COVID-19： The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic with authors Barry Cooper and Marco Navarro-Génie
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Summary
Two political scientists, Marco Navarrogini and Barry Cooper, join me to discuss their new book, The Politics of Pandemic Moral Panic, which traces the roots of Canada s pandemic response from the early days of the emerging virus in China to today.
Transcript
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Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
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However, this is the internet so you can listen whenever you feel like and also watch whenever you feel like.
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Tonight my guests, that's right, guests as in two, are Marco Navarrogini and Barry Cooper.
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They're both political scientists who have co-written a new book titled COVID-19, The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic.
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And it examines Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and it traces the roots of the moral panic all the way back to the early days of the emerging virus in China.
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Is it better to be overly cautious than not cautious enough?
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Now, what if being too cautious ruined the economy, stripped you of your civil liberties, and caused catastrophic psychological fallout in your friends and neighbors?
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Yes, friends, tonight I'm discussing Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic with two political scientists who've written a brand new book on the topic.
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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It's called COVID-19, The Politics of Pandemic Moral Panic, and it is out on Amazon as we speak.
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It's written by two of my fellow Albertans, Marco Navarrogini and Barry Cooper, in conjunction with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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Now, Navarrogini is the president and CEO of the Haltain Research Institute, and Barry Cooper is a long-time professor at the University of Calgary.
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And as I mentioned earlier, both men are political scientists, and they join together to write their new book that examines Canada's pandemic response from the very beginning,
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from the early days of a strange, unknown virus emerging in Wuhan, China in late 2019 to today,
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to the economic and social fallout of increased lockdowns and lockdowns after lockdowns driven by early federal inaction, moral panic,
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flawed modeling, and health bureaucrats with a taste for power.
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The gentleman joined me in an interview via Zoom to discuss the book, what inspired the book,
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and their predictions for the future. Check it out.
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So joining me now are two political scientists. We've got Marco Navarrogini.
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I didn't put any emphasis on any of the syllables there that are probably right, but that's okay.
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And Barry Cooper. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me and coming on to talk about your new book.
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It's called COVID-19, The Politics of Pandemic Moral Panic.
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And I think this is truly the first real analysis of Canada's COVID response, both at the federal level,
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but also you've analyzed some of the responses at the provincial level.
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Why did you want to do this? And whichever one of you wants to answer, go ahead.
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We had independently sort of commented on issues related to the pandemic, Barry and I,
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And so we decided to do this little project together.
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But the main thing, really, the broad question that prompted the work
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is that we both had noticed that we have had pandemics before and, you know,
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in five in the last 100 and so years since the so-called Spanish flu.
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But nowhere ever had there been any full lockdown of entire societies.
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And so we started wondering, you know, why is this?
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So the response really is what is new here and not so much the fact that there are pandemics
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I would add only that this is kind of a preliminary report
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and that there'll be later iterations as we sort of come to, let's say,
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more questionable policies by these various governments.
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And we also refine our understanding of what, at least from my point of view,
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Marco may see things somewhat differently, but the way the bureaucrats have taken control
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over politics and are attempting to terrify every Canadian so that they do exactly what
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these, I mean, to be kind, these academic mediocrities want us to do.
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And I think that that, I think that's eventually where we're heading.
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It's a, it's a, that's the novel political part of, of what I think we've discovered by looking at
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the government response to this, this medical problem.
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You know, and that's one of the questions I have on my list of things to discuss with you guys.
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And we'll get to that in a second, but I mean, you really do a historical analysis
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of how the pandemic began and the early handling of it, say in December and January.
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For example, there are things that I think I'm a pretty close pandemic follower,
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but somehow this escaped me that January 4th, 2020, the New York Times had reported that 175,000
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people had left Wuhan in one day. I mean, there was an outpouring of people from Wuhan in those
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early days. I think further on in your analysis, you know, you say that there had been millions
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of people who had left Wuhan for the Lunar New Year. And at the same time, World Health
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Organizations were, the World Health Organization and their bureaucrats, and to some extent, Canadians
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who are involved in that process, were praising China for their handling of the pandemic.
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Yeah, that's where you get into the very strange kind of international politics of it.
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I bet you that there are people in the intelligence organizations in this country, as well as in
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the UK and the United States, that have a pretty clear idea of what was going on. And they probably
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have their own theories about what ties all this stuff together. But it's certainly clear,
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it was certainly clear by, say, late February or March, that the relationship between the PRC and
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the WHO was, let's say, not healthy. It was acting, the World Health Organization was acting basically
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as a mouthpiece for communist China. And I mean, there's just absolutely no question of that,
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because you can document their twists and turns. But as to what was actually happening in China,
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we're still pretty much in the dark about that. I figure it'll eventually it'll come out, there'll be
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some deep state guy will blab, and of course, the Chinese will deny it. But the circumstantial
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evidence is pretty compelling. Marco, what role do you think this appeasement of communist China,
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and let's just set aside the World Health Organization for a moment, because I think we
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pretty well know that they are infected with the virus of China sycophancy at the World Health
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Organization. But what role do you think this Chinese appeasement played in the early decision
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making of Trudeau's liberal government, when it came to such things as, you know, closing the border,
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limiting incoming travelers, or for that matter, calling anybody who questioned the fact that the
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border was left wide open, racist? What role do you think that played in all of this?
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Well, we have known for quite a while that our prime minister is an admirer of the People's
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Republic, and their, as he put it, their basic style of dictatorship. They get things done,
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and he's a great admirer of that. I think at the very beginning, there is a kind of what we call a
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moral panic, or aspects of it, related to pointing the finger at China. And we see it coming out of
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the WHO, that they're tied into this in many ways. But we also see it out of the communications of the
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Canadian government and Canadian officials, that they don't want to say that this is coming from
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China. I mean, everybody knows, but they don't want to say the words China. And every time somebody
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suggests it, then they would say that somebody's racist is basically the woke kind of mentality
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that wants to protect things that need not be protected in many ways. We see it also from the
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Minister of Health, challenging journalists for asking difficult questions about Chinese data,
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and that sort of stuff. And so it's, in a sense, perhaps the admiration of the prime minister,
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and of course, the minions paying attention to what the prime minister admires. But there is also
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a kind of a wokeness about not being able to mention China, because immediately people think,
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and people think this stuff, that Canadians are going to be attacking Chinese people or people
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of Chinese origin, and that sort of stuff. So it's a kind of panic in some respects as well.
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You know, and it's true that that is the bigotry of low expectations, to think that normal Canadians
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cannot separate the Chinese communist government from regular Chinese people. In fact, in my experience,
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especially in the lower mainland of BC, some of the largest critics of the communist state are new
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Canadians from China who are finally able to speak their mind about the issue. I wanted, Barry, you
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mentioned the moral entrepreneurs in all of this. And that's how you describe these unelected health
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bureaucrats who seem to be making all these extra parliamentary rules and regulations for controlling our
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lives. How did they, I guess they sort of seized power using health regulations, and now we are seeing,
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Yeah, it's, without diminishing the importance that this has for the actual individuals,
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where it can, you know, be genuine existential threats to their well-being. If you look at it from a
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social science point of view, which, you know, that's what we do, and it tends to be somewhat
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impersonal, it's a, it's a kind of novel, but appearance on the political scene of people who
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otherwise, a year ago, we didn't know the names of the chief medical officer of health of Canada,
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or of Alberta, or of her colleague out in, in, in BC. Now they're celebrities. It doesn't change what they
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are. You know, there were bureaucrats a year ago, there's still bureaucrats. What's interesting from our way of
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looking at, at, at politics, is how they came to this position of prominence. And that's a, that's actually a pretty
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big question. A lot of it has to do with the, with the sense that, that not just Canadians, but modern people around the
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world have, with respect to science. In this case, it happens to be medical science, or so called medical science. In fact,
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the medical science is a lot more ambiguous. And if you listen to these three bureaucrats, you'd ever, you'd ever imagine. You see the
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same thing in, in climate change. Uh, the science there is just as ambiguous, uh, as, uh, as the official spokesman
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for, say, Environment Canada, uh, say it is. Even in Environment Canada, there's, there are debates, but you'd never
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know it, uh, if you listen to the government. So, it becomes part of a pattern where, uh, commonsensical Canadians
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are willing to give up their, what they see in, in, before their very eyes to listen to, to a bunch of
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people who claim that they, uh, have access to, you know, a magical world of science, uh, which is largely
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imaginary. Uh, and, and that's a very interesting problem where, uh, where we give up our sense of
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reality that we can see right in front of our noses. Marco, I want to ask you about, um, some of these
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predictions and modeling, and I think it was fascinating that Barry pointed out the overlays
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between the climate change debate and then, you know, COVID, the COVID debate. Um, the modeling
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has been absolutely wrong from the very beginning. And from the outside looking in, it feels like some
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of the modeling was produced to create fear so that the populace would be open to, you know, heavy
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lockdowns and, um, heavy restrictions on our civil liberties. How did they get the modeling so wrong?
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There are several issues with the modeling and, and, uh, this is a really good question. Uh, on the one
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hand, part of what happens, of course, is that, uh, the modeling is simply a representation of
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something, uh, a snapshot, a picture. And this picture is constructed largely from a whole set of
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assumptions, uh, bits and pieces, if you will, from, from, from actual reality. And, uh, and those bits and
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pieces are chosen. So they're driven by assumptions. They're driven by a certain type of, uh, belief in the
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people who are putting it, uh, who are putting it together. And so the first problem really is that,
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uh, the, the models are not able to handle the complexity of reality and the complexity of all
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the human interactions and all the different things that must be taken into account in order to be able
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to have a glimpse of what could happen, uh, with the expansion or the, the, uh, uh, of, uh, a viral,
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uh, uh, uh, a viral, uh, contagion like, like this one. That that's the first issue, the first issue
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that, um, these kinds of statisticians often enough, they tend to marry the reality that they
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have painted as though it was the real thing. But the second problem, uh, is of course that there are
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competing models, uh, in that, uh, we seem to have honed in on one and one alone, the, uh, happens to
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be the scariest one. So, uh, you were asking me about, you know, whether they're designed to create
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fear. Maybe they are, but certainly some are, uh, more prone to drive fear than others. And those are
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the ones that had the largest, uh, prognosticated numbers of, of death. Uh, they happen to have been
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made by this guy named, uh, Ferguson. Uh, and, uh, and, and the, and the thing about Ferguson and his
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model is of course that not only was it wrong, but it was wrong by several orders of magnitude.
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And this was not the first time that his models were wrong. He has a long string, a long record
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of wrong models and modeling going back decades. And so for the life of me, I don't understand how
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A, we picked that model and B, then we shut down anyone else who had any kind of competing model
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that was perhaps less, um, alarmist and maybe to some extent more reliable. So those issues,
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uh, and these of course, connects to what Barry was saying that the people who picked these models
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are the medical officers that are advising the policymakers. And so if there is something to be
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said here is that, uh, the, the, the medical bureaucrats, uh, honed in on the alarmist or the most
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alarmist models, and those are the ones who seem to have been the ones that they put in front of the
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policymakers. Just like climate change, just like climate change. Just like climate change, right?
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And dismiss anything else, dismiss any other possibility, dismiss solar flares, dismiss any
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kind of other actual reality. Yeah. It's interesting how it, it quickly turns into a doomsday scenario.
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You pick the scariest thing. That's the one we'll build policy around that and just discard everything
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else. And it, it happens across the board, but there is a strong overlay between, uh, climate
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change modeling and COVID modeling. And now we're connecting them. This morning, one of the headlines
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I read, uh, said that, uh, you know, the cost of food this coming year is going to go up, uh, 17,
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20% because of COVID-19 and climate change. So there you have the two boogeyman, uh, coming together.
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And I read that article too, and it didn't mention carbon taxes, adding anything to the cost of food.
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Isn't that fascinating? We all know that if we pay more taxes, the weather will be, will improve.
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That's right. And if we pay more taxes to Justin Trudeau, we'll have more money in our pockets.
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Apparently that's also how that works. And the budget will balance itself. Um, Barry, I wanted to
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ask you, um, about some of the comparisons, uh, to the Swedish approach versus the Canadian response
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here because we are almost a year out from both companies or both countries handling, uh, their
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pandemic response. And we're seeing, um, drastically different, um, results and consequences in both
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countries. Yeah. Since Marco wrote that part. Sure. And he has, uh, and he has, uh, family members in
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Sweden. He can tell you a much better answer than I can. I, everything I know about Sweden,
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I learned from Marco. Okay. Barry's in trouble already. That's true. Um, the, the, the comparison
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with, with Sweden, uh, we, we, we sort of decided, um, we, we originally started comparing what was
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happening here with a lot of different places. Uh, you know, we started looking at Japan. We looked
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at Taiwan. We looked at, uh, uh, different countries. Uh, but what became actually clear is
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that, uh, Taiwan isn't really like Canada. Uh, and, you know, South Korea isn't really like Canada
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or there are less points of comparison, shall we say. So, so Sweden seemed to be a better model. Uh,
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and, and of course, Sweden is also run by a social democratic, uh, uh, party. Uh, one would argue
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that, uh, the current party in power is not really a liberal party, uh, in the full sense of the term.
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And so there is, there's a, a great many points of comparison between, uh, Sweden and, and, uh,
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and Canada. What is interesting about Sweden is how they came to their decision-making power. And it's,
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it's, uh, it, it is an interesting story actually, um, because, uh, the Swedes several years ago,
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uh, decided that they didn't really need emergency contingencies or, or anything like that because
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they were at the time being governed by a kind of pie-in-the-sky, uh, government who thought that
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the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that Sweden was no longer in any kind of danger, uh, from being
00:22:18.360
invaded, overrun, and needing emergency plans. Then, of course, uh, Russia invades, uh, Crimea and, uh,
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and they suddenly panic and, and, and they go to the garbage can and pick out their last iteration
00:22:34.540
of an emergency plan and they decide to revamp it by essentially involving the entire population,
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uh, from, they, they had hearings, they had consultations. So the short and the long story
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is that by the time they are done, every Swedish household has some kind of a pamphlet from, uh,
00:22:54.320
the government, uh, about what's to be done in situations of emergency. They've all participated.
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By great coincidence, the plan was finished last December and this summer they were supposed to
00:23:08.760
hold kind of war games or, uh, exercises to test it out. Well, they didn't need to do that because
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COVID-19 arrived and they were, uh, all ready to go. But the point of all that story is to say that
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because they had contingencies, because they had thought about it, because, uh, most of the population
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had been involved in the process, they were less prone to panic. I'm not saying that there were
00:23:34.840
no Swedish people who, who panicked. There were, of course, and there were many who wanted the
00:23:40.240
government to go into full lockdown. There are still, uh, many Swedes who are wanting to lock down
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and, and they're panicking now and the government is pushing them, uh, in, in that direction.
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But, uh, Sweden stands out from all the other countries because, uh, they had undergone this kind of
00:23:56.480
progress, uh, uh, excuse me, process, uh, and, uh, uh, and there were less, less prone to panic.
00:24:06.480
Now, Barry, uh, maybe I'll ask you this question then. Um, I want to ask you about the effects
00:24:13.360
on the culture because of the COVID regulations. You're a social scientist, so maybe you can help
00:24:19.420
me with this. I'm concerned that there is this direction towards a snitch culture that we've
00:24:26.720
really never had in this country. And it's being reinforced with the crackdown on civil liberties.
00:24:34.040
Uh, is, is that a threat to, to us? Is that becoming ingrained in our culture? And a second part of
00:24:42.120
that question is, are we, is, is this whole thing becoming normalized? Are people sort of accepting
00:24:49.120
that this is the way we're going to live from now on? Um, that's a, that's a very interesting
00:24:55.200
observation, uh, particularly with respect to the snitches. Uh, I mean, it, it, uh, kind of reminds
00:25:01.180
you of the Stasi, uh, in, in, uh, in East Germany. Uh, and I mean, in, in Calgary, we had the 311
00:25:08.160
line repurposed as a snitch line. And I thought, what is the matter with our mayor? I mean, he would
00:25:16.540
be one of the first victims of, uh, this, the Stasi way of looking at, at things. Uh, on the other
00:25:23.580
hand, there's a lot of resistance to that. Um, and that should give us all a great deal of, of, uh,
00:25:30.660
confidence that we're, we're simply not listening, uh, to, to our betters, uh, if, you know,
00:25:37.040
for very good reason, you know, because most of them, because they're lying through their teeth
00:25:41.060
and they know it. Uh, but this, the snitch calls, uh, or the snitch lines are, uh, should be a concern
00:25:50.240
to everybody. Um, and one of the reasons for that is that, that most people still, um, have an ability
00:25:58.700
to make commonsensical judgments, uh, on the basis of their, of their own experiences. Uh, and they're
00:26:05.620
not going to snitch on their neighbors. Uh, and they find a defensive that, uh, say, uh, I mentioned
00:26:12.560
the, uh, city of Calgary repurposing, uh, one of its, uh, emergency lines as a snitch line. Um,
00:26:20.020
and on the other hand, there is a lot of, or more or less organized. I don't know that there's some
00:26:26.160
sort of mastermind behind it, but, but with social media, you can, you can create, uh, uh,
00:26:31.020
demonstrations pretty quickly against this, uh, this kind of, uh, government, um, what kind of
00:26:39.640
tyrannical imposition of, of normalcy. Uh, and I think that's going to continue. Um, I think there's
00:26:46.600
going to be a real crisis of legitimacy for all of these politicians who have, uh, given up their,
00:26:54.800
uh, role as, uh, as political leaders and, uh, turned over the responsibilities, uh, to people who
00:27:02.340
have, who have no capacity to act politically, namely these, these bureaucrats who are concerned
00:27:07.700
about, you know, one tiny little part of, of a, uh, current political crisis. So it's going to be
00:27:13.560
very interesting, you know, in the next six or eight months to see what happens to these characters.
00:27:17.360
Now, I guess this next question I'll, I'll throw to Mark, to Marco. Um, so what do you predict
00:27:27.380
will happen in the next six months or a year? Are we going to see an end to the pandemic? Are we going
00:27:35.120
to see, you know, some of these civil liberties impositions rolled back? Um, and what's going to
00:27:41.280
become of our politicians, particularly the conservative ones that I think we all kind of expected to take
00:27:47.340
a less heavy handed approach, uh, to the pandemic? Uh, what are your predictions for, I guess, the short
00:27:53.780
term? Uh, for, for the very short term, I think it is pretty safe to say that the virus is not going to
00:28:03.920
go away. Um, they, we've created this fantasy that if we all lock ourselves in our houses, uh, the virus
00:28:12.920
will disappear. Uh, you know, let's remember that at the very beginning, uh, they managed to get an
00:28:20.580
enormous amount of consent about the lockdown by saying, all we need to do is hide for a couple of
00:28:27.340
weeks and we're going to bend the curve, make sure that the, uh, health system isn't overwhelmed. Uh,
00:28:33.240
and you know, this arrived, they claimed suddenly. And so they needed, they needed to get ready.
00:28:38.080
The reality is it's a virus. Viruses have been around for tens of thousands of years. Uh, they're
00:28:47.260
not going to go away. And their job really is, is to move around and, and get passed around. That's
00:28:55.120
how they live. It's, it's fantasy that they're going to end and it's fantasy that they're going
00:29:00.300
to end with a lockdown. So we already, and the evidence is clear, right? This is not opinion. Uh,
00:29:06.020
we had lockdowns in several countries. And when we barely started to reopening, uh, the virus A had
00:29:15.040
not gone away and then it resumed its rapid pace of advancement. So unless we shut down absolutely
00:29:22.320
everything, and we're not going to do that, even from Ottawa, um, the virus will continue to move
00:29:29.120
at a certain pace. Uh, the second thing is that the vaccine may change that dynamic, but there is an
00:29:38.040
expectation that the vaccine is kind of a little wand, uh, that we're going to wave around and the
00:29:43.960
virus is going to stop. Uh, well, for starters, uh, the plan to have the vaccine roll out in Canada is
00:29:52.100
months long, uh, as far as I can tell, there is no plan, but, but the glimpses that we've managed to,
00:29:57.720
uh, to get is that, you know, this could be June, maybe, maybe even further before we vaccinate
00:30:03.600
everybody who wants to be vaccinated. So in the meantime, the virus will continue, uh, will continue
00:30:09.680
to move. There'll be renewed calls for locking down until everybody is, is vaccinated. And that's,
00:30:17.440
that's going to pose, uh, problems. Now, uh, the second part of the question is, you know, what's,
00:30:23.060
what's going to happen to all these politicians? Well, the public is always fickle. Uh, and for as
00:30:30.920
long as you can peddle this idea, uh, that you can come on, on, on, uh, on, on camera, all teary-eyed
00:30:38.340
and say, I'm going to shut down your Christmas, but I'm the guy you need. Uh, and, uh, you know,
00:30:44.520
all of a sudden the Grinch comes disguised as a savior for as long as there is that they might
00:30:50.780
be able to convince people that that's what they need because what, what drives this thing is fear.
00:30:56.620
But you may have noticed that looking at the eyes, cause that's more or less only the only thing you
00:31:03.820
can see in people at Costco or whatever, uh, the fear in their eyes is not the same fear that there
00:31:10.040
was in March. In other words, that this kind of stuff is kind of wearing thin to a certain extent.
00:31:16.660
And so there is only so far you can push it. Uh, I doubt that a third lockdown, uh, will be as easy
00:31:23.600
as the one pushing for a second one. And there could be a third one because the natural logic of this
00:31:30.100
is that there, there'd be more and more calls for another lockdown and not lockdown until the people
00:31:37.420
who claim that they want zero transmission becomes zero transmission. That's not going to happen.
00:31:44.440
There will never be zero transmission either. Uh, the virus that calls SARS is, is still, is still
00:31:49.780
around. Uh, the virus that caused the, the, uh, swine flu a few years ago is still around and now it's
00:31:55.600
part of the cycle of the common flu, uh, every, every year. So this particular virus, as new as it,
00:32:03.020
we claim it is, isn't, isn't going away. Um, I would also predict to some extent that, uh, the people
00:32:11.040
who have fared badly for presumably not wanting to lock everything down and not wanting, uh, to
00:32:19.140
bankrupt everybody, uh, their fortunes will probably change once the fear, uh, starts to wane and, and,
00:32:26.400
and dissipate. So there could be a kind of a flip, uh, and, uh, the people who continue to advocate
00:32:33.720
for lockdowns may not know when to stop. And that, and that will be, that will be their demise.
00:32:40.320
Oh, from your lips to God's ears, Marco. Barry, uh, I want to give you a chance to, uh, let people know
00:32:47.340
where they can find your book and, and see some of the other work that both of you are doing.
00:32:52.420
Um, well, the, probably the easiest place to get it's on Amazon. Uh, Marco told me that yesterday
00:33:00.200
it was trending in a very positive direction, which is always, you know, that's always good news.
00:33:05.060
I mean, not, you know, we're not going to get, be able to retire on our royalties, but, but, uh, to
00:33:10.780
have, to have this kind of information out there among, um, Canadian and, and there's some, uh,
00:33:17.400
American interest in it as well is, you know, that's always a good thing. So for anybody who's
00:33:22.400
watching that, um, you know, you might, you might not agree with what we have to say, but, uh,
00:33:27.620
that's partly because it contradicts everything you read in the mainstream media.
00:33:32.240
So, you know, go get it. It's, and it's called COVID-19. Just go to Amazon, do COVID-19. It'll
00:33:38.820
come up right away. Uh, and then you can, you know, you'll learn about moral, uh, panics and all kinds
00:33:43.980
of other stuff. You'll even learn about Hobbes. Yeah. And it's impeccably footnoted by the way.
00:33:49.620
Uh, Marco, I know that you do some work, um, with the Western Standard from time to time.
00:33:54.980
They publish some of your op-eds. Where else can they find you? Um, I, I am, I wear many hats. Of
00:34:01.840
course, one of them is I do, I do write, uh, columns that often appear in the Western Standard.
00:34:06.980
Um, this book has been a collaborative effort between Barry and I as individuals, uh, but it's
00:34:13.400
also been a collaborative effort between the Frontier Center for Public Policy, uh, which is the,
00:34:18.000
sort of the official, uh, publisher, uh, and the Haltain Research Institute, uh, which is sort of a new
00:34:24.000
research institute based here, uh, in Alberta, um, designed, if you will, to look at, uh, problems for
00:34:31.120
landlocked territories. Uh, and, uh, as you probably know, there are only two landlocked, uh, provinces,
00:34:38.000
uh, in Canada. So, uh, it's pretty much, uh, uh, Western based. Um, yes, um, uh, I, I would renew
00:34:45.000
Barry's Call. Uh, it's a, it's a semi-interesting book at the very least, uh, and it fits very nicely
00:34:52.920
That's a great way to close the show. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for taking the time to talk
00:34:59.720
with me today and best of luck in the book sales. Um, because I think this is valuable information
00:35:04.020
that everybody needs to have. It's a comprehensive look from all the aspects of the pandemic, both
00:35:11.680
the economic, the medical, and the social side. Um, thanks again.
00:35:18.520
I've read Marco and Barry's new book from cover to cover. It's fact-filled, remarkably well
00:35:34.280
footnoted and easy to digest even for non-experts like me. And more importantly, it tells the other
00:35:41.040
side of the story beyond the official narrative of our benevolent, unelected overlord,
00:35:48.300
health bureaucrats and the politicians who empower them and the media who continue to enable them.
00:35:54.340
Which means, of course, you probably won't hear much about Marco and Barry's book in the mainstream
00:36:02.420
media. Again, the title of their new book is COVID-19, The Politics of Pandemic Moral Panic,
00:36:10.940
and it's available today on Amazon. Well, everyone, that's the show for tonight. Thank you so much
00:36:17.180
for tuning in. I'll see everybody back here at the same time in the same place next week. And
00:36:23.580
remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.