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Comment by Loquebantur | Hacker News Reader

There is no such thing as "mass hysteria".

That "mystery illness" is an invention to explain away cases of unknown cause. An argument by ignorance essentially.

Observe how in this particular instance the spread of the disease does not conform to what would be expected if the cause was information.

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There has been plenty of examples of mass illness not connected to anything tangible, like a detectable disease or infections. The famous study on “long Covid” gave multiple examples of large groups of people experiencing symptoms with vague connections to any physical condition like headaches, fatigue, sleeplessness, generic “pain”, etc. They cited multiple other incidents such as the “gulf war syndrome” and a few others I can’t remember off hand.

These are very similar to mass hysteria. But they are connected to very real things like subsets of the population experiencing trauma. War and covid was traumatic mentally for a lot of people and that can manifest as other physical symptoms. Whether everyone in the group has a direct connection to those things or get grouped through circumstance and general interest by doctors/scientists/media is a big differentiator.

(Not saying this poisoning case fits this but it’s always good to be suspicious).

People being unable to find a cause for something does not make that event a diagnosable illness.

Essentially, you are confabulating a cause where there is not enough evidence.

Yep just like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, both affects …certain types of personalies but also people with long histories of poor physical and mental health (which is trendy to get over-excused these days as being without any personal responsibility but there's still plenty of people with serious personal backgrounds where it's difficult to pass judgement). But ultimately the appearance of symptoms doesn’t make it an illness. Still a “syndrome” is better than “mass panic”.

The fact that 50-60 schools across the country have been affected by reports of poisoning makes it highly unlikely that there was a coordinated poisoning campaign. Such a campaign would require a significant amount of planning, resources, and coordination, and it is unlikely that a single group or individual could carry out such a campaign across multiple schools in different regions of the country. MPI is a very plausible explanation and fits the facts of this case much better than an unprecedented mass poisoning.

Except the state. The state can plan and carry this out.

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