following the Citizen United Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that sanctioned/ empowered them to flood campaigns with cash to install their proxies into seats of power. Through their proxies in public office, they can then pass legislation/laws/policies that favor their business interests/profits, instead of what benefits the general public. They work behind the scenes, hidden in the shadows, and out of the public eye. In this way, when the public inevitably becomes angry at the lack of progress to improve average people's lives, their wrath gets directed at the institution of government, discrediting the institution of a representative democracy. Each party blames the other. The public gets fed up with the lack of effective government and therefore are more willing to accept the lie that private business can better accomplish what historically has been a public service/a function of government. Privatization moves forward as the super-rich covertly steal control of everything.

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This book will attempt to assemble the puzzle, putting the pieces in place to show the full/real/true picture- to reveal/elucidate/illuminate how the ruling powers have used the COVID-19 pandemic to consolidate their monopoly on power and resources, without regard for the real damage that their mandates/measures have inflicted on the American people (true/genuine regard for the welfare of the American people). Their actions suggest that the long term goal is to permanently/irreversibly disenfranchise/disempower the people (undermine the public’s ability/capacity to influence policy and law) by encouraging/sowing/fomenting mistrust and division between segments of the public, by reducing social capital, the power of the vote, and the ability to organize at a grass roots level including the right to assemble to protest unfair policy and laws, and (the right to demonstrate in mass numbers) to advocate/push for fair and equitable treatment.

In the pivotal 2020 election, the rulers sprayed political pesticides on the grassroots campaigns. This favored their corporate-sponsored candidates and resulted in a monopoly over the election choices. Power prefers monopolies and monocultures over diversity. No door to door canvassing when there’s orders to isolate and social distance. No rallies. No community networking and organizing. The pandemic rules favored establishment candidates with name recognition and millions of dollars to spend on slick television ads that were broadcast on mainstream media that itself has become a monopoly having killed small media, exterminating them like weeds. 

By contributing a psychological perspective to the public dialogue, written in plain language that is clear and accessible, (hopefully) many who are suffering because/as a result of the pandemic mandates may feel validated and justified in their outrage with our leaders (rich and powerful)- at their callous disregard for the quality of people’s lives and the well-being and future health of America’s children.

To counter the assault on life and liberty, people must wake up and recognize that true democracy is fading/vanishing/disappearing, to be replaced by an oligarchy (a small group of people having control of a country); to realize that the rich and powerful are intent on destroying the civil institutions and local economies that build social capital; public institutions that empower the people to influence/determine/direct the priorities and direction of the nation.

If the “new normal” or “great reset” succeeds, those civil institutions will never recover, thereby accomplishing the rulers’ goal to (cripple forever the people’s ability to challenge) reduce/eliminate future/further challenges to their absolute authority. Already, after they crashed the economy, millions are too busy struggling to stay afloat/keep their heads above water that they fail to see the net that surrounds them. Employment patterns and opportunities have radically changed for most workers, instilling confusion and anxiety. Millions of people have become too distracted and disoriented by the pandemic fog to recognize that they are slipping into the Matrix- the unscrupulous, immersive construct designed to instill complacency and perpetual subjugation of the masses, the rabble.

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A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

Psychological/thought/mind manipulation is the genius of the pandemic strategy. The rich and powerful (our masters) have capitalized on our primal fear of death and disease to divide and conquer. They introduced/implanted an exaggerated fear of infection into our minds, like a computer chip in the brain, that enables them to manipulate and control us. They over-rode/commandeered our reasoning/logical mind and manipulated our emotions to suit their purposes (achieve their ends). They weaponized our bodies, indoctrinating/convincing us to believe that every person is a potential threat, a viral bomb that could go off at any moment. This served to drive us apart, isolating us from one another, turning us against each other.

Divide and conquer.

Every time someone sneezes, we’ll knee-jerk fear contagion. When every other person/anyone/everyone is a potential threat to our health, we adopt/acquire some degree of mistrust and avoidance (of each other). Once introduced, these fears are coded into our brain networks, our memories, and will always be there. When it next suits their purposes, they can reactivate those fear pathways, triggering obedience/ submissiveness/ passivity and subsequently control over us again. Like a master hypnotist, they say the trigger words and the public snaps back into a state of fear and suspicion of others around them. They've implanted the "gift" of obedience (movie: Ella Enchanted).

The rulers’ most egregious/despicable/unforgivable crime is their intentional disruption of the rich web of community connections and social bonds that make us healthy, both physically and mentally. Bonds that nurture us and enable our children to thrive. They have depleted/drained/eliminated/undermined our social capital and left us poor and broken. Since diverse voices and grass roots organizing is antithetical to central authority, they sprayed social pesticide on American society, killing a whole level of neighborhood and community relationships, disrupting the social ecosystem, transitioning us into GMO humans and engineering a social monoculture.

Healing

However, local community is also our greatest strength, the source of the public’s power and needs only people reconnecting with each other to replenish our social capital. Humans are genetically programmed to be social, to read faces (without masks) and to form emotional connections. Working people account for 99% of the population and there is immense power in numbers.

The 1989 Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic, the Arab Spring protests that began in Tunisia in 2010, civil rights and ant-war protests in America in the late 1960’s and even the 1989’s Tieneman Square protests show how masses of people working together can effectively challenge abusive rulers and help restore balance of power. (to government and law.) Many protest movements are started by students/young adults which is why the new normal was designed especially to isolate and muzzle young people. Even now in 2023, some states are exploring the option to raise the voting age to 25 in order to reduce/cripple or eliminate the power of millions of young people. 

The first step is for the American people to wake up and recognize that our autonomy and basic rights are under attack; to realize that far more unites us than divides us; and to reclaim the right to free assembly; then to assemble in person by the millions to demand a fair and just society. A society that, above all, values the dignity and autonomy of all people, that values children as our most precious resource, and that values the natural world, artistic expression, spirituality, diverse voices and love between friends, family and community.