Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Gabrielle Bauer on lessons learned from the pandemic

00:00:00.000 Did the COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates serve society's best interests?

00:00:04.740 Author Gabrielle Bauer from the Brownstone Institute joins me today to discuss.

00:00:10.360 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:00:30.000 After three years of almost utter and complete homogeneity in the mainstream media and, you know, in pop culture, dissenters are starting to have their say.

00:00:43.340 And it's not that the dissenters didn't really exist during the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:00:48.600 You just couldn't hear from them because of the intense censorship online.

00:00:53.600 And the dissenters, they weren't necessarily wild-eyed conspiracy theorists.

00:01:00.600 They were the fancy people, the well-connected people who all of a sudden found themselves cancelled and othered, like, well, current presidential candidate for the Democrat Party, RFK.

00:01:15.400 Now, my guest today is Gabrielle Bauer.

00:01:18.000 She's an author and a longtime journalist, and she's got a new book published by the Brownstone Institute.

00:01:23.760 It's called Blindsight is 2020, Reflections on COVID Policies from Dissident Scientists, Philosophers, Artists, and More.

00:01:31.200 And the book features 46 thinkers drawn from different parts of society and even different political persuasions.

00:01:41.600 But they all agree on one thing, that the policies enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic crossed the line and the world lost its way.

00:01:50.400 I'm very fascinated to talk to Gabrielle.

00:01:53.720 I've heard nothing but good things about her from my friend Laura, and she joins me right now.

00:02:01.200 So, joining me now is author Gabrielle Bauer.

00:02:09.380 She's the author of the new book, Blind Sight is 2020.

00:02:14.000 And, Gabrielle, thanks so much for joining me on the show.

00:02:17.160 Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the book, I was, as is my job to do as a fellow journalist, poking a little bit around into your background.

00:02:25.980 And as I previously said to you, don't take this the wrong way, but you're not a crazy person.

00:02:30.860 And I'm told by the mainstream media and the people in the white lab coats that anybody who disagrees with the prevailing government narrative on the COVID pandemic is a crazy person and a conspiracy theorist. 0.76

00:02:47.500 And if you ask Justin Trudeau, a fringe radical extremist and quite possibly a white supremacist, but I don't find any of that. 0.91

00:02:54.600 You forgot. You forgot racist and misogynist. 0.98

00:02:57.220 That's a two. That too. Yeah. 0.71

00:02:58.900 And I don't find any of that in your background.

00:03:01.120 In fact, I find an accomplished medical journalism background for you.

00:03:06.820 So tell us a little bit about your background first.

00:03:08.620 Yeah, thanks. It's a pleasure to be on the show.

00:03:12.300 I have an academic background in biochemistry, and I ended up as a medical writer and health journalist.

00:03:18.480 So I write for both doctors, health professionals, doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and for the general public.

00:03:27.700 I've been doing it for 29 years.

00:03:29.620 I work with doctors every day.

00:03:32.000 I work with pharma companies as well.

00:03:34.100 So, you know, you might say that I'm part of the medical establishment.

00:03:38.300 And as well, I'm 66 years old now, 63 when the pandemic started.

00:03:43.700 So, yes, you would not think that my profile matches someone who would have such deep, deep objections to what went on.

00:03:51.320 You know, as I joke, I'm not a grandma, but I'm old enough to be one.

00:03:54.740 So, you know, ostensibly the policies were designed to save people like me.

00:03:59.940 But no, I had a visceral recoil against the whole thing from the start.

00:04:05.040 Okay, so let's talk about that.

00:04:06.400 What I know for a lot of people, there's a moment in time where they figure out, wait, this is not at all making any sense and not at all what we've normally done.

00:04:18.940 When we have a wave of infectious disease rolling out of China, as we tend to do every five to 10 years.

00:04:25.280 What was it for you that really was the scales falling off your eyes?

00:04:31.020 Well, to be honest, the moment was literally from day one, from hour one.

00:04:36.300 There was no sort of period, you know, of a month or two months when I was on board.

00:04:40.380 I pretended to be on board for the first six weeks because everybody in my circle was and it took me a few weeks to really find my sea legs and, you know, start venturing online at first and then talking to other people and finding my tribe.

00:04:55.600 But I remember thinking literally when the lockdowns were announced for the first time, I thought, why are we only listening to scientists here?

00:05:06.080 A pandemic is a human problem.

00:05:07.880 It's not just a scientific problem to solve.

00:05:11.240 You know, we have to sort of shepherd the human family through all this.

00:05:14.280 Why are we not listening to mental health experts?

00:05:17.220 Why are we not listening to economists and philosophers and historians and bioethicists?

00:05:23.480 You know, this is not just a problem of trying to control a virus.

00:05:28.220 It's so much more.

00:05:29.700 And that really troubled me right from the start.

00:05:33.740 And then the whole culture that sprang up around the lockdowns and the pandemic, you know, the shaming and the snitching and the wholesale panic, it just seemed disproportionate and unhealthy and very alien.

00:05:48.840 You know, and at first I didn't quite have the vocabulary to understand my feelings.

00:05:55.840 And I spent the next three years really trying to understand why I was feeling what I was feeling, reaching out to like-minded people and developing that vocabulary, ultimately writing a whole bunch of essays about COVID.

00:06:09.880 And then when this opportunity to write this book came along for the Brownstone Institute, I really couldn't say no.

00:06:16.640 I often wondered how quickly it happened that people in East Germany adopted the snitch culture right in front of them. 0.93

00:06:27.660 And there was, you know, the threat of real force from the government.

00:06:31.800 And I don't want to say coercion isn't forced because it definitely is.

00:06:34.820 But you had this real threat of people being imprisoned and taken away and gulagged because they didn't snitch on their neighbors in East Germany.

00:06:45.720 We didn't have to get that far in our culture with the threat of this virus.

00:06:51.880 What do you think made it happen so fast?

00:06:55.420 Well, I guess, you know, there's still so much debate about that.

00:06:58.140 Yeah.

00:06:58.260 I know that there's people who sort of say the whole thing was orchestrated.

00:07:05.820 And my view is perhaps a little more nuanced.

00:07:08.800 I mean, I hate to use the word conspiracy theorist because it's so derogatory.

00:07:13.320 But, you know, I don't lean that way.

00:07:15.900 I tend to lean in the direction of groupthink is a very powerful human force.

00:07:24.380 I don't know if you, you know, you're familiar with Matthias Desmet, who I feature in the book, who talks about mass formation.

00:07:32.680 Yep.

00:07:32.920 And that's where I lean.

00:07:36.720 I believe that there are, there's a certainly historical record of group craziness that takes over people.

00:07:45.520 You know, the Salem witch trials being one instance.

00:07:48.420 Satanic panic.

00:07:49.720 Satanic panic is not that far behind us.

00:07:51.840 Yeah, Satanic panic.

00:07:52.520 Exactly, exactly.

00:07:53.340 And this happens.

00:07:54.440 And this just happened on a wider scale because of social media and instant connectivity and all that.

00:08:01.680 And so I kind of believe in the dominoes falling theory that, of course, there were some bad actors that took advantage of the situation.

00:08:10.580 And although I work for the pharma industry, I mean, I think it's because I work for them, I understand their vested interests and I understand how they present data, you know, with a certain slant.

00:08:29.480 I mean, it's a business.

00:08:30.480 I mean, it's a business and that's how the business is run.

00:08:32.720 So, so certainly there were some bad actors and there was some obfuscation and, you know, of the reality.

00:08:41.500 But I do believe that the people were just swept away by this.

00:08:46.260 Certainly, media did not help.

00:08:48.340 I mean, media, of which I'm a member, abdicated its role as a check and balance on all the craziness.

00:08:56.040 You know, as a pushback, media just got swept along as well.

00:09:00.640 So it was a confluence of all these factors.

00:09:02.800 I think I think when Italy fell, so to speak, then that somehow gave the signal to the rest of the world that they had to do this.

00:09:11.660 So I don't know, I think I think people are still investigating this a lot.

00:09:16.740 And there's probably things that are going to come to light in different countries that help set all this in motion.

00:09:25.080 You know, my my interest, like in writing the book is more.

00:09:31.220 You know, why people behave the way they did and also what what ethical breaches all this entailed.

00:09:37.820 You know, why this was this response was so misguided from a social, ethical, psychological point of view.

00:09:47.240 And so that's why I feature people from various disciplines, including a comedian and a priest who address all these ethical lapses.

00:09:57.620 Yeah, I think a lot for me, I've tried I've tried to do a lot of thinking about what caused people to just all of a sudden join the hysteria and start throwing gasoline on the bonfire of civil liberties instead of trying to get a bucket of water.

00:10:14.200 And I think I think there's a lot of people and it's unfortunately true with the development of society becomes ease of your life.

00:10:23.220 And a lot of people, they want to feel like heroes and you didn't have to work very hard during the times of COVID to be told that you were saving lives. 0.98

00:10:35.520 All you had to do was stay home or wear a mask or follow the stupid arrows on the floor. 0.97

00:10:40.840 And you were psychologically, in your own mind, akin to a firefighter running into a burning building and carrying out a grandmother. 1.00

00:10:49.540 You were saving lives just by following stupid, arbitrary rules that didn't work. 0.97

00:10:54.740 And so I think that's why there are a lot of people out there who've never really done anything for other people in their lives, 0.99

00:11:00.800 except follow these mindless rules that are clinging to that sense of moral superiority.

00:11:08.820 And that's why they don't want to give it up. 0.99

00:11:11.520 That's why they want to keep the masks and they want to keep the stupid arrows and they want to keep the social distancing. 0.99

00:11:16.940 And all the dumb rules is because you take away the rules and all of a sudden you're just a normal person who never held the door for an old lady. 0.99

00:11:25.240 Right. No, for sure. 0.98

00:11:26.280 And that was one of the greatest irritants for me, that moral finger wagging that constantly went on, which was not justified.

00:11:36.100 And I found this a lot online.

00:11:39.340 I mean, the insults that I was subjected to online, I, you know, in all my years of life, no one before had ever called me a sociopath.

00:11:46.620 No one had called me a mouth breathing Trump tard. 1.00

00:11:50.320 Nobody had called me a, you know, a village idiot, negative IQ. 1.00

00:11:54.800 I mean, you name it. 0.99

00:11:56.780 And, you know, it was, it was all very new for me.

00:12:00.220 I had never experienced any of this and it was utterly shocking.

00:12:05.040 And it took me a while to thicken my skin a little bit and just to realize, you know, not to take it seriously and realize that, well, people were scared.

00:12:14.080 That's one thing.

00:12:14.660 And I think I also detected and still detect this incredible sense of entitlement that people have.

00:12:21.320 They think the government can and should keep us safe, keep us from dying ever.

00:12:29.960 You know, just this amazing sense of entitlement about life and refusal to acknowledge that life has a season and an arc.

00:12:39.520 And, of course, we do try to protect people, but life ends for all of us.

00:12:45.320 And, you know, again, I just sensed beneath it all this, this was more than COVID.

00:12:52.660 It was more that people were coming face to face with their mortality in general, and they just didn't accept it.

00:12:59.220 And there was something else very weird manifesting that I had never really seen before, that it all of a sudden became a moral failing if you became sick.

00:13:12.780 Yes.

00:13:13.780 Yeah, that is so true.

00:13:15.440 You know, I give the example of the flu.

00:13:18.780 Like, before COVID, if a very old and very frail person died of the flu, and I know somebody, a relative to whom this happened, people just attributed it to their age and their frailty.

00:13:32.120 Nobody went hunting for a killer.

00:13:34.640 Right.

00:13:34.820 You know, it's when somebody is just that frail, something's going to get them.

00:13:39.300 It's sad.

00:13:40.020 We mourn the death, but that's life.

00:13:43.420 That's biological life.

00:13:44.640 And yet, when COVID came along, it was, oh, you know, where did this, who transmitted it, and who transmitted it to the person who transmitted it to transmitted it?

00:13:53.200 It's just, that's not how life works on a planet that's shared by humans and microbes.

00:13:59.300 I mean, inadvertent transmission has happened since the dawn of time.

00:14:03.820 You know, of course, we don't go around deliberately infecting people.

00:14:06.700 Yeah, but this idea of assigning blame, and especially telling children, you know, don't go and kill grandma.

00:14:14.080 That's so destructive to a child, you know, to saddle them with that unnecessary and unwarranted burden of guilt.

00:14:24.880 So, I really objected to that.

00:14:26.840 So, before we get into your book, because that's why you're here talking to me, I wanted to ask you, did you have, you know, personal fallout for being a skeptic about how the pandemic was handled?

00:14:41.000 I think, for those of us who have, I think most of us, if you are an open-minded person and don't shun your friends, if they think differently about things that you hold different values on, I think a lot of us ran up against people that we disagreed with on COVID.

00:15:00.540 But it seems as though, for me, if you came from my side of the argument, if you disagreed with someone, you could just disagree with someone and life went on.

00:15:11.780 But from the other side, again, it's that sort of sense that you had a moral failing if you didn't follow the government narrative, and so now they couldn't talk to you.

00:15:21.720 Did you have some of that in your life?

00:15:23.900 Well, I have to say I was pretty fortunate, as I just told you.

00:15:26.920 I mean, people attacked me online like crazy, but as far as losing personal friendships or relations with relatives or even colleagues, that has not happened so far.

00:15:37.380 And I've even had some colleagues buy my book, colleagues who didn't agree with my position, and I'm not sure why.

00:15:44.620 You know, I guess I tried not to be too combative in my discussions, but I did.

00:15:51.060 After the first six weeks, the first six weeks, I was scared to talk to anyone, and I only talked to people online.

00:15:56.520 And after that, I made the decision, you know, I'm old enough that I should be able to say what I think, and whatever happens, happens.

00:16:04.240 And so I did start to talk to people, and I did have some disagreement, but I haven't lost a single friend or colleague so far.

00:16:10.660 So, and I know I've heard lots of stories of people who have.

00:16:14.220 I mean, the worst that happened is, I remember one, I was at a family gathering in New York last year, and when I was talking about my views to a cousin, he said, but surely you didn't support the convoy, did you?

00:16:27.640 And I said, well, as a matter of fact, I did.

00:16:30.140 And he just looked at me, just kind of baffled, as though, you know, this was just something that had never entered his field of vision before.

00:16:39.300 He was very, very far left, and I think he had just never, he didn't expect that response and didn't know what to do with it.

00:16:45.640 So he just kind of changed the subject.

00:16:47.740 I thought it was, it was funny, because, yeah, he could accept that I'm against some of the lockdowns, but you actually supported the convoy?

00:16:53.460 Like, that's funny.

00:16:56.820 I see some of those people who were very pro-lockdown, pro-coercion coming around to my way of thinking, and I'm trying to exercise some grace and stick my I told you so's in a sack, because these are baby critical thinkers, and I don't want to scare them back to the other side.

00:17:15.740 But I'm glad that you have a, you're obviously a good judge of character to the people that you keep close to you, because you didn't have a lot of people shunning you or any people shunning you for your worldview.

00:17:26.020 No, I want, go ahead.

00:17:27.600 No, no, no, no, please.

00:17:29.140 No, I just wanted to say, perhaps, I don't know, perhaps it's because I did get vaccinated.

00:17:34.480 I mean, that wasn't my hill to die on.

00:17:36.560 I came to be very much against the mandates, and certainly against the degree of coercion.

00:17:40.720 And I never, ever, ever asked anyone else their vax status or never made socializing contingent on it, nothing like that.

00:17:47.260 But I did get vaccinated.

00:17:48.440 I imagine that if I had not gotten vaccinated, then I might have faced more of that opprobrium.

00:17:55.620 And you had told me that before we were recording, but I just didn't think that was actually all that relevant to our conversation.

00:18:04.620 One of my, my heels to die on during all of the pandemic was, it's, I care about medical privacy.

00:18:11.680 I don't want to know, I don't think your bartender should know, or your flight attendant should know what your vaccination status is for the flu or for COVID.

00:18:21.920 So I just, I didn't even want to bring that up, but I think that's a really important point to make that you just made, is that we're not necessarily against the vaccine.

00:18:32.760 Although I think this one was not as advertised, and a lot of people are figuring that out.

00:18:39.060 But you seem to be, as you said to me, against the mandates and against the coercion of it all.

00:18:44.700 And, and for me too, it was also the government handing the coercion over to the private sector, and then saying, see, it's not us.

00:18:53.440 It's actually the bar that wants to stay open to the guy who owns the place doesn't lose his shirt.

00:18:58.460 That's the guy vax carding you.

00:19:00.120 It's not us.

00:19:02.100 Yeah, no, for sure.

00:19:03.080 And I have to say, and again, my views evolved as well.

00:19:05.760 Like when, when the vaccine rollout started, I wasn't that opposed to the mandates at that point, because I thought, well, it's not that different from school mandates.

00:19:15.200 And I, you know, I, all my, my, my kids got vaccinated, and I never really gave it too much thought.

00:19:22.480 I thought it was the right thing to do at the time.

00:19:24.200 So I thought this is not that much different.

00:19:25.820 But then as time went on, and as I talked to bioethicists for the book, I began to realize that, no, this was not just a, like the childhood vaccine mandates, this was much different.

00:19:38.300 The degree of coercion was, you know, off the charts way more.

00:19:44.100 If a parent did not want their child to get vaccinated, there was always a way out without sacrificing their career, you know, or their prospect.

00:19:52.720 This, this was very different.

00:19:55.480 And so I really, you know, my views certainly shifted toward vehemently opposing the mandates and the way they were handled.

00:20:05.860 Yeah.

00:20:06.080 And I'm like you, I try not to walk down the conspiracy road, but boy, it's hard these days.

00:20:12.120 And it felt as though they wanted to eliminate the control group with these mandates, right?

00:20:16.740 You got to get everybody vaccinated.

00:20:18.320 So there's nothing to compare against at the end of the day.

00:20:21.600 And I think for, that was one of the reasons why the mandates were so harsh that you couldn't watch your kid play hockey, couldn't get on a plane.

00:20:30.620 I mean, this is Canada, one of the biggest, least populated countries on the face of the earth.

00:20:36.720 Hopefully someone will edit my alarm going on in the video.

00:20:43.460 But this is Canada.

00:20:44.540 We're one of the least populated places on the face of the earth.

00:20:48.660 And we were not just confined to our location, but oftentimes confined to our homes.

00:20:55.700 We couldn't mix how, like we couldn't mix households. 0.68

00:20:58.800 And I think that was to make sure that should something go wrong, that there was nothing to compare it against.

00:21:06.600 And I know that sounds like a conspiracy theory.

00:21:09.680 But I'm there on that one.

00:21:11.880 Yeah.

00:21:12.180 Well, whatever.

00:21:12.800 That was certainly the result.

00:21:14.160 You know, whether that was the explicit intent, that was certainly the result.

00:21:18.120 And I do remember, you know, coming back to the vaccines, after I got vaccinated and there was that period of the vax passports to go in the restaurant, I always felt really uncomfortable.

00:21:30.340 Yeah.

00:21:30.480 Really uncomfortable showing my papers, so to speak.

00:21:35.340 You know, and that's what really made me realize, okay, this doesn't feel right.

00:21:39.080 And I started to think and look deeper into the whole thing.

00:21:41.760 There were a lot of people who were very uncomfortable with being included in the biomedical elite of society.

00:21:50.040 Yeah.

00:21:50.360 Yeah, that's exactly it.

00:21:51.500 I didn't want to be part of this elite.

00:21:54.120 Yeah.

00:21:55.460 Now, let's talk about the book.

00:21:57.700 Your book, Reflections on COVID Policies from Dissident Scientists, Philosophers, Artists, and More.

00:22:05.940 Well, here, I'll hold it up.

00:22:07.300 Thank you, please.

00:22:08.420 Thank you, please.

00:22:09.360 So, Blindsight is 2020.

00:22:11.980 What inspired the book?

00:22:16.040 I think it was an entirely organic process because my feelings, you know, I had so much passion for the topic.

00:22:24.380 Yeah.

00:22:24.520 And from the start, I started collecting links and quotes and listened to interviews.

00:22:30.040 I didn't know where this was all going, but there was such a need to understand and to somehow express and put my little drop of water into the conversation

00:22:39.300 that I started doing all this research without knowing where it was going.

00:22:43.140 And then in August 2020, I took a trip to Sweden when there was that window of opportunity for travel, just to get away from the madness that was Canada.

00:22:54.800 And to experience some semblance of normalcy amid all this.

00:22:59.620 And when I came back, I wrote an essay about my experience in Sweden and that got published and that led to a bunch more essays.

00:23:07.900 And then I realized that I really enjoyed doing this, writing these social philosophical essays about COVID.

00:23:15.900 And I started writing for the Brownstone Institute, among other news outlets, some mainstream, some more niche.

00:23:24.660 And then I pitched this idea for a book to them and they went for it.

00:23:29.780 They were, you know, happy with my writing.

00:23:31.440 They said I was a popular writer on the site and then it became a reality.

00:23:36.160 So I'd say the whole thing was sort of organic and not really premeditated.

00:23:40.980 So it was the best kind of scenario in a way.

00:23:43.080 It's when you have a strong passion for something and, you know, you find a way to get it out.

00:23:47.600 Yeah, I love the title of your book because now looking back, we can really see that those early objectors were right.

00:23:55.240 The data is continuing to roll out with Sweden.

00:23:59.060 We also know where I am in Alberta.

00:24:01.700 We have a little town called La Crete.

00:24:03.780 And I don't know if you know about it, but it's at the top of the province.

00:24:07.120 It's like eight hours from the capital city.

00:24:09.520 It never locked down.

00:24:11.980 And I think it's distance from the capital, the fact that it's, you know, it's at the end of the road, at the top of the province.

00:24:19.120 It's a religious, largely Mennonite community, although most, a lot of the people there are not Mennonite.

00:24:25.900 But it's a town of like 3,000 people.

00:24:28.980 It refused to lock down.

00:24:31.420 It just said, you know what, we're not limiting our churches.

00:24:34.040 We're not limiting our businesses.

00:24:36.220 If the businesses so choose to do it, fine, but good luck to you in a small town like that.

00:24:40.820 In fact, the county itself, McKenzie County, it's larger than a lot of European countries.

00:24:49.080 I think it's larger than Belgium.

00:24:50.660 It's oil and gas rich and forestry rich.

00:24:53.040 And the town council there said, large companies, you don't get to come and work inside of our county if you have a VAX mandate for your employees.

00:25:03.580 And they became the control group for the rest of the, I think, for the country.

00:25:10.100 Because when now you look at what their vaccination rate was without coercion, because they removed coercion from the equation, it's only about 30%.

00:25:20.980 So places like that, places like Sweden, they really show you what the uptake on vaccination for COVID would have been without government coercion.

00:25:33.760 Yeah.

00:25:34.660 Although I believe Sweden actually does have a high VAX rate.

00:25:38.520 But they did very well, ultimately, without any lockdowns.

00:25:44.520 Yeah.

00:25:44.700 You know, and very, very few restrictions.

00:25:46.520 I mean, now they have one of the lowest excess death rates in all of Europe.

00:25:50.040 You know, and I always said that it would take years, not months, for us to really be able to evaluate the impact of all these policies.

00:25:59.100 And I think that's how it's probably going to still take a few more years until we really, really have the answers.

00:26:06.080 But we're getting closer to them now.

00:26:07.920 I think we are.

00:26:08.800 And I think also the societal fallout of our institutions, I think that's going to take time to manifest.

00:26:17.060 You know, like we've chased all the good, we, I mean, the government, the royal we.

00:26:22.200 They've chased all the people who should be in positions of leadership in their institutions, in medicine, in academia, in the judicial system, in policing, in the military.

00:26:34.680 All the critical thinkers, the conscientious objectors, the people who are resilient to coercion, they've been chased right out of the organization.

00:26:46.480 When they should be, they should be promoted to positions of leadership.

00:26:50.160 And now we've just got a bunch of yes men left in these institutions.

00:26:53.440 And I fear for the future.

00:26:55.300 Well, that's exactly it.

00:26:56.440 I mean, how to manufacture consensus?

00:26:58.220 Well, you suppress dissent.

00:26:59.680 Easy peasy, right?

00:27:00.740 You got consensus.

00:27:01.880 Remove everyone who disagrees.

00:27:03.860 But I found it interesting that you were referring just now to this town in northern Alberta, you know, where there was some religious practice.

00:27:12.040 And it reminds me of, I saw a video about the Amish as well.

00:27:15.260 Same thing.

00:27:15.800 They just said, we're not doing any of this.

00:27:18.700 And they fared at least as well with COVID as anyone else.

00:27:24.000 And I found that whole religious aspect interesting because, I mean, I'm not religious myself.

00:27:28.680 But during COVID, I really came to have an appreciation for the religious worldview and perspective and rejection of this biomedical model of life.

00:27:42.780 You know, and the Orthodox Jewish community was another.

00:27:46.980 I have, you know, a mostly Jewish background.

00:27:49.120 And when I read about the Orthodox Jews in New York and in Israel who just refused to comply, I felt an understanding or kinship with them that I'd never felt before.

00:28:02.760 Because I really, they were just rejecting that whole model of life that the mainstream was imposing on everyone.

00:28:10.840 And this model that says you can completely disregard everything that makes life worth meaning, that gives, you know, community.

00:28:19.000 We can just disregard all that in this futile quest to, you know, try to keep people metabolically alive.

00:28:25.820 That's what I call it.

00:28:27.080 You know, that was the only thing that matters.

00:28:28.740 And our reasons for being here don't matter at all.

00:28:34.780 Community, connection, doesn't matter at all.

00:28:37.220 And I think that's what some of us just recoiled against instinctively.

00:28:41.320 It was just this very two-dimensional view of life, you know, and the whole purpose of it all just never entered the discourse.

00:28:49.500 Just stay home, save lives, stay home, save lives.

00:28:51.840 There was something very alienating and off and off-putting about it.

00:28:55.040 Yeah, we saw that with a lot of the Christian pastors featured in our documentary that's being released on July 5th.

00:29:03.460 It's called Church Under Fire, Canada's War on Christianity.

00:29:06.580 And we spoke to members of the Christian community who objected to the lockdowns or at least the restrictions on places of worship and the consequences that they faced because of that.

00:29:19.860 I mean, we had pastors facing, you know, weeks in jail, Pastor James Coates here in Edmonton, Phil Hutchins in New Brunswick.

00:29:29.420 I mean, it was just an insane time to see these China-style lockdowns on pastors. 0.56

00:29:37.700 And many of them weren't even COVID skeptics.

00:29:40.800 They just said, we are going to gather.

00:29:42.880 That's all they said, and that's what had them end up in jail.

00:29:47.940 Getting back to your book, because I could talk to you forever about what you think about the lockdowns and all those things, but I know that your time is precious.

00:29:55.560 Tell us about some of the people featured in your book.

00:29:59.480 Okay.

00:29:59.980 Well, let's start with religion.

00:30:01.580 I featured Father Raymond D'Souza, who was also a columnist for the National Post.

00:30:06.820 You know, and he was one of the people who just really made me understand, you know, that for some people, religious communion is, you know, is like food and water.

00:30:15.720 It's like an IV drink.

00:30:17.040 And you can't just arbitrarily declare that this is non-essential and then declare that, you know, walking through the aisles of Walmart is essential.

00:30:26.180 That was completely arbitrary.

00:30:28.500 And, again, the people that I featured in my book, I deliberately went beyond scientists and doctors, because scientists, epidemiologists, virologists, public health people, they can tell us about what they know about containing a virus.

00:30:44.240 They cannot tell us, and they have no extra authority on what it means to be human, how to balance different priorities, you know, how to do cost-benefit in one way or another.

00:30:56.300 They have no authority on that.

00:30:57.600 And this is what was missing.

00:30:59.620 It was just listen to the scientists, follow the scientists.

00:31:02.860 Well, no.

00:31:03.780 The scientists are just one group of experts at a table, and we should have had all these other experts right from the start.

00:31:10.500 And so I feature a comedian, Bill Maher, who had a very sane perspective on COVID from the start.

00:31:18.860 I feature many writers, novelists, philosophers, deep thinkers, who, like one of them being Giorgio Agamben, Italian philosopher, who, again, you know, I really could connect with his visceral objection to all this.

00:31:35.180 He talked about this emphasis on bare life and what I call metabolic life at the expense of living.

00:31:42.220 This idea of cancelling living to save lives, not to mention that, you know, it didn't save lives the way people promised.

00:31:52.180 But even so, it was just this two-dimensional vision, and he talks about that.

00:31:56.540 And he emerged early in the pandemic as a voice against all this.

00:32:02.360 And he also talked about the permanent state of exception, how we are living in a society that is just looking for emergencies everywhere.

00:32:11.400 And after one emergency has ended, we move on to the next, and we move on to the next.

00:32:15.700 And, you know, he talked about how unhealthy it is for a society to be living in this permanent emergency mode where we cannot allow any semblance of normalcy.

00:32:28.020 So, and then I featured novelists.

00:32:31.320 One of them is Lionel Shriver of We Need to Talk About Kevin fame.

00:32:37.700 She's a great, you know, very wry, crotchety American writer who's been living in England for many years.

00:32:46.660 And I put her in a chapter on freedom because, again, she was just appalled that her compatriots just accepted this assault on freedom.

00:32:56.220 And she and another writer that I feature in the freedom chapter, Matthew Crawford, just talk about the value of freedom and how people, you know, just dismissed that.

00:33:11.660 You know, freedom really is as important as life itself.

00:33:13.860 And it was very disconcerting to me to see freedom reduced to this caricature.

00:33:19.620 You know, free dumbs, or you want your free dumbs to go to Arby's and get a sandwich or something.

00:33:25.840 No, that's not what it was about.

00:33:27.600 Yeah.

00:33:28.560 It was about the freedom to do whatever I want without the government asking me my medical status.

00:33:36.020 I want to ask you, before I let you go, because you've been very generous with your time, I want to ask you about the censorship of the COVID skeptics and how it was constantly morphing.

00:33:51.580 You could have your entire existence online cancelled early on in the pandemic if you said something like,

00:33:57.780 well, I'm not sure if these vaccines are as effective as they keep telling me they are, because I got it and then I got sick and they told me that I wouldn't.

00:34:05.900 You couldn't even talk about your own personal experience.

00:34:09.260 Right.

00:34:10.060 Yes.

00:34:10.340 Even online or on YouTube without your Twitter account being just locked down, your YouTube channel being taken away.

00:34:18.240 It became my full-time job to make sure we didn't lose access to our 1.6 million YouTube subscribers every day just by saying things we knew to be true because of the just intense censorship of people who are now proven right.

00:34:38.120 And those same social media companies, they changed their policies quietly.

00:34:42.580 And now you can talk about vaccine injuries and you can talk about skepticism about lockdowns, but they never actually go back and retroactively fix the censorship that they did as though you could fix censorship.

00:34:56.060 But they never even give you your account back.

00:34:58.260 They just say, well, we got it wrong, but that's not our problem.

00:35:01.720 And they just move on from it.

00:35:03.920 Yeah, no, it was it was terrible.

00:35:05.340 And in addition to that, I think what I've experienced also with this book, and it's a disappointment, is just the left wing media's lack of interest.

00:35:16.320 I mean, my objective in writing the book was to speak not only to people on our side, but to people on the other side.

00:35:23.800 And I really, really tailored the book with that in mind, the kind of book that you could give to your, you know, left leaning friend who's locked in a certain narrative just to sort of make them think, ah, okay, this is why some people objected to this.

00:35:38.940 Okay, something to think about.

00:35:40.400 And, but I've found that it is, I mean, my publisher has been great in promoting the book, and I've supplemented my publisher's efforts, but I found that it's been so much easier to attract interest from so called right wing media, than from left wing media.

00:35:57.620 And, you know, that's another form of censorship or ignoring, and so then people don't get the full picture.

00:36:03.580 I mean, I'm still working on it, you know, and I've had, you know, a few little bites here and there, but it's, I find that that's a very big shame, in that, again, you know, we aren't, we don't get to influence or to really participate in the discourse, to the extent that we should.

00:36:20.380 And, and then the debate still gets framed in a certain way.

00:36:26.760 On the flip side of that, I somewhat understand the psychology of people who don't want to pick up your book and read it, because your book, if you pick up the book and read it, if you're on the other side of this, and you just spent three years acting like an absolute tyrant, like just discriminating against people because of their medical choices, and you pick up this book.

00:36:48.700 And again, I use this, the phrase, the scales fall away from your eyes, you don't want to admit to yourself, like you have to admit to yourself, that you were wrong, really wrong.

00:36:59.500 And you were not the person you thought you were, when you are mugged by the reality of something like your book.

00:37:06.900 Yeah, I suppose that's part of it.

00:37:08.260 Although I have to say, where I have had success is individuals that I know, that were on board with that, and who know me, and you know, I told them my book was published, they bought it, they read it.

00:37:19.220 That's been successful.

00:37:20.880 So I think that, you know, once people get their hands on it, you know, it's really not a combative book.

00:37:26.460 And sure, it's more of an exploratory book, you know, here, look at the menu, you know, see why we felt the way we did.

00:37:33.600 And I also get deep into some personal experiences, you know, how the lockdowns drove me to try LSD and see a Zoom therapist and all this stuff.

00:37:43.420 I have a history as a memoirist too, so I weave all that in.

00:37:45.980 And so I think, again, you know, once people get it into their hands, it has not, it has made people think it hasn't offended people.

00:37:54.000 It's just, you know, the barrier really is to get the left wing media to, you know, to sort of spread the word.

00:38:03.100 And I think that's what all of us face who write so-called counter-narrative books, you know.

00:38:09.800 So I know my publisher, Jeffrey Tucker from Brownstone said, this is the sort of book that people on our side should just give their friends on the left wing.

00:38:17.720 Here, try this.

00:38:18.660 So I really hope that, you know, that this happens a little bit.

00:38:22.400 Yeah, you don't seem like a combative lady. 1.00

00:38:25.020 And I'm sort of shocked that you tried LSD.

00:38:28.900 The craziest thing I did was I finally got around to starting Game of Thrones.

00:38:36.440 Gabrielle, I want to give you the opportunity to tell people how they can get their hands on your book.

00:38:43.020 Okay, well, it's available at all the Amazon outlets,

00:38:46.060 either as a print book, an e-reader, and recently as an audio book as well.

00:38:52.360 And I'm not the narrator.

00:38:54.440 Publisher chose the narrator.

00:38:56.200 For Amazon haters, it's available on Lulu.

00:38:59.340 I mean, it's published by an American publisher, so you won't find it in many bookstores here.

00:39:04.320 Spanish speakers, it has also been picked up by a Spanish publisher.

00:39:09.860 So they can pick it up at Mandala Ediciones.

00:39:14.140 Oh, nice.

00:39:14.540 And I will include a link to your Brownstone page in the show notes and in the text accompanying this interview,

00:39:23.200 so that people can just click right through if they want to.

00:39:26.080 Yeah, and also, I mean, if possible, you could also include perhaps a link to the Amazon ordering.

00:39:31.800 Yeah, we'll do.

00:39:32.340 Amazon.ca.

00:39:33.420 That would be wonderful.

00:39:35.060 And, yeah, well, thanks very much.

00:39:37.400 Really enjoyed talking to you.

00:39:38.780 Well, friends, as always, we've come to the portion of the show where we invite your viewer feedback.

00:39:50.000 It's the reason I give out my email address right now.

00:39:53.140 It's Sheila at rebelnews.com.

00:39:55.060 If you have opinions about the work that I do here at Rebel News, particularly on the show,

00:40:00.940 send it to me at that email address.

00:40:03.160 Put gun show letters in the subject line so I know why you're writing me.

00:40:07.400 But also don't hesitate to leave a comment on one of the platforms where you might find the free version of the show,

00:40:14.700 YouTube Rumble, because sometimes I go looking for comments over there, and that's exactly what I did today.

00:40:21.440 So today's comments come to us from YouTube, and they are on last week's show with my friend and filmmaking partner,

00:40:30.060 chief documentary filmmaker here at Rebel News, Kian Simone.

00:40:32.880 We were discussing the completion and the world tour launch of our new documentary called Church Under Fire,

00:40:40.600 Canada's War on Christianity, for details and showtimes near you.

00:40:45.220 And we have showtimes all across the country right now.

00:40:48.220 Go to savethechristians.com, and you can just click through, find a city near you, click through, get your tickets,

00:40:55.360 but also act fast because we already have locations that are beginning to sell out.

00:41:01.620 And I know that we had people asking for a show in eastern Canada.

00:41:06.820 We do have one in New Brunswick where one of the pastors in our documentary, Pastor Phil Hutchins, is located.

00:41:13.800 So we're bringing the documentary to his church.

00:41:16.600 So if you want to meet the man at the church that stood up to the government and he spent seven days in jail,

00:41:23.180 just go to savethechristians.com, find that showing, click through, buy your tickets.

00:41:28.900 But again, act fast because showtimes are selling out.

00:41:32.880 So anyway, we've got some comments from the YouTube, as they say, on this very topic.

00:41:41.080 This letter comes from Redacted2275, who writes,

00:41:45.940 I wish you all success.

00:41:47.100 This was a topic that I've seen only Rebel News covering with seriousness,

00:41:51.880 and that it would have been forgotten if it wasn't for the channel.

00:41:54.680 Trudeau being Castro's admirer is not a joke anymore.

00:41:57.660 You know, there were other outlets that did cover this,

00:42:01.120 but we really saw these stories through to the very end.

00:42:04.780 And we did build a lot of trust with the congregations.

00:42:08.180 We were very respectful and careful of the congregations who were also very, very different.

00:42:15.300 But they knew that we would accurately present what they did and why they were doing what they were doing.

00:42:22.520 We've got another comment here from J.B.N.F.2.R.P.

00:42:31.780 I'm going to assume that's not your real name, who writes to us,

00:42:34.520 Jesus is Lord, not the state.

00:42:36.220 Thank you, Rebel News, for your courage in making this documentary.

00:42:39.040 Thank you to all the pastors and Christians in Canada who took a stand

00:42:42.380 while under pressure from the state to capitulate to unjust measures.

00:42:45.820 Thank you to the truckers who broke the grip of the state on the people.

00:42:50.260 And thank you, Lord, for emboldening your people in Canada.

00:42:54.420 Those are great letters.

00:42:55.260 I don't have anything to add to that.

00:42:57.640 I want to thank everybody so much for tuning in

00:43:01.060 and everybody who works behind the scenes in Toronto,

00:43:04.040 but also all across the country to bring you my show

00:43:07.740 whenever you want to watch it or listen to it.

00:43:11.080 They work very, very hard and they are very skilled broadcast professionals.

00:43:16.320 And as always, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:43:41.080 Thank you.

00:43:49.220 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - June 28, 2023

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Gabrielle Bauer on lessons learned from the pandemic

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