The World Health Organization, WHO, has just released a report on global post-pandemic mental health issues., “Rates of already-common conditions such as depression and anxiety went up by more than 25% in the first year of the pandemic,” they say. That number is almost certainly too low, but I doubt the statistic was its point anyway.

It’s titled, “World Mental Health Report: Transforming Mental Health for All.” If you think that sounds like a rah-rah fundraiser for the clinic up the street, just look at what they highlighted in the executive summary. The report is “designed,” it says, “to inspire and inform better mental health for everyone everywhere.” It’s for “showcasing examples of good practice from around the globe, voicing people’s lived experience,” because “Ultimately, there is no health without mental health.” Great line, there! The executive summary leaves out virtually all the stats, but the sales pitch remains intact.

It’s not just any fundraiser, though. WHO is shilling to solve a problem they had a lot to do with causing in the first place.

It’s not just any fundraiser, though. WHO is shilling to solve a problem they had a lot to do with causing in the first place. Not WHO alone, obviously: The virus alone would have raised anxiety and depression levels around the globe, for there’s no safe way to get through a pandemic. In fact there’s no way through that isn’t absolutely brutal. The virus has taken a massive toll on us, and we all grieve it. But no one could possibly think the virus was the only cause behind these growing mental health problems.

Just look at the messages we were subjected to during the lockdowns. Someone — undoubtedly including WHO — thought hearing this would be good for us all, and not just once but over and over and over again. How did any of us stay sane?

Be Afraid! Be Very, Very Afraid!

• Millions and millions of us are about to die.
• That’s millions. And millions. And millions more, all dying.
• Watch the news, and everyone on your TV screen is dying. Everyone but the reporters and the doctors and nurses they’re interviewing, all of them urging you to be afraid, because look: Everyone else on your TV screen is dying!
• Stay home! Hide! Shelter in place! It’s your only safe place.
• But wait, no! Even your home is dangerous: Your mail could kill you! Your groceries could kill you! Don’t touch anything!! (Remember that from near the start of the crisis?)
• Not just at the start, but all the way through: People can kill you! They radiate death. They don’t even have to touch you!
• Fear everyone, but especially fear people who don’t have symptoms. They could be secret, silent “carriers.”
• If you don’t have symptoms, fear yourself, too.

Don’t Do Anything That Matters; You Might Kill Someone

• Don’t go visit your dying relatives: You could kill them!
• Don’t go anywhere. Period.
• Don’t get medical help unless you’re dying. That includes cancer tests, orthopedic tests, eye exams, dentistry, anything “elective.” Don’t do it! You might die! You might kill someone!
• Don’t celebrate anything. Not with people, anyway. You could die! Or you could radiate your own secret carrier illness and kill them yourself.

Don’t Take Responsibility for Anything Except for Not Killing People

• There’s only one responsibly adult thing you can do: Stay home. Hide. Don’t go anywhere.
• Do your job.
• Don’t make your own decisions. You’re not a scientist, so you’re not qualified.
• Don’t even think of trying to go out and make a living unless you’re “essential.”
• Don’t bother trying to think for yourself whether you’re “essential.” You’re not adult enough to make that judgment.
• If you can’t make a living, that’s okay, mommy and daddy the government will give you an allowance to live on.
• Adult privileges are for adults, and apparently lawmakers are adults, because they can break rules we kids aren’t allowed to break.
• Rioters can break the rules, too. (At least ones of a particular political slant.)
• You can’t.

Don’t Think for Yourself, Just Be Afraid

• Don’t trust anything except “the science.” Even when “the science” is massively politicized.
• What? You dared doubt “the science”? You thought for yourself? STOP IT!
• Repeat after me: “We can trust politicians because they listen only to science,  and we can trust scientists because they never listen to politics.”
• (Feel better now? If it didn’t work the first time, just keep repeating and it’ll sink in.)
• Have no courage. Courage turns people into super-spreaders.
• The only thing we have to fear is courage itself.
• And everything else, too.

Your Purpose in Life is To Not Die

• Community life means nothing. You’re too busy not dying to do any of that.
• Contributing to the world around you means nothing compared to not dying.
• Learning is fine, unless you need personal contact for it. Then your priority is not dying instead.
• Even spiritual community life means nothing. Only not dying means anything.
• Your assigned purpose in life is to not die.

An Orchestrated Fear Campaign

Funny thing about that list: It looks too long, even to me. “It couldn’t have been that bad, could it?” Yes, it could. It may be long, but it’s real. Some people might not agree with some inferences I drew. (They’d be wrong, but what can you do?) The bulk of it is just plain facts. We all know it’s true. This was an orchestrated fear campaign, with childish regression and purposelessness included to boot.

WHO quoted a woman in the report, saying, “I have many friends who had relapses in their mental health because of the increased levels of fear and panic. It was almost as if fear was contagious.” Wow — I wonder how that happened! I could almost wonder who was behind it, except I know WHO was, with eager cooperation from the CDC in America, the global media, and politicians almost everywhere except maybe Sweden.

WHO Takes No Responsibility

They take no responsibility for the damage they caused. There was never any positive evidence that lockdowns did the least bit of good, and by the end, there was plenty of negative evidence that they had no real effect on COVID illnesses or deaths. They sure scared us, though. They rendered us immobile, unproductive, panicked, and practically infantile. 

The virus caused the world immense pain, but these messages only increased it. I’m all in favor of increasing high-quality mental health services around the globe. I just don’t trust WHO leading the charge on it, not after the mental damage they’ve inflicted, and I have no respect this shameless shilling afterward.

I won’t trust them leading the charge on any future declared pandemic, either. I’m bothered to have to admit it, but I let them catch me up with their panic in 2020. My job was already a home job, so that was fine, but I feared going out to a store, and I was slow returning when our church opened up again. I had “some risk factors,” I told myself. But I wasn’t alone in my fear. Most of us bought it; most of us cooperated with it.

What Can We Learn?

Have we learned any lessons? What if they were to try it again, say, for monkeypox? Will we go passive again? Or will we live life as if we’re here to live life? Don’t read me wrong: I am not saying we shouldn’t be prudent during a pandemic. I’m saying we shouldn’t go infantile. We’ve got keep on living as responsible adults, and we absolutely must not lose track of the true reason for living, as too many of us did this time around.

Pandemics bring death much closer to our daily experience, but let’s not forget that COVID was never the cause of death. It caused this person’s death or that one’s, possibly someone you love, but death was going on a long time before COVID, and it will keep on going after. COVID didn’t cause death itself. Scripture teaches us the real cause was human sin. It’s universal, so pandemic or not, there’s no safe way out of life; no way to avoid your inevitable death. The only safe answer is to follow Jesus Christ, who gives us an eternally good landing spot to live in after death.

In the meantime, even the secularist should see that not-dying makes for a lousy life purpose. Who knows? Maybe even WHO can see it now. I’m not ready to trust them with it, though. If they ever try pulling that on us again, I say let’s do the adult thing. We can make our own decisions. We should listen for good input,  and by all means be prudent, respectful of others’ needs, and mindful of their fears.

But let’s agree now, we will never again put fear on center stage as we did with COVID. We will never again act as if not-dying is our whole purpose for living. We will live in wisdom to the best of our ability. And we will walk in courage, even in the face of death.

Tom Gilson (@TomGilsonAuthor) is a senior editor with The Stream and the author or editor of six books, including the recently released Too Good To Be False: How Jesus’ Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality.