Mass Hysteria

Arrests made. The usual suspects?

Iran has announced the first arrests connected to a spate of suspected poisonings of schoolgirls that has gripped the country.

“Based on the intelligence and research measures of the intelligence agencies, a number of people have been arrested in five provinces and the relevant agencies are conducting a full investigation,” the deputy interior minister, Majid Mirahmadi, told state television. Mirahmadi did not provide details on the detained individuals.

The arrests come as Tehran cracks down on criticism of its response to the suspected attacks. On Monday, three journalists and three dissidents, including a retired academic, were called in for questioning after challenging the government’s handling of the incidents.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-arrests-over-suspected-schoolgirl-poisonings
 
ramonmercado said:
Arrests made. The usual suspects?

Iran has announced the first arrests connected to a spate of suspected poisonings of schoolgirls that has gripped the country.

“Based on the intelligence and research measures of the intelligence agencies, a number of people have been arrested in five provinces and the relevant agencies are conducting a full investigation,” the deputy interior minister, Majid Mirahmadi, told state television. Mirahmadi did not provide details on the detained individuals.

The arrests come as Tehran cracks down on criticism of its response to the suspected attacks. On Monday, three journalists and three dissidents, including a retired academic, were called in for questioning after challenging the government’s handling of the incidents.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-arrests-over-suspected-schoolgirl-poisonings
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We may never know the truth on this one. At least not until there is a regime change and I don't see that happening soon.
 
Nearly 80 schoolgirls poisoned in Afghanistan

The education official said the person who orchestrated the poisoning had a personal grudge, but did not elaborate.

Nearly 80 female students were poisoned in the Sangcharak district of Sar-e-Pul province over Saturday and Sunday, said Mohammad Rahmani, who heads the provincial education department.

He said 60 students were poisoned in Naswan-e-Kabod Aab School and 17 were poisoned in Naswan-e-Faizabad School.

"Both primary schools are near to each other and were targeted one after the other," he told The Associated Press.

"We shifted the students to the hospital, and now they are all fine."

He gave no information on how the girls were poisoned or the nature of their injuries.

Neighbouring Iran has been rocked by a spate of poisonings, mostly in girls' schools, from last November.

Thousands of students said they became sick because of noxious fumes from the incidents, but there has been no word on who might be behind the incidents or what chemicals may have been used.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/worl...soned-in-afghanistan/ar-AA1c8esY?ocid=BingHPC

maximus otter
 
uair01 said:
This was accidental exposure to fentanyl. That stuff is strong!

https://sanfordandsonmemes.com/2023...a-officers-overdose-during-drug-search-video/
Bodycam Shows Florida Officer’s Overdose During Drug Search (Video)
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Interestingly, I've been reading about this phenomenon very recently - police in USA have been trained and briefed about Fentanyl but the actual risk from being in ephemeral contact with the stuff as a LE person is very low. It looks like the Florida LE is having a panic attack/psychogenic reaction.

Several commentators have been calling psychogenic illness/hysteria on strange reactions in coppers who've briefly been in (uningested/uninjected) contact with it - apparently the fear of Fentanyl induces a reaction stronger than any actual contact with Fentanyl will induce. You'd have to physically apply it to the skin for several hours for it to have an effect [this is how Fentanyl patches work], physically snort it, or swallow it or inject it.

Study about Fentanyl exposure training here: https://healthandjusticejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40352-021-00163-5

Misinformation about overdose risk from accidentally inhaling or touching fentanyl is widespread among police in the United States. This may aggravate already elevated burdens of officer stress and burnout, while chilling lifesaving overdose response. Police education has shown promise in reducing false beliefs about fentanyl....

NY Times Magazine article about the psychogenic syndrome induced by contact with Fentanyl: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/magazine/police-fentanyl-exposure-videos.html

It’s nearly impossible for an overdose to be caused by brief contact with the drug. It is possible these videos will worsen the danger for those truly at risk.....
It’s not that the symptoms seen on video are feigned. Some psychologists suggest a kind of “mass psychogenic illness” is afoot, or a form of conversion disorder — neurological symptoms without a clear physical cause — or, potentially, simple panic attacks. Police officers have been told, by authorities including the Drug Enforcement Administration, that microscopic amounts of fentanyl can be deadly; they are taught to fear this substance. Their bodies may react accordingly, exhibiting symptoms, like rapid breathing, that are indicative of distress and panic. (Fentanyl produces the exact opposite effect; high doses result in slow and shallow breaths.)

The concern is that US LE personnel will hold back from administering lifesaving help to those in an overdose state if they think Fentanyl is involved - it's the person who's taken the drug that maybe needs Narcan, rather than the cops having a psychogenic attack.

Having spent a lot of time in hospital and having been prescribed Fentanyl occasionally, and from having many family & friends who're routinely exposed to small amounts of the drug in the air or on their skin/clothes in the course of their work in the NHS I've never seen anyone be affected beyond the desired clinical effect.

**Mods @gordonrutter I am wondering if this segue into Fentanyl exposure videos should be moved into our Mass Psychogenic Illness/Hysteria thread?
 
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AnonyJ said:
Interestingly, I've been reading about this phenomenon very recently - police in USA have been trained and briefed about Fentanyl but the actual risk from being in ephemeral contact with the stuff as a LE person is very low. It looks like the Florida LE is having a panic attack/psychogenic reaction.
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Wow, that's really weird. Thanks for posting!

Note: I got fentanyl for my colonoscopy and I felt very badass for using that infamous drug :)
I made a joke about it but I think the (very friendly and competent nurses) were too innocent to get it. Or they had heard it a hundred times before ...
 
uair01 said:
Wow, that's really weird. Thanks for posting!

Note: I got fentanyl for my colonoscopy and I felt very badass for using that infamous drug :)
I made a joke about it but I didn't think the (very friendly and competent nurses) were too innocent to get it. Or they had heard it a hundred times before ...
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Fentanyl has a reputation but it's very useful and cheap painkiller and anaesthetic.

Medical staff in many departments use it and often get it spilt on their skin or clothing - if it's washed off immediately there is no more danger than any other strong opoid drug. It's one constituent of many general anaesthetics IIRC.
 
AnonyJ said:
Interestingly, I've been reading about this phenomenon very recently - police in USA have been trained and briefed about Fentanyl but the actual risk from being in ephemeral contact with the stuff as a LE person is very low. It looks like the Florida LE is having a panic attack/psychogenic reaction.

Several commentators have been calling psychogenic illness/hysteria on strange reactions in coppers who've briefly been in (uningested/uninjected) contact with it - apparently the fear of Fentanyl induces a reaction stronger than any actual contact with Fentanyl will induce. You'd have to physically apply it to the skin for several hours for it to have an effect [this is how Fentanyl patches work], physically snort it, or swallow it or inject it.

Study about Fentanyl exposure training here: https://healthandjusticejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40352-021-00163-5

Misinformation about overdose risk from accidentally inhaling or touching fentanyl is widespread among police in the United States. This may aggravate already elevated burdens of officer stress and burnout, while chilling lifesaving overdose response. Police education has shown promise in reducing false beliefs about fentanyl....

NY Times Magazine article about the psychogenic syndrome induced by contact with Fentanyl: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/magazine/police-fentanyl-exposure-videos.html

It’s nearly impossible for an overdose to be caused by brief contact with the drug. It is possible these videos will worsen the danger for those truly at risk.....
It’s not that the symptoms seen on video are feigned. Some psychologists suggest a kind of “mass psychogenic illness” is afoot, or a form of conversion disorder — neurological symptoms without a clear physical cause — or, potentially, simple panic attacks. Police officers have been told, by authorities including the Drug Enforcement Administration, that microscopic amounts of fentanyl can be deadly; they are taught to fear this substance. Their bodies may react accordingly, exhibiting symptoms, like rapid breathing, that are indicative of distress and panic. (Fentanyl produces the exact opposite effect; high doses result in slow and shallow breaths.)

The concern is that US LE personnel will hold back from administering lifesaving help to those in an overdose state if they think Fentanyl is involved - it's the person who's taken the drug that maybe needs Narcan, rather than the cops having a psychogenic attack.

Having spent a lot of time in hospital and having been prescribed Fentanyl occasionally, and from having many family & friends who're routinely exposed to small amounts of the drug in the air or on their skin/clothes in the course of their work in the NHS I've never seen anyone be affected beyond the desired clinical effect.

**Mods @gordonrutter I am wondering if this segue into Fentanyl exposure videos should be moved into our Mass Psychogenic Illness/Hysteria thread?
Click to expand...
Pretty much, even the commenters on the video call it out ("I can sympathize with the officer, one time i walked past a liquor store and got blind drunk.").

If the police were actually being affected by fentanyl to the quickness and extent shown in their many videos, there wouldn't be a fentanyl problem because all the fentanyl users would be super-dead.

It's attracted enough attention there are scientific studies on it.
 
Thread resurrection because I couldn't think where else to put this. I found my Facebook status from 9th August 2011, which I'm assuming references the rioting and looting in London that was going on... for reasons I seem not to remember at present. Here it is:

"Oh no! Ive just been told 400 Tottenham Looters are on a train bound for Hastings! Presumably they're meeting up with the Chelsea Skinheads, and for all i know El Chupacabra and The Icklesham Slags. The Fortean Times will be interesting when this dies down."

Question is, did FT ever do anything about the panicked nonsense that was spreading via social media at that time? I remember our big supermarket "was forced to close because it had been attacked by looters" (it hadn't) and "the police were arresting everyone in a hoodie" (they weren't, but that didn't stop my wife phoning me in a panic just before I left work that night).
 
I was working in Tooting, South London, or rather Saarf Lundun, for Dixons in around 1977, I can't remember exactly, when some rioting and looting had taken place somewhere in London and rumour spread via local news and national TV that Tooting along with many other places was about to be hit. In the shop we were told by Head Office to remove all VCR's, remember them, and high value TV's, cameras, etc, to the under floor stock room for safe keeping and to put all cash in the safe.

All the local shops shut and locked doors and the high street was empty of people.

There was no looting or no anything. No shop windows smashed or anything like it. For three days it was a lock down situation and nothing happened.
 
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kamalktk said:
Pretty much, even the commenters on the video call it out ("I can sympathize with the officer, one time i walked past a liquor store and got blind drunk.").

If the police were actually being affected by fentanyl to the quickness and extent shown in their many videos, there wouldn't be a fentanyl problem because all the fentanyl users would be super-dead.

It's attracted enough attention there are scientific studies on it.
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I wonder if this is a similar kind of thing to where kids think they've had alcohol (I remember we did it, having eating home made fruit salad and convincing ourselves that the syrup had turned to alcohol) and start behaving as though they are drunk?
 
catseye said:
I wonder if this is a similar kind of thing to where kids think they've had alcohol (I remember we did it, having eating home made fruit salad and convincing ourselves that the syrup had turned to alcohol) and start behaving as though they are drunk?
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Like a learned response?
 
Mythopoeika said:
Like a learned response?
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I don't think I'd ever seen a drunk adult when we had our 'experience'. But I do know that kids will taste something 'funny', convince themselves that it's alcohol and then behave as they assume drunk people behave - whilst being firmly convinced that they are 'drunk'. A similar effect can be observed in someone eating brownies they are then told contained weed - they begin to behave as though they are stoned. A kind of self-hypnosis, perhaps.
 
kamalktk said:
Pretty much, even the commenters on the video call it out ("I can sympathize with the officer, one time i walked past a liquor store and got blind drunk.").

If the police were actually being affected by fentanyl to the quickness and extent shown in their many videos, there wouldn't be a fentanyl problem because all the fentanyl users would be super-dead.

It's attracted enough attention there are scientific studies on it.
Click to expand...

Law enforcement officers tell lies about Fentanyl.

Fentanyl has an amazing effect on law enforcement officers, who experience medically impossible things in its presence out of delusion, distress or deception. But Sonoma County District Attorney Carla Rodriguez's office is in a league of its own. It published a fake story about a 6-year-old child's lethal fentanyl overdose in a playground as a warning to citizens.

The stern warning presented the doom of "Lisa," a soccer-playing, horse-loving kid. Lisa was having a good time at the playground when she "fell down and made this gurgling noise and then went limp." She didn't even ingest the drug, but merely "saw some white powder and touched it. That's all she did… All of a sudden, something just wasn't right. Her pupils look like little dots."

The problem is the same one as with the fainting cops. Fentanyl cannot cause this reaction through skin exposure, and it cannot cause it instantly even when ingested. The California Newsroom called Rodriguez to ask questions, and the anecdote soon disappeared from the DA office's website. The Sonoma County Coroner's Office confirmed it had no record of a child dying from fentanyl exposure at a playground.

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/19/s...n-playground-was-fabricated-for-campaign.html
 
Perhaps you might get exaggerations to safeguard their positions. A peaceful society doesn't need these people...
 
It sounds like one of those 'Big Warning' stories. The sort of FOAF tales to warn people against doing something, just taken a step further.

And the story will stick, and people will become convinced that they have all kinds of problems because they 'must have brushed up against something that had Fentanyl in it.' Potential for mass hysteria again....
 
Ask about this to someone who lives in a low-wage area in America.
'We' in the UK are lucky ... unless you live in some small areas. I've had an attempted mugging with a knife, in broad daylight, in a bus station in Canterbury city centre.
It's rare in the UK but the world is not a peaceful place. But, I suppose if your particular location is a peaceful and safe bit then lucky you.

'We' don't need the police eh?

So ... the Fentanyl scare might be mass hysteria but a conspiracy to encourage the widespread overreach of the police?
 
Stormkhan said:
...we don't actually live in a peaceful society at this present time.
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World Crime Rate & Statistics 2000-2024​

Screen-Hunter-476-Jan-22-09-50.jpg



https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/crime-rate-statistics

Deaths in state-based conflicts:

Screen-Hunter-477-Jan-22-09-53.jpg


(2022 spike based on Ukraine & Ethiopia)

https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace

maximus otter
 
So all violent crime doesn't exist and society is so peaceful that we do not need police?
It's not on the planet I live on.
I'm outta here.
 
escargot said:
Yes we do. On the whole, it's possible to go about one's daily life without worrying about (say) being shot or robbed in broad daylight.
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It seems to me that by and large teenagers in the UK are certainly more peaceful and law abiding that in the 70s when I was a teenager.
Maybe it is just because I am not a part of it any more but there seemed to be far more aggression and hostility amongst different groups of younger people in the 70s -punks vs Teds for example. Before my time, in the 50s/60s the Mods vs Rockers too.
 
Perhaps we can bring the word 'relatively' into the discussion. We do live in a 'relatively' peaceful civilised society now, compared to, say, the Middle Ages, where gangs roamed the countryside or where kings could order entire swathes of the countryside to be 'laid waste'. Much crime now is one-on-one, and the UK is a fairly peaceful place to live compared to some inner city areas of the USA or South Africa.
 
Giant R said:
It seems to me that by and large teenagers in the UK are certainly more peaceful and law abiding that in the 70s when I was a teenager.
Maybe it is just because I am not a part of it any more but there seemed to be far more aggression and hostility amongst different groups of younger people in the 70s -punks vs Teds for example. Before my time, in the 50s/60s the Mods vs Rockers too.
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Are they? I guess we didn't have these gangs in my area when I was growing up, although there were a few incidents.
There seem to be a lot more stabbings and knife-carrying these days - although that could be as a result of amplification by the news media.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Are they? I guess we didn't have these gangs in my area when I was growing up, although there were a few incidents.
There seem to be a lot more stabbings and knife-carrying these days - although that could be as a result of amplification by the news media.
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I think it could be as you suggest regarding reporting in the media nowadays. The stories of the Kray twins and other gangs in London suggest that knives were used quite a lot in the 50s-60s. Likewise Teddy boys with flick knives.
In the 70s skinheads were seen quite often and didn't appear too friendly! Similarly you don't seem to hear of as much trouble at football matches as there seemed to be back then.
 
My suggestion was designed to suggest what law enforcement professionals and the industry of said law enforcement may feel which may or may not be connected to reality. I think whether the society is peaceful or not may be unrelated to the fears experienced/stoked up by the law enforcement industry, especially in America which has a pretty extreme version of capitalism. There's money involved as well as law and order. The officers on the front line will be scared given the nature of the violence they face every day. The senior managers responsible for them who are exposed to public opinion through elections will be worried about their PR. Their House Representatives and Senators will want to look strong on crime.

America is probably more peaceful than in the frontier era and more peaceful than parts of Mexico for example, but not as peaceful as other countries like Switzerland. Each internal market for law enforcement will be a little different. The makers of rocket launchers and armoured personnel carriers look on with interest.

All it takes is some stirring such as a magic drug which causes officers to drop dead when they touch it and more crackdowns are ordered. On to the next fear inducing criminal quirk. A salesman contacts the procurement team.
 
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