Wanna bet this tag will be applied to those who prepared?

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Mass hysteria may be rising -U.S. study

BOSTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Outbreaks of mass hysteria, including fears of poison gases in the air, may be on the rise and traditional efforts to combat them may only make them worse, an article in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine found.

Researchers said it was likely that as fear of bioterrorism or environmental toxins rose, outbreaks of short-term, widespread, psychogenic illness were likely to increase.

The team found that many doctors called upon to investigate a mass outbreak of illness often suspect hysteria but feel obliged to conduct probes because of anxiety in the community.

It also found the investigation itself, and accompanying coverage by news media, can make the situation worse.

"Dramatic and prolonged media coverage frequently enhances such outbreaks," researchers said.

The team, which found that intense investigations and the attention they drew could heighten worry in a community, recommended that officials' make a return to normality in the affected community their main goal.

In a study of a November 1998 outbreak of illness at Warren County High School in McMinnville, Tennessee, Dr. Timothy Jones of the Tennessee Department of Health and his team found no evidence of any medical or environmental cause for the sickness, which affected about 186 people in two incidents.

The first incident started when a teacher at the school reported a "gasoline-like" odor in her classroom. Shortly thereafter she became sick. Other students also got sick and were taken to the hospital. The school was then closed.

Symptoms included headache, dizziness, nausea, drowsiness, vomiting and many others. They were reported by students all around the school.

A second rash of cases occurred a week later, a day after the school reopened, again resulting in the closure of the facility. After the second incident an extensive environmental and epidemiological investigation was launched.

While Jones and his team emphasized that the symptoms reported by victims were no doubt real, they still said they were probably a case of mass hysteria.

"The pattern of illness in the school did not reflect a particular route of air distribution," it said.

"It is difficult to conceive of any toxic gas or other toxic substance in the environment that would account for such variations in the description and location of the odor and for such a wide range of self-limited symptoms in persons scattered throughout a large building, with no evidence of abnormalities in any environmental or laboratory tests," they said

-- TM (mercier7@pdnt.com), January 13, 2000

Answers

TM:

Good post. Your question--it wouldn't surprise me at all.

-- (Kurt.Borzel@gems8.gov.bc.ca), January 13, 2000.


I used to do a workplace safety newsletter--this type of thing has been widely covered. Some people think it's a coverup for the fact that there IS such a thing as Sick Building Syndrome. The same reasoning is used to explain away repetitive stress injuries... It's much easier to discredit complaints than to address them.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), January 13, 2000.

OUTRAGEOUS! But alas, humiliation remains the strongest form of social control; least, that's what they taught me in grad school; never seen it fail.

Blatant falsehood:

"...many doctors called upon to investigate a mass outbreak of illness often suspect hysteria but feel obliged to conduct probes because of anxiety in the community."

A psychogenic cause can ONLY be made when medical causes have been outruled (ie lab tests, patient history).

Any doc who *suspects* hysteria yet ONLY probes *because of anxiety in the community*, rather than probes to RULE OUT medical causes, should lose his license.

NOTE: No doctor is quoted as saying this, because, IMHO, he would be the LAUGHING STOCK of the medical community!!!

What horse shit! TPTB paid way too much for this Reuter's plant. What a dweeb. I want a refund of MY tax dollars, heh.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 13, 2000.


What a strange world you live in.

"Dramatic and prolonged media coverage frequently enhances such outbreaks"

Pah, any attention, even from other paranoid wackos, enhances such outbreaks.

You need to change the filter on your NBC suit, you're obviously not getting enough oxygen to your brain.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), January 13, 2000.


From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

I wouldn't doubt that a victim-blaming "individual psychological defect" will eventually be used to discount and under report the YfluK bug. Millions of people spread all across the country, unknown to each other and unaware of the chemtrails above them, coughing until they vomit for weeks on end... all independently came up with these same hysterical symptoms. Yeah, that will work. A lie has to be REALLY big to be most believable.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), January 13, 2000.



http://www.r01.tdh.state.tx.us/safety/pbblinds.htm

-- Guess We are (all@hysterical.com), January 13, 2000.

ON THE ONE HAND, as the primary doc in a small farm town in eastern WA I noted from time to time striking evidence of just such a 'psychogenic' outbreak, almost always young female teenagers. Sometimes seemed to be related to a publicized student injury, but typically often nothing more than one girl 'sick, feinting' after a gym class. This would be followed by a significant number of other teeners ending up in my office with odd, similar, complaints. I'd even get the verification from a P.E. teacher, or the like, "Oh, yeah, Doc, we get these kinds of things mebbe couple times a year."

ON THE OTHER HAND, chemtrail documentation has come to me from multiple sources I consider eminently reliable, stable, 'sensible'-- non-kooky. (The only thing re that phenomenon that I believe is FAR from documented are the descriptions of WHY the guvvies are doing what they're doing. So far it appears to be a field day for fantasy -- but that's very predictable, as a result of the Perfect Vacuum of information from TPTB.)

Bill

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), January 13, 2000.


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