The dancing nurses videos - just spontaneously "spreading joy"..?
...or one manifestation of mass psychogenic illness?
I am sure most people who used any form of social media during 2020 and 2021 will be aware of the plethora of videos of dancing nurses, doctors and other hospital workers which proliferated during the “pandemic”.
This is just a brief article to lay out a few thoughts and questions I have around these.
This thread on X contains links to a number of these and I suggest you watch at least a few of them to place the questions I have into some sort of context.
The author of that thread proposes that the purpose of the videos was to nudge the population psychologically, and maintain unity and morale, reminiscent of the role of communal dancing in communist countries.
I find that explanation lacking.
For one thing, it assumes that all the videos are real. While I am sure some are, many of them are extremely sophisticated, involving troupes of nurses (and in some cases doctors and other healthcare workers) quite expertly dancing in rhythm, sometimes in usually busy and public parts of their workplaces, some with aerial footage. In many cases, expensive pieces of equipment (eg MRI scanners) are commandeered and used as props.
Working on the assumption that they are real, I would like to know:
Has anyone ever seen any discussions of how the videos came about? Who suggested them, and in what forums? Was management involved?
Who will have sanctioned the time off work to both rehearse and film the event, and the use of the public space for filming?
Who will have authorised the employment of a film crew and editors, and possibly a choreographer?
Why was the need for “social distancing” jettisoned in order to make these videos?
Where are the minutes from any of the meetings at which any of the above issues were debated and resolved?
Why has nobody who ever performed in these videos ever spoken about them?
The above questions do - in my opinion - give rise to a suspicion that some of these videos, particularly the more sophisticated ones, might be AI-generated.
But even on that assumption, the questions of who authorised and funded their creation, and why, remain unanswered.
The other mystery surrounding this topic is the lack of curiosity on display by people who are aware of these videos. Have none of the questions above not occurred to anyone else?
Does nobody else wonder how and why these were made when we were being told that obeying social distancing rules was essential to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed? Do these hospitals appear overwhelmed, or in any danger of so becoming? Why does hospital management fail to see the contradictions between the approved government messaging and what these videos (real or not) say about the prevailing conditions?
One possibility which I think ought to be taken seriously (certainly in relation to some of the obviously “genuine”, more amateurish, videos) is that the participants were suffering from some sort of mass psychosis.
I personally believe that this is a hugely understudied aspect of what went on over the past few years.
There’s a good primer on contagious psychosis here1:
Note in particular:
Clinical Relevance: Micro-organisms have long been the focus of infectious diseases, but modern concerns now include the spread of psychological contagions, such as mass hysteria and shared psychosis.
And
“under certain conditions, groups of people can exhibit similar psychiatric and sometimes physiological symptoms, which is often referred to as psychological contagion.”
It should be remembered that due to government messaging, staff were living in fear of their lives, so much so that perfectly healthy doctors discussed making their wills. It is virtually impossible that the military-grade propaganda employed on the population did not have profound effects on the pysche of those who were considered to be (and considered themselves to be) at the “front line” of this “war”.
There is, moreover, historical precedent for mass psychosis to manifest itself in spontaneous dancing2.
There’s quite a good summary of the phenomenon at Wikipedia, which describes several waves of spontaneous dancing mania, sometimes leading to exhaustion or even death, throughout history.
The article claims that a biological phenomenon may have been at play, though also points out that:
According to Deborah Hyde, the spontaneous spread of this phenomenon through social networks played a significant role: "It’s hard to deny that the dancing mania was marked by social contagion exacerbated by stress. Outbreaks occurred along trade routes or reoccurred in the same areas – where people had knowledge of the format, in other words. Beliefs and behaviour can travel just like pathogens."
A fascinating account of the mania can be found in this (translated) 1846 book by a German physician, Dr JFC Hecker.
(Click on image below to go to an archive of the book.)
Pages 85 - 166 cover various waves of the Dancing Mania:
The preface to that section reads as follows:
The diseases which form the subject of the present investigation afford a deep insight into the workings of the human mind in a state of society.
They are a portion of history, and will never return in the form in which they are there recorded ; but they expose a vulnerable part of man — the instinct of imitation — and are therefore very nearly connected with human life in the aggregate.
It appeared worth while to describe diseases which are propagated on the beams of light — on the wings of thought; which convulse the mind by the excitement of the senses, and wonderfully affect the nerves, the media of its will and of its feelings.
It seemed worth while to attempt to place these disorders between the epidemics of a less refined origin, which affect the body more than the soul, and all those passions and emotions which border on the vast domain of disease, ready at every moment to pass the boundary.
Should we be able to deduce from the grave facts of history here developed, a convincing proof that the human race, amidst the creation which surrounds it, moves in body and soul as an individual whole, the Author might hope that he had approached nearer to his ideal of a grand comprehension of diseases in time and space, and be encouraged, by the co-operation of contemporaries, zealous in the search of truth, to proceed along the path which he has already entered, in prosecuting the investigation.
The author starts the chapter with an account of an outbreak in the 14th century:
So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle3 who had come out of Germany, and who, united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public both in the streets and in the churches the following strange spectacle.
They formed circles hand in hand, and appearing to have lost all control over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion.
They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were swathed in cloths bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack.
He goes on to describe how the mania spread geographically:
A few months after this dancing malady had made its appearance at Aix-la-Chapelle, it broke out at Cologne4, where the number of those possessed amounted to more than five hundred and about the same time at Metz, the streets of which place are said to have been filled with eleven hundred dancers.
Peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties, to join the wild revels, and this rich commercial city became the scene of the most ruinous disorder.
Secret desires were excited, and but too often found opportunities for wild enjoyment; and numerous beggars, stimulated by vice and misery, availed themselves of this new complaint to gain a temporary livelihood. Girls and Boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to amuse themselves at the dances of those possessed, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection.
I think you get the picture and the point I am making so I am going to leave it there for now.
As usual, we have more questions than answers.
If you know anything about the genesis of the hospital dancing videos, please let me know in the comments section below.
psychiatrist.com is the website of the publisher of The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry - an international peer-reviewed journal, and the official publication of the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology.
Sometimes called St Vitus’s dance.
Now known as Aachen.
Cologne is about 50 miles, or 80 km, from Aix-la-Chapelle aka Aaachen.
I wouldn't put the dancing nurses, ambulance crews etc down to a mass psychogenic illness. Many 'dances' were slickly choreographed....how was all that dance practice fitted in to their apparently overworked days? One might ask why there wasn't 'spontaneous spreading of joy ' by shop workers, postmen/women, fire fighters, teachers, because it had to be among health workers. Those working groups weren't part of the 'nudge' to the nation to 'keep the NHS front and centre'. The dancing sessions ( hardly spontaneous) kept the public's mind focused on the NHS. MIght there not have been a subliminal message in those 'performances'....the 'virus' was not really a threat, not the worst public health crisis faced by the UK because there was joyous dancing breaking out amongst health workers.
It was all planned, a key element of the propaganda. It certainly needs investigating, like so much else in those two hellish years. In fact those 'dancing nurse' vids ( probably most AI generated, but a few amateur actual dances to make the whole convincing) were regarded by many as an insult to people whose relatives suffered for want of 'normal' NHS service.
People seem to dig in their heels and double-down on belief when it is made clear it's an absurdity. I can imagine someone with control of social media planting the seeds with a few rehearsed videos and then letting "viral" (e.g., "ALS ice bucket challenge") take it from there. It then makes it clear that the pandemic is a total clownshow and paradoxically this causes true-believers to become more rigid in their beliefs.
This is when I stopped believing in it because everything became more and more absurd. Dancing nurses, then infinity Floyd protests, then bars and STRIP CLUBS(!!!) were re-opened, then the "you'll catch Covid Cooties from shaking hands you must bump your elbows together instead", then "two masks", and so on. It got progressively stupider and stupider and my "covidian" friends and family became more and more adamant there was an incredibly contagious disease around us (just not at happy hour at Hooter's).