There are three primary forms of mass media: textual, visual, and audio. Each is capable of telling a complete story by itself, but more interestingly, they can be combined to tell three different but related stories at the same time. As a fun experiment, the reader should try watching a newscast, first with just the video, then just the audio, and note any differences in your perception of stories when you separate the two.
That said, let's take a look at how COVID is sold and programmed to manipulate a mass audience. We will look at the tricks used to sell COVID, how it is packaged, and the motives of those selling it.
Let's ask ourselves what we really know about COVID. We are told it is a virus, that it originated in Wuhan, China, and that it is deadly. When we seek proof of these three propositions, most of us have no means to prove the existence of a virus, so we depend on "experts" to tell us that the cause of some set of symtoms is a virus. We depend on the "experts" to tell us that the first known cases were in Wuhan. We depend on "experts" to explain the connection between certain events (infection, progression, mortality) and the virus we cannot see.
The entire COVID narrative depends entirely on a small group of individuals with credentials we are told make them "experts" telling us how to connect certain dots to form the picture they want to paint in our minds.
You and I have been trained since birth to accept the authority of certain individuals and organizations on certain topics. We rarely, if ever, question our underlying assumptions, which make us vulnerable to all kinds of marketing and PR.
If I take a middle-aged male with a soothing voice, put him in a lab coat and stick a stethoscope in his pocket, and place him in a vaguely clinical setting, then add a voice-over saying, "Nine out of ten doctors believe/recommend/choose...," most people would not only assume the man is a doctor, but that what he is saying is authoritative and true.
This effect depends heavily on the human propensity to delegate authority to someone else so we don't have to do all the work involved for ourselves. This effect is commonly called "suspension of disbelief," and mass media is built on it.
If we take a performer with a certain (scientifically determined) look and vocal range, dress them up and place them on a vaguely "newsy"' looking set, we tend to delegate authority to them as "employees" assigned to find, digest and deliver information to us in a compact and packaged format.
Because we have delegated certain authority to these performers, we accept uncritically any random person they trot out as an authority on some topic. We assume the performer has done the work necessary to vet the "expert" credentials. We never see the expert's diploma or transcript, nor do we ever personally interview those who conferred "expert" status on them. We base our assumptions about the expert on assumptions about the performer on assumptions about institutions. We are at the mercy of multiple layers of assumptions that few of us examine on a regular basis.
When the performer trots out an expert who says a deadly virus is sweeping the planet, most of us have no way to verify the patient from whom samples were taken and scanned under an electron microscope and compared to the list of known viruses and determine whether the virus is indeed the cause of the sumptoms in the patient. We assume that all the experts being presented to us have done all the work to verify the information they are telling us, and that their motives are pure and benign.
When I search for images of the SARS-COVID-2 virus, what I get looks very much like images of the seven other corona viruses that afflict humans, and since the images are generated by a computer counting the electrons bouncing off the surface of the virus, the images are in fact generated by an algorithm. I have no means at my disposal to analyze those images, nor the computer and algorithms that produced them, so I am dependent on "experts" to interpret that data for me.
This doesn't begin to address all the tricks used - color, composition, lighting, music, etc. - but being aware of the use of "experts" is important to understanding how COVID is packaged.
COVID is packaged as an imminent and existential threat to every human being on the planet. It is packaged as a virus, which none of us can see, and we are told that someone is infected by use of a test that none of us can verify (theory, design, processing). A certain set of symptoms (matching several influenza and corona viruses) is a sign of infection by this virus. And finally, it is all "wrapped" in a package labelled "SCIENCE".
Please forget that SCIENCE is a methodology for testing facts and assumptions, and NOT a belief system designed to stamp "authority" all over information, based entirely on a nested set of assumptions.
The packaging of COVID is designed to increase our credulity. If "authorities" and "experts" and SCIENCE are all over the packaging, it must be true. On a simple level, if you put French's common yellow mustard in a jar with French words all over it, you can double the price. If you put a skull and cross-bones on the label, most people will not taste it to verify whether the contents are poisonous. Thus, if we take an invisible threat, wrap it in "authority" and "expert," and stamp SCIENCE all over the label, not many people will question the information's veracity.
Let's take hydroxichloroquine, or HCQ, as an example. Here is a drug that has been used by millions of people across the planet for decades, and is listed by the US government as being safer than aspirin (widely sold on the shelf of any convenience store). It is frequently used to treat dengue fever, which is caused by one of four different viruses, so we know for a fact that it is effective against at least some viruses.
So, we have a cheap, common and safe drug with a long history of effectively treating some viruses. Those are facts. Now ask yourself, what is your perception of HCQ. If terms like "side effects," "heart problems" and "poison" come to mind, then you have been watching mass media. Whether you believe that information or not is irrelevant. If your doctor wants to prescribe it for you, you will immediately react with fear. Giving in to that fear or suppressing it depends entirely on your cognitive capacity and access to alternative information.
Ultimately, we are being manipulated by and with FEAR. Fear is a very powerful emotion that is rooted deep in our minds. It shuts down our reasoning capacity and causes us to react on instinct. No one can stop fear, but we can suppress it, but it takes a significant conscious effort.
When we strip away all the unknown or unverified (unverifiable) information available on COVID, what we are left with is FEAR, wrapped in AUTHORITY and stamped with SCIENCE. Quite simply, these three concepts are at the root of the entire global phenomenon we generally call COVID.
The FEAR is generated by the unknown and the uncertain. We are unwilling or unable to verify the threat, so like the skull and cross-bones on the label, we won't question the contents out of FEAR we may be wrong.
We may be wrong because AUTHORITY has certified that our FEAR is warranted. We read the label and saw the warning, and now some guy in a lab coat with a stethoscope in his pocket is verifying our FEAR. He has lots of letters after his name, and other AUTHORITY figures confirm his AUTHORITY. Thus, we give in to the FEAR.
This brings us to SCIENCE, a term which should never be confused with science, which is a set of rational rules for testing and verifying facts. Rather, SCIENCE is itself a set of assumptions and beliefs that act as a modern theology. It generates myths and deities that we are taught to hold sacrosanct.
SCIENCE has a high priesthood called AUTHORITY, which is telling us to FEAR. If we cannot question SCIENCE, then none of the propositions built on it can be questioned, either.
If we want to unravel the marketing effort known as COVID, we must first examine our FEAR. Where is it coming from? What is generating it? Who is selling it? What is their motivation? Once the FEAR is addressed, the rest of the illusion will crumble, in the same way that being on the set of a commercial and meeting the actor in the lab coat destroys the illusion that he is a medical professional.
We now turn to the last question - What is their motive?
The answer to this is a bit more difficult, because we must discern what is in the heads of a complex set of characters - individuals and institutions - and why.
The first thing we ask ourselves when unravelling a marketing campaign is, "What are they selling?" The answer is either an action or a belief. They want us to buy a product, or believe something about it. This is not always easy, and involves another set of nested assuptions.
In order to get us to buy Air Jordans, we must first be convinced that Michael Jordan is an honorable and believable person worthy of trust and emulation, that he has intimate knowledge of shoe technology, that he genuinely believes in the product he hawks, and that some part of his skills in basketball are due to his shoes and that we can purchase those skills with no more effort than a visit to Foot Locker.
In the same way, to believe the COVID narrative, we must first believe there is a virus, that the AUTHORITY has perfect knowledge of this virus, that they know how to mitigate the virus, and that if we buy what they are selling we can escape harm and reduce FEAR.
What has the AUTHORITY sold us to mitigate FEAR? Do not trust our friends and neighbors. Wear a face covering. Do not attempt to treat yourself. Only a new (as yet uninvented) medication can stop the FEAR. Only listen to AUTHORITY, no one else can possibly understand what is happening.
If we sum up the messages, it would seem that we are being channeled toward global AUTHORITY and that daily contact with the people around us will somehow weaken or undermine this transition (personal experience). SCIENCE is the only way to understand the nature of the threat. Only AUTHORITY can interpret SCIENCE.
Taken together, it seems that we are being sold a command and control system that the average human cannot and should not question. The punishment for not following orders is death from an invisible bogeyman called COVID.
The result is billions of humans acting entirely on instinct and FEAR. When humans do this, they tend to rally to leaders, or AUTHORITY. This is the "circle the wagons" effect, and it is so effective that it is ubiquitous. Humans herd when threatened, and herds conform to whatever the leaders tell them. It is built into our psyches and it at the heart of almost all marketing. People buy products to conform to social norms so they can be accepted into the group to receive the protection from the unknown (FEAR) that they crave.
We are being herded. FEAR is the sheepdog. AUTHORITY is the shepherd. SCIENCE is the slaughterhouse. Our individual identity, will and independence are the targets. The marketing team wants full control over what goes into and onto, and how we use our most primordial possession - our Selves.
In other words, the marketers want Perfect Consumers.
