alicespringstomind

Our frontal lobe processes complex thought such as rational analysis, decision making and planning. A functional frontal lobe allows us to control our emotions as we apply thought and logic to feelings. This is one of the last areas of the brain to mature, in early adulthood.

Our amygdala is one of the first parts of our brain to form during foetal development. Its role is to recognise and respond to emotion. Most animals have an amygdala; even lizards, hence its moniker of “lizard brain”. Yesterday I was walking along a bush track and a lizard dashed under a rock to hide from me. His amygdala told him danger was approaching and to disappear quickly.

In the past year most of the world have experienced unusually high levels of stress due to the global Covid-19 pandemic and so-called “public health” response. Stress and fear activate our amygdalas which can overpower our frontal lobes, reducing thought processes into a disorganised, uneasy and impressionable state. This is a useful condition for opportunists with something to gain from compliant populations. I have been very disturbed to hear health professional colleagues making claims such as “we need people to feel afraid” (in order to convince them to comply). This directly contradicts the role of public health and creates far more harm than benefit, as demonstrated in the NHS summary analysis below.

Witnessing researchers and academics such as John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, Scott Atlas and others vilified and maligned has contributed to the silencing of many who dare to question mainstream-promoted consensus such as lockdowns and face masks. Scientific inquiry has become wrongthink deserving of most vicious punishment. In the middle ages they burned witches at the stake, today they run smear campaigns against critical thinkers. It all appears as part of the threat to freedoms that the West once assumed to be our unquestionable right.

When I decided in July to stop watching mainstream media, a sense of calm came over me which I had not felt since around April. Oneday about a month later I turned the television news on and felt an immediate sense of doom returning. I hit the power button and calm restored itself. I found like-minded souls on Twitter who were sharing information explaining the pandemic in ways which the mainstream media and politicians don’t do. I met people with the skills and confidence to investigate evidence who were offering nuanced information, many of them conducting relevant research as medical or social scientists. For example Stanford University researchers (including Bhattacharys and Ioannidis) published this last week: Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID‐19, in which they state

Because of the potential harmful health effects of mrNPI – including hunger, opioid-related overdoses, missed vaccinations, increase in non-COVID diseases from missed health services, domestic abuse, mental health and suicidality, as well as a host of economic consequences with health implications – it is increasingly recognized that their postulated benefits deserve careful study

and conclude that we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs.

This translates to lockdown-doesn’t-work.

Another example relates to the message in mainstream media that the United Kingdom’s health service is falling apart “because of pandemic levels of Covid”. The only reason, according to politico-media consensus, that the NHS are under strain is because thousands of people per day are falling sick and dying of Covid in overwhelmed hospitals. However an analysis of the situation tells a different, far more complex story.