How to hide a disease in plain sight

UPDATED: 27 April 2021
Thanks to Becca for allowing us to share her heart wrenching but true words regarding the history of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) to a wider audience. We recognize that understanding how we got here is important in order to identify how best to move forward. We at ME International will continue to advocate for the recognition of ME as described in the ME International Consensus Criteria (ICC) - we feel the information provided in the ME ICPrimer provides guidance that can benefit everyone thrown into this melting pot no matter what label they have been given. The key to proper care is proper testing which leads to accurate diagnosis and that applies to everyone, no matter what disease lands someone in this melting pot. ~ ME International

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How to hide a disease in plain sight:
 
First, equate it with hysteria. Cast suspicion on sufferers as neurotics and hypochondriacs.
 
Then conflate it with fatigue. Make fatigue the central focus and symptom, until it becomes the only symptom and focus.
 
Get a big pot and fill it with as many fatiguing illnesses as possible. Hide the disease in this pot and give the pot a name that emphasizes fatigue. Convince people that everything in the pot is the same thing.
 
Say nothing is known about what’s in the pot. Emphasize that it’s a mystery. Keep repeating this until people believe it without question. Repeat it for decades. If anyone finds out anything about one thing in the pot, dismiss that evidence on the basis that it doesn’t apply to everything in the pot.
 
Next, conflate this newly named fatiguing illness pot with emotional problems and trauma. Cement the link several times between trauma and what’s in the pot, include the disease hidden there among all the other fatiguing illnesses.
 
Emphasize as many times as you can that there is no virus of any kind involved. Do whatever you have to, to break the link between a virus and the disease hidden in the pot. Repeat this so many times and in so many ways, that the people with the disease begin to believe it themselves.
 
Make sure no one looks in the right places for a virus. If anyone finds a virus, immediately provide an alternate explanation or discredit them. Create as much confusion as possible and plant as many doubts as possible re viruses and the disease.
 
Now, tie in phobias and fear. Suggest de-conditioning as a result of phobia and fear of exercise. Prescribe graded exercise and psychiatric intervention as treatment. Equate objection to this treatment with laziness and being uncooperative.
 
Spread this misinformation and disinformation far and wide. Send people into patient support groups to spread this narrative. Do it in such a way that they seem perfectly ordinary. Cast just enough doubt on any truth to make people question their own sanity without appearing obvious.

Set up patient charities and orgs to feed this misinformation to patients. Make those dispensing the misinformation seem trusted and caring, so everyone will buy the narrative.
 
Anytime anyone gets close to lifting the disease out of the pot and sweeping away the misinformation to reveal the truth, have your countermove ready. Create another new name and transfer the disease to another pot full of the same fatiguing illnesses as the first pot.
 
Stir this new pot well, until everything dissolves and blends together. When the new name is rejected, quickly pivot. Keep the fatigue name from the first pot and join it with the name of the hidden disease. Tell everyone they are the same thing as many times as necessary. Promote the hell out of this new mix. Tell people it’s for their own good, that it will help them.
 
Label anyone who objects to or questions the above paradigm as a "troublemaker", a "divider of the community", "mentally dysfunctional", "narrow", "too focused on the past", and a "holder back of progress".
 
Engage high profile, trusted names in the community to spread this narrative. Further gaslight anyone who objects to it. Brand them divisive and trouble-making. Poison people’s minds against them so that anything they say is perceived as a lie or "crazy".
 
This is how you hide a disease once called "ATYPICAL POLIO", with sufferers who have a quality of life and disease burden comparable to an AIDS patient 2 months from death - in plain sight.

~Becca Waddle