[Behavioral sink is defined as the collapse (or sinking) of "good" behavior with a corresponding increase in destructive behaviors, leading to a downward spiral of societal self destruction.]
Before March 2020, most governments had the same basic pandemic plan. People were trusted to behave sensibly. There was no need to tell ignoble lies or ‘nudge’ them. There were no plans to close schools or businesses or mandate masks. Border closures and quarantines were recognized as ineffective. Everything we knew about viral transmission told us that, by the time we knew about the existence of a fast-transmitting respiratory disease, that disease had already spread far and wide.
These plans were based on the modern epidemiology we’d followed since the beginning of the 20th century. They helped our complex, interconnected civilization survive and thrive despite frequent pandemics and epidemics.
But in March 2020, for various reasons, world leaders were enthralled by China’s medieval lockdown policies. Simultaneously, nearly every government around the world forgot their pandemic plans and the science they were based on to embrace the genocidal communist regime’s ZeroCOVID plans. Borders were closed, lockdowns were imposed. Only Sweden resisted.
With the same speed they used to embrace ZeroCOVID, the world’s media and governments uniformly condemned Sweden’s ‘pandemic experiment’ - even though Sweden was using the same health measures they had all successfully been using for more than a century.
Dr Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, was one of the few medical professionals who retained the knowledge civilization had accumulated before 2020. He saw lockdowns as a form of "madness" that “flew in the face” of what we knew about handling viral outbreaks. He said "It was as if the world had gone mad, and everything we had discussed was forgotten."
The Great Barrington Declaration also supported established epidemiology and condemned the madness. The thousands of influential voices that joined to harass Tegnell also vilified the Great Barrington scientists.
Tegnell and the Great Barrington signers shouldn’t have been alone. Anyone who had taken a biology or health class knew lockdowns and mandates would be ineffective. Anyone who knew anything about economics knew a worldwide shutdown would destroy economies and lives. But, strangely enough, the most enthusiastic supporters of lockdowns were the people who took those classes - and aced them. Previously reasonable, educated people fell into a dark forgetting. They sheepishly followed every word of CDC advice. Many took it even further – with the grim moral certainty of witch hunters they tore the social bonds that made life worth living. “We’re all in this together” they said as they snitched on neighbors, tortured toddlers with masks, told children their germs would kill their teachers and grandmas, fired and cancelled dissenters on social media, chased the unmasked from public places.
Before 2020, we knew that isolation is torture. We’ve known that for centuries. We are social animals, in times of trouble we band together, help each other, nurse each other back to health. No sane doctor would ever advise isolation as a cure. But sanity left the building as doctors joined the memory hole chorus, supporting the CDC’s recommendations to isolate COVID patients and withhold office visits and treatments.
World employment rates and economies reached previously unplumbed depths. The tourism industry that helped developing nations thrive was dead in the water. Globally, 79.5 million people were forcibly displaced, far more than had ever been displaced by war, famine or unrest.
Collectively, we created a dystopia that made Orwell’s 1984 hellscape look like a church supper. Even Big Brother let the proles gather together in bars. He didn’t demand that children be ‘resilient’, and sacrifice all joy in their lives to protect him.
We didn’t just forget how to socialize. We forgot how to be human.
No pandemic or other ‘emergency’ in Western history prompted this kind of mass hysteria, this embrace of authoritarianism. Even after the 9/11 attacks, people joined together to mourn, plan a response, rebuild. In his essay “A Time of Gifts”, written shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Stephen Jay Gould wrote:
“The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the ''ordinary'' efforts of a vast majority.”
Our COVID response was the polar opposite of this. The ordinary kindness of individuals was overwhelmed by the cruelty, panic, petty authoritarianism and self-destructive acts of influential thousands.
In April 2020, I drove to New York City to bring a friend to the hospital for her cancer treatments. Of course, the hospital wouldn’t let non-patients into the building – (stop the spread, stay safe). So, while she was seeing her doctor I took a walk. I was one of, maybe, three people in this city of millions who dared to step outside.
The silent, empty streets reminded me of the finale of the sci-fi movie Serenity. After our heroes successfully dodged the rapey, cannibalistic Reavers, they reached their goal — Miranda, the planet whose population of 30 million was wiped out by a mysterious, apocalyptic event.
On the planet, they’re puzzled to find the cities and infrastructure intact. There was no damage to buildings in the formerly thriving colony. It’s hard to believe that there was any apocalyptic event at all. Then they look in the windows.
A recording left by a doctor who had visited the planet years ago (and was killed by Reavers) revealed what had happened.
There's been no war here and no terraforming event. The environment is stable. It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die.
For 0.1% of the population it had the opposite effect. It caused extremely violent behavior, and created the Reavers.
Manhattan under lockdown had the same vibe. Covid didn’t transmit outdoors, everyone knows that fresh air and walks are good for your health. But the streets stayed empty, then and for months afterwards.
The highways stayed empty too – except for the the .01% who weren’t compliant. They were out there, driving at reckless speeds, like it was the end of the world and they planned to go out with a bang.
Miranda's fate may have been inspired by the John B. Calhoun behavior experiment, in which a colony of mice were raised in a peaceful Utopia where all their needs were met. Despite suffering from no hunger or need, some mice who could not find their place in paradise became extremely aggressive and violent (like the Reavers). This was followed by an irreversible downfall, a period of extreme apathy toward food and reproduction (like most of the colonists). The mice forgot how to be mice. This led to a complete societal collapse.
Calhoun called this downfall ‘behavioral sink’.
[Part 2 - coming soon]