A Post Pandemic Parable: The Boy Who Cried Wolf & The Crowd Who Played His Game

There is always something powerful about half-truths. 

A half truth is not only highly persuasive, it can also be morally corrosive as it brings out the lying tendency in our human nature.

The boy who cried wolf is the most accurate description of our gullible and dangerous participation in the fear-mongering chatter of the Covid-19 pandemic. Especially during 2020-2021. 

The wolf turned out to be an old fox

Fortunately, after a year of going through the saga of mostly non-fatal infections and controversial vaccines of different brands, the world woke up to the false narratives of lockdowns and vaccine mandates. 

Setting aside the mysterious origins of the Covid-19 pandemic (whether it was a bat transmission, accidental lab leak or a synthesized virus to create a global crisis), the biggest half- truth that many of us participated in was the lie that the Covid-19 virus was so fatal that it justified the lockdown of all social and economic activities for 2-3 years.

The hungry "wolf" turned out to be just an ageing fox whose dance of death has caused more mental & economic damage than physical harm. Just look at the push-back from those mass protests in Germany, France, Australia and Canada in 2021-2022.

For countries like China that had the strictest lockdowns, the lies about the danger of Covid-19 infections were finally exposed when the Chinese saw thousands of maskless spectators from all over the world cheering and having a great time at the World Cup games in November-December 2022.

Why was it a half-truth?

It was half-true because the virus was actually infectious (4 out 10 people were infected in most cases) and can actually worsen the health of people with pre-existing health issues or comorbidities. 

In an era of fact-checks and 10 second surfing per post, half-truths can be promoted to the detriment of our mental and physical health. 

At the individual and communal level, half-truths encourage the human tendency to lie in order to satisfy a psychological or economic need. (In behavioural science, this is known as cognitive biases of the brain).

It is also extremely comforting to share with a group of people the same fear and anxiety (band wagon bias). As if sharing your fears make it less fearful. In fact, the opposite is usually the case: for weak-minded people, sharing a communal fear frequently (availability bias) makes it even more fearful.

(For example, one of our neighbors recently found a python curled up under his car engine bonnet. Imagine the communal fear if this shocking incident & photos of the snake was shared repeatedly among the house wives. The passive mind often plays tricks on our fight-or-flight instincts). 

In the case of governments, pharmaceutical companies and other big corporations, the pandemic and the policy responses have given them much greater control over their citizens' lives, their revenues and profits.

The next big lie?

If we dont call out the lie of the boy (i.e. the collusion of governments, big pharma, tech platforms and the WHO) today, we would not be able to deal with the next big lie tomorrow. 

But this time, it may be even more persuasive because quite a number of us, who have not woken up to the half-lie, will be primed to participate in the World Economic Forum's agenda of deception (also known as the Great Reset).

So be warned, my fellow world citizens. 

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

What to do about the deception

The posture of our minds and hearts determines our perspective. So if we are committed to living and staying in a life based on truth, there is no way we can compromise to live in half-truths and half-lies. The most powerful deceptions are the ones with some grain of truth in them. 

Like the traveler with one foot on the platform and the other on the train. Either he goes onto the train or stays where he stands. There is no two ways about it.

Thus, the three things we need to do to avoid falling into the narrative of half-truths and half-lies:

(1) Be aware of your own cognitive biases when reading news and the narratives that the media is conveying through their juxtaposition of actual facts and unsupported opinions.  

(2) Be quick and alert to call out those friends/social media writers who repeat half-truths and total falsehoods. 

Dont worry about causing offense when making your point. These people are either intellectually naive or their minds are so programmed that their consciences are immune to truth-checks (as opposed to the discredited fact checking engines).

(3) Take three steps ahead of the liars's next move. Once we are aware of the agenda of control by the deep state and their corporate and institutional supporters, then we can checkmate their next big deception by positioning ourselves ahead of their next move. 

Three steps ahead can be strategic or tactical.  For myself, as a Christian, it means (a) listening to God's prompting, (b) confirming what I discern with the voice of the anointed prophets and (c) watching the evolution of world events objectively to see whether the prophetic messages line up with them.