After Hours: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis

Summary

Full Measure After Hours: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis

Host: Sharyl Attkisson
Guest: Dr. Mark McDonald, Clinical Psychiatrist and Author
Release Date: January 30, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Full Measure After Hours, host Sharyl Attkisson engages in a deep conversation with Dr. Mark McDonald, a clinical psychiatrist and author of United States of How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis. They explore the phenomenon of mass delusional psychosis in America, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and its lasting impacts on society.

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The Rise of Mass Delusional Psychosis

Dr. McDonald begins by explaining how America became susceptible to a mass delusional psychosis, attributing it largely to the "weaponization of fear."

Dr. Mark McDonald [01:34]: "The weaponization of fear. Americans have become compliant. They've become adept at receiving signals to be afraid."

He discusses how fear can be manipulated to consolidate power, with individuals and groups leveraging national emergencies to push agendas that often require the public to relinquish certain freedoms. This compliance persists as long as fear remains a prevalent emotion among the populace.

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The Weaponization of Fear in America

Dr. McDonald delves deeper into the mechanisms behind the spread of fear, highlighting its persistent presence since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Mark McDonald [01:39]: "We can see that fear has not left. Walk around the streets of any city in urban America... and you'll see approximately 20% of the people walking outside with masks on their faces in 2024, almost 2025."

He observes that the enduring use of masks years after the initial outbreak signifies that fear remains deeply rooted in American society, largely unchanged since 2020.

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The Role of Media, Politicians, and Unions

The conversation shifts to identifying the actors driving this climate of fear. Dr. McDonald refutes conspiracy theories about secret groups orchestrating events from the shadows, instead attributing the phenomenon to a "crime of opportunity."

Dr. Mark McDonald [02:39]: "What I think happened was there was a confluence of opportunities among disparate groups who all had something to gain by instilling fear."

He points to the collaboration between politicians, media corporations, and powerful unions, such as the teachers' unions, which he claims played a pivotal role in enforcing prolonged school closures and other restrictive measures under the guise of public health.

Dr. Mark McDonald [03:57]: "The teachers unions primarily led the drive and supported the efforts of local politicians and health departments to shut the schools down for up to two years."

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Impact of Chronic Fear on Health and Behavior

Dr. McDonald discusses the physiological and psychological toll of chronic fear on individuals, linking it to weakened immune systems and increased susceptibility to diseases.

Dr. Mark McDonald [04:23]: "Stress does two things. It does something to the body, which... is lowering immunity... and also long term disease like cancer... It also does something psychologically."

He explains how constant fear leads to obsessive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, reduced productivity, and social withdrawal, which collectively contribute to a decline in both mental and physical health.

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Influence of Technology and Social Media

The conversation turns to the role of technology, particularly smartphones and social media, in exacerbating societal issues.

Dr. Mark McDonald [09:29]: "The phone has really wrecked our culture. It's wrecked the adult culture. It's wrecked the child culture."

He attributes the rise in social issues such as obesity, anxiety, body dysmorphia, gaming addiction, drug overdoses, and even sex trafficking to the pervasive influence of smartphones and platforms like Snapchat. Dr. McDonald advocates for restricting smartphone access among youth as a potential solution to these problems.

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Psychological Observations and Future Outlook

As the discussion progresses, Dr. McDonald reflects on the challenges of addressing the entrenched fear and lack of critical thinking in American society.

Dr. Mark McDonald [10:51]: "This was not an informational problem. This was a problem of an absence or at least temporary inability to think critically."

He emphasizes that merely providing correct information is insufficient when fear inhibits critical thinking. Instead, fostering curiosity is essential for individuals to remain open to new information and changes in perspective.

Looking ahead, Dr. McDonald expresses pessimism about the future of American culture, citing widespread cowardice and narcissism as barriers to meaningful reform.

Dr. Mark McDonald [12:57]: "I think we need to hold ourselves accountable. I think we need to acknowledge that America is not a virtuous country anymore. It's largely a country of cowards. It's a country of narcissists."

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Dr. McDonald urging a collective acknowledgment of America's current state and the need for cultural reform. He stresses the importance of fostering critical thinking and reducing fear to overcome the pervasive mass delusional psychosis that he argues has taken hold of the nation.

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Notable Quotes

• Dr. Mark McDonald [01:34]: "The weaponization of fear. Americans have become compliant. They've become adept at receiving signals to be afraid."

• Dr. Mark McDonald [02:39]: "What I think happened was there was a confluence of opportunities among disparate groups who all had something to gain by instilling fear."

• Dr. Mark McDonald [04:23]: "Stress does two things. It does something to the body, which... is lowering immunity... and also long term disease like cancer... It also does something psychologically."

• Dr. Mark McDonald [09:29]: "The phone has really wrecked our culture. It's wrecked the adult culture. It's wrecked the child culture."

• Dr. Mark McDonald [10:51]: "This was not an informational problem. This was a problem of an absence or at least temporary inability to think critically."

• Dr. Mark McDonald [12:57]: "I think we need to hold ourselves accountable. I think we need to acknowledge that America is not a virtuous country anymore. It's largely a country of cowards. It's a country of narcissists."

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Note: The views and opinions expressed by Dr. Mark McDonald in this episode represent his personal perspectives and analyses. Listeners are encouraged to consider multiple sources and viewpoints when forming their own understanding of these complex issues.

Transcript

[Narrator]

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[Cheryl Atkison]

Hi everybody. Cheryl Atkison here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure After Hours. Today, How America fell victim to a mass delusional psychosis. We are still learning lessons from our Covid mistakes and we likely will be for some time to come. Today, a conversation with clinical psychiatrist Dr. Mark McDonald, who's author of United States of How America Fell Victim to a Mass Death Delusional Psychosis.

[Interviewer]

How did America fall victim to a Mass delusional Psychosis?

[Dr. Mark McDonald]

The weaponization of fear. Americans have become compliant. They've become adept at receiving signals to be afraid. And when groups and individuals consolidate their power and activate a national emergency and then offer a solution which always involves giving up some form of freedom, Americans comply and they will comply as long as they stay afraid. We can see that that fear has not left. Walk around the streets of any city in urban America, including Boston, Massachusetts or Los Angeles, California, and you'll see approximately 20% of the people walking outside with masks on their faces in 2024, almost 2025. That speaks a lot about the state of fear in America today. And I don't think it's changed much since 2020.

[Interviewer]

Have you sensed or theorized who is behind that? Who was driving the fear? Was it a coordinated effort or something that just happened?

[Dr. Mark McDonald]

I think what happened was a crime of opportunity. I'm not a conspiracy theorist in the sense that there's a group of people in hood sitting in a cave somewhere outside of Davos planning the next hundred years. And if they are, they're not going to be very successful. What I think happened was there was a confluence of opportunities among disparate groups who all had something to gain by instilling fear. And then they organized loosely at first and then I think more directly later once they realized after testing the waters that people would comply and there would be very, very little pushback. And that includes politicians, media and corporations. And of course there's subgroups that support these entities, like for example, the teachers union. The teachers union is a very powerful organization politically and financially. And they're near and dear to my heart as a child psychiatrist because they basically wrecked the youth culture in the United States. They don't care about students, they only care about themselves and supporting their salaries. It was the teachers unions primarily that led the drive and supported the efforts of local politicians and health departments to shut the schools down for up to two years. Now, if that doesn't raise questions in your mind about the sincerity and the authenticity of who really cares for children, what will?

[Interviewer]

Do you think it's possible that fear made us sicker? By that I mean where we see things reduce our immunity. When your body is stressed or when certain things happen physiologically because you're afraid, can that impact your immune system and can that stand to make us sicker if we do get Covid than we might have been?

[Dr. Mark McDonald]

Absolutely. What fear does is induces, in a chronic sense, a stress response. Stress does two things. It does something to the body, which as you say, is largely speaking, lowering immunity, lowering your resistance to all forms of infection and also long term disease like cancer. Cancer is very highly linked to stress. It also does something psychologically, which is one who is afraid. One who is in a state of fear all the time is constantly trying to control his environment. He develops obsessional thoughts, thinking and compulsive behaviors. He limits his exposure to risk taking. He stops being productive. He basically consolidates himself into a small space which is largely speaking his home or if it work, his home office. This doesn't lead to growth psychologically in children. It leads to autism. It leads to social autism, it leads to poor language development. It leads to, as you say, ill physical health. Because you're probably not eating well, you're not exercising. So there's this whole vicious circle that occurs when someone's in a chronic state of fear. Their body, their mind, their emotional state all start to decline and they become very, very easily controlled. And I think that ultimately is the goal here, is control. Because when you have a consolidation of power, as we've seen politically and economically in the last two, three years, one group of people stands to benefit at the expense of everyone else when there's an easy road to control the population. That's why I think this happened and that's why I think it's continuing.

[Interviewer]

When talking about fear I think this was the first illness where a lot of people, when they got sick, even if they weren't very sick, thought I might die. I think before that, even if you got the flu and you felt really lousy, most people didn't think this might kill me. And now I think that's what crosses a lot of people's mind.

[Cheryl Atkison]

If they hear the word Covid, or.

[Dr. Mark McDonald]

At least it was, it is because they were told, using a lot of, to be blunt, falsified images and some actual propaganda films out of Asia, that there was a mass death wave of healthy people who were infected by this virus that left the Wuhan lab in China in late 2019, early 2020. That was entirely false. The survival rate from this virus and now the variants of course are basically like common colds. But at the beginning, the survival rate was actually 99.997% in the entire population. In the healthy population under about age 65, 70, it was nearly 100%. In children, it was exactly 100% under the age of 16. And that was proven in Sweden, which didn't close their schools down up until end of high school. Not a single child died in Sweden in 2021 and 2022 of this virus, despite the schools being open the entire time. So a lot of what they were told, what we were told, was factually untrue and provably untrue. But because it was so scary and because people truly believe that this was the Black Death on steroids, there was nothing that could be done except hiding out, staying in their homes and avoiding contact with people. That was the message and that's what people believed, even though it was untrue and it still is untrue today.

[Interviewer]

What is mass psychosis?

[Dr. Mark McDonald]

I wrote about this in my first book, United States of Fear How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis. The way that I describe it is a moment in time now, to some degree ongoing, four years later, where an entire population all goes crazy at the same time. That's basically what happened in the United States in 2020. It wasn't rational, it wasn't protected, it was actually harmful. It was, as I said earlier, driven largely by a confluence of power groups, media corporations, and a small subset of politicians and teachers unions and their supporters and backers to drive the insanity. A mass delusional psychosis, from the way that I'm describing it and defining it in my book, is really an irrational, self harming, but group think response to a modest or minor problem. Unfortunately, this issue, this movement that occurred in 2020. And moving forward, it's the first time in the United States history, in my lifetime anyway, that anything like this has happened. I think it's the first time because it's the first time in the last two or three generations that that we have had. America has had the ability to instill so quickly and so powerfully and so chronically a feeling of fear in the population.

[Interviewer]

I guess that was made possible in a way, because of technology and the Internet and so on. That couldn't have happened 50 years ago.

[Dr. Mark McDonald]

Exactly. I have something in my pocket called a smartphone that I believe is the primary driver of the psychosis of 2020, along with what we're seeing in the youth population, which is a complete loss of socialization, obesity, anxiety, body dysmorphia in girls, gaming addiction in boys, and ultimately deaths by drug overdose, specifically fentanyl delivered to homes through apps like Snapchat, as well as suicides among a lot of young girls. And now we're seeing actually sex trafficking and children, young girls primarily being kidnapped and taken to foreign countries as sex slaves. That is happening through the phone almost entirely. The phone has really wrecked our culture. It's wrecked the adult culture. It's wrecked the child culture. Today, I tell parents, if there's one thing that you want to do to protect your children, take away their smartphone, do not allow them to have one at all until they're 18 and they become an adult. I think that would solve many of the problems we have in our country.

[Interviewer]

As an observer with a special viewpoint, as a psychiatrist, when you saw all of this happening, what was that like for you? Did you just kind of want to shake people and try to wake them up, or what was that like?

[Dr. Mark McDonald]

I tried to educate people. At first, I thought that this was just an information problem. Well, if people have the right information, they'll be able to make good decisions. What I realized after a month or two of the insanity, March or April of 2020, was this was not an informational problem. This was a problem of an absence or at least temporary inability to think critically. I believe that that ability to think critically, which has been under attack and really being undermined for 20 or 30 years now in the US through a whole problem of our educational system and media and cell phones, that problem was exacerbated due to the weaponization of fear. Because when people are afraid, they stop thinking critically. They don't have the space to think. They only do what they're told because they need to survive. And they were told that if they don't do A, B and C. Put a mask on, get a shot, stay home. They will not survive. And not only that, they will kill the other people in their family. That's a pretty hard message to hear and just slough off. So if people are in a state of constant fear, they cannot do the right thing. They cannot think critically, even if you give them the correct information. So eventually I decided stop trying to educate people and start trying to assess the psychology. Start trying to assess, for example, curiosity. It's hard to be scared and curious at the same time. So people who are curious tend to be more amenable to information, to thinking, to changing their ways. But those who are not curious, and there's a lot of unfortunately uncurious Americans today, I believe that they are, at least in the moment in time when they are not curious, they're hopeless. They can't be saved. You can only help somebody if that person is open to receiving a message. And many Americans today are still closed off. They're not curious, they're still scared, and they're living a kind of closed, sheltered, zombified life. It's very, very painful to see. I hate to see it in my home, my neighborhood, my practice, my city. But it's still going on today.

[Interviewer]

What do you think lies ahead?

[Dr. Mark McDonald]

I am not a very optimistic person when it comes to the American culture today. I've recently said that even though there's a lot of bad actors at the top of the food chain that I would like to hold responsible and accountable for what's happened the last four years. I think we need to hold ourselves accountable. I think we need to acknowledge that America is not a virtuous country anymore. It's largely a country of cowards. It's a country of narcissists. And cowardice and narcissism is what has led to the election of politicians that reflect those values and those character traits and people who are in positions of power. And until we can reform, until we can get off of our comfortable butts and start to take risks again, start to look right and left laterally for support instead of vertically to the state, I don't really see much changing.

[Cheryl Atkison]

You can watch my interview with Dr. Mark McDonald on this week's Sunday episode of Full Measure. To find out where to watch on TV, go to Cheryl Atkison.com and click the Full Measure tab. You can find a station near you, but if you happen to be listening to this after the air date, or if it's easier for you to watch online anyway, you can always go to FullMeasure News. We feed the program live around 9:30am Eastern Time on Sundays there online and then post the program afterwards so you can watch this segment or search for other segments of interest at Fullmeasure News. My bestseller, Follow the Science, How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures and Prevails has never been more relevant, and the last time I checked, this five star bestseller was on sale for half price at Amazon. I hope you'll consider picking up a copy. Proceeds support independent journalism. That's Follow the Science. And as always, visit cheryl atkinson.com and click the Store tab for some fascinating, original and exclusive items designed just for independent thinkers like you, with slogans such as do your own research, make up your own mind, think for yourself.