It’s not a war against a virus, it’s a war against our fear. Fear is winning.

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I would argue that fear is the most destructive human emotion. The power of fear is staggering. Someone in the vice grip of fear loses all reasoning ability, reverting to an animal state of emotional reaction. It has the power to compel someone to make the most irrational of decisions, decisions that can have devastating long-term consequences. Our leaders are making fear-based decisions, the media is pumping out a continuous stream of fear-inducing headlines, and the rest of us are attempting to navigate this new reality with as much cool-headedness as we can muster. For the most part, everyone I’ve encountered has not been ensnared in the fear that the media and government so desperately wish us to be caught up in. Everyone is fairly calm, although I do see plenty of face masks. They are trying their best to take the advice of their government, practice “social distancing”, and stay at home. Their businesses shuttered or operations curtailed, they are attempting to be good citizens, and are placing their trust in what their government is telling them. But it can only go on for so long. Fear is on the horizon, real fear, but not of a virus. It’s the fear of economic insecurity, the fear that they won’t receive a paycheck, or rather one much smaller than they are used to.  Fear has led to a domino-collapse of economic activity. Economic activity is lives and livelihoods. A ceasing of economic activity will instill a level of fear that no virus ever could.

We are told that this is a war against a virus, and the language now being used mirrors the language used to prosecute the “War on Terror”. But the real war is against our fear. This fear that we now feel is giving our own government free reign to impose martial law. To find our way out of this rapidly deteriorating situation, we must refuse to give in to the fear that we are being force-fed. If unemployment hits 30% in this country, no one will give a damn about a seasonal respiratory infection. They will be too focused on finding work, and feeding their family. What we are witnessing is the power of fear, and it’s ability to rapidly lay the foundation for authoritarianism and destruction.

If our species experiences a true apocalypse, it’s cause won’t be some disease or other natural disaster. It will be self-inflicted. We are our own worst enemies.

The elite impose their “fantasies of doom” upon the world, world governments perform apocalypse theater, and we all suffer for it

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The headlines being written for the COVID-19 spread are unbelievably reckless. But other writers do have cooler heads, and Spiked’s Brendan O’Neil calls out the elites for their “luxury of apocalypticism”, as well as the government response as more performative art or apocalypse theater than an actual measured response. COVID-19 is a health challenge, not the end of the world. But an economic collapse triggered by reckless government policy could very well feel like an apocalypse for many, and for a very long time. It isn’t worth it, especially now that we are discovering that coronavirus is about as dangerous as seasonal flu.

Israeli virologist is a voice of sanity during these insane times

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From Times of Israel:

“I’ve been in this business for 30 years,” Bishara said in a Channel 12 interview. “I’ve been through MERS, SARS, Ebola, the first Gulf war and the second, and I don’t recall anything like this. There’s unnecessary, exaggerated panic. We have to calm people down.

“People are thinking that there’s a kind of virus, it’s in the air, it’s going to attack every one of us, and whoever is attacked is going to die,” he said.

“That’s not the way it is at all. It’s not in the air. Not everyone [who is infected] dies; most of them will get better and won’t even know they were sick, or will have a bit of mucus.”

But in Israel and around the world, “everybody is whipping everybody else up into panic — the leaders, via the media, and the wider public — who then in turn start to stress out the leaders. We’ve entered some kind of vicious cycle.”