COVID-19: The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic with authors Barry Cooper and Marco Navarro-Génie
Episode Stats
Words per minute
151.50601
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Hate speech
5
sentences flagged
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
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.
00:00:45.240
Now, if you like listening to the show, then I promise you're going to love watching it.
00:00:48.380
But in order to watch, you need to be a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
00:00:51.560
That's what we call our premium long-form TV-style shows here on Rebel News.
00:00:55.100
Because subscribers get access to my show, which, you know, I obviously think is worth the price of admission alone.
00:01:01.140
But you also get access to David Menzies' fun Friday night show Rebel Roundup as well as Ezra's nightly Ezra Levant show.
00:01:07.800
Just go to rebelnews.com slash subscribe to become a member of Rebel News Plus.
00:01:13.660
And just for my podcast listeners, you can save an extra 10% on a new Rebel News Plus membership by using the coupon code PODCAST when you subscribe.
00:01:22.960
That's rebelnews.com slash subscribe to become a member and the coupon code is PODCAST.
00:01:31.040
And if you like the show, and I'm pretty confident that you do, please leave a five-star review wherever you find us.
00:01:36.040
That's a great way to support the show without having to spend a dime.
00:01:39.180
But it also helps other people find the podcast too.
00:01:42.440
Now, please enjoy this free, audio-only version of my show.
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.
00:02:45.980
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.
00:04:56.920
We had independently sort of commented on issues related to the pandemic, Barry and I,
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?
00:05:49.120
So the response really is what is new here and not so much the fact that there are pandemics
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,
00:13:06.580
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
00:34:52.920
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.