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Cult

Best of the Web: Psychotherapist says lockdown zealots are behaving like cult members

stay home sign
© James D. Morgan/Getty Images
Psychotherapist Dr. Hugh Willbourn says lockdown zealots are displaying all the classic signs of cult members by doubling down on their beliefs despite having been proven wrong.

In an article on his website, Willbourn highlights the work of respected social psychologist Leon Festinger, who analyzed the beliefs of a UFO cult in the 1950's who believed that a flying saucer would rescue them from the apocalypse.

However, after the catastrophic earthquakes and floods they expected to hit the United States never arrived and their beliefs were totally disproved, "the cult members would become not less but more convinced of their beliefs."

Festinger identified five conditions that needed to be met in order for the cult members to double down on their beliefs and avoid cognitive dissonance.

1. There must be conviction
2. There must be commitment to this conviction
3. The conviction must be amenable to unequivocal disconfirmation
4. Such unequivocal disconfirmation must occur
5. Social support must be available subsequent to the disconfirmation.

"Festinger's five conditions and the behaviour of the cult believers correspond closely to the situation with Brexit, Climate Change and Covid-19: a prophecy is made, believers invest themselves, their time, money and prestige in it, the prophecy fails and the believers become more fervent," writes Willbourn.


Comment: These same lockdown zealots may have 'drama-junkie' personality traits that 'feed on' this autocratic opportunity.


Comment: It's definitely cult-like.

Duck-and-Cover And Burn The Heretics: The Modern-Day Cult of Corona


Attention

Best of the Web: Worldwide volcanic uptick: Multiple eruptions to 45,000+ ft (13.7+ km) - Direct cooling effect

Volcanic uptick

These past few days have seen a violent worldwide volcanic uptick, sending us all further signs that the next Grand Solar Minimum is dawning.


HIMAWARI-8 (a Japanese weather satellite) recorded two HIGH-LEVEL eruptions on May 16, both occurring in Indonesia.

The first took place at Ibu -a relatively new volcano with only 3 notable eruptions; in 1911, 1998, and 2008- and was confirmed by the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) Darwin which warned of an ash plume rising to an estimated 45,000 ft (13.7 km).

The second high-level eruption took place just a few hours later at Semeru -a very active volcano with an eruptive history peppered with VEI 2s and 3s; the first coming in 1818, the most recent in 2014- and as with Ibu's, Semeru's eruption was picked up by both HIMAWARI-8 and the VAAC Darwin, with the latter confirming the generation of "a dark ash plume which reached an altitude of 46,000 ft (14 km)."

In addition, and as recently reported by VolcanoDiscovery.com, active lava flows remain active on the Semeru's southeast flank, currently about 4,921 ft (1.5 km) long (as of the morning of May 18).

Comment: It is likely that atmospheric dust loading from increased volcanic and comet activity is contributing to recent extreme hailstorms, the cooling effect of which causes ice crystals to form. See also:


Health

Best of the Web: 'I'm still here': Trump reveals he's been taking Hydroxychloroquine against Covid-19

trump
© REUTERS/Leah Millis
US President Donald Trump shocked reporters by revealing that he has been taking the anti-malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine as a preventative against the coronavirus, following the advice of the White House physician.

"I've been taking it for about a week and a half now and I'm still here," he said on Monday, following a meeting with governors at the White House. "I was just waiting to see your eyes light up when I said this," he told the reporter asking the question.

Asked what evidence he had that the drug was helpful, Trump said "I get a lot of positive calls about it," before adding, "What do you have to lose?"

Comment: Previously:


Light Saber

Best of the Web: Debunking the Covid-19 Narrative: Interview with molecular biologist Prof. Dolores Cahill

dolores cahill
Prof. Dolores Cahill is a world-wide renowned immunologist, molecular biologist, and expert in high-throughput proteomics technology development and automation, and high-content protein arrays and their biomedical applications, including in biomarker discovery and diagnostics.

Prof. Cahill is speaking out against the Covid-19 lockdown by challenging the core claims made by govts and media about the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In the following interview she explains why lockdowns are the worst possible 'treatment' for dealing with this virus, why masks and social distancing will only sicken healthy people, and presents evidence that the virus was in fact tweaked in a laboratory setting...


Magic Hat

Best of the Web: The US is dramatically overcounting Coronavirus deaths

Dr. Fauci
© AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Editor's Note: Timothy Craig Allen, MD, JD, contributed to this column.

Over 86,500 people have reportedly died in the United States from the Coronavirus, and the fear generated by those deaths is driving the public policy debate. But that number is a dramatic overcount. Our metrics include deaths that have nothing to do with the virus. The problem is even worse as the Centers for Disease Control over counts even some of these cases and the government has created financial incentives for this misreporting. Relying on these flawed numbers is destroying businesses and jobs and costing lives.

"The case definition is very simplistic," Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of Illinois Department of Public Health, explains. "It means, at the time of death, it was a COVID positive diagnosis. That means, that if you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means, technically even if you died of clear alternative cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death."

Comment: Nothing that hasn't been stated dozens of times here previously, and for the last several weeks, but it certainly is interesting to note how much more these truths are being realized by an ever-growing number of doctors and pundits - and how many will react and respond to this information - given how the lies have already wreaked so much havoc on the lives of so many.

See:


Handcuffs

Best of the Web: Jonathan Sumption: 'You cannot imprison an entire population'

Police Officer patrols Brighton beach
Police Officer patrols Brighton beach
The current rationale for the lockdown is incoherent. The old rationale was: 'you must spread the infections over a longer period so as to allow the NHS to catch up'. So that was why there was the slogan 'Save the NHS'. Well, they've dropped that part of the slogan - and for good reasons. Currently, the NHS has more than doubled its intensive care capacity. It's an impressive achievement by the government. But they need to follow the logic of it. The crucial fact is that [the government's] paper accepts that Covid-19 is going to be with us long term. That is the likely outcome. And it's consistent with the science. Once the a virus has taken hold in a population, it doesn't just go away until enough people have been exposed to the disease to acquire immunity or a vaccine turns up. So when the lockdown ends, whenever that is, the virus will still be there waiting for us.

More than nine tenths of the deaths are cases in which the death certificate shows that there were multiple causes of death: Coronavirus was only one of them. This is a virus that attacks people with really serious pre-existing vulnerabilities. Almost all of these people are very old and suffering from conditions serious enough to be mentioned as a cause of death on the certificate. The overwhelming majority would have died. A bit later, but not much later.


Comment: See also:


Sheriff

Best of the Web: Italian lawmaker demands Bill Gates arrest for crimes against humanity

bill gates wanted poster
Days after it was revealed in an intercepted human intelligence report that Bill Gates offered $10 million bribe for a forced Coronavirus vaccination program in Nigeria, now an Italian politician has demanded the arrest of Bill Gates in the Italian parliament. Sara Cunial, the Member of Parliament for Rome denounced Bill Gates as a "vaccine criminal" and urged the Italian President to hand him over to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. She also exposed Bill Gates' agenda in India and Africa, along with the plans to chip the human race through the digital identification program ID2020.

As reported by GreatGameIndia earlier, in 2015 it were the Italians who exposed secret Chinese biological experiments with Coronavirus. The video, which was broadcast in November, 2015, showed how Chinese scientists were doing biological experiments on a SARS connected virus believed to be Coronavirus, derived from bats and mice, asking whether it was worth the risk in order to be able to modify the virus for compatibility with human organisms.

Comment: See also:


Stop

Best of the Web: YouTube censors epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski for opposing lockdown

Dr. Knut Wittkowski
© Helayne SeidmanDr. Knut Wittkowski
Big Tech companies are aggressively tamping down on COVID-19 "misinformation" โ€” opinions and ideas contrary to official pronouncements.

Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski, former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University, says YouTube removed a video of him talking about the virus which had racked up more than 1.3 million views.

Wittkowski, 65, is a ferocious critic of the nation's current steps to fight the coronavirus. He has derided social distancing, saying it only prolongs the virus' existence and has attacked the current lockdown as mostly unnecessary.

Comment: Dr. Wittkowski was also featured in the second installment of the infamous article series 'Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic' on OffGuardian.

See also:


Brick Wall

Best of the Web: Lives vs lives - The global cost of lockdown

masked woman New Delhi India
© Getty ImagesA masked woman in New Delhi, India.
Policies that depress the world economy put millions at risk

'There have been as many plagues in history as there have been wars,' wrote Albert Camus in The Plague, 'yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.' So it was this time. The arrival of a new coronavirus blindsided governments of most advanced nations as they reached for a tool that few had ever really considered before: lockdown. It all happened too fast for a proper discussion about the implications. The biggest question โ€” the extent to which lockdown will claim lives as well as save them โ€” is one you can ask at a global level.

We know the national costs. In the United States, there is joblessness on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, with more than 33 million unemployed. The Bank of England forecasts the UK economy will fall by 14 per cent this year โ€” the steepest decline since 1706. Similar trends can be found across the industrial world. The global economy is veering toward an economic depression not seen for generations.

Comment: See also:


Heart - Black

Best of the Web: Why have they only just noticed the carnage in care homes?

care home physician
Care homes are now the epicentre of the Covid-19 epidemic. Figures from the ONS show that 40 per cent of all coronavirus deaths so far occurred in care homes.

Finally, politicians and the press are starting to wake up to the fact that the official guidance on care homes was fundamentally flawed.

In this week's Prime Minister's Questions, Keir Starmer quoted old government advice that suggested that care-home infections were 'very unlikely'. Starmer also quoted a cardiologist:

'We discharged known, suspected and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared with no formal warning that patients were infected, no testing available and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.'

Indeed, NHS guidance made it explicit that patients should be discharged to care homes in order to free up hospital capacity for an anticipated surge in cases.

Comment: Why have they only just noticed what we warned would happen? Because they don't care.

The most vulnerable are always the ones that end up suffering most. It's a tragic but all too natural consequence of leaders making decisions and enacting policy that pay lip service to helping people but are always done with other agendas and goals in mind.