vox--2020-12-30--9 wild cult stories to get lost in

9 wild cult stories to get lost in

Who among us doesn ’ t love a good cult story ?
In the wake of the high-profile trial and conviction of NXIVM leader Keith Raniere , numerous high-profile documentaries about the self-improvement-scam-turned-sex-cult have been released .
So , too , have online guides to other documentaries and exposés for anyone who wants to know more about similar cults — and there ’ s no shortage of stories to fill them with .
It ’ s tempting to wonder why , with all our modern knowledge about how cults operate , groups like NXIVM , Scientology , and various cultish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gaining so much power and control over their followers .
But in truth , the abusive tactics of such organizations remain effective at manipulating unsuspecting and well-meaning people , no matter which era we ’ re in .
Chronicling the realities of cults can perhaps help us avoid the traps and manipulations they set for their victims .
The list below contains some of the most jaw-dropping stories about cults that I ’ ve encountered — the extreme , wacky , and the murderous .
Many of these cults have been covered in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also included multiple sources about each cult in question .
Here are nine macabre , yet hopefully enlightening , rabbit holes for you to fall into .
I ’ m baffled that this cult has gotten relatively little mainstream media attention , given that a ) it ’ s bizarre and b ) it encompasses the mysterious deaths of numerous people , including a young girl who was very probably murdered by her own mother — all in the service of cult leader Terri Hoffman .
In the ’ 70s , Hoffman developed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ belief in faith-healing , new age occultism , and “ Black Lords , ” energy-sucking alien entities who supposedly walked among us .
These were all old cult staples , but they allowed her to bilk millions of dollars from her followers .
Where things got seriously creepy was when her followers started dropping like flies — conveniently right after they ’ d signed their inheritances and their insurance payouts over to Hoffman herself .
What to read and listen to : The main source for most information about this cult comes from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rise and Fall of a North Dallas Cult.
” The Dollop , a comedy improv podcast about real history , isn ’ t for everyone , but it ’ s where I first heard this story .
The added comedic element highlights just how absurd so much of this story is — particularly the fact that , because Hoffman ’ s most disturbing crimes were crimes of persuasion , she could never truly be brought to justice .
See also : “ Conscious Development of Body , Mind and Soul , ” the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hoffman ( Part 1 and Part 2 ) ; The Trail Went Cold podcast episode on the unsolved murder of cult member Charles Southern ; this r/Unresolved Mysteries roundup of Hoffman ’ s alleged victims and related deaths ; the Dark Histories podcast episode “ Terri Hoffman & the Black Lords.
” This cult gave rise to one of Sweden ’ s most famous true-crime cases , but it ’ s gotten relatively little attention in US media , despite its many astounding — and heartbreaking — elements .
It begins with an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In the small town of Knutby in the early 2000s , the church , known as Knutby Filadelfia , evolved into a bizarre cult , revolving around the worship of a woman claiming to be the bride of Christ and a manipulative , predatory pastor named Helge Fossmo , who exploited multiple women in the congregation .
Among the many women who became victims of Fossmo was a young woman named Sara Svensson .
Vulnerable and easily influenced , Svensson became Fossmo ’ s mistress after he convinced her it was God @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so .
Later , after Fossmo grew tired of her , the cult punished Svensson for her infidelity with Fossmo , who was already married to another member of the congregation — but directed Fossmo to carry out her punishment , which he did by locking her in a bedroom for months and subjecting her to gut-wrenching abuse at his hands .
Fossmo ’ s torture of Svensson , carried out before an indifferent and silent church , might have gone on indefinitely had his plans not changed .
He decided to manipulate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ murders for him — and once again , he claimed to be speaking to her on behalf of God .
The story gets much wilder and still sadder from there , but it ’ s worth discovering for yourself .
What to listen to : I first heard this story on the True Crime Sweden podcast .
The Cults podcast also has a gripping two-part series on this cult ( Part 1 and Part 2 ) .
See also : Because of the language barrier , most of the media on this story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one excellent , open-access academic essay on the church that is free to download and contains fascinating interviews with former and current church members — because , it turns out , the church is still active today .
The self-help guru who believed his own hype The Secret is perhaps one of the most pernicious bestsellers in history .
It ’ s a dubious 2006 self-help book and “ documentary ” that claims humans can change their reality through the power of positive thinking .
Based on a nonscientific , quasi-religious , 19th-century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ positive thinking ” rhetoric has been used to peddle everything from Scientology to CrossFit .
In the case of The Secret , numerous celebrities , including Oprah Winfrey , latched onto it and promoted its magical thinking — as well as one of its biggest proponents and his beliefs .
James Arthur Ray preached the “ law of attraction , ” a variant of New Thought that landed him on The Secret documentary as one of its hosts , and later as a guest on Oprah .
His ideas had been challenged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a habit of turning his self-help workshops into grueling , physically dangerous marathon sessions .
But he was unstoppable — and so was the growth of his cult of following — until one day in 2009 , when he forced dozens of them to endure his bogus version of a Native American “ sweat lodge.
” The events of that day led to the deaths of three members of Ray ’ s cult and the hospitalization of 18 more people — along with Ray ’ s fall from grace , a trial , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Astonishingly , however , Ray served just two years in prison , and he ’ s currently carefree , apparently unrestricted , and still peddling his dangerous thinking to his followers on the internet .
What to watch : The events of Ray ’ s rise and fall are chronicled in the chilling 2016 documentary Enlighten Us , available on Amazon Prime and YouTube .
See also : “ The Death Dealer , ” a 2013 article and YouTube short from The Verge , examines Ray ’ s attempts to reestablish himself post-prison @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , hosted by Matt Stroud , author of The Verge article , dives even more thoroughly into Ray ’ s personality , life , and crimes .
You can also check out the “ Spiritual Warriors ” episode of Oxygen ’ s Deadly Cults series , currently available on Amazon Prime .
In the ’ 80s , a unique thing happened : Hundreds of Indian immigrants moved to a tiny rural Oregon community in order to practice their religion .
The Rajneeshpuram was a commune created by followers of Osho Rajneesh , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose teachings are still in wide circulation today .
By all accounts , unlike many of the cults herein , Rajneeshpuram was a peaceful community , whose extremes were exacerbated by one small group of tyrannical leaders who constantly clashed with the local populace — and each other .
These tensions escalated throughout the decade and finally culminated in a heinous climax : One commune leader and her loyalists wreaked vengeance upon the surrounding locals of Dalles , Oregon , in what would become the largest bioterrorist attack in US history .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ members still say the experience was one of the best times of their life !
What to watch : Netflix ’ s engrossing six-part documentary series Wild Wild Country put this story on the radar of true-crime fans , and it ’ s definitely worth the watch .
See also : The Cut ’ s interviews with nine Rajneeshpuram members ; Netflix ’ s accompanying podcast episode ; The Dollop ’ s Rajneeshpuram episode .
So much has been written , filmed , and discussed about NXIVM , Keith Raniere ’ s pyramid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sex ring , that it may feel redundant to mention it here .
Still , it ’ s such a fascinating , disturbing story that more angles on it only serve to further our understanding and empathy — and now that Raniere has been sentenced to 120 years in prison for his crimes , there ’ s a flood of new information about the cult for obsessives to explore .
What to watch : The most popular documentary on this case is HBO ’ s nine-part series The Vow , but you should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that have been overshadowed by HBO ’ s show .
The first , Seduced : Inside the NXIVM Cult , is an acclaimed , four-part Starz series that allows several of the women Raniere victimized to tell their stories .
Watch it on Starz through your local cable provider or on Amazon Prime or Hulu with a Starz bundle .
The other documentary , The Lost Women of NXIVM , is a 90-minute Investigation Discovery exploration of four women who lost their lives while involved with the cult — which may have indirectly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deaths .
Find it on the Investigation Discovery website or Amazon Prime .
See also : If podcasts are more your style , there are several good resources .
Uncover Season One : Escaping NXIVM explores the cult in depth over nine episodes ; the Cults podcast has a four-part series on NXIVM ; and in NXIVM on Trial , the Times Union devotes 18 short but thorough episodes to the cult , including interviews with former members and trial analysis .
For a psychological exploration of Raniere and his many victims , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the cult , featuring extensive interviews with the showrunner and host of Seduced , Cecilia Peck and India Oxenberg , who herself is one of the cult ’ s more high-profile escapees .
The cult that abducted tourists for ritual sacrifices All cults are to some extent horrifying , but there are some cults that are seriously lose-your-lunch frightening , like real-life horror movies .
This particular cult even inspired several actual horror movies in its wake .
It also fueled decades of xenophobic American fear-mongering about Mexican border towns , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ 80s — even though its leader was originally a Catholic kid from Miami .
Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo was a powerful Mexican drug lord with a very large following of family members and minions who believed he had magical abilities .
Constanzo was drawn to the Afro-Cuban religion of Palo Mayombe but distorted its tenets to justify his abuse .
As part of his warped belief , he required his followers to abduct young men , upon whom he enacted sadistic rites in order to replenish his magic .
Constanzo carried out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ open secret on his Mexican compound Rancho Santa Elena — until he ritualistically dismembered the wrong man .
Mark Kilroy was a plucky , average Texas college student who vanished off the street while partying over spring break in 1989 , in the Mexican border town of Matamoros .
While his baffled friends searched for him , Kilroy , kidnapped by one of Constanzo ’ s followers , was quickly herded to an unspeakable death .
The subsequent border-crossing hunt to find him ultimately revealed Constanzo ’ s nightmarish commune — and his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a dramatic global manhunt for Constanzo himself .
What to watch and listen to : The Casefile true-crime podcast has an excellent episode on this case , as did the true crime podcast Red Handed .
Oxygen ’ s Deadly Cults also covered it in the season one episode “ Palo Mayombe , ” currently available on Amazon Prime .
See also : Two 1989 longreads , one in Rolling Stone and one in Texas Monthly , both go into detail about the case and the cult .
And this 2004 San @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s main supporter Sara Aldrete , who served at least 25 years of a 50-year sentence in Mexico for her role in the crimes .
The white supremacist who turned his rural cult into a slaughterhouse Another cult arose in the mid-80s thanks to Michael Wayne Ryan , a raging white supremacist who first joined one radical fundamentalist cult and then left it to pursue his own distorted neo-Nazi spin on evangelical Christianity .
He used this doctrine , which he dubbed the “ Christian identity ” movement , to terrorize his followers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yahweh cult because of Ryan ’ s claim that he himself was Yahweh , or the Rulo cult because of the tiny Nebraska town where they eventually settled , Ryan ’ s commune became a hellscape of torture , sadomasochism , child abuse , and sexual abuse .
Ultimately , after one cult member escaped and authorities closed in on the group , Ryan and his followers enacted a double homicide so gruesome that court documents summarizing the details are too graphic for us to even link to .
What to read and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chicago Tribune sums up the cult and its bizarre practices , including an erratic fortune-telling tool using the bogus ideomotor effect to hoax people into believing God was speaking to them .
More recently , Oxygen ’ s Deadly Cults series profiled the cult in “ Killers of Rulo , ” available on Amazon Prime , and the Cults podcast dedicated a two-part episode to Ryan : here ’ s Part 1 and Part 2 .
See also : Investigation Discovery ’ s series Evil Lives Here devoted an episode , “ Son @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perspective of Michael Wayne Ryan ’ s son Dennis Ryan , currently available on Amazon Prime .
Then still a teenager , Dennis was manipulated by his father into participating in the cult ’ s abuse and in the murders ; he served 12 years in prison before his release in 1997 .
A 2015 Omaha Magazine profile chronicled his attempts over the decades since to build a normal life for himself .
The homeless ex-con who turned his daughter ’ s dormitory into a sex cult A 2019 article in New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sarah Lawrence , ” alerted the world to the gobsmacking story of a controlling , charismatic ex-convict , who moved into his daughter ’ s dormitory and proceeded to utterly brainwash , psychologically torture , and abuse her and all of her friends — even to the point of turning the group into a sex ring .
Lawrence Ray was apparently a would-be kingpin , with friends in high and low places all over New York , from the mayor ’ s office to the mob .
He allegedly held an indescribable sway @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to rule , bilking them of almost $ 1 million , manipulating them into false confessions to nonexistent crimes for which he then blackmailed them , and grooming them into sexual abuse .
According to prosecutors , he forced at least one of his victims into performing sex work for him — and even reportedly encouraged some followers toward suicide .
He was ultimately indicted and is currently awaiting trial — and even from jail he ’ s still a chilling figure .
What to read : Beyond news reports , there ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the wild ( Blumhouse is adapting the story for Amazon ) , but what ’ s out there makes for bonkers reading .
The authors of the original New York Magazine piece did a lengthy follow-up this year with additional interviews in the wake of Ray ’ s arrest , while the New York Times delved deep into his background and his bizarre range of claims and connections .
At what point does mainstream religion take on aspects of a cult ?
This is a question countless documentaries have raised over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more urgent than ever thanks to the current trend of ideological polarization sweeping the globe ( and the US in particular ) .
Lest you think any particular religion is immune to such dogmatic extremism , let these stories remind you that anything can become cult-like if abuses of power go unchecked .
What to watch : The Oscar-nominated 2006 documentary Jesus Camp was a seminal film that raised questions about the extremities , coercive techniques , and potential abuses of Protestant fundamentalism — and it ’ s currently free to watch on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Jesus Camp returned with yet another profound look at extremist religion : the documentary One of Us , currently available on Netflix , which explores the rigid orthodoxy of Hasidic Judaism , and the struggle members of the community face as they try to leave it .
Another excellent series about the extreme overreach of the church is Netflix ’ s The Keepers , about the 1969 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnick .
The crime is now widely believed to have been done at the behest of a Catholic priest who was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the Baltimore Catholic school where Cesnick taught .
( Sound familiar ? )
If one story of Catholic authorities going to extremes to cover up years of systemic abuse isn ’ t enough , have a few more : the double murders of Dan O ’ Connell and James Ellison , as covered in the Casefile podcast , and the mass graves of an Irish Catholic orphanage , revealed in 2014 and covered in the hour-long documentary Children of Shame , now on Amazon Prime .
Three more fictional stories of cults @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of these films and series was deeply researched , and each one unfolds almost like a documentary .
This acclaimed 2011 film , starring Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes , plumbs the terrifying aftermath of a cult and the fragile psyche of an escaped cult member fighting to be free once and for all .
Where to watch : HBO Max and Amazon Prime This gripping drama series about a woman escaping her Hasidic Williamsburg community after she ’ s forced into an arranged marriage manages to be both utterly respectful of Jewish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the extremist variants of Hasidic practice .
You might not think of radical Islamic sects as being cults , but this eight-episode Swedish series dramatizes the process of recruitment and radicalization in a way that might change your mind .
Caliphate ( no relation to the recently heavily disclaimed New York Times podcast of the same name ) follows five normal Swedish girls as they encounter — and then succumb to — the lure of Isis .
It ’ s a meticulously researched , powerful show that vividly illustrates how a belief system @ @ @ @

Who among us doesn’t love a good cult story? In the wake of the high-profile trial and conviction of NXIVM leader Keith Raniere, numerous high-profile documentaries about the self-improvement-scam-turned-sex-cult have been released. So, too, have online guides to other documentaries and exposés for anyone who wants to know more about similar cults — and there’s no shortage of stories to fill them with.
It’s tempting to wonder why, with all our modern knowledge about how cults operate, groups like NXIVM, Scientology, and various cultish MLMs can continue to spring up, gaining so much power and control over their followers. But in truth, the abusive tactics of such organizations remain effective at manipulating unsuspecting and well-meaning people, no matter which era we’re in. Chronicling the realities of cults can perhaps help us avoid the traps and manipulations they set for their victims. The list below contains some of the most jaw-dropping stories about cults that I’ve encountered — the extreme, wacky, and the murderous.
Many of these cults have been covered in multiple places, so I’ve also included multiple sources about each cult in question. Here are nine macabre, yet hopefully enlightening, rabbit holes for you to fall into.
Conscious Development (a.k.a. The Texas Hypnocult)
I’m baffled that this cult has gotten relatively little mainstream media attention, given that a) it’s bizarre and b) it encompasses the mysterious deaths of numerous people, including a young girl who was very probably murdered by her own mother — all in the service of cult leader Terri Hoffman.
In the ’70s, Hoffman developed a mostly nonsensical cult revolving around her belief in faith-healing, new age occultism, and “Black Lords,” energy-sucking alien entities who supposedly walked among us. These were all old cult staples, but they allowed her to bilk millions of dollars from her followers. Where things got seriously creepy was when her followers started dropping like flies — conveniently right after they’d signed their inheritances and their insurance payouts over to Hoffman herself.
What to read and listen to: The main source for most information about this cult comes from the 1982 D Magazine article “The Rise and Fall of a North Dallas Cult.”
The Dollop, a comedy improv podcast about real history, isn’t for everyone, but it’s where I first heard this story. The added comedic element highlights just how absurd so much of this story is — particularly the fact that, because Hoffman’s most disturbing crimes were crimes of persuasion, she could never truly be brought to justice.
See also: The Crimelines podcast recently thoroughly covered the case and its many offshoot mysteries. The Cults podcast has a two-part series on Hoffman (Part 1 and Part 2); The Trail Went Cold podcast episode covered the unsolved disappearance of cult member Charles Southern; this r/Unresolved Mysteries thread sums up Hoffman’s alleged victims and related deaths.
Knutby Filadelfia (a.k.a. Knutbydramat)
This cult gave rise to one of Sweden’s most famous true-crime cases, but it’s gotten relatively little attention in US media, despite its many astounding — and heartbreaking — elements. It begins with an isolated cloister of the Swedish Pentecostal movement. In the small town of Knutby in the early 2000s, the church, known as Knutby Filadelfia, evolved into a bizarre cult, revolving around the worship of a woman claiming to be the bride of Christ and a manipulative, predatory pastor named Helge Fossmo, who exploited multiple women in the congregation.
Among the many women who became victims of Fossmo was a young woman named Sara Svensson. Vulnerable and easily influenced, Svensson became Fossmo’s mistress after he convinced her it was God’s will for her to do so. Later, after Fossmo grew tired of her, the cult punished Svensson for her infidelity with Fossmo, who was already married to another member of the congregation — but directed Fossmo to carry out her punishment, which he did by locking her in a bedroom for months and subjecting her to gut-wrenching abuse at his hands.
Fossmo’s torture of Svensson, carried out before an indifferent and silent church, might have gone on indefinitely had his plans not changed. He decided to manipulate Svensson into carrying out a series of murders for him — and once again, he claimed to be speaking to her on behalf of God. The story gets much wilder and still sadder from there, but it’s worth discovering for yourself.
What to listen to: I first heard this story on the True Crime Sweden podcast. The Cults podcast also has a gripping two-part series on this cult (Part 1 and Part 2).
See also: Because of the language barrier, most of the media on this story is inaccessible in English. There is one excellent, open-access academic essay on the church that is free to download and contains fascinating interviews with former and current church members — because, it turns out, the church is still active today.
The self-help guru who believed his own hype
The Secret is perhaps one of the most pernicious bestsellers in history. It’s a dubious 2006 self-help book and “documentary” that claims humans can change their reality through the power of positive thinking. Based on a nonscientific, quasi-religious, 19th-century movement called New Thought, this false “positive thinking” rhetoric has been used to peddle everything from Scientology to CrossFit. In the case of The Secret, numerous celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey, latched onto it and promoted its magical thinking — as well as one of its biggest proponents and his beliefs.
James Arthur Ray preached the “law of attraction,” a variant of New Thought that landed him on The Secret documentary as one of its hosts, and later as a guest on Oprah. His ideas had been challenged for years, particularly because he had a habit of turning his self-help workshops into grueling, physically dangerous marathon sessions. But he was unstoppable — and so was the growth of his cult of following — until one day in 2009, when he forced dozens of them to endure his bogus version of a Native American “sweat lodge.”
The events of that day led to the deaths of three members of Ray’s cult and the hospitalization of 18 more people — along with Ray’s fall from grace, a trial, and his ultimate sentence for murder. Astonishingly, however, Ray served just two years in prison, and he’s currently carefree, apparently unrestricted, and still peddling his dangerous thinking to his followers on the internet.
What to watch: The events of Ray’s rise and fall are chronicled in the chilling 2016 documentary Enlighten Us, available on Amazon Prime and YouTube.
See also: “The Death Dealer,” a 2013 article and YouTube short from The Verge, examines Ray’s attempts to reestablish himself post-prison. Wondery’s eight-episode Guru podcast, hosted by Matt Stroud, author of The Verge article, dives even more thoroughly into Ray’s personality, life, and crimes. You can also check out the “Spiritual Warriors” episode of Oxygen’s Deadly Cults series, currently available on Amazon Prime.
Rajneeshpuram
In the ’80s, a unique thing happened: Hundreds of Indian immigrants moved to a tiny rural Oregon community in order to practice their religion. The Rajneeshpuram was a commune created by followers of Osho Rajneesh, an Indian mystic who emphasized meditation, and whose teachings are still in wide circulation today. By all accounts, unlike many of the cults herein, Rajneeshpuram was a peaceful community, whose extremes were exacerbated by one small group of tyrannical leaders who constantly clashed with the local populace — and each other.
These tensions escalated throughout the decade and finally culminated in a heinous climax: One commune leader and her loyalists wreaked vengeance upon the surrounding locals of Dalles, Oregon, in what would become the largest bioterrorist attack in US history.
But hey, many of the surviving cult members still say the experience was one of the best times of their life!
What to watch: Netflix’s engrossing six-part documentary series Wild Wild Country put this story on the radar of true-crime fans, and it’s definitely worth the watch.
See also: The Cut’s interviews with nine Rajneeshpuram members; Netflix’s accompanying podcast episode; The Dollop’s Rajneeshpuram episode.
NXIVM
So much has been written, filmed, and discussed about NXIVM, Keith Raniere’s pyramid scheme turned self-help seminar turned cult turned sex ring, that it may feel redundant to mention it here. Still, it’s such a fascinating, disturbing story that more angles on it only serve to further our understanding and empathy — and now that Raniere has been sentenced to 120 years in prison for his crimes, there’s a flood of new information about the cult for obsessives to explore.
What to watch: The most popular documentary on this case is HBO’s nine-part series The Vow, but you should also check out two other excellent documentaries that have been overshadowed by HBO’s show. The first, Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, is an acclaimed, four-part Starz series that allows several of the women Raniere victimized to tell their stories. Watch it on Starz through your local cable provider or on Amazon Prime or Hulu with a Starz bundle.
The other documentary, The Lost Women of NXIVM, is a 90-minute Investigation Discovery exploration of four women who lost their lives while involved with the cult — which may have indirectly or directly played a role in their deaths. Find it on the Investigation Discovery website or Amazon Prime.
See also: If podcasts are more your style, there are several good resources. Uncover Season One: Escaping NXIVM explores the cult in depth over nine episodes; the Cults podcast has a four-part series on NXIVM; and in NXIVM on Trial, the Times Union devotes 18 short but thorough episodes to the cult, including interviews with former members and trial analysis. For a psychological exploration of Raniere and his many victims, Real Crime Profile recently began a series on the cult, featuring extensive interviews with the showrunner and host of Seduced, Cecilia Peck and India Oxenberg, who herself is one of the cult’s more high-profile escapees.
The cult that abducted tourists for ritual sacrifices
All cults are to some extent horrifying, but there are some cults that are seriously lose-your-lunch frightening, like real-life horror movies. This particular cult even inspired several actual horror movies in its wake. It also fueled decades of xenophobic American fear-mongering about Mexican border towns, as well as the Satanic Panic of the ’80s — even though its leader was originally a Catholic kid from Miami.
Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo was a powerful Mexican drug lord with a very large following of family members and minions who believed he had magical abilities. Constanzo was drawn to the Afro-Cuban religion of Palo Mayombe but distorted its tenets to justify his abuse. As part of his warped belief, he required his followers to abduct young men, upon whom he enacted sadistic rites in order to replenish his magic. Constanzo carried out this gory practice for years as an open secret on his Mexican compound Rancho Santa Elena — until he ritualistically dismembered the wrong man.
Mark Kilroy was a plucky, average Texas college student who vanished off the street while partying over spring break in 1989, in the Mexican border town of Matamoros. While his baffled friends searched for him, Kilroy, kidnapped by one of Constanzo’s followers, was quickly herded to an unspeakable death. The subsequent border-crossing hunt to find him ultimately revealed Constanzo’s nightmarish commune — and his dozens of serial murders — and led to a dramatic global manhunt for Constanzo himself.
What to watch and listen to: The Casefile true-crime podcast has an excellent episode on this case, as did the true crime podcast Red Handed. Oxygen’s Deadly Cults also covered it in the season one episode “Palo Mayombe,” currently available on Amazon Prime.
See also: Two 1989 longreads, one in Rolling Stone and one in Texas Monthly, both go into detail about the case and the cult. And this 2004 San Antonio Express profile looks at Constanzo’s main supporter Sara Aldrete, who served at least 25 years of a 50-year sentence in Mexico for her role in the crimes.
The white supremacist who turned his rural cult into a slaughterhouse
Another cult arose in the mid-80s thanks to Michael Wayne Ryan, a raging white supremacist who first joined one radical fundamentalist cult and then left it to pursue his own distorted neo-Nazi spin on evangelical Christianity. He used this doctrine, which he dubbed the “Christian identity” movement, to terrorize his followers for years.
Often known as the Yahweh cult because of Ryan’s claim that he himself was Yahweh, or the Rulo cult because of the tiny Nebraska town where they eventually settled, Ryan’s commune became a hellscape of torture, sadomasochism, child abuse, and sexual abuse. Ultimately, after one cult member escaped and authorities closed in on the group, Ryan and his followers enacted a double homicide so gruesome that court documents summarizing the details are too graphic for us to even link to.
What to read and watch: A 1986 article in the Chicago Tribune sums up the cult and its bizarre practices, including an erratic fortune-telling tool using the bogus ideomotor effect to hoax people into believing God was speaking to them. More recently, Oxygen’s Deadly Cults series profiled the cult in “Killers of Rulo,” available on Amazon Prime, and the Cults podcast dedicated a two-part episode to Ryan: here’s Part 1 and Part 2.
See also: Investigation Discovery’s series Evil Lives Here devoted an episode, “Son of the Prophet,” to the perspective of Michael Wayne Ryan’s son Dennis Ryan, currently available on Amazon Prime. Then still a teenager, Dennis was manipulated by his father into participating in the cult’s abuse and in the murders; he served 12 years in prison before his release in 1997. A 2015 Omaha Magazine profile chronicled his attempts over the decades since to build a normal life for himself.
The homeless ex-con who turned his daughter’s dormitory into a sex cult
A 2019 article in New York Magazine, “The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence,” alerted the world to the gobsmacking story of a controlling, charismatic ex-convict, who moved into his daughter’s dormitory and proceeded to utterly brainwash, psychologically torture, and abuse her and all of her friends — even to the point of turning the group into a sex ring.
Lawrence Ray was apparently a would-be kingpin, with friends in high and low places all over New York, from the mayor’s office to the mob. He allegedly held an indescribable sway over the college dormitory where he came to rule, bilking them of almost $1 million, manipulating them into false confessions to nonexistent crimes for which he then blackmailed them, and grooming them into sexual abuse. According to prosecutors, he forced at least one of his victims into performing sex work for him — and even reportedly encouraged some followers toward suicide. He was ultimately indicted and is currently awaiting trial — and even from jail he’s still a chilling figure.
What to read: Beyond news reports, there’s currently very little about this cult in the wild (Blumhouse is adapting the story for Amazon), but what’s out there makes for bonkers reading. The authors of the original New York Magazine piece did a lengthy follow-up this year with additional interviews in the wake of Ray’s arrest, while the New York Times delved deep into his background and his bizarre range of claims and connections.
A religious denomination near you
At what point does mainstream religion take on aspects of a cult? This is a question countless documentaries have raised over the years, but it’s arguably more urgent than ever thanks to the current trend of ideological polarization sweeping the globe (and the US in particular). Lest you think any particular religion is immune to such dogmatic extremism, let these stories remind you that anything can become cult-like if abuses of power go unchecked.
What to watch: The Oscar-nominated 2006 documentary Jesus Camp was a seminal film that raised questions about the extremities, coercive techniques, and potential abuses of Protestant fundamentalism — and it’s currently free to watch on Vimeo.
In 2017, the creators of Jesus Camp returned with yet another profound look at extremist religion: the documentary One of Us, currently available on Netflix, which explores the rigid orthodoxy of Hasidic Judaism, and the struggle members of the community face as they try to leave it.
Another excellent series about the extreme overreach of the church is Netflix’s The Keepers, about the 1969 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnick. The crime is now widely believed to have been done at the behest of a Catholic priest who was attempting to cover up widespread sexual abuse in the Baltimore Catholic school where Cesnick taught. (Sound familiar?) If one story of Catholic authorities going to extremes to cover up years of systemic abuse isn’t enough, have a few more: the double murders of Dan O’Connell and James Ellison, as covered in the Casefile podcast, and the mass graves of an Irish Catholic orphanage, revealed in 2014 and covered in the hour-long documentary Children of Shame, now on Amazon Prime.
Three more fictional stories of cults that might as well be real
Each of these films and series was deeply researched, and each one unfolds almost like a documentary.
Martha Marcy May Marlene
This acclaimed 2011 film, starring Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes, plumbs the terrifying aftermath of a cult and the fragile psyche of an escaped cult member fighting to be free once and for all.
Where to watch: HBO Max and Amazon Prime
Unorthodox
This gripping drama series about a woman escaping her Hasidic Williamsburg community after she’s forced into an arranged marriage manages to be both utterly respectful of Jewish culture and religion and starkly critical of the extremist variants of Hasidic practice.
Where to watch: Netflix
Caliphate
You might not think of radical Islamic sects as being cults, but this eight-episode Swedish series dramatizes the process of recruitment and radicalization in a way that might change your mind. Caliphate (no relation to the recently heavily disclaimed New York Times podcast of the same name) follows five normal Swedish girls as they encounter — and then succumb to — the lure of Isis. It’s a meticulously researched, powerful show that vividly illustrates how a belief system can become all-consuming.
Where to watch: Netflix


vox--2020-12-31--Flattening the curve worked — until it didn’t

In the spring of 2020 , as Covid-19 was beginning to take its awful toll in the United States , three words offered a glimmer of hope : flatten the curve .
That phrase and charts illustrating the concept were everywhere in mid-March , shortly before the New York City outbreak exploded .
The city would see 10,000 cases and nearly 1,000 deaths every day by early April .
Covid-19 cases were spiking , and hospital systems risked being overwhelmed by patients with life-threatening symptoms .
If hospitals ran out of beds or ICU units , nurses or doctors , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and other causes .
The way to prevent such a tragedy was to lock down .
Flattening the epidemiological curve would keep the caseload manageable for our health system .
“ If you look at the curves of outbreaks , they go big peaks , and then come down , ” Anthony Fauci , the nation ’ s top infectious disease expert , said on March 10 .
“ What we need to do is flatten that down.
” Vox wrote an explainer on the idea .
Barack Obama shared it with his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Flatten the curve ” became a public health meme — there was even a Fauci bobblehead that incorporated it — but it was also an urgent call to action .
The US did succeed at flattening the curve — at least at first .
Businesses closed and most states issued stay-at-home orders , and later research concluded those lockdown measures helped prevent tens of millions of Covid-19 cases .
But America failed to take advantage of that window to ramp up its testing-and-tracing capabilities , and states quickly faced intense pressure to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ costs of the shutdowns .
Reopening began earlier than public health experts believed it should .
The political will to impose new lockdowns had evaporated by the time cases spiked again .
At the end of 2020 , with nearly 20 million Covid-19 cases and more than 340,000 deaths in the US , it is evident that trying to flatten the curve was not sufficient to end the pandemic .
That doesn ’ t mean it failed entirely .
Slowing the spread of Covid-19 was meant to buy time to figure out what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did .
America ’ s political leaders did not establish clear , shared goals for managing the outbreak .
And eventually the Covid-19 response became politicized , driving Americans apart on the value of wearing masks or social distancing rather than maintaining the solidarity necessary to stamp out a highly infectious virus .
Flattening the curve became an abstraction with no real meaning .
“ The value of ‘ flatten that curve ’ was in the context of that first surge , ” Albert Ko , who leads the epidemiology department at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me , “ and then it lost its value.
” Flattening the curve worked — at first Flattening the curve was already a well-understood concept in public health circles .
But the Covid-19 pandemic presented the first real opportunity to put it to the test .
“ Initially , it really hit home for people when they saw the images of overcrowded hospitals , ” Leana Wen , the former Baltimore city health commissioner , told me .
“ The ‘ flattening the curve ’ concept made sense when people realized it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get too crowded.
” “ There are many millions of Americans who made profound sacrifices , and continue to do it to this day , ” she continued .
“ But it was inconsistently applied.
” It may be difficult to remember now , but back in March , Americans were mostly unified in embracing the strategies necessary to flatten the curve .
The vast majority of states closed businesses and schools .
Polling showed that people were willing to take social distancing measures .
New York faced plenty of challenges ( the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the NYC area before it was detected ) and made its share of mistakes ( sending infected patients back to nursing homes ) .
But the proof of the strategy ’ s success was in the curves .
Until the recent winter surge , they were flat .
Multiple studies have found that mitigation measures suppressed the virus ’ s spread and likely prevented millions of cases and with them many deaths .
A study published in Health Affairs in May found that social distancing policies , particularly stay-at-home orders as well as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off as many as 35 million cases in the US by the end of April .
More recent research published in Science concluded that closing schools and businesses , as well as limiting the size of private gatherings , reduced spread considerably .
“ NYC flattened the curve .
Other places delayed it , ” William Hanage , an epidemiologist at Harvard University , told me .
“ But that ought to provide an opportunity to ramp up testing and health care and prepare people for the long haul .
You know that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with roadmaps for how to proceed once the initial curve was flattened .
A proposal from the American Enterprise Institute set specific thresholds for case numbers , hospital capacity , and testing that were designed to allow states to safely begin relaxing their lockdown measures once the virus had been sufficiently suppressed and the health system ’ s capacity had been expanded .
But the Trump administration never embraced those plans .
Instead , the president often said that the cure ( lockdowns ) could not be worse than the disease ( Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a message that the US would need to learn to live with the virus .
America ’ s failures to establish an effective test-trace-isolate program are well documented .
Some experts question whether contact tracing could have been as effective in a country like the US as it has been in somewhere like South Korea , which is much smaller and has laws that allow government authorities to intrude on personal privacy in the name of public health .
But everybody I spoke to agreed the United States had not made the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flattening the initial Covid-19 curve .
Instead , many US states that had avoided the worst of Covid-19 in the spring saw the lack of an outbreak as a sign that they could push ahead with reopening .
Once the curve was flat , the political will to keep it that way began to crumble .
America wasn ’ t the only place to struggle to figure out how to move out of its spring lockdown ; many European countries saw their own second waves over the summer .
But the missed opportunity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the pandemic .
“ We never really came up with a plan to transition , ” Caitlin Rivers , a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who co-authored the AEI roadmap back in March , told me .
The Covid-19 pandemic revealed the limits of “ flatten the curve ” In some ways , flattening the curve did work as intended .
Hospitals have not — yet — been overwhelmed , as they were in the dire situation in Lombardo , Italy , in the spring .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rising , US hospitals warn they are again nearing a breaking point .
Slowing the spread of the disease in the spring also gave scientists a chance to learn more and more about the virus .
Among other things , they learned that people were the most infectious before they showed symptoms .
They figured out the virus primarily spread through respiratory droplets , not through touch or surfaces .
The elevated fatality risk to the elderly became more apparent .
Researchers quickly began to figure out which treatments worked ( putting patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and dexamethasone ) and which ones didn ’ t ( the Trump-favored hydroxychloroquine ) .
With this information , the US could have used the time it bought by flattening the curve to figure out whether more targeted interventions would work better than lockdowns , as the Science study suggested , and whether individual cities or counties could best manage their own outbreaks .
“ Do we need strong interventions rather than calibrated ?
Do you have to have regional interventions in order to really make a dent ?
” Ko said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in that kind of limbo .
Europe couldn ’ t calibrate that .
They had to go into lockdown.
” The cost of that failure has not been paid equally .
The pandemic underscored the many inequities in American life , starting with who contracts the virus and who dies from it .
Black and Hispanic Americans have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19 , both in terms of health and the toll of the year ’ s economic downturn .
When the curve didn ’ t stay flattened , the people who had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in intergenerational households , and who have higher rates of chronic disease were the most at risk .
“ I don ’ t think we ever fully appreciated how the messaging around flattening the curve , how the challenges we as a nation face , would affect the most vulnerable , ” Utibe Essien , a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh , said .
“ The people who didn ’ t have the same access to staying at home , masking up , who didn ’ t have the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t increase their exposure.
” And in other ways , flattening the curve still failed to accomplish its goal of preserving health care access .
While hospitals have not yet been completely overwhelmed , some people aren ’ t getting the care they need .
ProPublica reported that over the summer in Houston , medical examiners saw a spike in the number of people found dead in their homes .
Some of those deaths were from Covid-19 ; some were from heart attacks , strokes and other conditions .
Either way , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spread in the area may have kept people from seeking medical assistance , with deadly consequences .
Throughout the year , with cases staying stubbornly high , doctors warned about the consequences of non-Covid-19 patients were postponing care for chronic or emergent conditions .
Research showed that visits to primary care doctors and specialists dropped precipitously in the spring and summer .
Health care experts fear that patients who may have been experiencing an onset of diabetes or heart disease will face setbacks if they delayed seeing a doctor to get an initial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fully understand those long-term effects .
“ It ’ s like a lost year of care , ” Essien , a practicing physician , told me .
The US never pivoted from flattening the curve Now , with 2020 coming to an end and the US reporting 180,000 new cases and more than 2,000 new deaths on average every day , there is no more hope for flattening the curve .
Luckily , vaccine development has been speedy and people are already being vaccinated against the coronavirus .
But public health leaders still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the months between now and widespread protection among the population .
As a public health message , despite the initial success , “ flatten the curve ” has lost its force and America ’ s public health leadership failed to adapt and find a new message that would resonate with people .
David Rehkopf , a social epidemiologist at Stanford University , drew a comparison to the anti-smoking campaign .
Putting a surgeon general warning on cigarette boxes did have a quick and dramatic effect on smoking rates , but not everybody stopped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pivot to new strategies to keep making progress .
“ With Covid-19 , all of this was compacted into less than a year , not decades , ” he said .
“ Adapting that quickly is tough , but from past public health campaigns , we should have anticipated the need to do this.
” When I reported on Melbourne , Australia ’ s success in eradicating Covid-19 , I learned that the policy experts there worried that slogans like “ flatten the curve ” or “ slow the spread ” were too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instead came up with a detailed step-by-step guide for how they would , eventually , get Covid-19 cases down to zero .
Specific thresholds were set : Once we reach X number of cases per day , then we can reopen Y .
That strategy , despite some controversy , has been a success .
But in the US , many states , under pressure from businesses losing weeks of revenue and from anxious constituents who saw no immediate emergency in their daily lives , began to quickly lift their social distancing policies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seemed to flatten .
Texas , which put a fairly toothless stay-at-home order into place at the start of April , lifted it a month later .
By the end of June , its number of daily cases had increased 600 percent .
There was not one voice communicating to the public what mitigation measures were necessary , why , and what outcome we were working toward .
( New York Gov .
Andrew Cuomo , who held daily briefings in the spring with handy slide presentations to convey the current state of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ next , was largely an exception among his peers . )
The CDC was sidelined by the Trump administration throughout the year .
Instead , 330 million Americans were left to make their own risk assessments — or not .
Given the research that shows a small percentage of infected people account for a very large share of the transmission , that was a recipe for disaster .
And rather than take proactive measures as infection rates first ticked up , which public health experts say are most important given the pre-symptomatic spread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ governors seemed to be paralyzed and waited to act until the crisis was already upon them .
“ Every American ’ s personal definition of Covid-caution is completely unique , with some holed up at home for weeks at a time and others traveling the country to visit friends , ” Kumi Smith , an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota , told me over email .
“ While the institutional level measures may seem extreme , if they had been more uniformly implemented around the country for longer , we might have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transmission to the point that a careful reopening coupled with other measures like contact tracing and widespread testing and isolation would have been possible.
” The paradoxical lesson of flattening the Covid-19 curve is that the concept proved its worth but it may be more difficult in the future to sell the public on such a strategy .
Nobody disputes the value of slowing transmission in order to relieve pressure on the health system .
But it had an expiration date as a motivational tool .
“ We know it works .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this pandemic , ” Jen Kates , director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation , told me .
“ This will be a standard part of pandemic preparedness and response going forward.
” “ An open question , though , will be to what extent has the concept been poisoned by the political discourse ?
” she added .
“ How successfully can it be used in the future ?
”

In the spring of 2020, as Covid-19 was beginning to take its awful toll in the United States, three words offered a glimmer of hope: flatten the curve.
That phrase and charts illustrating the concept were everywhere in mid-March, shortly before the New York City outbreak exploded. The city would see 10,000 cases and nearly 1,000 deaths every day by early April.
Covid-19 cases were spiking, and hospital systems risked being overwhelmed by patients with life-threatening symptoms. If hospitals ran out of beds or ICU units, nurses, or doctors, people would die unnecessarily — from Covid-19 and other causes. The way to prevent such a tragedy was to lock down. Flattening the epidemiological curve would keep the caseload manageable for our health system.
“If you look at the curves of outbreaks, they go big peaks, and then come down,” Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said on March 10. “What we need to do is flatten that down.”
Vox wrote an explainer on the idea. Barack Obama shared it with his tens of millions of Twitter followers. “Flatten the curve” became a public health meme — there was even a Fauci bobblehead that incorporated it — but it was also an urgent call to action.
The US did succeed at flattening the curve — at least at first. Businesses closed and most states issued stay-at-home orders; later research concluded those lockdown measures helped prevent tens of millions of Covid-19 cases.
But America failed to take advantage of that window to ramp up its virus testing and tracing capabilities, and states quickly faced intense pressure to relax their policies to alleviate the economic costs of the shutdowns. Reopening began earlier than public health experts believed it should. The political will to impose new lockdowns had evaporated by the time cases spiked again.
At the end of 2020, with more than 20 million Covid-19 cases and nearly 350,000 deaths in the US, it is evident that trying to flatten the curve was not sufficient to end the pandemic. That doesn’t mean it failed entirely. Slowing the spread of Covid-19 was meant to buy time to figure out what came next. But the US never did.
America’s political leaders did not establish clear, shared goals for managing the outbreak. And eventually the Covid-19 response became politicized, driving Americans apart on the value of wearing masks or social distancing rather than maintaining the solidarity necessary to stamp out a highly infectious virus.
Flattening the curve became an abstraction with no real meaning.
“The value of ‘flatten that curve’ was in the context of that first surge,” Albert Ko, who leads the epidemiology department at the Yale School of Public Health, told me, “and then it lost its value.”
Flattening the curve worked — at first
Flattening the curve was already a well-understood concept in public health circles. But the Covid-19 pandemic presented the first real opportunity to put it to the test.
“Initially, it really hit home for people when they saw the images of overcrowded hospitals,” Leana Wen, the former Baltimore city health commissioner, told me. “The ‘flattening the curve’ concept made sense when people realized it was about making sure hospitals didn’t get too crowded.”
“There are many millions of Americans who made profound sacrifices, and continue to do it to this day,” she continued. “But it was inconsistently applied.”
It may be difficult to remember now, but back in March, Americans were mostly unified in embracing the strategies necessary to flatten the curve. The vast majority of states closed businesses and schools. Polling showed that people were willing to take social distancing measures.
New York faced plenty of challenges (the virus was likely spreading for weeks in the NYC area before it was detected) and made its share of mistakes (sending infected patients back to nursing homes). But the proof of the strategy’s success was in the curves. Until the recent winter surge, they were flat.
Multiple studies have found that mitigation measures suppressed the virus’s spread and likely prevented millions of cases — and with them many deaths. A study published in Health Affairs in May found that social distancing policies, particularly stay-at-home orders and closing bars and restaurants, had staved off as many as 35 million cases in the US by the end of April. More recent research published in Science concluded that closing schools and businesses, as well as limiting the size of private gatherings, reduced spread considerably.
“NYC flattened the curve. Other places delayed it,” William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard University, told me. “But that ought to provide an opportunity to ramp up testing and health care and prepare people for the long haul. You know that did not happen.”
Experts came up with roadmaps for how to proceed once the initial curve was flattened. A proposal from the American Enterprise Institute set specific thresholds for case numbers, hospital capacity, and testing that were designed to allow states to safely begin relaxing their lockdown measures once the virus had been sufficiently suppressed and the health system’s capacity had been expanded.
But the Trump administration never embraced those plans. Instead, the president often said that the cure (lockdowns) could not be worse than the disease (Covid-19). The White House eventually settled on a message that the US would need to learn to live with the virus.
America’s failures to establish an effective test-trace-isolate program are well documented. Some experts question whether contact tracing could have been as effective in a country like the US as it has been in somewhere like South Korea, which is much smaller and has laws that allow government authorities to intrude on personal privacy in the name of public health. But everybody I spoke to agreed the United States had not made the best use of the time afforded by flattening the initial Covid-19 curve.
Instead, many US states that had avoided the worst of Covid-19 in the spring saw the lack of an outbreak as a sign that they could push ahead with reopening. Once the curve was flat, the political will to keep it that way began to crumble.
America wasn’t the only place to struggle with figuring out how to move forward from its spring lockdown; many European countries saw their own second waves over the summer. But the missed opportunity still set the course for the rest of the pandemic.
“We never really came up with a plan to transition,” Caitlin Rivers, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who co-authored the AEI roadmap back in March, told me.
The Covid-19 pandemic revealed the limits of “flatten the curve”
In some ways, flattening the curve did work as intended.
Hospitals have not — yet — been overwhelmed, as they were in the dire situation in Lombardo, Italy, in the spring. But today, with cases and hospitalizations still rising, US hospitals warn they are again nearing a breaking point.
Slowing the spread of the disease in the spring also gave scientists a chance to learn more and more about the virus.
Among other things, they learned that people were the most infectious before they showed symptoms. They figured out the virus primarily spread through respiratory droplets, not through touch or surfaces. The elevated fatality risk to the elderly became more apparent. Researchers quickly began to figure out which treatments worked (putting patients in a prone position, administering remdesivir and dexamethasone) and which ones didn’t (the Trump-favored hydroxychloroquine).
With this information, the US could have used the time it bought by flattening the curve to figure out whether more targeted interventions would work better than lockdowns, as the Science study suggested, and whether individual cities or counties could best manage their own outbreaks.
“Do we need strong interventions rather than calibrated? Do you have to have regional interventions in order to really make a dent?” Ko said. “I think we’ve been in that kind of limbo. Europe couldn’t calibrate that. They had to go into lockdown.”
The cost of that failure has not been paid equally. The pandemic underscored the many inequities in American life, starting with who contracts the virus and who dies from it. Black and Hispanic Americans have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, both in terms of health and the toll of the year’s economic downturn.
When the curve didn’t stay flattened, the people who had to go into work, who live in intergenerational households, and who have higher rates of chronic disease were the most at risk.
“I don’t think we ever fully appreciated how the messaging around flattening the curve, how the challenges we as a nation face, would affect the most vulnerable,” Utibe Essien, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, said. “The people who didn’t have the same access to staying at home, masking up, who didn’t have the same opportunities to do jobs that didn’t increase their exposure.”
And in other ways, flattening the curve still failed to accomplish its goal of preserving health care access. While hospitals have not yet been completely overwhelmed, some people aren’t getting the care they need. ProPublica reported that over the summer in Houston, medical examiners saw a spike in the number of people found dead in their homes. Some of those deaths were from Covid-19; some were from heart attacks, strokes, and other conditions. Either way, the news of the virus’s rapid spread in the area may have kept people from seeking medical assistance, with deadly consequences.
Throughout the year, with cases staying stubbornly high, doctors warned about the consequences of non-Covid-19 patients postponing care for chronic or emergent conditions. Research showed that visits to primary care doctors and specialists dropped precipitously in the spring and summer.
Health care experts fear that patients who may have been experiencing an onset of conditions like diabetes or heart disease will face setbacks if they delayed seeing a doctor to get an initial diagnosis. It will take years to fully understand those long-term effects.
“It’s like a lost year of care,” Essien, a practicing physician, told me.
The US never pivoted from flattening the curve
Now, with 2020 coming to an end and the US reporting, on average, 180,000 new cases and more than 2,000 new deaths every day, there is no more hope for flattening the curve.
Luckily, vaccine development has been speedy and people are already being vaccinated against the coronavirus. But public health leaders still expect tens of thousands more deaths in the months before the country can achieve widespread protection among the population.
As a public health message, despite the initial success, “flatten the curve” has lost its force and America’s public health leadership failed to adapt and find a new message that would resonate with people.
David Rehkopf, a social epidemiologist at Stanford University, drew a comparison to the anti-smoking campaign. Putting a surgeon general’s warning on cigarette boxes did have a quick and dramatic effect on smoking rates, but not everybody stopped smoking. Public health leaders had to pivot to new strategies to keep making progress.
“With Covid-19, all of this was compacted into less than a year, not decades,” he said. “Adapting that quickly is tough, but from past public health campaigns, we should have anticipated the need to do this.”
When I reported on Melbourne, Australia’s success in eradicating Covid-19, I learned that the policy experts there worried that slogans like “flatten the curve” or “slow the spread” were too vague. The public health authorities there instead came up with a detailed step-by-step guide for how they would, eventually, get Covid-19 cases down to zero.
Specific thresholds were set: Once we reach X number of cases per day, then we can reopen Y. That strategy, despite some controversy, has been a success.
But in the US, many states, under pressure from businesses losing weeks of revenue and from anxious constituents who saw no immediate emergency in their daily lives, began to quickly lift their social distancing policies in the spring, once the curve seemed to flatten. Texas, which put a fairly toothless stay-at-home order into place at the start of April, lifted it a month later. By the end of June, its number of daily cases had increased 600 percent.
There was no unified voice communicating to the public what mitigation measures were necessary, why, and what outcome we were working toward. (New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who held daily briefings in the spring with handy slide presentations to convey the current state of the outbreak and what would be coming next, was largely an exception among his peers.) The CDC was sidelined by the Trump administration throughout the year.
Instead, 330 million Americans were left to make their own risk assessments — or not.
Given the research that shows a small percentage of infected people account for a very large share of the transmission, that was a recipe for disaster. And rather than take proactive measures as infection rates first ticked up, which public health experts say are most important given the pre-symptomatic spread of Covid-19 and its slow gestation, governors seemed to be paralyzed and waited to act until the crisis was already upon them.
“Every American’s personal definition of Covid-caution is completely unique, with some holed up at home for weeks at a time and others traveling the country to visit friends,” Kumi Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, told me over email. “While the institutional level measures may seem extreme, if they had been more uniformly implemented around the country for longer, we might have been able to achieve low enough community transmission to the point that a careful reopening coupled with other measures like contact tracing and widespread testing and isolation would have been possible.”
The paradoxical lesson of flattening the Covid-19 curve is that the concept proved its worth, but it may be more difficult in the future to sell the public on such a strategy.
Nobody disputes the value of slowing transmission in order to relieve pressure on the health system. But it had an expiration date as a motivational tool.
“We know it works. We’ve seen that again and again in this pandemic,” Jen Kates, director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “This will be a standard part of pandemic preparedness and response going forward.”
“An open question, though, will be to what extent has the concept been poisoned by the political discourse?” she added. “How successfully can it be used in the future?”


vox--2020-12-31--One Good Thing: Housebound is the perfect horror comedy for the perpetually quarantined

One Good Thing is Vox ’ s recommendations feature .
In each edition , find one more thing from the world of culture that we highly recommend .
Recently , someone reminded me of the 2014 New Zealand horror comedy Housebound .
It ’ s a shoestring budget indie about a bratty young woman whose house arrest leads to some very unexpected scares .
The film has long flown under the mainstream radar , despite winning a cult following from horror fans .
When I first saw it about five years ago , I loved it — but I haven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ except as a little-known backburner title whenever anyone asks me for horror movie recs .
But now , remembering it in 2020 , I immediately wanted to see how it held up in a post-pandemic atmosphere .
My hunch was that Housebound , with its fixation on forced intimacy and confinement in too-familiar spaces , would be the perfect aperitif after eight-plus months in quarantine .
And I was right : Housebound still slaps — and today , it plays like a wry grace note to a year of living safely .
Housebound @ @ @ @ @ @ @ character who ’ s completely over everything Housebound is writer-director Gerard Johnstone ’ s only feature film , but its unique tone has the confidence of an established , more experienced screenwriter .
It ’ s one of those films that takes a while to figure out ; it ’ s not immediately clear what the stakes are , how one should watch the movie , or even who to root for .
But once you settle into it , like the spooky house at its center , Housebound is full of surprises @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impudent main character , a former addict named Kylie , gets sentenced to eight months of house arrest after a failed attempt to rob an ATM .
Sent back to live with her mother and stepdad in their creepy rural manse , Kylie is fed up with her forced confinement from day one .
Morgana O ’ Reilly is unforgettably and delightfully unlikeable as Kylie : She ’ s rebellious and sullen , rude , occasionally violent , and perpetually exasperated .
She ’ s totally over everything and everyone around her .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a walking 2020 mood .
And so is the house around her .
An oppressively dark , cluttered , unnavigable wood-paneled disaster , Kylie ’ s childhood home feels labyrinthine and suffocating , even though it ’ s hardly the Overlook Hotel .
It ’ s just a dilapidated former bed and breakfast , or so her mom tells her .
It doesn ’ t help that Kylie ’ s mother , played by Rima Te Wiata with pitch-perfect comedic timing and well-meaning befuddlement , has always believed the house is haunted .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ saw a figure in a sheet .
It moved .
What ’ s more , she ’ s certain that Kylie saw it too .
But Kylie no longer remembers what she saw ; all Kylie , who ’ s been living apart from her family for some time , can say for certain is that the moment she moves back home , strange things start happening .
Since she ’ s come home , things go bump in the night , food goes missing , and a demonic Teddy Ruxpin bear keeps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or may not be teeming with ghosts , it is teeming with secrets — secrets that Kylie is only just now starting to learn .
With the help of her house arrest officer , Amos , she begins to explore her family secrets , and it doesn ’ t take long for her to stumble across a big one : the alleged bed and breakfast is actually a former residential asylum , once home to a wayward girl much like herself , whose brutal murder has never been solved .
Is Kylie ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ victim ’ s spirit ?
Is the horror all in her head ?
Or is she experiencing terror from a much more corporeal source ?
It ’ s tempting to spoil more details — particularly to tell you about all the real-life horror stories upon which Housebound draws its wildest twist — but you should experience the story as it unfolds for yourself .
Housebound begins like a fairly straightforward ghost story , but then takes a few turns that keep it tonally interesting .
It ’ s usually billed as a horror @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those labels undersell how tense and dark the film gets .
What We Do in the Shadows also debuted in 2014 , and its ascendence as the reigning New Zealand horror comedy might have both overshadowed Housebound and dictated how audiences approached it .
But for me , the movie is a bit too tense , and a bit too serious , to approach as a parody .
It ’ s frequently tongue in cheek , yes , but it takes its terror seriously .
Furthermore , Housebound is serious about the ways @ @ @ @ @ @ @ undermined by most of the people around her and even her situation itself .
If an entire house could gaslight you , Kylie ’ s house would be doing exactly that , and that makes the movie a perversely relatable treat for anyone feeling like their prolonged confinement is driving them a bit mad .
Kylie ’ s time under house arrest soon grows quite eventful , but it starts out with the palpable slow slog of eternity .
Kylie seethes under her punishment the way all of us , at some point @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , probably have .
Although we don ’ t get much backstory on Kylie ’ s relationship with her mom and stepdad , the tension they greet each other with upon her return home lingers for most of the movie .
What ’ s sweet about this , if a movie whose main character once punched her mother in the face can be called sweet , is that Housebound always frames both Kylie and her mother as vulnerable to one another ’ s unwitting slights and microaggressions .
A flatter script could have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most of the conflict between her and her mother , but O ’ Reilly always lets us see how much Kylie cares about her family beneath her ongoing frustration with her confinement .
The movie also never lets us forget that Kylie is a recovering addict , and that this one fact frequently defines her to most of society .
I rewatched Housebound directly after refreshing myself on a true-crime case in which police repeatedly refused to take a sex worker ’ s claims seriously because her profession diminished her credibility .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of time that Kylie spends in Housebound fighting to be heard and taken seriously , only to receive the repeated message that her word matters less because of her status as an addict and as a repeat offender .
But if Kylie starts out thoroughly unlikeable , Housebound makes the argument that a rough , rude , defiant , violent 20-something is a good person to have around in a crisis .
And sometimes , the film suggests , having to ride out a period of sequestering with your relatives is just the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Well , that and getting the ultimate validation of finding out that everyone who undermined you was wrong all along .
There ’ s a certain narrative about the pandemic that ’ s become dominant .
It ’ s one centered on all the plucky bread-makers and Zoom-partiers and amateur interior designers and newfound plant lovers who made the most of a shitty time spent social distancing from most of their communities .
But for the rest of us , we who ’ ve been stuck in a stuffy , claustrophobic environment with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Housebound is a permanent mood .
Kylie wanders through most of the film the way I wandered through most of 2020 — glassy-eyed , openly horrified at everyone else ’ s bullshit , and desperate to go outside .
At one point her mom scolds Kylie for still being in bed well into the afternoon .
“ Oh , no , I ’ m late !
” Kylie gasps .
“ For nothing , ” Kylie retorts , rolling over and going back to sleep .
Housebound is available to stream on @ @ @ @ @

Recently, someone reminded me of the 2014 New Zealand horror comedy Housebound. It’s a shoestring budget indie about a bratty young woman whose house arrest leads to some very unexpected scares. The film has long flown under the mainstream radar, despite winning a cult following from horror fans.
When I first saw it about five years ago, I loved it — but I haven’t thought about it much since except as a little-known backburner title whenever anyone asks me for horror movie recs. But now, remembering it in 2020, I immediately wanted to see how it held up in a post-pandemic atmosphere.
My hunch was that Housebound, with its fixation on forced intimacy and confinement in too-familiar spaces, would be the perfect aperitif after eight-plus months in quarantine. And I was right: Housebound still slaps — and today, it plays like a wry grace note to a year of living safely.
Housebound’s chief delight is a main character who’s completely over everything
Housebound is writer-director Gerard Johnstone’s only feature film, but its unique tone has the confidence of an established, more experienced screenwriter. It’s one of those films that takes a while to figure out; it’s not immediately clear what the stakes are, how one should watch the movie, or even who to root for. But once you settle into it, like the spooky house at its center, Housebound is full of surprises.
The action kicks off when our impudent main character, a former addict named Kylie, gets sentenced to eight months of house arrest after a failed attempt to rob an ATM. Sent back to live with her mother and stepdad in their creepy rural manse, Kylie is fed up with her forced confinement from day one. Morgana O’Reilly is unforgettably and delightfully unlikeable as Kylie: She’s rebellious and sullen, rude, occasionally violent, and perpetually exasperated. She’s totally over everything and everyone around her. In other words, she’s a walking 2020 mood.
And so is the house around her. An oppressively dark, cluttered, unnavigable wood-paneled disaster, Kylie’s childhood home feels labyrinthine and suffocating, even though it’s hardly the Overlook Hotel. It’s just a dilapidated former bed and breakfast, or so her mom tells her.
It doesn’t help that Kylie’s mother, played by Rima Te Wiata with pitch-perfect comedic timing and well-meaning befuddlement, has always believed the house is haunted. Years ago, she swears that she saw a figure in a sheet. It moved. What’s more, she’s certain that Kylie saw it too. But Kylie no longer remembers what she saw; all Kylie, who’s been living apart from her family for some time, can say for certain is that the moment she moves back home, strange things start happening. Since she’s come home, things go bump in the night, food goes missing, and a demonic Teddy Ruxpin bear keeps activating itself.
While the house may or may not be teeming with ghosts, it is teeming with secrets — secrets that Kylie is only just now starting to learn. With the help of her house arrest officer, Amos, she begins to explore her family secrets, and it doesn’t take long for her to stumble across a big one: the alleged bed and breakfast is actually a former residential asylum, once home to a wayward girl much like herself, whose brutal murder has never been solved.
Is Kylie’s house actually haunted by the murder victim’s spirit? Is the horror all in her head? Or is she experiencing terror from a much more corporeal source?
It’s tempting to spoil more details — particularly to tell you about all the real-life horror stories upon which Housebound draws its wildest twist — but you should experience the story as it unfolds for yourself.
Housebound begins like a fairly straightforward ghost story, but then takes a few turns that keep it tonally interesting. It’s usually billed as a horror comedy or a comedy thriller, but those labels undersell how tense and dark the film gets. What We Do in the Shadows also debuted in 2014, and its ascendence as the reigning New Zealand horror comedy might have both overshadowed Housebound and dictated how audiences approached it. But for me, the movie is a bit too tense, and a bit too serious, to approach as a parody. It’s frequently tongue in cheek, yes, but it takes its terror seriously.
Furthermore, Housebound is serious about the ways in which its surly anti-heroine is subtly undermined by most of the people around her and even her situation itself. If an entire house could gaslight you, Kylie’s house would be doing exactly that, and that makes the movie a perversely relatable treat for anyone feeling like their prolonged confinement is driving them a bit mad.
Housebound is a permanent 2020 mood
Kylie’s time under house arrest soon grows quite eventful, but it starts out with the palpable slow slog of eternity. Kylie seethes under her punishment the way all of us, at some point during a year of retreat from Covid-19, probably have.
Although we don’t get much backstory on Kylie’s relationship with her mom and stepdad, the tension they greet each other with upon her return home lingers for most of the movie. What’s sweet about this, if a movie whose main character once punched her mother in the face can be called sweet, is that Housebound always frames both Kylie and her mother as vulnerable to one another’s unwitting slights and microaggressions. A flatter script could have easily made Kylie the hard-edged instigator of most of the conflict between her and her mother, but O’Reilly always lets us see how much Kylie cares about her family beneath her ongoing frustration with her confinement.
The movie also never lets us forget that Kylie is a recovering addict, and that this one fact frequently defines her to most of society. I rewatched Housebound directly after refreshing myself on a true-crime case in which police repeatedly refused to take a sex worker’s claims seriously because her profession diminished her credibility. So I was particularly attuned to the amount of time that Kylie spends in Housebound fighting to be heard and taken seriously, only to receive the repeated message that her word matters less because of her status as an addict and as a repeat offender.
But if Kylie starts out thoroughly unlikeable, Housebound makes the argument that a rough, rude, defiant, violent 20-something is a good person to have around in a crisis. And sometimes, the film suggests, having to ride out a period of sequestering with your relatives is just the kind of thing that builds character. Well, that and getting the ultimate validation of finding out that everyone who undermined you was wrong all along.
There’s a certain narrative about the pandemic that’s become dominant. It’s one centered on all the plucky bread-makers and Zoom-partiers and amateur interior designers and newfound plant lovers who made the most of a shitty time spent social distancing from most of their communities. But for the rest of us, we who’ve been stuck in a stuffy, claustrophobic environment with people we frequently can’t stand, Housebound is a permanent mood. Kylie wanders through most of the film the way I wandered through most of 2020 — glassy-eyed, openly horrified at everyone else’s bullshit, and desperate to go outside.
At one point her mom scolds Kylie for still being in bed well into the afternoon. “Oh, no, I’m late!” Kylie gasps.
“For what?” the mom asks.
“For nothing,” Kylie retorts, rolling over and going back to sleep.
Yep. That’s 2020 in a nutshell.
Housebound is available to stream on Amazon Prime and Tubi. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.