Pro-social framing works best as a way to con people to be needlessly vaccinated
Wed 4:58 am +01:00, 16 Sep 2020The estimated infection fatality rate for seasonal influenza listed in this paper is 0.8%. So, the only people for whom SARS-CoV-2 infection is more dangerous than influenza is those over the age of 60.
All others have a lower risk of dying from COVID-19 than they have of dying from the flu. Put another way, if you’re under the age of 60, your chances of dying from the flu is greater than your chance of dying from COVID-19.
White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx also confirmed this far lower than typically reported mortality rate when she, in mid-August 2020, stated that it “becomes more and more difficult” to get people to comply with mask rules “when people start to realize that 99% of us are going to be fine.”15
Expect Massive Propaganda Campaign to Boost Vaccine Uptake
With death rates being as low as they are for everyone under the age of 60, it really weakens the rationale for vaccinating the entire world, including newborns, the risk to whom the virus poses is virtually nil.
The vaccine looking increasingly unnecessary is likely a reason for why the U.S. government is planning to launch an “overwhelming” COVID-19 vaccine campaign this fall, using carefully researched messages. As detailed in “Health and Autonomy in the 21st Century,” Yale University has conducted a trial16 to determine the type of message that will maximize acceptance and uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine. Messaging slants evaluated in the investigation included:17
| Personal freedom message — A message about how COVID-19 is limiting people’s personal freedom and how working together to get enough people vaccinated can preserve society’s personal freedoms. |
| Economic freedom message — A message about how COVID-19 is limiting people’s economic freedom and how, by working together to get enough people vaccinated, society can preserve its economic freedom. |
| Self-interest message — A message that COVID-19 presents a real danger to one’s health, even if one is young and healthy, with the idea being that getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the best way to prevent oneself from getting sick. |
| Community interest message — A message about the dangers of COVID-19 to the health of loved ones. The idea to promote is that the more people who get vaccinated against COVID-19, the lower the risk that one’s loved ones will get sick. The idea: Society must work together and all get vaccinated. |
| Economic benefit message — A message about how COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on the economy and the only way to strengthen the economy is to work together to get enough people vaccinated. |
| Guilt message — This message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the health of one’s family and community, with the idea that the best way to protect them is by getting vaccinated, and that society must work together to get enough people vaccinated. Then it asks the participant to imagine the guilt they will feel if they don’t get vaccinated and spread the disease. |
| Embarrassment message — This message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the health of one’s family and community. The idea to promote is that the best way to protect them is by getting vaccinated and by working together to make sure enough people get vaccinated. Then it asks the participant to imagine the embarrassment they will feel if they don’t get vaccinated and subsequently spread the disease. |
| Anger message — This message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the health of one’s family and community. The sales idea is that the best way to protect them is by getting vaccinated and by working together to make sure that enough people get vaccinated. It then asks the participant to imagine the anger they will feel if they don’t get vaccinated and spread the disease. |
| Trust in science message — A message about how getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the most effective way of protecting one’s community. It promotes the idea that vaccination is backed by science, and that anyone who doesn’t get vaccinated doesn’t understand how infections are spread or who ignores science. |
| Not bravery message — A message which describes how firefighters, doctors and front line medical workers are brave, and infers that those who choose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 are not brave. |
The study, which was completed July 8, 2020, also sought to determine:
- Participant’s confidence in the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine after hearing the message in question
- Participant’s willingness to persuade others to get vaccinated
- Their fear of those who have not been vaccinated
- The social judgment of those who choose not to vaccinate
Prosocial Pressure Tactics Work Best
Harvard Business School in collaboration with the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have also published a working paper18 comparing self-interested versus prosocial motivations for COVID-19 prevention behaviors.
Considering the messages we’ve been bombarded with over the past few months — calling people who don’t wear masks “grandma killers” and so on — it seems clear that results from these kinds of investigations have been capitalized on.
In that paper, “Don’t Get It or Don’t Spread It?” the authors review studies in which various types of messages were compared — messages highlighting the threat to self, versus the threat you might pose to others.
Overall, prosocial messages, i.e., messages that stress the importance of complying with prevention behaviors in order to protect others fared the best. According to the authors:19
“These results reveal that prosocial framing was more effective than self-interested framing, suggesting a potential primacy of prosocial motivations in supporting prevention intentions …
First, prosocial framing may have been relatively more effective not because prosocial motivations do more to drive prevention intentions, but rather because people believe that COVID-19 poses a greater threat to society than to themselves.
Indeed, subjects in Studies 1-2 did on average report that coronavirus posed a larger public than personal threat.
However, we find that the advantage of the Public treatment (relative to the Personal treatment) was not significantly moderated by ‘threat difference scores’ (i.e., differences between the reported personal vs. public threat of coronavirus), or significantly smaller among subjects who reported the personal threat of coronavirus to be as large or larger than the public threat …
Thus, we find evidence that the relative effectiveness of the Public treatment was not unique to subjects who saw COVID-19 as more threatening to society than to themselves.
A second possibility is that prosocial framing (which encourages people to avoid spreading coronavirus) was more effective than self-interested framing (which encourages people to avoid getting coronavirus) because people feel relatively more empowered to avoid spreading the virus.”
Stop Believing in the Lockdown
A powerful essay20 in the American Institute for Economic Research asks the question: Is the lockdown the best way to minimize casualties in this pandemic?
Using historical examples beginning with Voltaire’s words, “those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities,” the author reasons that lockdowns are not going to save the world from COVID-19, if for no other reason than whenever lockdowns are eased, infections naturally start to creep back up.
However, the vast majority of these “infections” or “cases” are asymptomatic. A rising “case” load does not mean people are actually getting sick and dying. The misuse of the medical term “case” is an egregious one, as historically, a “case” is defined as someone who has symptoms of a particular disease — someone who is actually sick.
Never in medical history has a “case” meant someone who is perfectly healthy and requires testing to determine whether they are infected with a particular pathogen. Would you get tested for the common cold or influenza if you had no symptoms? If the test happened to come back positive, would you with a straight face say you “have” a cold or the flu?
There are other myths, mostly scare tactics, that people are willingly believing that need to be stopped now, too, the author asserts — and it’s time to start questioning what is credulous and what is not. I encourage you to read that essay in its totality.
The Fatal Attraction of Techno-Fascism
Another article21 well worth reading is Mark Petrakis’ “The Fatal Attraction of Techno-Fascism.” This one also starts off with an excellent quote by Cato the Elder: “Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious matters.” One of the first points he makes is that fascism is attractive because:
“… it requires so little from us, so little independent thought; just our basic belief and adherence to a limited set of popularly-shared directives and narratives that once fully accepted, relieve us of the need to address stubborn questions or to fret over subtle differences of opinion and feeling.
Propaganda reassures us that we are complete, that we know all there is to know, that we are rational, pragmatic and pure, that the science has been settled and that we are a part of something special.”
Petrakis goes on to discuss why propaganda and disinformation is required in order to maintain control in a fascist regime, and how truth is a liability that must be disallowed and penalized. In the end, the price we pay for this kind of intellectual laziness is “soul-crushing denial and disconnection.”
No one who has been paying attention this past year in particular can have missed that propaganda is in full swing, 24/7, and that both truthful facts and personal opinions that run counter to the established propaganda narrative are being censored and penalized in equal measure.
When it comes to COVID-19, the propaganda is so pervasive and widespread that it has actually shattered what Petrakis refers to as “the grandest illusion of all” that “must be maintained at all costs,” namely the appearance that the propaganda messages are randomly generated.
“It must always appear that the media’s coverage and the comments of experts are entirely free from any preconceived manipulation,” he says. Today, there is little doubt that the narrative we see is anything but free from bias. There’s little doubt that what we’re told is “weaponized storytelling,” to quote Petrakis yet again.
“Looking at our world, we can see that the reach and authority of the transnational global capitalists who run the world’s nation-sized casinos has been cemented. All systems are now in place, up and running LIVE on that criminal syndicate’s vast web of networks. Each one of us has by now been targeted by them for some form of surveillance and financialization …
The ‘A.I. control grids’ are all active and expanding. The technocratic agendas are now fully ready for prime-time.
We have been gradually ‘shepherded’ by propaganda and psychological torture techniques … under the ‘persistent’ control of A.I., which will guide the process of transmuting us into commodities, into plunderable assets, into digitally-regulated and genetically modified ‘livestock.’ Sadly, this is where decades of constant acquiescence to propaganda and institutional hypnosis has brought us …”
Ultimately, the economic system known as technocracy is tailor-made for the transhumanist revolution — which I touch upon in “Will New COVID Vaccine Make You Transhuman?” — where man is merged with technology and AI. As always, the lure will be greater convenience, self-improvement and “a better world for all.”
What’s never mentioned is the ultimate price. The price for all of it is complete subjugation to faceless leaders who profit from your every move, and therefore will dictate all of them.
COVID-19 Rules Mark ‘Hysterical Slide Into Police State’
I’ll end this with some observations by British Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption, who in a March 30, 2020, interview22 with The Post warned that COVID-19 rules are paving the way for despotism — the exercise of absolute power in a cruel and oppressive manner.
“The real problem is that when human societies lose their freedom, it’s not usually because tyrants have taken it away. It’s usually because people willingly surrender their freedom in return for protection against some external threat. And the threat is usually a real threat but usually exaggerated.
That’s what I fear we are seeing now. The pressure on politicians has come from the public. They want action. They don’t pause to ask whether the action will work. They don’t ask themselves whether the cost will be worth paying. They want action anyway. And anyone who has studied history will recognize here the classic symptoms of collective hysteria.
Hysteria is infectious. We are working ourselves up into a lather in which we exaggerate the threat and stop asking ourselves whether the cure may be worse than the disease.”
It is time to ask ourselves some very pressing questions. Is it reasonable to expect government to eliminate ALL infection and ALL death? They’ve proven they cannot, yet we keep relinquishing more and more freedoms and liberties because they claim doing so will keep everyone safer. It’s an enticing lie, but a lie nonetheless.
Remember, they sold us on the business shutdowns and home quarantining by saying we just need to flatten the curve of infection to avoid hospital overcrowding. Now the curve is in a visible nosedive and hospitals are far from overcrowded with COVID-19 patients, yet lockdowns remain in many areas and some — Australia being a prime example — have reached astonishing new heights.
Sooner or later everyone must decide which is more important: Personal liberty or false security? Circling back to where I started, the good news is that many are in fact starting to see the writing on the wall; they’re starting to see we’ve been “had,” and are starting to choose liberty over brutal totalitarianism in the name of public health.
