I started by searching like this:
site:.mil "fear appeal"
...and started reading.
https://dde.carlisle.army.mil/documents/courses_13/Readings/2200_gerras.pdf
Appeal to Fear. This involves an implicit or explicit threat of harm to advance your position. A fear appeal is effective because it psychologically impedes the listener from acknowledging a missing premise that, if acknowledged, would be seen to be false or at least questionable.
Fear Appeal during Viet Nam war
The aim of the fear appeal was to convince the enemy that he faced an overwhelming danger of being killed if he remained with the communists. Message themes included "death lurks everywhere," "born in the north to die in the south," and "no shelters are safe from the bombs of the B-52."
Fear appeal in the UK:
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-how-the-pms-slogans-have-changed-12040037
First we were told to "stay home". Then we were warned to "stay alert". Now, Britons are being advised to remember "hands, face, space"....'Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives'
Fear appeal In Canada:
scary hospital scenes "Stay at home: Save Lives"
Breaking down fear appeal as it applies to current times:
What is the position they want to advance?
What is the threatened harm?
What premise is missing?
This is very interesting. I notice kid’s schools and churches have these messages posted on their signs out front. “Wash Your Hands, Stay Apart, Be Safe, Get Vaccinated”. They are morbid and very dystopian.
I keep thinking there might be some simple way to make this whole Covid narrative unravel. Like some paradigm shift that makes it all silly and ridiculous and then people suddenly want to distance themselves. I keep thinking if the power is the fear, how do we drain it of its power. Like if somehow Covid zealotry became cheesy to people. If people became embarrassed to play along, how quickly would it unravel?
There was a fake news alert that went out on the Emergency Alert to all phones that 100,000 doses of vaccine were found to be contaminated with HIV and everyone in all these areas were to contact this number to schedule an HIV test. It was a Photoshop job, but how much could something like that destroy the vaccine narrative? Could you imagine some asshole demanding you take the injection after a story like that went national? All the injected would be frantically getting tested for HIV and who would they be pissed at? Anti-vaxxers? Unlikely.
Oddly I find myself thinking about a verse in the Blue Oyster Cult song that says something like, “history shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men.”
It should be abundantly clear by now that all this expert advice has been completely wrong. Nothing we’ve been told to do has stopped the virus from running its course. If anything the guidance has prolonged it. Nature finds a way to point up the folly of men.
Not only do I think it is clear that the “experts” are all wrong, but that they are intentionally wrong. I am no longer to reasonably ascribe their actions to mere incompetence. If it were simply incompetence, they would have at least gotten a few things accidentally right.
I’m in complete agreement with you. I should have said abundantly clear to everyone, even normies. I failed completely in adding to your idea of an effective counter message to all the fear porn the DS puts out.
My point is nature has prevailed here, this virus that causes covid is running its course, true scientists should have known that. And you’re right, it is willful incompetence , but with the mockingbird media to back them up, they aren’t held to account.
In theory this could work but not in reality.
Of course the obvious weakness is lack of control over media organizations to support the message. The legacy media controls the loudest voice and anything that is counter to their preferred message gets propagandized against and ignored/destroyed.
Meanwhile their messaging of fear is pumped out unceasingly and virtually unchallenged. It is not a fair fight.