Download or read book The Panic Virus written by Seth Mnookin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing account of how vaccine opponents have used the media to spread their message of panic, despite no scientific evidence to support them.
Download or read book Panic Attack written by Nicole Saphier and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Follow the science” is what they said. “Follow our politics” is what they meant. In Panic Attack, nationally bestselling author and physician Nicole Saphier uncovers the hypocrisy and hysteria which has characterized so much of the American pandemic response. While journalists trumpeted the importance of following science to “flatten the curve,” they praised Governors Andrew Cuomo and Phil Murphy, who sanctioned ill-equipped nursing homes to take COVID-positive patients, leading to an enormous death spike for New York and New Jersey. Plus, the old guard medical establishment captured by Dr. Fauci proved to be far too rigid during a health care emergency. While some state legislators are still concealing accurate records of nursing home deaths, many others have made anti-science decisions regarding re-opening plans; all of which fuel distrust and civil unrest. Democrat mayors like Bill de Blasio openly admitted that their decisions to keep schools closed were fueled by a “social contract” with teachers (that is: teachers’ unions), despite hard science saying this would be harmful. When anti-science measures are continuously implemented, the long-term consequences of such actions will likely stay with us for years to come. The pandemic has resulted in a failure of government, much of which is unavoidable in a unique disaster scenario. However, the rampant politicization of science, from the origin of the virus to the simple concept of wearing facemasks, has hopelessly muddied the water, divided the country, and knee-jerk anti-Trumpism made it all worse.
Download or read book The Price of Panic written by Jay W. Richards and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WHAT JUST HAPPENED? The human cost of the emergency response to COVID-19 has far outweighed the benefits. That’s the sobering verdict of a trio of scholars—a biologist, a statistician, and a philosopher— in this comprehensive assessment of the worst panic-induced disaster in history. As the media fanned the flames of panic, government officials and a new elite of scientific experts ignored the established protocols for mitigating a dangerous disease. Instead, they shut down the world economy, closed every school, confined citizens to their homes, and threatened to enforce a regime of extreme social distancing indefinitely. And the American public—amazingly enough—complied without protest. Modestly but relentlessly focused on what we know and don’t know about the coronavirus, Douglas Axe, William M. Briggs, and Jay W. Richards demonstrate in this eye-opening study what real experts can contribute when a pandemic strikes. In the early spring of 2020, the panic of government officials, the hysteria of the media, and the hubris of suddenly powerful scientists produced a worldwide calamity. The Price of Panic is the essential book for understanding what happened and how to avoid repeating our deadly mistakes.
Download or read book Liberty or Lockdown written by Jeffrey Tucker and published by American Institute for Economic Research. This book was released on 2020-09-20 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeffrey Tucker is well known as the author of many informative and beloved articles and books on the subject of human freedom. Now he’s turned his attention to the most shocking and widespread violation of human freedom in our times: the authoritarian lockdown of society on the pretense that it is necessary in the face of a novel virus. Learning from the experts, Jeffrey Tucker has researched this subject from every angle. In this book, Tucker lays out the history, politics, economics, and science relevant to the coronavirus response. The result is clear: there is no justification for the lockdowns. It’s liberty or lockdown. We have to choose. The book includes a foreword by George Gilder.
Download or read book An Economic Theory of Greed Love Groups and Networks written by Paul Frijters and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are people loyal? How do groups form and how do they create incentives for their members to abide by group norms? Until now, economics has only been able to partially answer these questions. In this groundbreaking work, Paul Frijters presents a new unified theory of human behaviour. To do so, he incorporates comprehensive yet tractable definitions of love and power, and the dynamics of groups and networks, into the traditional mainstream economic view. The result is an enhanced view of human societies that nevertheless retains the pursuit of self-interest at its core. This book provides a digestible but comprehensive theory of our socioeconomic system, which condenses its immense complexity into simplified representations. The result both illuminates humanity's history and suggests ways forward for policies today, in areas as diverse as poverty reduction and tax compliance.
Download or read book Facing COVID Without Panic written by Daniel Halperin and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise book explains in understandable terms how scientists, as they struggle to understand Covid-19, have begun to identify the main ways the coronavirus is spread and the primary factors associated with severe illness and death. This emerging evidence can help us determine the best ways to reduce risk as well as anxiety and fear. By examining 12 common myths and 12 lesser known facts about Covid-19, the author explores: ● How this respiratory coronavirus is mainly spread through close and prolonged contact, and why fleeting encounters are extremely unlikely to cause infection ● How most infections occur within clusters of people in indoor situations with poor air circulation: households, workplaces, nursing homes, prisons, mass transit, etc. ● The very low risk of infection while being outdoors and from surfaces ● Why a child is more likely to die from walking to school than from Covid-19, and the surprisingly low risk of children infecting others ● Why "facial distancing" is more helpful than "social distancing" ● The value and limitations of other prevention measures including masks, gloves, thermometer guns, hand sanitizers, vaccines, and "herd immunity" approaches ● Why having asthma does not increase risk of severe illness or death from Covid-19 (and may even lower risk) ● Is it safe to work out again at the gym? ● What's about "airborne" transmission: do we need to do anything differently? ● The not necessarily very high risk to the elderly, absent serious health conditions ● The need to focus on levels of Covid-19 deaths vs cases, even when surges inevitably occur ● The confusion regarding "asymptomatic" and "pre-symptomatic" infected persons ● The impact of shelter-in-place measures and other responses to the coronavirus, and ● What can be learned from past pandemics: Daniel Halperin, Ph.D. is Adjunct Full Professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health in Chapel Hill. He has conducted epidemiological and anthropological research for over forty years in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and other regions, and previously taught at Harvard School of Public Health, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico. He served over five years as Senior HIV Prevention Advisor at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Dr. Halperin co-authored a New York Times "Editor's Choice" book on the AIDS pandemic and has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles on infectious diseases in leading scientific journals, as well as a number of opinion pieces in the Washington Post, New York Times, Financial Times, and elsewhere.
Download or read book The Pandemic Century written by Mark Honigsbaum and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-09 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like sharks, epidemic diseases always lurk just beneath the surface. This fast-paced history of their effect on mankind prompts questions about the limits of scientific knowledge, the dangers of medical hubris, and how we should prepare as epidemics become ever more frequent. Ever since the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, scientists have dreamed of preventing catastrophic outbreaks of infectious disease. Yet, despite a century of medical progress, viral and bacterial disasters continue to take us by surprise, inciting panic and dominating news cycles. From the Spanish flu and the 1924 outbreak of pneumonic plague in Los Angeles to the 1930 'parrot fever' pandemic and the more recent SARS, Ebola, and Zika epidemics, the last 100 years have been marked by a succession of unanticipated pandemic alarms. Like man-eating sharks, predatory pathogens are always present in nature, waiting to strike; when one is seemingly vanquished, others appear in its place. These pandemics remind us of the limits of scientific knowledge, as well as the role that human behaviour and technologies play in the emergence and spread of microbial diseases.
Download or read book Rage written by Bob Woodward and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rage is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest. Woodward, the #1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans. In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months—an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind—the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the “dynamite behind every door.” At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president. Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making. Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents. Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a “fantasy film.” Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?” Trump told the author in July. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.”
Download or read book COVID 19 The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic written by Barry Cooper and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-27 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: COVID-19 The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic explores the political and social responses that have been tributary to the medical responses during the COVID-19 pandemic.What is a moral panic? The term was introduced by Stanley Cohen in his 1972 book, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, which was based on his PhD dissertation in sociology written at the London School of Economics. It is, in short, a relatively recent term in social science. The focus of any analysis of moral panic is whether an issue is distorted and exaggerated in such a way as to produce an obvious over-reaction on the part of social and political authorities. Such a process occurs in stages: (1) an event or perhaps a person is defined as a threat, perhaps only a vague threat, to existing values, traditions, or interests; (2) the event is simplified; and presented in the mass (and now social) media in a stereotypical way; (3) moral barricades are manned by editors, politicians, experts, and other right-thinking people and socially authorized knowers; (4) ways of coping with the disturbance are developed, and eventually; (5) the public profile of the disturbance, event, individual, etc., declines and is forgotten or is retained as a memory and as a diffuse or potential threat; Cohen called this aftermath a "folk devil." The chief emotion associated with a moral panic is fear.John Lee, M.D., retired professor of pathology and a National Health Service consultant pathologist, summarized the point about the history of the virus over the past couple of decades: "The spread of viruses like COVID-19 is not new. What is new is our response."
Download or read book Pandemic written by Slavoj Žižek and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-05-20 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an unprecedented global pandemic sweeps the planet, who better than the supercharged Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek to uncover its deeper meanings, marvel at its mind-boggling paradoxes and speculate on the profundity of its consequences? We live in a moment when the greatest act of love is to stay distant from the object of your affection. When governments renowned for ruthless cuts in public spending can suddenly conjure up trillions. When toilet paper becomes a commodity as precious as diamonds. And when, according to Žižek, a new form of communism – the outlines of which can already be seen in the very heartlands of neoliberalism – may be the only way of averting a descent into global barbarism. Written with his customary brio and love of analogies in popular culture (Quentin Tarantino and H. G. Wells sit next to Hegel and Marx), Žižek provides a concise and provocative snapshot of the crisis as it widens, engulfing us all.
Download or read book Pandemia written by Alex Berenson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most important fact about the coronavirus pandemic that turned the world upside down in 2020 is that our response to it has been an epic overreaction driven by a disastrous confluence of public and private interests—all of them purporting to “follow the science.” Since the lockdowns began, millions of Americans have relied on the reporting of Alex Berenson. Exposing the hysteria and manipulation behind the worst failure of public policy since World War I, this clear-eyed journalist has been a critical source of reason and truth. The product of relentless investigation and research, Pandemia explains how an illness that many people will never even know they had became the occasion for economically ruinous lockdowns and the suppression of personal freedom on a previously unimaginable scale. Dispassionate, factual, and untainted by any agenda other than telling the truth, this is the account that pandemic-weary Americans desperately need.
Download or read book Hope and Help for Your Nerves written by Claire Weekes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling step-by-step guide that will show you how to break the cycle of fear and cure your feelings of panic and anxiety. My heart beats too fast. My hands tremble and sweat. I feel like there’s a weight on my chest. My stomach churns. I have terrible headaches. I can't sleep. Sometimes I can't even leave my house.... These common symptoms of anxiety are “minor” only to the people who don't suffer from them. But to the millions they affect, these problems make the difference between a happy, healthy life and one of crippling fear and frustration. In Hope and Help for Your Nerves, Dr. Claire Weekes offers the results of years of experience treating real patients—including some who thought they'd never recover. With her simple, step-by-step guidance, you will learn how to understand and analyze your own symptoms of anxiety and find the power to conquer your fears for good.
Download or read book How to Prevent the Next Pandemic written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments, businesses, and individuals around the world are thinking about what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic. Can we hope to not only ward off another COVID-like disaster but also eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu? Bill Gates, one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists, believes the answer is yes. The author of the #1 New York Times best seller How to Avoid a Climate Disaster lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another catastrophe like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world’s foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, Gates first helps us understand the science of infectious diseases. Then he shows us how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, how we can prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy. Here is a clarion call—strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance.
Download or read book United States of Fear written by Mark McDonald M.D. and published by Bombardier Books. This book was released on 2021-11-12 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, LA-based psychiatrist Mark McDonald grew increasingly concerned by the negative mental health effects he witnessed among his patients—and Americans nationwide. These negative effects—stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, domestic violence, suicidal ideation—were all directly traceable to the climate of fear being stoked by public health authorities and irresponsibly amplified by national media. These fears in turn drove a hysterical overreaction from government in the form of draconian lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates of questionable value. But the fear did not abate and quickly took on a life of its own, becoming an unstoppable force in all our lives. At last McDonald began to speak out, explaining that America is actually suffering from two pandemics: a viral one and a psychological one, a “pandemic of fear” that is in many ways more dangerous and damaging than the virus itself. Rooted in the natural anxieties of women on behalf of their children and families, inflamed and amplified by sensationalistic media, and driven over the top by hamfisted authoritarian measures from those in power, McDonald diagnoses the country at large as suffering from a mass delusional psychosis. This is not a metaphor. The malady itself is very real. Whether we can regain our collective sanity as a society remains to be seen.
Download or read book Autopsy of a Pandemic written by Julius Ruechel and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Autopsy of a Pandemic, independent investigative writer Julius Ruechel systematically dismantles the data manipulation, lies, and distorted scientific principles that have plunged the world into medical tyranny since the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first detected at the end of 2019. Part one, The Lies Exposed by the Numbers, tells the story of the pandemic using the government's own official data. What emerges is a shocking story of deliberate scientific misconduct and breach of trust, which reveals the horrifying - and deadly - consequences of stripping data of context and allowing governments to evade transparency. Part two, Washington's Inoculation Gamble, focuses on the government's decision to rely on vaccines as an exit strategy and uses official government data to calculate the Vegas odds of death from the virus versus the odds of injury or death from the vaccines. This simple calculation is the basis of the principle of informed consent, which was established by the Nuremberg Code in the aftermath of the Second World War. Part two helps you take back control over your medical decisions by giving you the knowledge base to stop being manipulated by public health officials who are willfully distorting basic medical principles and using coercion to push universal vaccines and vaccine passports. And in part three, The Snake-Oil Salesmen and the Covid-Zero Con, Julius Ruechel takes a tour though pre-COVID science to demonstrate that, from day one, lockdowns and vaccines as an exit strategy were a deliberate fantasy, cultivated by international health agencies and vaccine developers, which was designed to rope us into a pharmaceutical dependency as a deceitful trade-off for access to our lives. Variant by variant. For as long as the public is willing to go along for the ride. It's the subscription-based business model, adapted to the pharmaceutical industry. "Immunity as a service". Combined with PCR testing, this may be the world's most lucrative shakedown ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. For anyone caught up in the panic of the last year and a half, Autopsy of a Pandemic clears a path through the fog of chaos to help them break free from fear. For anyone who has already broken free of the spell, this book provides a kind of record to gain perspective over what has been done to us. And for future generations, this book serves as a warning to prevent this from ever happening again.
Download or read book Factfulness written by Hans Rosling and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.
Download or read book Unmasked written by Ian Miller and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2022-02-11 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masks have been a ubiquitous and oft-politicized aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Years of painstakingly organized pre-pandemic planning documents led public health experts to initially discourage the use of masks, or even insinuate that they could lead to increased rates of spread. Yet seemingly in a matter of days in spring 2020, leading infectious disease scientists and organizations reversed their previous positions and recommended masking as the key tool to slow the spread of COVID and dramatically reduce infections. Unmasked tells the story of how effective or ineffective masks and mask mandate policies were in impacting the trajectory of the pandemic throughout the world. Author Ian Miller covers the earliest days of the pandemic, from experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci contradicting their previous statements and recommending masks as the most important policy intervention against the spread of COVID, to the months afterward as many locations around the globe mandated masks in nearly all public settings. With easy-to-understand charts and visual aids, along with detailed, clear explanations of the dramatic shift in policy and expectations, Unmasked makes the data-driven case that masks might not have achieved the goals that Fauci and other public health experts created.
