Juno News - The undeniable failure of lockdowns (Ft. Gabrielle Bauer)

00:00:00.000 hello everybody welcome to the rupa subramania show i'm rupa subramania uh thank you for tuning

00:00:24.840 in once again it's great to have you back it's now just over three years since the world plunged

00:00:32.180 into the covet 19 crisis and the harsh pandemic policies that were put in place by many governments

00:00:39.780 around the world including here in canada measures such as harsh lockdowns masking and social

00:00:46.220 distancing requirements and of course the vaccine mandates my guest today is a prominent voice who

00:00:54.220 has come out as a critic of such policies gabrielle bauer is a medical journalist and has just

00:01:00.600 published a book called blindsight is 2020 and it's a real honor to have her on the show to discuss her

00:01:07.560 book gabrielle welcome to the show uh it's a real honor to have you uh on my show to talk about your

00:01:14.700 new book uh blindsight is 2020 uh published by brownstone institute uh for those of you uh tuning

00:01:23.800 in i encourage you all to get a copy it's about the pandemic uh you know what went wrong and um and uh

00:01:31.500 and it's a real honor to have you on the show gabrielle um i'll show you the book here there it is

00:01:37.180 blindsight is 2020 there there you have it um so uh gabrielle let me start by asking you so three

00:01:43.840 years ago much of the world uh with the exception of countries like sweden went into harsh lockdowns

00:01:50.960 and soon we'd be facing uh harsh vaccine mandates and mass mandates and other restrictions uh on our

00:01:59.940 individual liberties that were unprecedented in peacetime um given your background as a medical

00:02:06.220 journalist uh what motivated you to write blindsight is 2020 ah well it's a long story and i guess an

00:02:14.160 organic story um when the lockdowns hit i was in brazil visiting friends uh and that was a whole story

00:02:22.180 in itself getting back to toronto but basically from day one and i literally mean day one that the

00:02:29.720 lockdowns were announced i had a visceral recoil to the whole thing and i spent the next three years

00:02:39.140 trying to understand it and trying to connect with like-minded people and really trying to get deep

00:02:45.800 into you know why did this bother me why were all my associates and friends and colleagues why were

00:02:51.800 they so gung-ho about this more than gung-ho why were they so militant why were they so eager to shame

00:02:58.680 any dissenting views you know what was going on was something wrong with me you know i briefly wondered

00:03:05.160 about that you know why am i not on board with this and so this took me on this journey completely

00:03:12.360 unexpected journey uh you know i never i mean i was 63 when this happened i'm 66 now so i'm kind of in the

00:03:18.680 demographic that you would expect to be oh you know to want the protection but i didn't i didn't

00:03:25.800 want this type of protection it it really did not sit well with me and so i felt a very strong need

00:03:33.800 to connect with like-minded people both professionals and lay people um i ended up um joining a reddit

00:03:42.840 group called lockdown skepticism that's still active with 55 plus thousand people and then

00:03:48.280 eventually forming a toronto group that we call hewlett questioning lockdowns in toronto and we had

00:03:55.240 a very active whatsapp group and we had meetups and somehow this was this was vitally important

00:04:01.960 because i i felt so unmoored and so alienated like what was going on with this world and why were people

00:04:09.480 okay with this um so eventually i and i read and read and read and took notes and you know i had no

00:04:17.640 idea i was going to write a book and kept links and all that stuff but it all kind of coalesced once i

00:04:22.280 started writing for the brownstone institute and then um i think they were happy with the quality with

00:04:28.120 of my writing and then i pitched a book to them and they agreed to publish it and so that's what happened

00:04:35.240 and it was published earlier this year and it's kind of a different book i've read a lot of pandemic

00:04:39.960 books too and um i can talk about that later this one is a little bit different sure yeah um could you

00:04:47.640 could you explain to us um this what i find the somewhat enigmatic title of your book um i know what

00:04:54.200 it means to be blindsided but what do you mean by blindsight uh which seems to be a coinage uh of yours

00:05:01.640 yeah i i mean it's a play on hindsight hindsight is 20 20. so blindsight i is i guess intended to mean

00:05:10.920 lack of hindsight so instead of having hindsight um you know the world had blindsight it didn't see

00:05:18.680 properly and then 2020 is also a pun because it's the 2020 vision but it's exactly year 2020 so it's kind

00:05:25.720 of a double plan i guess yeah well no it's it's a very interesting title um and you know in your

00:05:32.520 book in your book you're very um obviously very critical of uh uh the mantra that we kept hearing

00:05:40.680 follow the science follow the science uh trust our experts can you can you explain why this was absolute

00:05:49.000 nonsense and why and why science per se uh doesn't give us a singular um message uh on what our response

00:06:00.440 to the pandemic ought to be that's so true that's so true and so few people realize that yeah the

00:06:07.080 science is contested right and we were yet we were fed the singular narrative by our political leaders

00:06:13.560 scientists and the media well it's it's not just yes obviously that's part of it science is contested

00:06:19.400 and constantly evolving that's a part of it but another part of it kind of a more philosophical part

00:06:24.600 is science is not prescriptive science does not tell you what to do even if the science is perfect

00:06:31.560 even if we knew exactly you know what's going to make the virus spread more and spread less

00:06:37.080 that doesn't tell us what to do for humans um science you know tells us what is not what we

00:06:44.680 ought to do and what we ought to do depends not just on viral propagation properties on air or areas

00:06:50.600 under the curve or anything like that it depends on what's best for humanity as a whole you know and

00:06:56.440 that takes psychological economical um social historical spiritual all those considerations into

00:07:02.760 account so you know the way i say it briefly is what's best for the virus is not necessarily what's

00:07:08.520 best for humanity but there was this tacit assumption that whatever the science you know says we should

00:07:15.720 be doing to stop the spread or eliminate the virus is what we should do as humans and the two things are

00:07:23.000 not the same not necessarily the same yeah no absolutely and um you know um scholars such as

00:07:30.920 jay bhattacharya uh whom i've had uh on the show as well um you know he's been very critical of uh

00:07:38.280 throughout the pandemic uh uh consistently critical on the negative impact of lockdowns and school closures

00:07:44.920 and uh and you know and of course as a scientist he was um uh seen as uh as a dissenting voice he was

00:07:53.000 seen as beyond the pale um i've had the pleasure of meeting him actually in person and yeah no he

00:08:00.440 he is wonderful and he's incredibly encouraging and supportive of other dissenting voices and um you

00:08:07.960 know and is an incredibly down-to-earth person as well um could you and you know he helped set up the

00:08:13.720 great barrington declaration could you tell us about the significance of the declaration and the heart and

00:08:19.720 the harmful effect of lockdowns uh well it was interesting because um well when that when i first

00:08:26.760 found out about the great barrington declaration the day that it was you know october 4th the very

00:08:31.080 day i signed it right away and a lot of people signed it and then the signatures you could just

00:08:36.520 see them because i followed the the count of signatures it sort of went along this you know very

00:08:42.360 steep curve and then it just petered out very suddenly because what happened was suddenly the

00:08:46.600 mainstream media got a hold of it and started lambasting it maligning it and then people stopped

00:08:52.120 signing so it was initially for the first few days really popular a lot of scientists and lay people

00:08:59.400 were really on board and then it just stopped as i say it got so smeared so unbelievably smeared

00:09:04.680 in the mainstream media but what's also interesting is before the great barrington declaration there

00:09:09.960 were a lot of similar open letters from various governments uh or from various you know stakeholder

00:09:17.800 groups to governments you know i think in belgium and austria and israel and france i can't remember

00:09:22.360 all the countries but i remember in that summer of 2020 there were a lot of other grassroots groups

00:09:29.320 in countries that were just they were saying wait a minute this is crazy the world has gone nuts but for

00:09:34.280 some reason those other um letters did not gain traction and the great barrington declaration did even

00:09:42.120 though it was slammed you know it got the world's attention so i think in that sense it was a real

00:09:47.400 success even though the recommendations were ultimately not followed it still got the world's

00:09:52.840 attention and it changed the conversation it did and it's uh it's unfortunate you know as you point out

00:09:59.080 uh you know you saw a lot of people signing uh signing on to the declaration and then it just petered

00:10:04.600 out because people um you know some of these uh scientists and uh uh other experts uh just perhaps

00:10:14.520 were just afraid to attach their name to something that was seen as um controversial or anti-science or

00:10:23.000 you know and and they were you know they would have been publicly shamed i mean what you know what do you

00:10:29.000 what does that say about the state of academic freedom um you know independent thinking um especially

00:10:37.080 when it comes to the scientific community because if dissent is not um appreciated there if if you know if

00:10:46.680 critical thinking is not encouraged there what hope do we have of of of this happening in other

00:10:55.000 disciplines in other areas of our life lives absolutely i think what happened and i talk about

00:11:00.520 that a lot in the book because my book is less about science than about the philosophy and the

00:11:04.360 morality i think there was this this moral cloak that descended on the whole thing you know this sort

00:11:11.880 of stay home save lives um and this idea that if we even think about letting some infection happen

00:11:21.080 if if we don't just focus on suppress suppress suppress maximum suppression that somehow um

00:11:30.360 we are you know doing something morally wrong and that was very powerful and this then this

00:11:36.200 and people latched on to that i think the mainstream latched on to this idea of this moral outrage at

00:11:42.280 the idea that there could be a scientifically sound policy that involves that does not involve

00:11:50.040 maximum suppression you know that involves a balance between letting some infection happen

00:11:55.400 in order to build some population immunity and protecting the vulnerable you know i think there

00:12:00.520 was as i say this i could sense the overton window of morality just shifting with covid like crazy

00:12:07.560 and you couldn't talk about these things i mean i know it because when i tried to talk about any of

00:12:11.320 it online like i got insults the likes of that i've never seen in my entire life you know being called

00:12:17.080 and this was par for the course anyone as jay will tell you as well i mean he got death threats

00:12:23.080 anyone who who dared i think again there was this this group think this sort of outrage moral people

00:12:33.160 just got themselves worked up into this moral lather such that you could not have civilized insane

00:12:38.440 discussions about any of it we sort of forget how it was now but it was pretty bad yeah i mean that that

00:12:45.000 kind of um um um behavior has uh manifested itself in uh sure the pandemic is behind us to a large extent

00:12:54.920 but it's manifested in other areas of our lives like you know i mean i've i've interviewed um guests uh

00:13:01.800 who have um you know who who oppose gender ideology for example and i know when they when they speak out

00:13:09.640 and you know i just interviewed a detransitioner a very prominent detransitioner from the u.s this

00:13:15.160 morning and uh she's been ostracized and uh you know and and she's only 18 and it's it's incredible how

00:13:23.320 young people like teenagers people in high school are being cancelled and publicly shamed and derided

00:13:28.600 and bullied by um there's there's no space for nuanced discussions it's it's no and i've never experienced

00:13:34.840 this as i say i was 63 when this started no one had called me a sociopath or a mouth-breathing trump

00:13:40.760 tart or a village before and then that's you know in 2020 those those are the insults i mean what do

00:13:48.680 you what do you think what's going on here i mean i've asked this question to several people i've

00:13:52.600 interviewed uh you know on what went wrong with you know and how we handled the pandemic and um

00:13:58.920 uh fear obviously was an important component um you had uh you know authorities um who latched on to

00:14:10.440 the idea that they could propagate this fear as much as possible the media had a role to play uh i mean

00:14:17.960 the media saw its role as um you know as being moralistic pushing this moralistic line uh uh on the

00:14:25.160 the rest of us uh and you had a scientific community that was uh advocating for um you know

00:14:32.440 not not the entire scientific community but those of those uh scientists advocating for a zero covet

00:14:38.840 policy obviously their goals were in line with uh governments who want more control you know who

00:14:45.000 want to exercise more control over our lives so it was like the perfect storm in a sense or the perfect

00:14:50.920 meeting of three different things happening here which i believe uh you know led to this unfortunate

00:14:58.040 situation where any kind of dissent was seen as uh sacrilegious and uh you know and and enough to

00:15:06.200 um you know ostracize you yeah you know it's funny because i know that there are some people like

00:15:13.560 you know the brownstone writers community is a very very heterogeneous group um you know we communicate

00:15:19.000 a lot by email and there are some people who are i hate to use the word conspiracy because the word

00:15:24.600 has been kind of overused and misused but there are some people who are more inclined than i am to

00:15:31.160 suspect um sort of planning or malfeasance from the very beginning for that that to me that's a stretch

00:15:40.360 that has always been a stretch because it's not just in the us or in the uk or in canada this happened

00:15:46.360 this happened all over the world and the idea that there's just a few puppeteers kind of getting all

00:15:51.720 these politically uh you know and economically disparate countries with different goals to do

00:15:57.320 the same thing to me it's a stretch klaus schwab klaus schwab and the the world economic forum yeah no i

00:16:04.280 i'm no fan of that organization or mr schwab and i do think that uh you know i i don't i think they do

00:16:11.560 have uh nefarious objectives and i but you know i'm not um you know i and i try to tell people that

00:16:18.520 you know this grand conspiracy of this one guy sitting in the swiss alps getting together all

00:16:23.720 of these people and like he's you know like the uh bond villain or something just seems a bit of a

00:16:29.560 stretch yeah for sure but but i agree that there was certainly malfeasance along the way i'm certainly

00:16:34.920 the idea that you know there was a crisis and so um political actors who wanted greater control

00:16:43.000 saw the opportunity to to grab it you know and but i i to me the whole thing is kind of explainable

00:16:50.200 with the two um psychological forces that i discuss in chapters two and three of my book which is fear

00:16:56.760 and groupthink matthias desmet of course yes yeah proponent of the groupthink you know which he called

00:17:03.800 um uh mass formation and i i think that there's a lot of historical present for that i mean groupthink

00:17:12.040 is as a deep psychological force in humanity and so to me the combination of fear and groupthink

00:17:19.800 and then yes you know a media that instead of pushing back and interrogating government just

00:17:25.080 became their puppets um that that explains a lot so that's kind of where i land like now you know

00:17:32.520 i'm willing to change my mind if new facts emerge uh but that doesn't mean that i excuse any of it

00:17:40.760 i certainly excuse the media for as i say for not doing their job of interrogating a policy rather than

00:17:49.720 just yeah yeah no i i can tell you i was uh incredibly skeptical of lockdowns and i argued

00:17:57.480 against lockdowns uh from the beginning uh but something happened to me when it came to the

00:18:02.520 vaccine mandates i just uh year and a half later i just found myself saying that i we need vaccine

00:18:08.200 mandates uh that didn't last for too long because then i realized you know it was just a bad uh mistake

00:18:15.240 on my part and um and you know and then since then i've just been arguing against it and uh that's

00:18:21.480 interesting it's very similar to me i don't think there's too many of us i was also when i started out

00:18:26.440 yeah um i i just saw vaccine mandates as initially not that different from school vaccine mandates

00:18:32.520 yeah you know and i i had my kids vaccinated there was yeah more vaccines than required yeah never

00:18:39.880 have you know definitely um but as i interviewed bioethicists for my book and i learned more about

00:18:49.320 the nuances and i came to realize that yes this is different because previous vaccine mandates even the

00:18:54.520 smallpox mandates um did not put people in the position of having to choose job or job you know the

00:19:02.280 the penalty for not getting vaccinated was much more lenient and milder so this degree of

00:19:09.560 coercion i don't think we've ever seen that before and that's where it really

00:19:15.560 violated basic principles of bodily autonomy and then of course we all watched prime minister trudeau

00:19:21.000 go completely nuts with me yeah no matter what you in in 2021 no matter what you asked him you know

00:19:27.640 i don't know how are the ottawa senators doing let's get all canadians vaccinated yeah that was his

00:19:32.600 answer to everything yeah no absolutely i i do remember that quite well and um yeah i it

00:19:39.480 was um um um you know and that that that um that the trauma of those uh who you know i uh who

00:19:48.920 you know refuse to get vaccinated you know it's still very visible uh you know i can see that people

00:19:54.600 are still you know not over that and uh you know it's it's incredible how divisive that whole uh uh that that

00:20:02.680 whole part of the pandemic was and uh um you know and and the most visible manifestation of public

00:20:11.080 discontent um whether it related to these harsh lockdowns or whether it related to the vaccine

00:20:18.040 mandates uh no jab no job uh was of course the freedom convoy um and you referred to my writing uh of the

00:20:27.000 convoy uh in your book uh i and i feel very honored that you do that um you know i felt at that time

00:20:35.000 living and i still live in ottawa uh that it was an incredibly important uh moment in uh for us in

00:20:43.400 canada um for various reasons one of them being that we've typically been very docile and accepting of

00:20:50.680 authority and now people were finally pushing back in defense of their uh defense of their liberties

00:20:57.400 uh did you share that sense as well absolutely and one of the things that you said that really

00:21:03.160 struck me you said i think it was in another interview that i watched um that you said

00:21:09.000 that on the surface this is about vaccine mandates but it's actually a bigger moment

00:21:13.480 it is about more than that and i always felt that very deeply as well you know the ostensible demand

00:21:18.840 was to get rid of the cross-border vaccine mandates but i i agree that it was a bigger moment that

00:21:24.920 people were pushing back against you know the prime minister's style of managing this pandemic

00:21:32.360 and and just of managing you know of doing politics and as you say you know docile canadians

00:21:39.240 finally had enough so it was it was sort of a delicious irony that this happened in canada of

00:21:43.400 all places this convoy um and i actually paired you in a lot of the chapters i pair you know two or

00:21:50.120 three different people i paired you with this rappel banjo um mpp from manitoba absolutely stirring speech

00:21:58.680 um to the prime minister about how people are are suffering you know the the people in you know the

00:22:08.440 farmers the people the workers people are just suffering with these policies and that you know

00:22:13.400 we need a plan we need hope we need something it was it was just a dazzling speech

00:22:19.720 yeah yeah no it was uh it was a very important moment and i um you know i feel that um that you

00:22:28.200 know yes i i remember saying that in several interviews that it was much more than vaccine

00:22:33.000 mandates there was something bigger going on here and i was uh when i first pointed the

00:22:38.760 pointed it out when the convoy was here i was ridiculed uh for for saying that by establishment

00:22:46.520 journalists because uh they thought it was just like a small little gathering of people and they would

00:22:52.280 just stick around for the weekend and then leave uh but uh that that that uh wasn't the case obviously

00:23:00.280 and um yeah you know i i i many critics of the mandates have felt that the pandemic response

00:23:08.520 was driven more by politics than it was by science um um i i assume that you agree with this view and

00:23:18.280 well i mean going back to what i said earlier i actually don't believe that there is a purely

00:23:22.520 scientific response because science is not is not prescriptive there's always going to be values

00:23:27.960 and politics on both sides so i guess you know i see that as inevitable yeah there's there's no

00:23:34.280 such thing as a purely scientific response um you know i think both sides have accused the other

00:23:40.680 side of being driven by politics but i think that what our side so to speak felt was really lacking

00:23:47.560 was an appreciation of the downsides the profound downsides of these policies and how dehumanizing

00:23:54.920 they were and i found it interesting that religious people i talk about that as well in the book how

00:24:00.600 religion i feature one i feature father raymond de souza um who also is a national post writer and

00:24:08.360 i'm not religious myself but i really gained an appreciation for the religious perspective during

00:24:13.960 the pandemic which i thought was interesting you know greater appreciation than before

00:24:17.480 that you know these are people who they transcend the biomedical world view a different view of

00:24:26.200 community what it means um i also watched a video about the amish why they rejected the whole covet

00:24:32.440 paradigm i mean to them a life without communal worship without connection it literally makes no sense

00:24:40.840 you know this idea of of preserving metabolic life at the expense of everything that gives life meaning

00:24:48.840 just didn't make sense to them and i really you know gained a very an interesting appreciation for

00:24:54.840 that perspective yeah no um you know yeah there i mean there are i mean we're social beings you know we're

00:25:02.680 social animals and uh and and for us to live essentially in isolation um uh and and only interact through

00:25:12.440 zoom and uh through technology um you know was uh was was just a bit much very dystopian for sure and uh

00:25:21.400 yeah and it seemed to me that some people sensed this and saw it and felt it from the start and others

00:25:26.920 and that's why we had this divide i always felt the divide was not so much about facts and data

00:25:32.360 as about world view yeah there's some people who just they completely embrace the biomedical world view

00:25:42.200 you know so you know that those are the kinds of things that i explore in the book and that i came

00:25:48.280 to an understanding of uh and that's why i also feature philosophers yeah yeah yeah comedian a priest you know

00:25:57.960 no i i yeah i i it it sounds like an amazing book and and again i uh encourage our uh viewers and

00:26:06.360 listeners to get their copy um now you know switching gears a little bit america america's covet czar

00:26:13.000 anthony fauci uh who's seen as the official response to the pandemic uh spanning both uh the trump and biden

00:26:20.920 administrations um you know questions have been raised about some of the ethics behind his

00:26:27.240 recommendation you know what what is your view of um how much blame does he really deserve for the way

00:26:35.400 things played out and in in fauci in a recent interview with the new york times seemed to be

00:26:40.600 backpedaling a little bit uh you know struck by that um and um yeah i mean how much blame do you think

00:26:47.720 he actually deserves for for for the way things uh panned out i think quite a lot because he you know

00:26:54.840 again the the excuse that he and all the other public health advisors gave was well our our job is

00:27:04.360 just to look at public health not to look at economy or mental health or you know socialization or

00:27:11.480 schooling or anything our job is to look at public health and then you know governments take our advice

00:27:17.560 and combine it with advice from other disciplines in theory that should work but the problem is is

00:27:24.520 that the governments basically hopped onto that follow the experts you know bandwagon so the ex

00:27:30.440 so the government was only listening to these public health experts they did not bring in

00:27:37.320 experts from these other disciplines to balance the recommendations and so i think

00:27:42.360 to me it seems that someone like fauci he had such a huge responsibility and since governments

00:27:47.560 the government was just listening to him i think that somebody with a larger way of thinking

00:27:56.360 would have tried to balance his recommendations more not just focus on this one male with his one

00:28:01.880 hammer and to me didn't rise up to that occasion you know he was he was entrusted with his enormous

00:28:07.400 responsibility but he still approached it kind of like you know with a one-track mind yeah he had an

00:28:16.120 opportunity to do more you know yeah i mean the media played a big role as well in all of this of

00:28:23.160 course um you know basically parroting the official uh narrative uh and uh by punishing dissenting views

00:28:32.200 uh calling them conspiracy theorists anti-science and even worse uh why do you believe uh you know and

00:28:39.000 and you as a journalist you know why do you believe that this crucial time uh that large sections of

00:28:45.240 our media both in the us and canada um fail so miserably by taking what politicians were saying at that

00:28:53.640 time what politicians and officials were telling them at face value and not asking the tough questions and

00:28:59.640 not digging deeper i guess what comes to mind is as you know as we all know we're living in a

00:29:06.680 a very polarized um society that's where everyone fears getting cancelled um you know the fear of

00:29:13.240 getting cancelled as you mentioned for this detransition no matter what your age if if your views depart from

00:29:19.080 the official party line there is a serious chance of being cancelled uh a very real chance of losing your

00:29:27.960 your employment and not just your employment but your future prospects and all these things and

00:29:32.040 people who have let's say family responsibilities or even personal responsibilities and aren't

00:29:36.600 independently wealthy you know they legitimately are afraid to to go there i think that this was one

00:29:46.040 instance where somehow that the official narrative became so heavy and dominant i really you know whether

00:29:51.960 people whether journalists media articulated consciously or not i think they just felt that

00:29:58.120 here you know i felt it too but i think that it helped me in a way being older because even though

00:30:02.840 i'm like work very much full-time i mean freelance but i'm you know work seven days a week it's still

00:30:09.080 different i i no longer have young children to support and if it came to pass that i lost my job or

00:30:16.680 lost my clients i could survive so that's why i don't consider myself superior you know in any way for

00:30:23.800 going out and writing essays and writing the book it's just because i i had less to lose and i i

00:30:30.200 realized that i could lose what i had but it seemed to me that this was the time this was a time that

00:30:36.120 i had an opportunity to take a stand and this was the best time but i think a lot of people in

00:30:41.960 different um at different stages of their lives didn't have that luxury yeah and and you know

00:30:48.360 specifically on lockdowns um the rationale was based on epidemiological models that totally ignored the

00:30:57.080 psychological economic and other costs of these policies um and now we have research coming out that

00:31:05.240 shows that at least in the us where schools were locked down for longer kids fell behind

00:31:10.680 in uh things like math and english um how would you sum up the damage uh that the lockdowns had on

00:31:18.360 society and do you and do you think that this generation of young people who started life under

00:31:23.960 lockdowns you know are they ever going to recover and and leave and have a chance at a normal life

00:31:28.920 i don't know i guess we'll have to see but i think that the damage is not easily recovered because

00:31:35.080 certainly in school once you lose a certain amount of ground you're unlikely to make it up again because

00:31:42.680 you lose the engagement you you know you're not no longer plugged in and then so you know it's not

00:31:49.240 like oh they can make it up later that's not how it works yeah um and i also thought it was

00:31:55.960 so harmful to imply to children that they were responsible for not killing grandma you know that

00:32:07.400 whole idea you know and i i discuss that kind of stuff in the book too you know if you transmit a

00:32:13.880 virus accidentally not through malice you're not killing anyone you know this has been happening

00:32:21.720 since time immemorial on a planet that's shared by humans and viruses you are going to get some

00:32:26.760 transmission nobody is killing anybody so this idea that you are killing someone if you give them the

00:32:33.320 virus i thought that was completely absurd but again these these ideas took hold you know that

00:32:40.440 and and then we told children well you know you have to stay away from this and you have to wear a mask

00:32:44.520 and do this and not socialize because you don't want to kill your grandma i mean what a thing to

00:32:48.520 saddle a child with you know and i felt that that was a change that that wasn't that really did

00:32:53.960 represent a change in morality and not for the better because it's not a morality that's grounded in

00:32:59.080 biological reality of course we try not to hurt people we try not to infect people but we cannot

00:33:06.120 guarantee health we cannot guarantee uh freedom from biological harm yeah yeah i mean uh absolutely given

00:33:17.160 how damaging um all of this has been gabrielle um i mean final question to you do you think we've uh

00:33:24.680 learned our lesson uh do you think that whenever the next pandemic or some other apparent emergency

00:33:31.080 arises uh you think we'll um have a similar knee-jerk reaction to the whole thing

00:33:37.800 uh i guess i'm not entirely optimistic and not entirely pessimistic i think

00:33:41.400 i think we've probably absorbed something and i think that maybe i'd like to think the next time

00:33:48.920 there will be a little more deliberation um you know a little more um input from various disciplines

00:33:56.680 but on the other hand i think that most people probably are still on board with this way of doing

00:34:06.040 things i don't know if it's 60 or whatever i don't think i think most people are too according to me

00:34:13.640 too willing to throw away liberties that really mean so much and give our lives everything that they

00:34:19.000 mean people don't appreciate what that is and so that's a little disturbing to me so i think there is

00:34:26.200 a possibility that something similar will happen psychologically you know to humanity the next time

00:34:32.040 around and i think that's why that's one of the reasons that i and the many other people who

00:34:36.200 write articles and books about all this we do it just to you know put our drop of water in and to

00:34:42.360 keep the conversation alive and so that we don't forget and so that we um consider all these other

00:34:50.840 aspects uh all the downsides of these uh types of policies yeah well uh gabrielle i you know on that

00:34:59.320 note you know i i i really want to thank you for coming on to the show and uh i encourage everybody

00:35:07.240 to get a copy of your book blindsight is 2020 and uh i i and i really hope that we don't repeat the

00:35:15.000 mistakes of the last three years um like you i'm i i go between being uh optimistic and pessimistic

00:35:23.640 it all depends on the day um but but uh you know i i i'm keeping my fingers crossed that we've actually

00:35:30.600 learned some valuable lessons here and that uh that you know will that there will no lot that that there

00:35:36.760 won't be uh an infringement on our individual liberties and uh in and um and the ostracization of

00:35:43.800 dissenting voices in the future i think you're you're helping a lot in in uh that conversation that

00:35:49.640 objective so well i'm trying to do my best but it's not always easy but uh but so are you and that's uh

00:35:56.920 and it's it's a great uh honor to have been featured in your book and i really hope that you

00:36:03.080 return to the podcast to uh you know in this in sometime in the future to discuss uh your next book

00:36:09.800 perhaps all right well thank you so much it was great to to chat with you thank you gabrielle yeah a

00:36:17.080 real pleasure thank you

Juno News - May 31, 2023

The undeniable failure of lockdowns (Ft. Gabrielle Bauer)

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