Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ What impact will vaccine mandates have on the ethical and moral compasses of society going forward？

00:00:00.000 What impact will vaccine mandates have on the ethical and moral compasses

00:00:04.400 of society going forward? I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:00:09.020 My name is Julie Panessi and this message is about mandatory vaccinations.

00:00:32.200 I am a professor of ethics at Huron College at the University of Western Ontario.

00:00:39.020 It's one of the largest universities in Canada.

00:00:43.800 Today I'm going to teach you a short lesson on the universally accepted ethics of coercing

00:00:49.780 people into medical procedures. I'll be the example.

00:00:56.120 My employer has just mandated that I must get a vaccine for COVID-19.

00:01:01.440 If I want to keep working at my job as a professor, I have to take this vaccine.

00:01:07.620 Here's my conundrum. My school employs me to be an authority on the subject of ethics.

00:01:14.680 I hold a PhD in ethics and ancient philosophy.

00:01:19.380 And I'm here to tell you it's ethically wrong to coerce someone to take a vaccine.

00:01:25.920 If it happens to you, you don't have to do it. If you don't want a COVID vaccine, don't

00:01:32.020 take one. End of discussion. It's your own business.

00:01:37.680 But that is not the approach of the University of Western Ontario, which has suddenly required

00:01:43.860 that I be vaccinated immediately or not report for work.

00:01:49.480 So with the school year beginning in a few days, I am facing imminent dismissal after 20 years on the job.

00:01:58.200 Because I will not submit to having an experimental vaccine injected into my body.

00:02:03.540 That's a clip of Dr.

00:02:05.260 Julie Panessi's video to her students. She recorded it right after she saw her career of more than 20

00:02:10.760 years just disintegrate after she refused to comply with her university's COVID vaccine mandate.

00:02:16.920 However, unlike most of us, bioethics is something that Dr.

00:02:21.260 Julie had already given a lot of thought to. She's a master's in philosophy with a collaborative

00:02:26.620 specialization in bioethics from the University of Toronto and a diploma in ethics from the

00:02:31.660 Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. She's a bit of an expert here.

00:02:36.220 She stood on her conscience and careful consideration, and she would not allow herself to be coerced.

00:02:41.580 However, she paid a high price for that moral stand. Now she finds herself as the pandemic ethics

00:02:47.180 scholar at the registered Canadian charity, the Democracy Fund, wherein she educates the public

00:02:52.140 on civil liberties. And she has discussions on lockdowns that the lockdown enforcers and vaccine

00:02:58.780 mandators don't want us to have with each other. And she joins me tonight in an interview we recorded

00:03:03.660 before the Christmas break, wherein we discuss how she found herself at the center of a bioethics

00:03:09.660 controversy and why she wrote her brand new bestseller, My Choice, the ethical case against

00:03:16.220 COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Take a listen.

00:03:26.860 Joining me now from her home is Dr. Julie Panessi. Dr. Julie, for those of you who don't know

00:03:33.020 about you, and I don't at this point know how you couldn't, but why don't you tell us a little

00:03:37.020 bit about yourself professionally and, and I guess sort of how you found yourself in the position you are

00:03:42.940 today. That's a very good question. I know, big question.

00:03:47.100 Nobody ever asked me that particular question. Professionally, so I've been in academia for,

00:03:54.300 for quite a long time. I have a PhD in ethics and ancient philosophy, and I've taught at universities

00:03:59.660 in Canada and the US for a long time. And then the vaccine mandate came on the horizon at Western in

00:04:05.900 August, I guess it was, and I chose not to comply with it and was pretty quickly, efficiently terminated

00:04:15.020 with cause. And life's just been kind of a roller coaster since then. And the irony to that, that still

00:04:21.420 sort of haunts me and impresses itself upon me every day is that I was fired quickly, expediently,

00:04:30.940 seemingly unreflectively for doing exactly the kind of thing that as a person trained in ethics is

00:04:36.940 supposed to do. You know, you're supposed to evaluate evidence, especially when we're talking

00:04:42.220 about harms, you know, great, not just physical harms, but the kinds of, you know, moral injury that

00:04:48.460 we can do to other people. And at the very least, I mean, even if we don't have answers to how to resolve

00:04:56.780 those problems, trying to identify where the harms are happening and asking questions about them and

00:05:02.940 opening up debate so that we're really sure that we're on the right path here and that we don't do

00:05:08.380 more harm than we might otherwise do. You know, and so I work at that every day. And honestly,

00:05:15.740 most days I probably fail, maybe every day I fail, but I've got to think that there's some value in the

00:05:21.420 trying and hopefully that in the end we will, you know, help people and that truth will come to

00:05:27.420 light. And, um, so it keeps you going every day. Yeah. I think that's the nature of being human is

00:05:35.420 that we're just really not good at it. And, uh, the, the point is we're supposed to keep trying. Um,

00:05:43.900 now I wanted to ask a question because I don't think I've ever heard this answer from you, or maybe it

00:05:49.100 hasn't been posed to you. What did you think at the beginning of COVID? Did you, what did you think

00:05:56.140 about this emerging disease? Did you have any sort of inclination that this would be a massive civil

00:06:01.420 liberties violation? What, what were your first thoughts on COVID as the pandemic sort of

00:06:09.180 flowed into North America? Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a good question. I, um, interestingly,

00:06:15.740 in my own personal case, I was about eight months pregnant when I first heard of it. And so it was,

00:06:21.740 you know, distracted by other things and, um, uh, you know, limitations were being imposed in the

00:06:27.420 hospital and there were worries about what delivery was going to look like. So, you know, it was quite

00:06:32.140 focused on those things, uh, in terms of civil liberties. Nope. As someone born in the seventies in

00:06:38.300 Canada, I honestly, perhaps naively never thought we would have a civil liberties crisis again.

00:06:46.060 I thought we've learned from history. I thought we were morally mature as a group of people. Not

00:06:53.980 that we wouldn't make missteps, but I would never have imagined if someone asked me if what we're

00:07:00.060 going through now was possible, I would have very confidently denied it. Just goes to show how smart I am.

00:07:08.300 Well, you know, you don't want to think of your government as this benign creature, but, uh, I

00:07:17.660 mean, it, it, it's, um, you know, or rather you don't want to think of your government as this malignant

00:07:23.900 creature. And it's more just sort of this benign thing that does its thing over there. It doesn't

00:07:27.900 really bother you, um, until such time as a lot of people ignore it until they end up mugged by

00:07:35.020 reality. Um, which takes me to my next question. What was the one thing that really changed the

00:07:42.780 pandemic for you that sort of opened your eyes? Was it when you were being laid off or was it

00:07:48.060 sometime sooner? And what was it much sooner? I mean, back in March of this year, I started working

00:07:53.180 with the Canadian COVID care Alliance because I knew something was off and I knew they were a group of

00:07:57.580 scientists and physicians and other professionals who are trying to provide a more balanced, you know,

00:08:02.540 approach to, to this narrative that has just picked up steam, like a, like a locomotive, you know? Um,

00:08:09.100 I think the thing that first kind of got my radar twinging a little bit is when you, um, I mean,

00:08:15.420 I've done some work in, in medical ethics and sat on research ethics boards and things like that.

00:08:19.500 And one of the things that you notice, if you notice nothing else is just how painfully slow

00:08:24.220 everything moves because there's an extreme amount of caution. And, and as you might know, um, you know,

00:08:30.220 medical education has operated on this evidence-based, uh, model, uh, for a long time, decades now.

00:08:37.660 And so, um, there's been an extreme amount of attention paid to how things play out in the

00:08:43.820 clinical setting and then, um, um, you know, a feedback loop to policy. So here's an idea,

00:08:50.060 let's implement this policy, but then let's also see how it works in the clinical setting. Let's see

00:08:54.780 what health outcomes look like. Let's see if there are other adverse, you know, effects from this

00:08:58.780 particular policy. Let's make sure we uptake that information and make sure the policies we make it

00:09:04.060 we're making actually, you know, fit that, that evidence that we're seeing. And I started to notice

00:09:09.340 that none of that was happening. Right. That from the beginning, um, you know, any questions that are

00:09:16.700 raised about how case numbers are arrived at, um, how the PCR test works, whether or not it's the best

00:09:24.540 assessment of, of, of, of viral load, um, whether or not there are other ways to, how can I say, uh,

00:09:32.220 you know, establish immunity, looking at natural immunity. Um, the fact that all of these things are

00:09:37.980 disregarded and we don't even need to talk about, uh, you know, vaccine adverse events, but the fact that

00:09:44.220 none of these things are part of a conversation to ensure that we've identified all of the benefits and

00:09:51.820 risks on both sides of the issue, that was just a red flag right away. And of course, looking into

00:09:58.860 things more, it's become clear that we have no openness. We have no debate in my view, within

00:10:05.180 science, within politics, within journalism, and we are very egregiously and very negligently, uh,

00:10:12.460 ruining people's lives irreversibly. You know, that's a really great point because not only are

00:10:19.500 the people who are supposed to be asking these sorts of questions, are they not asking the

00:10:24.780 questions, but if somebody else tries to ask the questions, you are completely shut up. And it's not

00:10:30.940 just, you know, medical associations enforcing this sort of hard sense. It's used to be soft.

00:10:38.700 It used to be soft censorship. Now it's hard censorship when you can lose your job as a doctor. If you simply

00:10:44.540 say, you know what, let's just pump the brakes and ask this question. If you're a journalist,

00:10:48.540 you are censored, you're othered, uh, big tech is enforcing the censorship. We see, uh,

00:10:54.540 the government now pressuring the big tech people who aren't doing the censorship to continue to

00:11:01.420 censor it. Uh, I guess for me, and I'll ask you to look in your crystal ball, but I think you've got

00:11:07.020 a bit of a crystal mind on this issue too. Um, what do you think this means for the state of society?

00:11:13.180 When we aren't allowed to ask these questions, what does it mean for medical advancement? What

00:11:18.380 does it mean for the enlightenment of people? What happens to society when all the questions

00:11:25.580 aren't allowed to be asked?

00:11:26.780 I think with that quest, that one question you're asking, you know, what does it mean for society

00:11:31.260 to me is both, uh, retrospective and prospective because there's a question there about, you know,

00:11:37.020 what does it mean in terms of where we've come from and how we got here? And I think the situation

00:11:43.020 we're in is showing us that we've been on this track for a long time, decades, probably. Um, I think

00:11:50.140 post-modernism and academia is part of the problem. I think this cancel culture, which in ethical

00:11:56.700 literature we call like a culture of silence, right? So anytime you're privileging silence over, um,

00:12:02.860 asking questions and dissenting and trying to get to the truth and things like that, right? And that I

00:12:07.740 think is fueled by, um, social media and it's fueled by, uh, media now. But then the other part of

00:12:14.940 your question is, well, well, where are we going? How do we work our way out of this? And I think we

00:12:21.020 can't do that until we understand how we got here. And until we fix, nevermind COVID like COVID is,

00:12:28.620 if it wasn't COVID, it was going to be something else that is eroding our liberties right now.

00:12:34.540 So we need to understand what we, each one of us, we don't get to blame Trudeau every day.

00:12:40.060 We don't get to blame Ford every day. We don't get to blame the star every day,

00:12:43.820 though they are leading the moral harms in my view that, that we're going through now.

00:12:48.780 We have to blame ourselves every single day for having gotten ourselves into this position.

00:12:54.060 Some of us have done better than others. Some of us have been more negligent in our ignorance than

00:12:58.860 others, but every single Canadian who, you know, if you're getting, and Sheila, can I say this to your

00:13:05.180 viewers? If you're getting ready to enjoy a lovely Christmas where you're excluding your family because

00:13:09.900 of a personal medical choice you've made, you are fueling the fire of this horrible situation that

00:13:15.980 we are in. And until we bring that to light, until we can talk about that on shows like yours, in the

00:13:22.220 media, with our friends, with people in the coffee line, our democracy is sick and it's never going to

00:13:29.020 recover. You know, that's a great point. There are a lot of people who think that they would be

00:13:36.540 the conscientious objectors until such time as they're given the opportunity to be a conscientious

00:13:42.300 objector. And then they choose the path of least resistance. And we see this all the time with the

00:13:47.500 vaccine passport system where people say, well, you know, I want to go out for supper. So I'm going to

00:13:54.860 show my vaccine passport. Well, you just validified the system. You validated the system of segregation 0.85

00:14:03.020 and you took an opportunity to exercise your medical privilege over other people. You didn't

00:14:10.220 earn it. You just got it. And now you're part of the system. Whether you, you see that, or whether

00:14:17.260 you want to admit that to yourself or not, you are propping up a system of segregation. What, I guess,

00:14:23.020 what is it going to take for people to realize that, you know, when, when you engage in the system,

00:14:28.300 you are part of the reason the system stays together. Yeah. You know, I think part of that

00:14:34.700 narrative structure that you're mentioning, because I hear this a lot lately is this idea that if I just

00:14:40.780 give a little, I'll get back all. Yeah. And I've heard this a lot in particular contexts,

00:14:46.200 most specifically talking with someone who runs an exercise facility lately. And they said,

00:14:50.480 we hate imposing these passports, but if we just do it a little bit now, January will be better.

00:14:57.200 And I think we need, until we understand part of our problem, honestly, and I've been saying this over

00:15:03.120 and over again. And, you know, in the book, I just finished part of the, like the last couple of

00:15:07.720 chapters are about this. We, we are not good historians. We've forgotten, you know, the political

00:15:14.600 ideals of the past. We have forgotten how to read good literature. And by good literature,

00:15:19.480 I don't mean it has to be like highfalutin stuff that's, you know, it's not that. It's literature

00:15:25.840 that where there's a transparency and an honesty of ideas. And I think we, we forget that historically,

00:15:34.440 these tiny little creeps have led to the greatest harms and that complicity, right? So complicity is this

00:15:42.520 idea that you are partly responsible for some harm without being solely responsible. Complicity is

00:15:47.340 not morally neutral. You don't get a, get out of jail free card because you say, well, I only did a

00:15:51.980 little bit of harm or I only helped this, you know, I only helped the government to squash our liberties

00:15:56.380 a tiny little bit. So I'm not that bad. Right. It's so interesting to me, Sheila, that I've talked to a

00:16:01.320 few people who, you know, they have vaccine passports, but are unwilling to use them. I find that

00:16:07.840 so interesting and that's a, such a sign of maturity in, in citizenship to me because they've made the

00:16:15.200 medical choice that they feel is best for them. And I can't do anything other than respect that

00:16:19.200 fully. But they've made a political choice that they feel is best for everyone. And if you want

00:16:25.480 to talk about collectivism and being in it together, those are the people who are, you know, carrying that

00:16:31.700 flag, not the people who are bullying and pressuring people into making a choice that they do not

00:16:36.620 believe is right for themselves. I wanted to ask you, did you ever see, did you foresee the idea

00:16:49.220 of vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination for someone like you to do your job? You don't work

00:16:57.840 in medicine. I suppose there could be arguments made for people who work in medicine, not ethical ones,

00:17:02.980 but, but there are arguments to be made there. But for someone like you, did you ever even foresee

00:17:07.960 that this would be on the horizon? You know, it, the question is prompted by you just saying,

00:17:13.960 you know, this, the slow creep of civil liberties violations and to give a, give a little, to get a

00:17:21.640 lot back. You know, we've gone through 21 months of this, of giving in, giving in, giving in, and

00:17:28.300 people are still giving in, but did you ever foresee that this would come to your doorstep,

00:17:33.620 these vaccine passports? Yeah. Sorry, you just cut out there a little bit for me, but 0.80

00:17:39.680 no, I had no, I would not have guessed. This is all, this came out of the blue for me. There is a saying

00:17:49.440 that I quite like in the moral context and it's, you know, where there is risk, there ought to be

00:17:54.140 choice. And again, charitably, if you want to understand our situation is one according to which

00:18:01.440 we face this lethal, you know, and I'm going to qualify this and say, I think there are problems

00:18:06.440 at each step of this narrative. But if we want to say that we face a potentially lethal virus,

00:18:11.620 we have a potential treatment for it. But there are risks on both sides, then the idea of mandating

00:18:21.880 and quite possibly, I mean, I think we're being primed by our government and mainstream media

00:18:27.620 to, to enforce a national mandate. I have no doubt about that. Um, so people who feel that

00:18:33.960 we'll get worse off scot-free. I mean, I see on social media, people celebrating Christmas and New

00:18:39.040 Year's, like this pandemic situation is behind us. And, uh, if only the other 10% will get vaccinated,

00:18:45.240 will be, you know, will be free. Well, that's not going to happen, you know? Um, and I think we need

00:18:52.920 to, you know, again, we, we just, we, we need to look to history and see how this has unfolded in

00:19:00.820 the past. And the, it's so odd to me that, I mean, our case numbers are worse than they were before

00:19:08.260 all the vaccination started. Yeah. So if that doesn't, you don't have to, you don't have to

00:19:14.600 come down on the side against mandates in order to allow yourself to start asking some very

00:19:18.980 interesting and important questions about why that might be and whether or not it's reasonable

00:19:25.380 to be so vaccine adamant or mandate adamant in the face of that kind of information. And that to me

00:19:32.360 is a kind of, there's a kind of collective irrationality there that, that makes it very

00:19:38.020 hard, I think, for people on both sides of the debate to have, to have a discussion, right?

00:19:43.380 Because we're disagreeing about such fundamental aspects of it, you know, about, um, where

00:19:51.900 misinformation comes from, what it is, whether anything that, that departs from a certain

00:19:58.700 narrative is misinformation. I hope not, but that's certainly the default interpretation,

00:20:05.460 you know? I think there's some wide scale, I don't know what the right word is, maybe gaslighting

00:20:12.260 of the public at large. For example, you see all the time in the news media, um, my peers in the media,

00:20:21.140 I think they're guilty of this a lot. Um, when talking about vaccinations for kids, you're a

00:20:28.680 mom, I'm a mom, you know what it's like to take your kid off to the health unit to get their 1.00

00:20:32.520 vaccinations. I'm not averse to vaccinations, but all of a sudden we've got news media telling us

00:20:38.680 how to get your kid vaccinated as though we don't have a clue how to do it for the other vaccines

00:20:44.360 that we've been getting our kids. Like vaccination is this new and unusual thing. Um, and how we should

00:20:50.080 be talking to kids about vaccines. Well, we know how to talk to our kids about vaccines. We give them all

00:20:55.400 the other ones. It's just this one that we're apprehensive of. And you see sort of a rewriting

00:21:00.840 of the collective unconsciousness. And it's a new agey term that I'm, I sort of am loath to use, but

00:21:07.860 on the issue of vaccination itself, for example, I think our COVID vaccination rate right now is

00:21:16.700 somewhere around the current polio vaccination rate. And yet we don't push for 100% vaccination on

00:21:24.660 polio. It's just a thing that we get vaccinations for. And it's, it's sort of over there and we don't

00:21:30.180 worry about it, but there's this constant crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch on this one vaccine. And

00:21:36.720 people aren't even being reflective about how we treated vaccines in the past, or for that matter,

00:21:42.020 in the very recent history. It's very interesting. And one thing that I think we've done, uh, and I don't

00:21:49.360 know how obvious this is, but we've really taken this medical choice out of the context of the

00:21:56.920 clinical setting with your particular healthcare provider and made it a public event, you know?

00:22:04.140 So now when you go and, and you're given some kind of consent form, but it's not, uh, full and

00:22:09.520 sufficient in my view. And from what I understand people, I mean, I haven't done this, but you know,

00:22:13.920 people who go and, and, and, and sign one of these things, they will, it's not like there's any kind of,

00:22:18.280 there's not much time given to a discussion of benefits and risks and all of that. Right. So

00:22:22.660 I think one of the problem here is we've taken something that should be properly medicalized,

00:22:27.140 not to mention, you know, uh, up to the individual and supporting informed consent,

00:22:31.940 but there should be properly medicalized, taking it out of that context. And one of the things that's

00:22:36.340 really, you know, salient and important about that is that when, um, healthcare decisions are best

00:22:43.040 made in my view with someone who knows your medical history, the best. Right. Right. And that's going

00:22:50.060 to be your primary care, a person who has taken a good history and understands the risks that, um,

00:22:56.900 people in your family are, are exposed to, you know, if there's a risk of stroke in your family,

00:23:01.420 blood clotting in your family, that kind of thing. And so now we're not only removing that

00:23:06.560 kind of insulating effect, right. It's like a safeguard, right. It doesn't work perfectly all

00:23:12.720 the time, but it's an awful lot better than going to the Air Canada center and standing in line,

00:23:16.220 you know, or sending this child off to school. And well, who cares about informed consent,

00:23:20.800 as long as there's, you know, the vaccinators are wearing a superhero costume and giving your kid

00:23:24.820 a lollipop afterwards. So we, I think we've made it, um, not only non-medicalized,

00:23:31.480 but we've given it a kind of celebrity social media status. And now, I mean, you would never,

00:23:39.500 should I say never, you would not be inclined, I think, to take a photo of yourself getting

00:23:44.920 vaccinated in your doctor's office and then post it on Instagram. But now there are walls, right.

00:23:51.040 Where you can take your kind of like when people go to the Oscars, you can stand in front of this

00:23:55.120 wall and it says, I got vaxxed. I don't know what it is. Right. And there are stickers and there are,

00:23:59.640 um, at the Air Canada center that flashes the numbers of people up on the big screen of,

00:24:04.740 you know, it's become this act of celebrity and public. Um, it's become conspicuous.

00:24:12.940 Whereas medical care in the past has always been private and we don't even have to go down the

00:24:20.220 road further. I don't think to talk about whether that's good or bad, but it's important. Don't you

00:24:26.180 think for us to realize that there's been a fundamental shift in how healthcare is delivered

00:24:30.540 and where it's discussed in between whom? And now we feel that everybody has access to all of our

00:24:37.020 personal medical information and has rights to participate in that decision-making process.

00:24:42.860 Yeah. Uh, yeah. I, that has been one of the greatest casualties of the pandemic is just your

00:24:51.180 privacy. People ask you inappropriate questions. They divulge inappropriate information. It's been

00:24:58.840 very, very strange. Um, Julie, I wanted to ask you outside, uh, and this is a ridiculous question,

00:25:06.460 but I guess outside of losing the career that you worked for and your job, what has been for you the

00:25:12.560 hardest part of the pandemic? It's people back when my video came out in September, people wrote from

00:25:21.500 all over the world. They still do. And they're so lovely, but they express sympathy and concern for

00:25:27.040 me over having lost my job. And I say to everyone that I'm able to respond to that I was so emotional

00:25:34.240 in that video, not because I lost my job. Who cares? Who cares about my job? What's terrifying and

00:25:41.460 overwhelming? And it's just like waves that comes over, come over you every day. Sometimes every

00:25:46.920 moment of every day is the fact that we live in a country where this could happen and there's no

00:25:51.740 escape hatch. So my, what I find overwhelming, I forget if you put it that way, but what I find

00:25:59.380 overwhelming about the pandemic is nothing biological or immunological at all. That's not where my fears

00:26:05.100 come from. The fears are that, you know, as an individual, I, um, won't be able to live a free

00:26:13.120 life anymore, but as a mother, I won't be able to protect my child from the state anymore. And that

00:26:18.800 there's no place on earth where that might be possible. Now you've written a new book. It's called

00:26:27.400 My Choice, The Ethical Case Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates. Why did you write the book?

00:26:35.680 Good question. You know, it seems to me that we, there's a lot of cognitive laziness going on these

00:26:43.120 days, I think, from our government and our media. And that's created a sort of story according to which

00:26:50.180 only certain people are invited to the table and certain opinions are highlighted and shared on social

00:26:56.040 media or in articles or in editorials or whatever. And, um, I really want to do what I can, whether

00:27:02.040 it's with the book or doing interviews or giving speeches or talking with people on the phone. I want

00:27:07.640 to do whatever I possibly can to make it clear that there's another side to the story and to help

00:27:14.620 people who, who maybe have intuitions along the lines of what, what I've been saying today, but don't

00:27:20.140 quite know how to frame or package or articulate those ideas. And, um, I hope, you know, if you buy

00:27:27.000 the book, if you read the book, please don't feel like you have to agree with everything I say. I,

00:27:32.620 it will be a win for me if people just read, open themselves up to it, and then bring it forth to

00:27:40.020 discussion with other people they have. Just take it as an invitation to further discussion and debate.

00:27:45.740 It's not the definitive word by any means. It's just hopefully gives us a little, it's like,

00:27:50.840 it's a bit like a ticket to a conversation that I think we, we, we needed to have, but haven't been

00:27:55.140 having in our country for a couple of years now. One last question before I let you go.

00:28:02.400 And do you have some advice for people out there who are struggling with job loss because they are

00:28:07.900 those ethical resistors to the lockdown and the vaccine mandates? Do you have advice for them

00:28:13.180 when they're feeling alone, especially right now during the holiday season, they, you know,

00:28:17.600 they've been told that they can't go to holiday gatherings because they're unvaccinated. They

00:28:21.780 cannot participate in a fulsome way in the world because they are vaccine resistors or vaccine

00:28:28.820 passport resistors. What's your advice for them? Yeah, a good question. Um, maybe I'll give a little

00:28:36.680 dose of harsh reality first and then try to be a bit hopeful. Um, I think, and I hope this helps

00:28:44.200 people who are listening in some sense that I guess I want to say, I hear you and I see you and I know

00:28:50.220 you're going to, you're going to have a very hard Christmas this year, just talking about Christmas,

00:28:54.280 especially, you know, um, you're going to be very lonely and there's going to be a lot of hate

00:28:59.180 headed your way and you can't control what other people will do. Um, but you know, when we think

00:29:07.340 about moral integrity and that's just acting consistently with your deeply held beliefs and

00:29:13.620 values, um, that's a lonely road sometimes. Um, but it's a choice to make, you know, it's a choice.

00:29:22.220 If you feel that you're doing the right thing, people are going to, some people will applaud you for

00:29:27.940 that and will comfort you and bring, bring you into their lives and other people will shun you.

00:29:33.340 And if you're feeling sad, you know, that you can't participate in family gatherings because people

00:29:40.160 are excluding you, then I guess I would use it as an opportunity to think about how important those

00:29:47.060 relationships are in the first place, you know, and just think if you can imagine another kind of life

00:29:52.840 moving forward. I mean, myself as awful as the last sort of year and a half of being,

00:29:57.760 and I've lost a tremendous number of deeply personal relationships. Uh, I have also had other

00:30:03.560 ones grow and emerge in very surprising places that it's often like this, right? The Phoenix from

00:30:10.460 the ashes. You, you, sometimes you, you, you end up, you find yourself in the life that you could never

00:30:16.300 have created with your wildest imagination. And that sometimes great harm and devastation can produce

00:30:22.960 some pretty wonderful things. So please don't feel like everything is beyond your control. Um,

00:30:29.460 and please don't feel like you can make the right decision and not suffer because you probably will.

00:30:33.800 Um, but that's what morality is about.

00:30:38.760 Dr. Julie, thank you so much for the work that you do with the democracy fund. And thank you so much for

00:30:43.640 offering that, you know, that message of hope that things will be hard, but they will be different

00:30:48.480 and they could even be better. Um, how do people find your book and find some of the work that you're

00:30:53.820 doing?

00:30:54.820 Yeah. So you can visit the democracy fund website. Um, and you can visit my, my choice book.ca. You

00:31:01.920 can order the book that through that. Uh, and you can also go to amazon.ca. You can search for it

00:31:06.760 there. So we can give you links and you can link them. So I will put the links in the show description,

00:31:12.980 Julie, thank you so much for taking the time, all the best to you and your beautiful family in the

00:31:17.120 new year. And, um, here's to a freer 2022.

00:31:21.000 Absolutely. Merry Christmas.

00:31:22.500 Thank you. You too.

00:31:24.080 My name is Dr. Julie Panessi. I was a professor of ethics at Western University until I was fired

00:31:42.080 for choosing not to take one of the COVID-19 vaccines. I made an ethical choice and it cost me my job.

00:31:50.420 COVID-19 has caused a crisis in healthcare, but it has also triggered a crisis in other

00:31:58.240 institutions we regard as essential to civil progressive society, academia, especially the

00:32:04.920 sciences, journalism, government, the law, and more broadly civil discourse, how we talk to each other.

00:32:11.480 In my new book called My Choice, The Ethical Case Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates, I discuss how the

00:32:19.240 response to the pandemic is ushering us into a new era, away from the classical liberal world we are

00:32:25.660 leaving behind and why I think we are living through a pandemic of coercion and compliance.

00:32:31.480 I explain how we have gotten here and how we can grab hold of a safer, freer, more hopeful future.

00:32:39.040 You can get your copy of the book by going to mychoicebook.ca or bookstores everywhere.

00:32:46.120 I sincerely worry about the fate of our public institutions, academia, policing, education,

00:32:54.120 science, and even politics, when the most ethical amongst us, the ones that won't bend to public

00:33:00.940 pressure, are the ones being fired and cast aside. What happens to a society when the most

00:33:05.320 malleable amongst us are the ones put in charge? Well, everyone, that's the show for tonight

00:33:10.740 and the show for this year. I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week,

00:33:15.840 and remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:33:45.840 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - December 30, 2021

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ What impact will vaccine mandates have on the ethical and moral compasses of society going forward？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript