Rebel News Podcast - COVID-19： The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic with authors Barry Cooper and Marco Navarro-Génie

00:00:00.000 Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.

00:00:04.780 However, this is the internet so you can listen whenever you feel like and also watch whenever you feel like.

00:00:10.160 Tonight my guests, that's right, guests as in two, are Marco Navarrogini and Barry Cooper.

00:00:17.380 They're both political scientists who have co-written a new book titled COVID-19, The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic.

00:00:28.360 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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00:01:55.140 Is it better to be overly cautious than not cautious enough?

00:02:04.980 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?

00:02:15.020 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.

00:02:23.960 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:02:34.980 There's a brand new book out.

00:02:45.980 It's called COVID-19, The Politics of Pandemic Moral Panic, and it is out on Amazon as we speak.

00:02:52.620 It's written by two of my fellow Albertans, Marco Navarrogini and Barry Cooper, in conjunction with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

00:03:02.820 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.

00:03:15.300 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,

00:03:28.100 from the early days of a strange, unknown virus emerging in Wuhan, China in late 2019 to today,

00:03:36.200 to the economic and social fallout of increased lockdowns and lockdowns after lockdowns driven by early federal inaction, moral panic,

00:03:45.020 flawed modeling, and health bureaucrats with a taste for power. 1.00

00:03:49.320 The gentleman joined me in an interview via Zoom to discuss the book, what inspired the book,

00:03:55.080 and their predictions for the future. Check it out.

00:04:12.760 So joining me now are two political scientists. We've got Marco Navarrogini.

00:04:17.260 I didn't put any emphasis on any of the syllables there that are probably right, but that's okay.

00:04:23.400 And Barry Cooper. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me and coming on to talk about your new book.

00:04:30.100 It's called COVID-19, The Politics of Pandemic Moral Panic.

00:04:35.220 And I think this is truly the first real analysis of Canada's COVID response, both at the federal level,

00:04:45.140 but also you've analyzed some of the responses at the provincial level.

00:04:49.500 Why did you want to do this? And whichever one of you wants to answer, go ahead.

00:04:54.820 Marco, you go first.

00:04:56.280 Thank you.

00:04:56.920 We had independently sort of commented on issues related to the pandemic, Barry and I,

00:05:05.600 and then we noticed that we had some overlaps.

00:05:10.320 And so we decided to do this little project together.

00:05:13.540 But the main thing, really, the broad question that prompted the work

00:05:20.100 is that we both had noticed that we have had pandemics before and, you know,

00:05:27.320 in five in the last 100 and so years since the so-called Spanish flu.

00:05:37.020 But nowhere ever had there been any full lockdown of entire societies.

00:05:44.180 And so we started wondering, you know, why is this?

00:05:47.980 And why now?

00:05:49.120 So the response really is what is new here and not so much the fact that there are pandemics

00:05:55.820 because we have had pandemics, many.

00:06:01.480 Barry, do you have anything to add?

00:06:04.560 I would add only that this is kind of a preliminary report

00:06:09.800 and that there'll be later iterations as we sort of come to, let's say,

00:06:18.840 more questionable policies by these various governments.

00:06:23.100 And we also refine our understanding of what, at least from my point of view,

00:06:29.680 Marco may see things somewhat differently, but the way the bureaucrats have taken control

00:06:36.380 over politics and are attempting to terrify every Canadian so that they do exactly what

00:06:44.060 these, I mean, to be kind, these academic mediocrities want us to do.

00:06:50.740 And I think that that, I think that's eventually where we're heading.

00:06:55.240 It's a, it's a, that's the novel political part of, of what I think we've discovered by looking at

00:07:01.440 the government response to this, this medical problem.

00:07:05.420 You know, and that's one of the questions I have on my list of things to discuss with you guys.

00:07:11.040 And we'll get to that in a second, but I mean, you really do a historical analysis

00:07:16.420 of how the pandemic began and the early handling of it, say in December and January.

00:07:25.660 For example, there are things that I think I'm a pretty close pandemic follower,

00:07:29.720 but somehow this escaped me that January 4th, 2020, the New York Times had reported that 175,000

00:07:39.020 people had left Wuhan in one day. I mean, there was an outpouring of people from Wuhan in those

00:07:50.140 early days. I think further on in your analysis, you know, you say that there had been millions

00:07:57.180 of people who had left Wuhan for the Lunar New Year. And at the same time, World Health

00:08:02.880 Organizations were, the World Health Organization and their bureaucrats, and to some extent, Canadians

00:08:09.080 who are involved in that process, were praising China for their handling of the pandemic.

00:08:17.920 Yeah, that's where you get into the very strange kind of international politics of it.

00:08:22.500 I bet you that there are people in the intelligence organizations in this country, as well as in

00:08:33.720 the UK and the United States, that have a pretty clear idea of what was going on. And they probably

00:08:40.140 have their own theories about what ties all this stuff together. But it's certainly clear,

00:08:46.320 it was certainly clear by, say, late February or March, that the relationship between the PRC and

00:08:52.700 the WHO was, let's say, not healthy. It was acting, the World Health Organization was acting basically

00:09:02.440 as a mouthpiece for communist China. And I mean, there's just absolutely no question of that, 0.60

00:09:10.400 because you can document their twists and turns. But as to what was actually happening in China,

00:09:17.700 we're still pretty much in the dark about that. I figure it'll eventually it'll come out, there'll be

00:09:22.500 some deep state guy will blab, and of course, the Chinese will deny it. But the circumstantial 0.82

00:09:29.860 evidence is pretty compelling. Marco, what role do you think this appeasement of communist China,

00:09:41.040 and let's just set aside the World Health Organization for a moment, because I think we

00:09:45.760 pretty well know that they are infected with the virus of China sycophancy at the World Health

00:09:53.420 Organization. But what role do you think this Chinese appeasement played in the early decision

00:10:03.340 making of Trudeau's liberal government, when it came to such things as, you know, closing the border,

00:10:08.980 limiting incoming travelers, or for that matter, calling anybody who questioned the fact that the

00:10:13.920 border was left wide open, racist? What role do you think that played in all of this?

00:10:19.780 Well, we have known for quite a while that our prime minister is an admirer of the People's

00:10:28.520 Republic, and their, as he put it, their basic style of dictatorship. They get things done,

00:10:36.900 and he's a great admirer of that. I think at the very beginning, there is a kind of what we call a

00:10:45.820 moral panic, or aspects of it, related to pointing the finger at China. And we see it coming out of

00:10:56.400 the WHO, that they're tied into this in many ways. But we also see it out of the communications of the

00:11:05.880 Canadian government and Canadian officials, that they don't want to say that this is coming from

00:11:11.220 China. I mean, everybody knows, but they don't want to say the words China. And every time somebody

00:11:17.700 suggests it, then they would say that somebody's racist is basically the woke kind of mentality

00:11:27.480 that wants to protect things that need not be protected in many ways. We see it also from the

00:11:33.760 Minister of Health, challenging journalists for asking difficult questions about Chinese data,

00:11:39.820 and that sort of stuff. And so it's, in a sense, perhaps the admiration of the prime minister,

00:11:44.560 and of course, the minions paying attention to what the prime minister admires. But there is also

00:11:49.860 a kind of a wokeness about not being able to mention China, because immediately people think,

00:11:57.780 and people think this stuff, that Canadians are going to be attacking Chinese people or people

00:12:03.020 of Chinese origin, and that sort of stuff. So it's a kind of panic in some respects as well.

00:12:10.740 You know, and it's true that that is the bigotry of low expectations, to think that normal Canadians

00:12:17.120 cannot separate the Chinese communist government from regular Chinese people. In fact, in my experience,

00:12:23.720 especially in the lower mainland of BC, some of the largest critics of the communist state are new

00:12:30.100 Canadians from China who are finally able to speak their mind about the issue. I wanted, Barry, you

00:12:36.300 mentioned the moral entrepreneurs in all of this. And that's how you describe these unelected health

00:12:44.600 bureaucrats who seem to be making all these extra parliamentary rules and regulations for controlling our 0.98

00:12:52.160 lives. How did they, I guess they sort of seized power using health regulations, and now we are seeing,

00:13:03.220 you know, people's lives being stomped on?

00:13:06.580 Yeah, it's, without diminishing the importance that this has for the actual individuals,

00:13:13.080 where it can, you know, be genuine existential threats to their well-being. If you look at it from a 0.97

00:13:18.900 social science point of view, which, you know, that's what we do, and it tends to be somewhat

00:13:23.920 impersonal, it's a, it's a kind of novel, but appearance on the political scene of people who

00:13:34.040 otherwise, a year ago, we didn't know the names of the chief medical officer of health of Canada,

00:13:39.560 or of Alberta, or of her colleague out in, in, in BC. Now they're celebrities. It doesn't change what they

00:13:49.280 are. You know, there were bureaucrats a year ago, there's still bureaucrats. What's interesting from our way of

00:13:56.540 looking at, at, at politics, is how they came to this position of prominence. And that's a, that's actually a pretty

00:14:04.460 big question. A lot of it has to do with the, with the sense that, that not just Canadians, but modern people around the

00:14:11.700 world have, with respect to science. In this case, it happens to be medical science, or so called medical science. In fact,

00:14:19.520 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

00:14:26.520 same thing in, in climate change. Uh, the science there is just as ambiguous, uh, as, uh, as the official spokesman

00:14:35.720 for, say, Environment Canada, uh, say it is. Even in Environment Canada, there's, there are debates, but you'd never

00:14:42.200 know it, uh, if you listen to the government. So, it becomes part of a pattern where, uh, commonsensical Canadians

00:14:51.080 are willing to give up their, what they see in, in, before their very eyes to listen to, to a bunch of

00:14:58.720 people who claim that they, uh, have access to, you know, a magical world of science, uh, which is largely

00:15:05.000 imaginary. Uh, and, and that's a very interesting problem where, uh, where we give up our sense of

00:15:11.720 reality that we can see right in front of our noses. Marco, I want to ask you about, um, some of these

00:15:20.460 predictions and modeling, and I think it was fascinating that Barry pointed out the overlays

00:15:25.940 between the climate change debate and then, you know, COVID, the COVID debate. Um, the modeling

00:15:33.000 has been absolutely wrong from the very beginning. And from the outside looking in, it feels like some

00:15:41.900 of the modeling was produced to create fear so that the populace would be open to, you know, heavy

00:15:50.900 lockdowns and, um, heavy restrictions on our civil liberties. How did they get the modeling so wrong?

00:15:58.940 There are several issues with the modeling and, and, uh, this is a really good question. Uh, on the one

00:16:05.700 hand, part of what happens, of course, is that, uh, the modeling is simply a representation of

00:16:11.580 something, uh, a snapshot, a picture. And this picture is constructed largely from a whole set of

00:16:18.760 assumptions, uh, bits and pieces, if you will, from, from, from actual reality. And, uh, and those bits and

00:16:26.580 pieces are chosen. So they're driven by assumptions. They're driven by a certain type of, uh, belief in the

00:16:33.280 people who are putting it, uh, who are putting it together. And so the first problem really is that,

00:16:39.300 uh, the, the models are not able to handle the complexity of reality and the complexity of all

00:16:48.160 the human interactions and all the different things that must be taken into account in order to be able

00:16:53.720 to have a glimpse of what could happen, uh, with the expansion or the, the, uh, uh, of, uh, a viral,

00:17:02.060 uh, uh, uh, a viral, uh, contagion like, like this one. That that's the first issue, the first issue

00:17:10.500 that, um, these kinds of statisticians often enough, they tend to marry the reality that they

00:17:16.640 have painted as though it was the real thing. But the second problem, uh, is of course that there are

00:17:23.580 competing models, uh, in that, uh, we seem to have honed in on one and one alone, the, uh, happens to

00:17:33.740 be the scariest one. So, uh, you were asking me about, you know, whether they're designed to create

00:17:37.780 fear. Maybe they are, but certainly some are, uh, more prone to drive fear than others. And those are

00:17:47.080 the ones that had the largest, uh, prognosticated numbers of, of death. Uh, they happen to have been

00:17:53.080 made by this guy named, uh, Ferguson. Uh, and, uh, and, and the, and the thing about Ferguson and his

00:17:59.400 model is of course that not only was it wrong, but it was wrong by several orders of magnitude.

00:18:06.000 And this was not the first time that his models were wrong. He has a long string, a long record

00:18:12.880 of wrong models and modeling going back decades. And so for the life of me, I don't understand how

00:18:20.780 A, we picked that model and B, then we shut down anyone else who had any kind of competing model

00:18:29.860 that was perhaps less, um, alarmist and maybe to some extent more reliable. So those issues,

00:18:38.640 uh, and these of course, connects to what Barry was saying that the people who picked these models

00:18:44.420 are the medical officers that are advising the policymakers. And so if there is something to be

00:18:50.740 said here is that, uh, the, the, the medical bureaucrats, uh, honed in on the alarmist or the most

00:18:59.720 alarmist models, and those are the ones who seem to have been the ones that they put in front of the

00:19:03.800 policymakers. Just like climate change, just like climate change. Just like climate change, right?

00:19:10.040 And dismiss anything else, dismiss any other possibility, dismiss solar flares, dismiss any

00:19:16.480 kind of other actual reality. Yeah. It's interesting how it, it quickly turns into a doomsday scenario.

00:19:23.940 You pick the scariest thing. That's the one we'll build policy around that and just discard everything

00:19:28.880 else. And it, it happens across the board, but there is a strong overlay between, uh, climate

00:19:33.580 change modeling and COVID modeling. And now we're connecting them. This morning, one of the headlines

00:19:38.360 I read, uh, said that, uh, you know, the cost of food this coming year is going to go up, uh, 17,

00:19:45.160 20% because of COVID-19 and climate change. So there you have the two boogeyman, uh, coming together.

00:19:52.920 And I read that article too, and it didn't mention carbon taxes, adding anything to the cost of food.

00:19:57.820 Isn't that fascinating? We all know that if we pay more taxes, the weather will be, will improve.

00:20:04.660 That's right. And if we pay more taxes to Justin Trudeau, we'll have more money in our pockets.

00:20:09.060 Apparently that's also how that works. And the budget will balance itself. Um, Barry, I wanted to

00:20:14.260 ask you, um, about some of the comparisons, uh, to the Swedish approach versus the Canadian response

00:20:23.680 here because we are almost a year out from both companies or both countries handling, uh, their

00:20:29.360 pandemic response. And we're seeing, um, drastically different, um, results and consequences in both

00:20:36.880 countries. Yeah. Since Marco wrote that part. Sure. And he has, uh, and he has, uh, family members in

00:20:45.080 Sweden. He can tell you a much better answer than I can. I, everything I know about Sweden,

00:20:49.680 I learned from Marco. Okay. Barry's in trouble already. That's true. Um, the, the, the comparison

00:20:58.080 with, with Sweden, uh, we, we, we sort of decided, um, we, we originally started comparing what was

00:21:05.040 happening here with a lot of different places. Uh, you know, we started looking at Japan. We looked

00:21:09.380 at Taiwan. We looked at, uh, uh, different countries. Uh, but what became actually clear is

00:21:15.800 that, uh, Taiwan isn't really like Canada. Uh, and, you know, South Korea isn't really like Canada

00:21:21.740 or there are less points of comparison, shall we say. So, so Sweden seemed to be a better model. Uh,

00:21:27.400 and, and of course, Sweden is also run by a social democratic, uh, uh, party. Uh, one would argue

00:21:33.280 that, uh, the current party in power is not really a liberal party, uh, in the full sense of the term.

00:21:39.560 And so there is, there's a, a great many points of comparison between, uh, Sweden and, and, uh,

00:21:44.940 and Canada. What is interesting about Sweden is how they came to their decision-making power. And it's,

00:21:51.320 it's, uh, it, it is an interesting story actually, um, because, uh, the Swedes several years ago,

00:21:59.620 uh, decided that they didn't really need emergency contingencies or, or anything like that because

00:22:06.300 they were at the time being governed by a kind of pie-in-the-sky, uh, government who thought that

00:22:11.640 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,

00:22:28.000 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,

00:22:40.660 uh, from, they, they had hearings, they had consultations. So the short and the long story

00:22:46.540 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.

00:22:59.500 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

00:23:15.220 COVID-19 arrived and they were, uh, all ready to go. But the point of all that story is to say that

00:23:22.600 because they had contingencies, because they had thought about it, because, uh, most of the population

00:23:29.480 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 0.99

00:23:45.460 and, and they're panicking now and the government is pushing them, uh, in, in that direction.

00:23:50.880 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 0.93

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

00:34:51.140 in, uh, Christmas stockings.

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.

00:35:17.060 Thanks very much. It's a pleasure.

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.

Rebel News Podcast - December 10, 2020

COVID-19： The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic with authors Barry Cooper and Marco Navarro-Génie

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