Fear is the Real "Virus" Addendum

No replication competent obligate intracellular parasite required.

Shortly after I started the ViroLIEgy Substack, I wrote an article titled Fear is the Real “Virus,” focusing on how one’s mental state can profoundly impact their health. I examined how strong emotions like fear, leading to greater stress and anxiety, can manifest the very symptoms one fears—a phenomenon known as the nocebo effect. This effect occurs when negative beliefs create negative health outcomes. I provided evidence for the nocebo effect in action in the article Infectious Myth Busted Part 7: The Common Cold Vacation, where a patient's belief that they should contract an illness in a transmission experiment resulted in the very symptoms developing. This happened after a nurse mistakenly told the patient, who was healthy two days after the injection, that they had received a cold filtrate rather than a sterile solution. Once corrected, the patient's symptoms subsided almost immediately:

This was demonstrated by Alphonse Raymond Dochez in his paper Studies in the Common Cold. Oddly enough, this was the paper that convinced Dr. Andrewes that the common cold was due to a transmissable “virus” to the point where he adopted the views of Dr. Dochez as the CCU’s working hypothesis. In the 1930 paper, Dr. Dochez not only noted that volunteers could convince themselves that they had a cold when they did not, he also stated that the filtrates, regardless of whether containing the assumed “virus” or not, caused stuffiness, sneezing, and headaches:

“It is very easy for an individual who is being used for a transmission experiment to believe that he has a mild cold although objective evidence is extremely slight or absent. Where, as in the beginning of our work, volunteers believed that we were trying to produce colds, they were self-convinced occasionally that they were suffering from a mild infection. This was much easier of belief as the filtrate in practically all the cases, negative and positive, causes some slight stuffiness of the nose, a little sneezing and occasionally slight headache.”

As an example, Dr. Dochez spoke about a patient who was given an injection of sterile broth without “virus.” When he was accidentally told by an assistant that he had failed to catch a cold, that night, the man began to suffer severe symptoms. When he was told the next morning that he had been misinformed about the nature of his injection, the man’s symptoms disappeared within an hour:

“It was apparent very early that this individual was more or less unreliable and from the start it was possible to keep him in the dark regarding our procedure. He had inconspicuous symptoms after his test injection of sterile broth and no more striking results from the cold filtrate, until an assistant, on the second day after injection, inadvertently referred to his failure to contract a cold. That evening and night the subject reported severe symptomatology, including sneezing, cough, sore throat and stuffiness of the nose. The next morning he was told that he had been misinformed in regard to the nature of the filtrate and his symptoms subsided within the hour. It is important to note that there was an entire absence of objective pathological changes.”

The power of the nocebo effect, which is where the belief that a negative outcome from a treatment or procedure actually causes the manifestation of that outcome and results in harm, is a well-known phenomenon. This was something acknowledged by researchers before, during, and after the CCU experiments. In the CCU’s intake form, they advised that “the volunteer should not be bound to think that he will develop symptoms after being given nose drops.” In fact, they admitted that “there is a good chance that he may not” as “some volunteers prove resistant to the virus inoculum anyway.” They admitted that “by and large, only about one third of all volunteers actually develop symptoms.” These symptoms are non-specific, and they are exactly the same as those attributed to hay fever and seasonal allergies. Thus, on top of the issues with patients manifestimg symptoms due to the belief that they may get a cold just from undergoing the experiment, the interpretation of a cold is entirely subjective which is why they utilized a double-blind set-up to try and mitigate “incorrect interpretations” by the researchers as well as to ensure that they did not imagine signs and symptoms that were not there. Just the action of injecting these solutions into the nasal cavities, regardless of whether they contain a “virus” or not, will result in symptoms such as headache, malaise, stuffiness, and sneezing, as noted by Dr. Dochez and the authors of the 1958 study. Thus, it can be easily concluded that it is due to the experimental procedure itself, along with the reaction, both physically and mentally, of the individual to the presence of foreign substances, that results in the occurrence of the non-specific symptoms which are then subjectively interpreted to be the common cold by the researchers based upon the inoculum given.

In the case of “Covid-19,” the belief in—and fear surrounding—the “threat” of a “novel virus” may have been the critical trigger that pushed many over the edge into illness. The incessant visual cues—daily death counts, lockdowns and curfews, social distancing markers, hand sanitizing stations, and masked faces everywhere—served as constant reminders to remain afraid. Added to this was the flood of conflicting information: How did the “virus” spread? Were asymptomatic carriers a driving factor? Did masks work? How long did vaccines provide “immunity?” Was the “virus” natural or a man-made bioweapon? It’s no surprise that in a time when much of the population was already teetering on the edge of poor health, an increased state of fear, stress, and anxiety could negatively impact their well-being. No invisible microbial “virus” is needed to cause illness and death when the very real, and highly contagious, “virus” of fear is at play.

This topic is crucial for understanding how dis-ease can spread rapidly, particularly in today’s world where fear propaganda is delivered daily by the pharmaceutically-funded mainstream media. Increased fear, stress, and anxiety may explain many deaths, as these emotions could exacerbate underlying health conditions worsened by emotional trauma. The fear of an unknown “virus” and the potential threat to one’s health could easily drive people to seek testing at the first sign of symptoms they might have ignored in the past. The “scarlet letter” of a positive PCR test could transform a mild cold into a severe disease, possibly leading to deadly outcomes through invasive interventions and toxic treatments. All it takes is the belief that the imaginary threat is real. Once accepted, the mental and physical decline can follow.

“HIV” Discoverer Luc Montagnier understood the power of fear.

While fear over “Covid-19” has subsided in recent years, the mainstream media, with the help of “health” organizations like the CDC and WHO, continue to create a state of constant terror over the next big “threat.” Whether it’s the avian flu, monkeypox, West Nile "virus," the latest "SARS2" variants, bacterial outbreaks and food recalls, or the mysterious Disease X, there are daily stories alerting the public and keeping the fearful on edge, awaiting the next shoe to drop.

In light of this ongoing fear campaign, I planned to simply post my original article on this topic to ViroLIEgy.com for the Halloween season, hoping to raise awareness. However, the role of the mind in health outcomes is such an important subject—and one I’ve only just begun to explore—that I’ve decided to take a closer look at how fear and its related emotions affected public health during “Covid” to shed more light on this topic. To do so, I’m including an illuminating article from early in the “pandemic” on how fear can spread from person to person faster than an imaginary “coronavirus.” Additionally, I’ve included excerpts from a 2021 study on the psychological consequences of “Covid-19” fear and its impact on underlying illnesses. Together, these papers provide valuable insight into how we were emotionally manipulated during the “pandemic,” and how fear influences health, adding depth and context to the original article.