COVID-19: How Social Distancing and Lockdowns are Destroying Lives

Well, it’s now ten months into the shit-show that is 2020, and COVID-19 is still the biggest news story around. Lockdowns and travel bans are still in place around the world, even though studies repeatedly show the ‘deadly’ virus is in fact very benign. Seriously, if you’re going to get a ‘disease’ then you couldn’t do much better than COVID-19, whose infection fatality rate is so low it is measured in fractions of a percent.

Here are the CDC’s latest “best estimate” infection fatality rates (in the far-RHS column):

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html

So even the CDC’s own data shows that, if you are 19 and under, the virus is essentially a non-issue. If you are aged 20-49, then your odds of dying with COVID-19 are around the same as the annual likelihood of getting struck by lightning: 0.0002.

Even in the 70+ age group - apparently at imminent risk of mass extinction if we’re to believe the ongoing hysteria - the best estimate fatality ratio is a mere 0.054. That means of every 100 persons in this age group allegedly infected with COVID-19, 94.6 will survive.

Keep in mind these estimates are derived from those who die with COVID-19 listed on their death certificate. That is no guarantee these people actually died because of COVID-19; at best, it tells us they died with COVID-19. As I have explained in previous articles, the WHO has introduced new classification of death categories allowing doctors to ascribe “suspected” or “probable” COVID-19 as the cause of death, even though testing for COVID-19 is no more complicated than taking a nasal or throat swab and passing it on to the pathology lab.

We’ve had doctors come forward to complain they are being pressured into ascribing COVID-19 as cause of death. We’ve had health officials caught out falsifying death records to inflate the COVID-19 death toll, we’ve even had Fauci and Birx from the Whitehouse Coronavirus Task Force nonchalantly admit to the press the US has "taken a very liberal approach to mortality" and that "if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death" - irrespective of whether or not COVID-19 actually caused the patient's death.

We know that in the US, where the COVID-19 death toll features prominently in anti-Trump news stories, that hospitals are effectively being bribed into recording a patient as a COVID-19 victim. Under changes to the Medicare Act, the financial rewards triple if a patient is placed on a ventilator – a strategy that appears to greatly worsen, not improve, the patient’s prognosis.

Then there’s the question of just how accurate COVID-19 tests are. In Tanzania, COVID-19 test kits imported from overseas came under suspicion after returning some rather bizarre positives. In order to evaluate the quality of the kits, Tanzanian security forces randomly obtained non-human samples, including from a pawpaw, a goat and a sheep. The random samples were assigned human names and ages, and sent to a laboratory to test for COVID-19. The pawpaw and goat samples tested positive.

No, eating pawpaw (papaya) does not give you COVID-19.

What this all means is that even the already-meager “best estimates” of the CDC are in fact likely to be overestimates. COVID-19 is a fatality featherweight, with a punch so weak the survival rate for all but the oldest age groups is within a bee’s cajone of 100%.

It is clear then, that the COVID-19 hysteria campaign has nothing to do with public health, and is instead driven by another agenda. We'll examine that agenda another time, but for now, let’s talk about the mental health toll our sadistic elite are inflicting upon the world.

Social Distancing is Far More Dangerous than COVID-19

Mental distress, self-harm and suicidal behaviour have all increased since the lockdowns began. Lockdown-induced rises in unemployment, business closures, financial stress and social isolation are driving increasing numbers of people to the brink.

A recent study published by the CDC found elevated levels of mental health conditions, substance use, and suicidal ideation among survey respondents in the United States in June 2020. Overall, 40.9% of 5,470 respondents who completed surveys during June reported an adverse mental or behavioral health condition, with 10.7% having seriously considered suicide in the preceding 30 days.

Unpaid caregivers for adults were at especially high risk, with 3.03 times the odds of reporting suicidal ideation in June.

The prevalence of symptoms of anxiety disorder was approximately three times those reported in the second quarter of 2019, and prevalence of depressive disorder was approximately four times that reported in the second quarter of 2019.

Japan had reduced its suicide rate in recent years, a stark contrast to many Western countries where suicide rates have been steadily rising since the turn of the millennium. Up until June of this year, suicides had continued their downward trajectory.

But as the lockdown wore on, people started to crack. The shocking 23 May suicide of professional wrestler and reality TV star Hana Kimura, only 22 years old, was an ominous sign of things to come.

Hana Kimura.

By July, suicides rose back to where they were the same time last year. And by August, they were 15% above where they were the same time last year.

So far this year about 1,600 Japanese have died with COVID-19 — compared to more than 13,000 by suicide.

Which do you think Japanese health authorities should be focusing on?

There has also been a significant increase in female suicide: In August, the number of female suicides rose to 651, a 40% increase over the previous year — most involved women between 20 and 40 years of age. The economic downturn caused by the pandemic greatly affects women because they are far more likely to have temporary or part-time jobs. "These types of jobs were the first to be cut during the pandemic," says Masaharu Maeda, a health expert from the University of Fukushima.

In contrast to the overall trend, the suicide rate among Japanese youth has been on the rise for years but increased significantly this year: In August, 59 primary, middle and high school students killed themselves — more than twice as many as during the same period last year. "We've heard kids as young as five years old talking about dying or wanting to disappear," Hiroyuki Nishino, head of the non-profit children's aid organization Tamariba, told Bloomberg.

In South Korea, the number of people who deliberately harmed themselves in the first half of 2020 soared nearly 36% over the same period last year. A record 595,724 people have been treated for depression, up 5.8% on the first six months of 2019, while suicide rates have also risen.

Cases of suicide among women in their late teens and 20s are of particular concern, with 1,924 deaths in this age group in the first half of the year — an increase of more than 7% on last year's figure.

"The biggest worry that I hear about now, the biggest insecurity is about people's futures at this difficult time," said Dr. Park Chanmin, founder of the Seoul Central Mental Health Clinic.

"Social distancing in Korea is slightly different to other countries, but there is no doubt that it has led to higher levels of stress in people because the places they can go out and meet other people have been severely restricted," Park explained.

In India, which accounts for 15% of the world’s suicides, rates have risen further during the lockdown.

In Mid-September, senior politician Ramgopal Yadav said that in the previous five months, in the city of Noida, 44 people died with COVID-19, but in the same duration, 165 persons committed suicide due to economic distress and stress.

Here in the bland, geographically and culturally barren former penal colony of Australia, mental health has long been a pressing concern. A 2015 World Health Organization Report found Australia shared the world’s second-highest rate of depression alongside the US and Estonia and had the third-highest rate of anxiety, behind Brazil and New Zealand.

So, in a country that has long maintained a contempt-based form of government and policing, why not really stick it to the people with some draconian lockdowns?

That's exactly what happened. Australia has been turned back into a giant prison island, where people who don't like binge-drinking, homoerotic ball sports and brain-dead conversations are pretty much fucked.

The most enthusiastic of Australia's C U Next Tuesday class is the loathsome Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, and his creepy comrades who introduced the world’s harshest lockdown. Never mind hardly anyone lives in Australia, and therefore we have had hardly any people dying with COVID-19 (904 as of this writing, 14 Oct 2020). And never mind that almost all those deaths in Australia were comprised of elderly residents of nursing homes, where average life expectancy is less than 3 years.

The small portion of still-awake Victorian citizens who smelt a big, stinking load of shit and rightfully concluded they were being given the bareback treatment began exercising their freedom of speech and right to assembly by organizing peaceful protests on Facebook. They duly had their doors kicked down by thuggish cops and were arrested for … wait for it … “sedition.”

Stalin and Mao would be so proud.

Overseas readers who think I’m exaggerating … I’m not. Forget all that Crocodile Dundee, "laidback Aussie" bullshit – the real Australia is a highly-strung, hen-pecked nanny state making the conversion to full-blown police state. Victoria, which Chairman Dan signed up to the lots-of-strings-attached One Belt, One Road initiative of his CCP masters, is already there.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see where this would lead.

Earlier this year, Victorian hospitals reported a 9.3% increase in self-injury admissions. In children, the increase was an alarming 33% compared to the same period last year. Chairman Dan’s Politburo quickly countered with the claim that, okay, more people might be taking a razor to themselves, but at least they aren’t actually killing themselves, so what's the big deal, right? The local and highly compliant media made a big triumphant hoo-ha about a Coroner’s Office report that claimed there had been no increase in suicide deaths in Victoria - despite a spike in calls to crisis hotlines.

But now, lo and behold, a new Coroner’s Court report acknowledges an increase in suicides this year among younger and older Victorians. Thirteen males under 18 killed themselves before September 30 this year, “which is approximately equal to the full-year frequency for this group in earlier years,” the report said.

Seventy men over the age of 65 also took their own lives, compared to 46 for the same period in 2018, and 49 in 2019.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The only thing keeping Australia from completely tearing apart at the seams right now are the boatloads of stimulus money the government is desperately throwing around. But when the Jobkeeper payments and rent/eviction/mortgage moratoriums end – and they inevitably will – it's not going to be a pretty picture.

Melbourne surgeon Geoffrey Wells — who spearheaded a doctors’ campaign against the city’s harsh lockdown — said he feared the suicide figures were “just the tip of the iceberg” and a tsunami of mental health harm was bearing down on Victoria.

“I’m still not sure who exactly is making health policy for Victoria (but) are they in a bubble, or just totally oblivious to the harm that’s occurring in Victorian society?” he questioned.

The distress is by no means limited to Victoria. Nurses in Queensland are reporting a surge in desperate people presenting at hospital psyche wards as they buckle under financial stresses brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Suicide Prevention Australia has warned the nation is facing a rare “black swan” event which could pose serious consequences for suicide rates.

President of the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists Dr Philip Morris also fears the worst is yet to come. “In previous pandemics there was little evidence of people taking their own lives until at least a year later. The economic impact grows as time passes and personal financial problems grow,” Dr Morris said.

Domestic Violence - The Real Pandemic

Domestic violence has also spiked markedly around the world as victims now find themselves locked down with their abusers. From Brazil to Germany, Italy to China, domestic violence has increased around the world since lockdowns began.

In Hubei province, the heart of the initial coronavirus outbreak, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled in one county alone during the lockdown in February, from 47 last year to 162 this year, activists told local media.

In Brazil a state-run drop-in centre has seen a surge in cases it attributes to COVID-19 isolation, the Brazilian broadcaster Globo said. “We think there has been a rise of 40% or 50%, and there was already really big demand,” said Adriana Mello, a Rio de Janeiro judge specialising in domestic violence.

The Catalan regional government said that calls to its helpline had risen by 20% in the first few days of the confinement period; in Cyprus, calls to a similar hotline rose 30% in the week after 9 March, when the island had its first confirmed case of coronavirus.

Those disturbing figures log only cases where women are able to seek help; many cannot make calls because they fear being overheard by abusive partners, or are stopped from leaving home.

In Italy activists said calls to helplines had dropped sharply, but instead they were receiving desperate text messages and emails. “One message was from a woman who had locked herself in the bathroom and wrote to ask for help,” said Lella Palladino, from EVA Cooperativa, an activists’ group for the prevention of violence against women. “For sure there is an overwhelming emergency right now. There is more desperation as women can’t go out.”

Palladino said she expected to see an “explosive increase” in the number of reports of domestic abuse once the lockdown restrictions eased.

In Spain – where lockdown rules are extremely strict, and many people are being fined for breaking them – the government has told women they will not be fined if they leave home to report abuse. For some victims, it was too little, too late. On 19 March, the country saw the first domestic violence fatality since the lockdown began five days earlier, when a woman was murdered by her husband in front of their children in the coastal province of Valencia.

Police in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, which has one of the worst track records on violence against women in the country, have launched a new domestic violence helpline as cases surge.

The US is seeing a similar pattern. For example, in Seattle, one of the first US cities to have a major outbreak, the police saw a 21% increase in domestic violence reports in March.

In Texas, during March the Montgomery County District Attorney saw a 35% increase in domestic violence cases.

The increased threat to women and children was a predictable side effect of the COVID-19 lockdowns, said activists.

It didn't take a genius to predict the psychological toll harsh lockdowns would extract, but our so-called leaders went ahead and imposed them anyway. And they are doggedly maintaining them despite an abundance of mounting evidence showing COVID-19 is not so deadly after all.

Social Distancing is a Social Disaster

Social isolation is, in itself, an undesirable and unhealthy state of being. People who have robust social connections live healthier and longer lives than those who don’t.

In the large UK Biobank study, social isolation was associated with a 40% increased risk of heart attack and stroke. The risk of all-cause mortality was even higher, with a 73% increase in relative mortality risk for the socially isolated, even after statistical adjustment for age, sex, ethnic origin, and chronic disease.

More recently, a study led by Kassandra Alcaraz, a public health researcher with the American Cancer Society, analysed data from more than 580,000 US adults and found social isolation increased the risk of premature death from every cause. Among black participants, social isolation increased the risk of early death by over 100 percent, when comparing the most isolated with the least isolated. Among white participants, the highest quintile for social isolation was associated with a 60 to 84 percent increased mortality risk.

Social isolation is so harmful that some countries have even banned solitary confinement in their prisons. In a 2018 article, bioethicist Gali Katznelson and psychiatrist J. Wesley Boyd wrote of solitary confinement:

"Let’s call it for what it is: Placing prisoners in solitary confinement is tantamount to torture and it needs to stop."

On 18 October 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E. Méndez called on all countries to ban the solitary confinement of prisoners except in very exceptional circumstances and for as short a time as possible, with an absolute prohibition in the case of juveniles and people with mental disabilities.

Indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement in excess of 15 days should also be subject to an absolute prohibition, he added, citing scientific studies showing some lasting mental damage is caused after a few days of social isolation.

“Segregation, isolation, separation, cellular, lockdown, Supermax, the hole, Secure Housing Unit ... whatever the name, solitary confinement should be banned by States as a punishment or extortion technique,” Méndez told the UN General Assembly’s third committee, saying the practice could amount to torture.

If you feel like the lockdown is driving you crazy, there’s some solid science to back your suspicions. In 1951, researchers at Montreal's McGill University, led by psychology professor Donald O. Hebb, set out to study how sensory isolation affects human cognition. They offered male graduate students $20 a day — excellent pay in those days — to stay in small chambers containing little more than a bed. "They were given food by human beings, and also when they needed to use the washrooms and things they would be escorted there by other human beings. So they weren’t completely alone,” recalls Peter Milner, one of Hebb’s former graduate students who is now an emeritus psychology professor at McGill.

The volunteers also wore gloves and cardboard tubes over their arms to limit their sense of touch. A U-shaped pillow covered their ears and the hum of an air conditioner further obscured outside noise.

Most of the subjects had planned to use this period of quiet time to think about their work, review their studies, plan term papers, and one thought he would organize an impending lecture, wrote Woodburn Heron, another of Hebb’s collaborators.

Hebb himself had reportedly hoped to observe his subjects for six weeks. As it turned out, the majority lasted no more than a few days in isolation — and none more than a week.

“Nearly all of them reported that the most striking thing about the experience was that they were unable to think clearly about anything for any length of time and that their thought processes seemed to be affected in other ways,” wrote Heron.

Cognitive tests showed the volunteers’ mental faculties were temporarily impaired. While in isolation, the subjects were played tapes arguing that supernatural phenomena, including ghosts and poltergeists, were real; when interviewed later, they proved amenable to such beliefs. They performed poorly on grade-school tasks involving simple arithmetic, word associations, and pattern recognition. They also experienced extreme restlessness, childish emotional responses, and vivid hallucinations. “The subjects had little control over the content” of their visions, Heron wrote. “One man could see nothing but dogs, another nothing but eyeglasses of various types, and so on.”

Nowadays, such an experiment would be highly unlikely to pass the ethical review board of any respectable research department. But here we are in 2020, and the global elite are amusing and enriching themselves by performing a cruel social deprivation experiment, not with a group of volunteer college students, but with the entire planet.

Cunts.

Want to Break Down a Hard Man? Isolate Him

In 1983, Dr Stuart Grassian reported on 14 inmates aged 22-38 years who had been subject to periods of solitary confinement ranging from 11 days to 10 months at the maximum security Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Walpole. Among the symptoms experienced by the prisoners were hypersensitivity to external stimuli; perceptual disturbances, hallucinations, and derealisation experiences; affective disturbances, such as anxiety and panic attacks; difficulties with thinking, memory and concentration; the emergence of fantasies such as revenge and torture of the guards; paranoia; problems with impulse control; and a rapid decrease in symptoms immediately following release from isolation. The robustness of the symptoms and their consistency with those described in earlier German reports led Grassian to conclude they formed a "major, clinically distinguishable psychiatric syndrome."

The same year Grassian published his findings, social psychologist Craig Haney interviewed a group of inmates in solitary confinement at California's super-maximum-security Pelican Bay State Prison. Haney has since inspected many supermax prisons across the U.S., conducting systematic psychological assessments of nearly 1,000 inmates in solitary confinement. In addition to conducting observations and face-to-face interviews with inmates, mental health staff and correctional staff, he has performed an extensive literature review of personal accounts and prison documents relating to the operation of confinement units.

“There are few, if any, forms of imprisonment that appear to produce so much psychological trauma as isolation,” Haney says. “For many prisoners, the absence of regular, normal interpersonal contact creates a pervasive feeling of unreality.”

Haney’s research found that among the population of inmates in supermax prisons, there is a higher rate of mental illness than the general prisoner population. Among 400 randomly selected inmates he studied, over half experienced 11 of the 12 recognized signs of psychological distress. Approximately two out of three of those interviewed reported having anxiety attacks and feeling on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Some inmates also reported more extreme symptoms, such as depression and suicidal thoughts.

Haney's research showed that even in the correctional system, people need human interaction to be healthy psychologically. “It borders on being common sense, but it is common sense with empirical research to support it,” Haney says. “So much of what we do and who we are is rooted in a social context. When people experience extreme isolation and social exclusion, they suffer.”

Social Isolation (a.k.a. “Social Distancing”) Kills

A national study of 339 jail suicides in 1986 found that two-thirds were attempted by someone being held in solitary confinement.

A review of completed suicides in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation between 1999 to 2004 found prisoners housed in a single cell, particularly in administrative segregation or a secure housing unit, were at markedly higher risk of suicide.

In other words, if you want to break people without having to physically assault them, social isolation is a very effective method. If it can bring hardened criminals to their knees, little wonder socially isolated civilians are losing their ability to keep it together.

The UN Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners state that efforts to abolish solitary confinement as a punishment, or to restrict its use, should be undertaken and encouraged.

The revised UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) state that "Imprisonment and other measures which result in cutting off an offender from the outside world are afflictive by the very fact of taking from the person the right of self-determination by depriving him of his liberty. Therefore the prison system shall not, except as incidental to justifiable segregation or the maintenance of discipline, aggravate the suffering inherent in such a situation.’ (Rule 3). They define solitary confinement as ‘confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact’. Beyond an absolute prohibition of its indefinite or prolonged use (in excess of 15 days), the Rules state that ‘solitary confinement shall be used only in exceptional cases as a last resort, for as short a time as possible and subject to independent review, and only pursuant to the authorization by a competent authority." Furthermore, they call on measures to alleviate the potential detrimental effects of separated confinement for the prisoners concerned.

Yet the UN’s WHO was vigorously encouraging social isolation for the entire world. Stay at home, keep 1.5 metres from others, don't shake hands, don't hug each other, wear masks ... basically, we're being encouraged to become a bunch of impersonal, detached robots.

Using a barrage of histrionic fear tactics, authorities are making us fearful and suspicious of each other, while simultaneously presenting themselves and their destructive, freedom-destroying strategies as the solution.

As to why this is all really happening, stay tuned.

PLEASE NOTE: If you are experiencing thoughts of self-harm or suicide, please do not suffer in silence. Please reach out to a counsellor or crisis helpline. Because of my global readership, it is impossible for me to provide help hotline numbers for every country, but a quick internet search for suicide hotlines should retrieve such numbers for your locality. Even reaching out to a friend or loved one can do wonders.

If You Found This Article Helpful, Please Consider Leaving a Tip