Making people anxious and compliant is one thing – triggering spikes in synchronous cardiac arrest events is another
Thousands of New Yorkers, including those I know or have spoken to directly, testify to the incessant sound of sirens in the first weeks of the spring 2020 shutdown. Conversations on Twitter in 2022 offer good examples of how New Yorkers express the effect.
The Sound of Shutdown
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten cited “terror” from ambulance sirens as a reason teachers were afraid for schools to open in her testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic:
“We spent every day from February on, trying to get schools open. We knew that remote education was not a substitute for opening schools. But we also knew that people had to be safe. And maybe it’s because I live in New York City. I live near a hospital. Every other minute there was an ambulance. There was terror. Our members were terrified. Others were terrified.”1
Some New Yorkers said ambulances seemed to be driving around with lights and sirens on, even when they did not appear to be transporting patients. I have no way of verifying those claims and am not asserting that they are true. I mention them only because they prompted a closer look at the dispatch data itself.
While working through New York City’s EMS files, an associate and I noticed a brief increase in ambulance dispatches without a standard incident code. A small number of such records is expected and easily explained by human or technical error. What stood out was the timing: the increase began with the “15 days to slow the spread” announcement and ended by late March, before overall dispatch volume declined. Documented call-handling changes may have been a factor; still, the pattern is unmistakable.
Figure from “Eleven Sets of Serious Problems with the New York City Mass Casualty Event of Spring 2020”
Even setting the uncoded dispatches aside, total ambulance dispatches increased by roughly 25% during the first three weeks of the emergency period. Manhattan did not see a comparable increase,2 but with the “ceasing” of ordinary city sounds, sirens would have been far more noticeable. This is what Weingarten’s testimony captures very well: the distinction between measured activity and “lived experience” in those days.
Being alarmed by a siren is natural. The tone and pattern are like a wailing infant, and sends a similar signal: Something is wrong. Take action. Stay home, save lives. The role of sound (or the conspicuous absence or reduction of certain kinds of sounds) during “lockdown” — especially in major cities — warrants further investigation for its ability to induce not just heightened alertness but moderate to severe anxiety.
The first time I seriously considered this possibility was after a personal experience in late spring 2024, when northern Illinois experienced a “double-brood” emergence of 13- and 17-year cicadas.
Cicadas are a sound of summer in our area, one I normally don’t notice unless someone points it out. I’m not afraid of the insects or the noise they make. Yet something about the rise and fall of the two broods in concert, and the fact that I couldn’t get away from it, was extremely stressful. I didn’t identify it as a source of stress for several weeks into the cicadas’ arrival. The deafening, incessant sound waves made me feel panicked. (Audio in the clip below does not do it justice.)
The warnings about preparing had been aimed at individuals with autism and known auditory sensitivities, not me.3
My a-ha at the time? This is the same pattern as an ambulance siren. It rises and falls in the same way. You can make people more anxious by decreasing other sounds (shutting down the city) and sending out more ambulances.
A Bridge Too Far for Sound?
For me, the question is not whether sirens can increase anxiety, but whether sustained exposure to alarms in an already destabilized environment could create acute physiological events.
While the sound of sirens is enough to scare people, compel compliance, convince them that something is happening, and (for some) make them call 911 or rush to the hospital, could it trigger widespread sudden deaths?
The first few weeks of “the emergency” is also when New York experienced an incredible out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) death event. The ability of siren sounds or messages on TV and social media to generate the magnitude and shape of the cardiac curve shown below is, I believe, highly unlikely. Still, the potential association is worthy of debate and study.
Chicago did not see a significant OHCA event that spring, nor a real increase in heart deaths at home.4 But London did. The 81% increase in OHCAs coincided with the period of globally synchronized emergency messaging that followed President Trump’s “15 days to slow the spread” declaration in the U.S.
Source: Rachael T. Fothergill et al., “Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest in London during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Resuscitation Plus 5 (2021): 100066, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resplu.2020.100066 Dashed line above shows incidents, not deaths. Red mark-ups by J. Hockett
Did Londoners hear more ambulance sirens?
Apparently, yes.
Pathologist Clare Craig, who lives in London, mentioned it and the effect in Expired: COVID, The Untold Story:
“As we all cowered, the sound of the city hushed, making the increase in the number of ambulance sirens more noticeable. Each passing sound was a further reminder of the fear and momentary confirmation that our decision to cower was worthwhile.”
Norman Fenton, professor emeritus at Queen Mary University of London, has said he heard the sirens too. In a November 2024 podcast, he said something even more interesting, akin to my experience with the cicadas:
“Fear propaganda, or just a fear hysteria can really have physical impact on you….I was actually obsessed with science fiction as a kid. And I had this obsession that the race of disgusting aliens was gonna come and land on earth and sort of kill us all at some point. And for some reason, maybe I’d seen some films, I was only very, very young but I’d seen some films whereby it was always the case that it started with this, sort of a whirling sound, which I associated with these sort of, whatever, flying saucers landing before the aliens were going to come and kill us. But it was a particular sound, a particular whirling sound. And every so often, usually at night or early morning, when I was in my bed, I would hear what I thought was that whirling sound. It was probably some cars or whatever, some lorry or truck outside. I actually, when that happened, I felt physically sick, right? I felt physically sick, and sometimes I actually was sick. That’s how that fear, completely irrational fear, can get that physical reaction. And I think that people were physically, physically disoriented. They were made physically ill, many people, simply by that incredible propaganda. And it was one of the most incredible fear propaganda campaigns that has ever been unleashed on the human race.”5
Fenton wasn’t directly relating the nature of the sound in 1950s sci-fi films (example here) to the sound of ambulance sirens, but when I pointed out the potential connection via email, he said, “The alien space ship sound from sci-fi movies is indeed similar to the ambulance sirens and I suspect that it was exactly ambulance sirens I was hearing while in a deep sleep [during the first lockdown] that made me think the aliens were arriving.”6
Sirens AND Songs – Coincidence?
Professor Fenton is right: fear-based messaging can have a physical impact. Even for those who weren’t afraid of “the virus” in spring 2020, the uncertainty about what officials were going to say or do next, when schools and businesses were going to reopen, etc. was enough to trigger a headache, at least.
But while the launch did involve intense words, numbers, and images, it also involved a good bit of entertainment involving sights and sounds. Music videos, dancing nurses, encouragement from Hollywood actors and stars of the stage. Banging pots and pans for healthcare hereos. It wasn’t all fear and obedience. We were pitched a War Against a Virus. War efforts require buy-in, reassurance, and a good bit of positive mobilization, as in, Rah-rah, we can do this – only two weeks!
Which makes me wonder: Could a city like New York or London have been convinced that an emergency was occurring without the sound of sirens? And wouldn’t the sound of sirens have to involve more dispatches for a brief period during which other, normal sounds were removed?
Military and intelligence agencies around the world have no doubt studied, tested, or deployed sound and frequency-based stimuli in a range of experimental, emergency, or operational contexts and understand very well how to use sound to convey a sense of urgency and gain compliance. Should we believe that they have perfected techniques to the point where they know, or should know, that sirens can trigger widespread cardiac events in large, already-tense urban centers?
Until other factors such as the orders given to EMTs (which, in New York City, were obviously and predictably deadly7), chemicals or drugs known to trigger cardiac arrest are accounted for, and the data itself shown to represent real-time, on-the-ground events, I say no.
At minimum, “the sound and the fury” — including the fun — deserve to be treated as part of the event itself, in all its theatrics, not merely its backdrop.
- Grabien. “AFT’s Weingarten: ‘We Knew That Remote Education Was Not a Substitute for Opening Schools’.” Grabien, 2026, https://grabien.com/story?id=421053 ↩︎
- See Figure 28 in “Eleven Sets of Serious Problems with the New York City Mass Casualty Event of Spring 2020” ↩︎
- e.g., Norkol, M. (2024, May 6). “Cicada Watch 2024: How autistic and sensory-sensitive people are preparing for the noisy emergence.” Chicago Sun-Times. https://chicago.suntimes.com/environment/cicada-watch-2024/2024/05/06/cicadas-autism-sensory-sensibilities ↩︎
- See image 1 below. ↩︎
- “Norman Fenton’s Fighting Goliath: COVID Narrative’s Flawed Math”. (2024, November 14). False Fact Fixed with Dr. Randall Bock. https://randybock.com/norman-fenton-covid-flawed-math/ ↩︎
- Personal communication, 30 December 2025. Quoted with permission. ↩︎
- See image 2 below. ↩︎
Image 1
Image 2
Adding archived tweet post publication (9 February 2026). Top graph credit: Clare Craig
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