The Real Effects of COVID-19 Are Psychological

The purpose of the China virus narrative is psychological control

Staff members checking a unit at a temporary "Fire Eye" laboratory used for COVID-19 testing at an exhibition center in Nanjing in China's eastern Jiangsu Province on July 28, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

The world has been bombarded with agitprop public messaging from state-run Chinese media and “wolf warrior” diplomats, as well as Western authorities and their media sycophants, since China first reported COVID-19 cases in Wuhan city, Hubei Province to the World Health Organization on Dec. 31, 2019.

The messages were uniformly and relentlessly propagated, all without a shred of scientific and epidemiological evidence backing up the various “health directives.” The purpose of the narrative was expressly psychological in order to condition people to accept ostensible health and security measures from the government “experts” in exchange for personal freedoms. Here are the main components of the narrative:

• Wear masks everywhere, including outside (while ignoring their relative ineffectiveness and also the hazards to children of wearing them over time). • Practice social distancing everywhere (arbitrary distancing requirements). • Implement total lockdowns and stay-at-home policies to “flatten the curve”—a public relations euphemism that has magically disappeared as a stated public health goal. • Recommend vaccinations/injections to stop the spread, despite no long-term human trials or legal remedies for adverse reactions. Furthermore, Rochelle Walensky, the U.S. CDC director, has stated that “vaccines no longer prevent you from spreading COVID.” • Press vaccines for demographic groups not at risk, including children who are at virtually zero risk of death from the virus. • Suppress discussion of natural immunity in favor of vaccines/injections. This includes mandating injections for those who contracted the virus and have long-term antibodies as a result. • Suppress discussion of early treatment protocols using existing therapeutic drugs. • Suppress all public reporting of adverse reactions to vaccines/injections (one example reported here). • Insist that the zoonotic theory of the virus origins was correct (despite much contrary evidence as noted here, here, here, here, here, and here); conversely, deny the lab leak theory at all costs. • Ridicule, shame, and ostracize any and all who deviate from the above orthodoxy, especially independent doctors and physicians who have successfully saved lives using protocols associated with hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, quercetin, monoclonal antibodies, azithromycin, zinc, and other therapeutic drugs and medicines. • Most of all, propagate and reinforce fear in the minds of everyone in order to force adherence to the above messaging.

Has there been a dime’s worth of difference between the virus messaging of state-controlled Chinese media and the U.S. legacy media? Not that is discernible to careful observers. But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) goes further in its virus-related messaging. Despite the general debunking of the points in the above media narrative, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs cleverly denies their virus agitprop: “Spreading disinformation about the epidemic is indeed spreading a ‘political virus,’“ the ministry told The Associated Press. ”False information is the common enemy of mankind, and China has always opposed the creation and spread of false information,” it said.

That phrase “false information is the common enemy of mankind” is the ultimate in CCP hypocrisy, as virtually everything spun by Chinese state-run media is a lie.

A man wearing protective gear walks past shops in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on May 18, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Fear of death is the ultimate psychological leverage being exploited in the virus information war by the CCP and authoritarian governments everywhere. According to data from Worldometers, as of Oct. 5, there have been 4,819,544 deaths caused by COVID-19. The data includes the grossly under-reported total of 4,636 deaths in China, a number that has remained unchanged since May 2020—this has strengthened the false narrative that “CCP health measures defeated the virus.”

With the purposeful misreporting of COVID-19 statistics as a result of government financial incentives to attribute deaths to the virus, no one will ever know the true number of deaths directly caused by the virus. Nor, for political reasons, will we ever know how many people might have otherwise been saved had they been administered therapeutic protocols when their symptoms first manifested, instead of adhering to delayed government supportive care treatment protocols in terminal stages of the disease, especially Remdesivir, steroids, and mechanical respirators. Yet, there is ample evidence of the effectiveness of Ivermectin and other drugs in treating people early who contract the virus, especially as reported in India here and here.

Beijing’s Psychological Warfare

The CCP’s virus messaging is an element of the Chinese strategy of Three Warfares, which includes concurrent psychological, media, and legal components. The strategy was officially “endorsed by the CCP Central Committee and the Central Military Commission in 2003.” During the pandemic, there has been far too much focus on the media component of the CCP narratives when the real danger is associated with the CCP’s psychological objectives. The media agitprop objectives are fairly obvious: shift blame for the virus away from China, push false Chinese altruism and benevolence (medical supplies for modest profits), create the illusion that China has “solved the virus problem,” demand multilateral cooperation under Chinese leadership to counter the virus worldwide, “get vaccinated,” etc.

The psychological goals are hidden and much subtler. A key element of psychological warfare is the demoralization of decision makers and especially targeted populations. Fear of death, economic lockdowns, the “new normal” of masks and social distancing ad infinitum, the transition from “two shots” to periodic (and seemingly unlimited) booster injections, and arbitrary authoritarian measures that have been implemented and changed willy-nilly over time are weighing heavily on the collective psyche of populations around the world.

A demoralized world population facilitates aggressive CCP actions aimed at asserting Chinese leadership in virtual every aspect of human endeavors. Those goals were discussed at length here.

Students, some wearing protective masks, arrive for the first day of school at Sessums Elementary School in Riverview, Fla., on Aug. 10, 2021. (Chris O'Meara/AP Photo)

There are two key indicators that point to an increasing demoralization and feelings of hopelessness as fears of the virus continue to be stoked. The first is a significant rise in drug use worldwide, as noted in a U.N. report from June 2021. Drug abuse is of course a way of avoiding the difficulties of real life, and the potential for the seemingly random and uncontrollable probability of death from COVID-19. The second indicator is the increasing incidence of depression and suicide, especially among young people. Lockdowns and the associated isolation are particularly devastating on the young, and the absence of social contacts with peers leads to feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and suicide. But economic lockdowns are also devastating to small business owners who have spent their lives building their businesses only to seem them shut down by state and local governments.

The bottom line is that national governments that are focused on domestic issues associated with their demoralized citizens are less inclined to counter CCP aggression in general. The CCP wins without fighting!

Perhaps the most important psychological component of the CCP’s Three Warfares virus campaign is the conditioning of people who are otherwise unaccustomed to authoritarian measures of control, especially in their personal lives. There has long been tension between federal and state governments promising to deliver safety and security and the American people, who wish to preserve their hard-fought individual freedoms and liberties preserved by the U.S. Constitution.

Conditioning people to willingly obey the arbitrary whims of government medical “experts” and politicians in order to “combat the virus” is only one degree of separation from getting those same people to accept and obey authoritarian measures on other topics deemed important to politicians: implementation of a social credit and control system, creation of an internal passport system based on individual social credits, monitoring and reporting of individual financial transactions greater than $600, confiscation of individual firearms, suppression of free speech rights on topics deemed unfavorable by the political class, etc.

People who accept unwarranted vaccine mandates, social distancing requirements, vaccine passports, and forcing children to wear masks at school are much more willing to accept other authoritarian measures dreamt up by governments and authoritarian politicians. The psychological component of the CCP Three Warfares campaign is aimed squarely at preparing people for government control in all facets of their daily lives—just like in communist China

Conclusion

The CCP is heavily investing in a Three Warfares campaign that exploits the pandemic to achieve their objectives worldwide. The psychological “softening up” of America in particular in getting people to accept the arbitrary authoritarian dictates of an amorphous, nameless, and faceless government is a key objective of the CCP’s ongoing campaign to demoralize and condition people for future exploitation and control by the CCP.

Individual freedoms and liberties are anathema to CCP control and must be vigorously defended at all costs—or else lost possibly forever. That means fighting and defeating unconstitutional mandates and directives by governments, as well as those same governments forcing businesses to implement those mandates.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.