People can get ill just because they expect to become ill.
Another fascinating example of the nocebo effect in action.
Some months ago I published a short essay citing 2 examples of the “nocebo” effect:
Did the "nocebo" effect play a huge role in the events of the past few years?
My attention was recently drawn by this and susequent tweets (sorry Elon - I am still going to use that word), which echoed some of my recent thinking along these lines: Have we dramatically underestimated the role of negative propaganda in generating people’s symptoms of illness during the 2020 Great Human Rights Heist.
I just spotted (here) another fascinating example of this effect in action. The paper cited appeared in the Journal of Experimental Medicine in 1930, and discusses various attempts to transmit the common cold between humans and animals, and humans to humans. It can be downloaded from the below:
The experiment was controlled in that at different times subjects received either sterile broth or filtrate meant to induce a cold (nasal washings from individuals with a cold), and various ruses were employed to keep them ignorant of what was received when.
As the above extracts says, in respect of one subject:
they were accidentally (but wrongly) given information which would have made them think they’d had the “active” substance
that subject then developed the symptoms of a cold with sneezing, cough, sore throat and stuffiness of the nose
the next morning he was told that he had actually had sterile broth, and his symptoms subsided within the hour
This is very similar to the case I mentioned in the above essay, in which a man’s blood pressure plummeted after an overdose and only returned to normal after being told he’d taken placebo.
The point of these examples is to emphasise the fact that psychological factors can manifest in real physical symptoms.
I believe we have hugely underestimated the extent of the physical symptoms induced by the most intense, sophisticated and longest propaganda campaign ever waged on humanity.
In 1936, in India, recounts Nobel Laureate Bernard Lown in "The Lost Art of Healing," an astonishing experiment was conducted on a prisoner condemned to die by hanging. He was given the choice instead of being "exsanguinated," or having his blood let out, because this would be gradual and relatively painless. The victim agreed, was strapped to the bed and blindfolded.
Unbeknownst to him, water containers were attached to the four bedposts and drip buckets set up below. Then after light scratches were made on his four extremities, the fake drip brigade began: First rapidly, then slowly, always loudly. "As the dripping of water stopped, the healthy young man's heart stopped also. He was dead, having lost not a drop of blood."
Source: https://www.poconorecord.com/story/lifestyle/2004/01/23/bleeding-to-death-without-losing/51060683007/
People expected to get 'covid' because the propaganda was that "everyone was at risk" ( Gove promoted that early on), and then people could be asymptomatic with 'covid'. The long list of symptoms, a runny nose, sore throat, fever, chills, stomach upset, eg would mean any one or two of those symptoms would lead ( and did lead) to people believing they had contracted 'covid'. That new label given to a set of symptoms, common to colds and flu like illness (fli), inevitably enhanced how those symptoms were felt by many individuals.
Thus, people reported that they felt "terrible" because they had 'covid', and, the PCR 'test' confirmed how "awful" they felt! A common or garden winter cold or, an fli, was elevated by propaganda in to being something 'special', so how people felt on being 'told' they had 'covid'(by the ubiquitous and flawed tests) was magnified.
This isn't to dismiss those who did have a very rough time and died because of their old age and multiple comorbidities, or, underlying health issues. Pneumonia can then develop, which takes many to the end.
Essentially, the rampant propaganda about 'covid' caused a great deal of harm to populations...not just physically but psychologically. The nocebo result of the propaganda.....was it forseen and 'encouraged', or, just an unintentional 'by-product'?