Western Standard - Past COVID policies & public expectations

00:00:00.000 Hello Ms. Bower, thank you very much for joining us today. Oh my pleasure. So I mean I guess I'll

00:00:06.880 get right into it you know the book is talking about hindsight it's I guess a review it's looking

00:00:12.480 at what the responses were how we reacted to the pandemic how governments reacted people reacted

00:00:18.400 and I guess maybe if you could kind of sum up in a nutshell what you're covering in this book.

00:00:23.360 Um okay it's a little I've read a lot of pandemic books as part of my research this one is a little

00:00:28.160 bit different and then it really focuses on the psychological sociological dimension so it's not

00:00:34.720 as much about you know data this fact or that fact although there certainly are uh some of those but

00:00:40.880 it's um you know why did the world go mad what happened you know why was there this level of

00:00:46.880 fear why was there this level of groupthink uh why was there this level of shaming and snitching and

00:00:52.240 where did that all come from and so in order to make my case I don't just talk about my own

00:00:57.920 views but I enlist the expertise of people 46 people from various disciplines not just science

00:01:04.880 and that's really important because I think you know novelists and artists and lawyers and philosophers

00:01:10.880 they all have really important things to say about a pandemic so I bring together all these people

00:01:15.840 including scientists and through them um you know I make the case for some of what happened and why it did

00:01:22.640 yeah and I mean it was at 46 uh dissenting thinkers I believe is what you've got listed in that book

00:01:28.960 who have come out and then we can't dismiss the the people on the grounds the musicians the novelists

00:01:33.680 I mean with that they've traditionally been part of our social fabric they've uh put out social trends

00:01:39.360 from their you know periods of observation historically and it's very important to hear what they say

00:01:44.800 not just the fella in the lab coat in the in the back of a room somewhere and I mean yeah as you said it was

00:01:50.240 almost a temporary madness the world went into uh I mean we'll be studying this for for a long long time

00:01:56.560 but I mean now at least we're allowing some of the voices to come out and even talk about it I mean

00:02:00.400 that was part of the trend everybody was being shouted down if they uh swam against the current

00:02:04.720 I've never never seen anything like it I mean I'm 66 years old now so I'm old enough to be a grandma

00:02:09.840 although although I'm not one yet no 63 when this all started and so but I never you know even though

00:02:16.480 you think I might be in a demographic that wanted to stay home and say stay safe no never that never

00:02:20.960 made sense to me and in fact I could not understand why my friends and colleagues and family were so

00:02:28.000 on board with this I could not understand it and it troubled me mightily and the first few weeks I

00:02:33.360 tried to sort of understand this and start some conversations online and the the degree of of

00:02:39.840 outrage and vitriol I received I've never seen anything like it I mean no one had called me a sociopath

00:02:45.200 before you know or a mouth breathing trump tart or you know people telling me to go lick the virus

00:02:50.960 I mean it was unbelievably toxic you know and and it was damaging you know and I mean I think

00:02:58.240 everybody's sort of seen it I hope some are looking back shamefully but some rifts haven't been healed

00:03:02.960 I've seen that within some aspects of more my uh extended family a couple of siblings who couldn't

00:03:09.360 talk with each other over the period of this because they were on different sides of the vaccination

00:03:13.360 and masking issue like we shouldn't have a a political issue ripping apart tight family units 1.00

00:03:18.640 well it's not a political issue it shouldn't have turned political and that's something that's

00:03:22.000 interesting too was the left right divide I mean you didn't think this was all just based on health

00:03:26.560 and data but there was a very distinct uh split between people who were traditionally I guess leaned

00:03:33.040 towards conservative views and people who weren't well yeah absolutely I do want to address one thing

00:03:38.080 you said you'd think it would all be about the science and data one of the points that have has

00:03:42.160 always been important to me and that I make in the book is that managing a pandemic is never just about

00:03:48.000 science and data no matter which side of the divide you're on there's always values that go into it

00:03:54.160 you know and in a chapter on um kids and schools I talk about that how important is it to the society

00:04:00.640 for children to go to school you know there are no formulas to tell us when to close schools and when not

00:04:06.080 to it's always going to be a value judgment I mean data can inform that value judgment but it's never

00:04:11.600 just a question of the science so to speak no matter how good the science is um so and yes as far

00:04:18.640 as the political divide and that's another issue that I address in the book you know about this this

00:04:22.720 ridiculous left right thing because traditionally the left has really paid attention to um the working

00:04:31.040 class and the struggles and the need to earn a living and a dignified living and all that stuff and

00:04:35.360 that completely went out the window and um there are so many people like myself that I've met um

00:04:43.440 through all this that came from perhaps a more left-leaning um background and and just got thoroughly

00:04:52.240 disillusioned with the left over the past three years three years and now find ourselves politically

00:04:58.400 homeless you know I mean we appreciate some things from the right but we still are kind of in this no

00:05:04.960 man's land and and we disrupted socially disrupted an entire generation at some of their most formative 0.92

00:05:11.440 periods I mean that the fear and and the division and some of the things imprinted upon children when

00:05:17.520 the schools were shut down and so much fear was being spread around and even when the numbers were

00:05:21.680 coming in I can understand some panic in the early part of a a crisis okay we don't know how this is

00:05:26.240 going to move we don't know who it's going to hurt we really don't want to act and see if we can't get

00:05:30.160 under control but I mean after a year we had a pretty good idea that thankfully children were

00:05:35.120 virtually immune from harm from this virus but even then we couldn't get them back into the schools we

00:05:41.600 had hazard tape going around playgrounds we wouldn't let them get outdoors and socialize and and that's

00:05:47.600 gonna affect them for the rest of their lives yes and then and to add to that all the guilt that we lay

00:05:53.280 on them that was another thing that just really disturbed me from the start is this idea of

00:05:58.160 telling children well don't do xyz or else you might kill grandma well no I mean if you inadvertently

00:06:05.120 transmit a virus to someone you're not killing anyone you know of course we try to be careful

00:06:10.160 and we don't do these things on purpose but humans and viruses have coexisted since the beginning of time

00:06:16.240 you cannot make a child feel guilty for inadvertently doing something that is just biology you know so I

00:06:24.320 found that outrageous and I think that really affected a lot of children and I'm still hearing

00:06:29.840 about it today where they just you know oh my god if I take off my mask who am I gonna kill you know

00:06:34.480 it's just just crazy stuff um it really was like the world it's the title of one book that I quote in my

00:06:41.120 own book the year the world went mad by an epidemiologist a mainstream epidemiologist and

00:06:46.960 that is in fact what happened the world went mad I believe for three years without doubt and

00:06:51.840 rationality went out the window and so many things that we can't take back you know we had family

00:06:56.960 members who might be passing away of something that is clearly terminal nothing is going to save them

00:07:01.360 the most important thing in the last period of their lives is to try and see some loved ones one more

00:07:06.560 time before they go and we kept loved ones out who cares if you're going to give them an infection of

00:07:11.920 covid when they're going to die of cancer in a week they just exactly somebody's hand one more time

00:07:17.040 and exactly that it just amazed me that that people lost sight of that you know and that is a theme that

00:07:22.880 i return to a lot in the book you know what is what are we here for you know and what is um what do we

00:07:28.960 want in the last moments of our lives do we want to be you know protected from humanity or do we want

00:07:36.320 to reach out and and sort of look over our lives and think and connect and make memories you know

00:07:42.240 it just it was such a monolithic response you know there's these epidemiologists with with their

00:07:49.360 hammer is just looking for this one nail and that is you know probably the central theme in the book is

00:07:56.000 that this is not just an epidemiological problem it's a human problem that has mental health dimensions

00:08:02.320 social dimensions spiritual philosophical dimensions and the response just swept all that aside which

00:08:10.080 really went against all previous pandemic guidance you know and that's why i enlist even the the sort

00:08:17.120 the thoughts of a comedian some musicians um several novelists i found that novelists often had the

00:08:24.000 deepest insights about the pandemic you know obviously they can't advise us on virology or transmission

00:08:30.640 patterns but they can tell us a lot about sort of the philosophy of of managing a pandemic and what

00:08:37.600 needs to be done and what shouldn't be done well and these things matter i mean the distrust in the

00:08:44.080 entire system and authority in general i mean we were ill used or a lot of us certainly feel we were

00:08:50.720 and if an emergency comes down the road i imagine there's always another one coming there's going to

00:08:55.920 be a lot of people resisting possibly perhaps resisting on the wrong side but they've just lost

00:08:59.840 so much trust in the authorities and the establishment that they won't listen to them when when the time

00:09:04.560 comes that they probably should well that's right you know and i didn't see any sense of restraint

00:09:11.200 it was always you know great overreach um i didn't see any sense of restraint oh well things are

00:09:18.000 looking better you know let's pull back now let's talk let's bring in some expertise from other areas

00:09:22.480 um and of course we all know you know the whole the push the insane push toward vaccines is the only

00:09:30.480 solution now i'm vaccinated myself i'm boosted like i personally didn't have an issue with the vaccines

00:09:36.480 i worried about the vaccines as little as i worried about the virus which might seem strange to some

00:09:41.600 people but you know it's how i'm built so it wasn't an issue for me personally but as the months went on

00:09:48.160 in 2021 2022 and i just saw how insane the vax wars became a lot of us remember that cover spread on the

00:09:54.880 toronto star um with quotes from the people who wanted you know the anti-vaxxers to die and go to

00:10:01.280 hell and wanted their children to die and i mean like what is this that just seemed far far more harmful

00:10:06.960 to me than any virus you know and one thing that i guess i take pride in is that you know although i got

00:10:12.880 vaccinated myself i i resolved very early on that i was never going to question or shame anyone for

00:10:20.640 their decision because i trust that my friends who decided not to get vaxxed have good reasons for it

00:10:27.440 and so i never asked them i never made socializing contingent on it and it became also clear very soon

00:10:34.160 that the vaccine was not stopping transmission which really removed any ethical justification for the

00:10:40.560 mandates um so i just didn't get into any of that you know so many of my friends are you vaccinated

00:10:46.480 are you not you know and i remember meeting a friend who was not vaccinated and um we were walking

00:10:53.840 outside and she burst out crying in the middle of our walk i described this episode in the book and she

00:10:59.520 she just said she was so afraid of meeting me because she thought maybe that i wouldn't want to

00:11:03.040 hang out with her once i found out she wasn't back we were outside walking you know i just thought wow

00:11:08.000 yeah and then another aspect that turned into almost a bizarre measure of i i think two degrees

00:11:15.200 virtue signaling maybe began with some medical rationale but was masking i i think part of it's

00:11:20.400 because you wear a mask you're showing your visible effort that you're trying to stop this

00:11:24.800 despite the fact that it was showing that it wasn't doing a heck of a lot to stop anything

00:11:30.320 but it was annoying the heck out of people it was dividing people and again it just came down to i think a

00:11:35.440 symbolic thing of uh of just showing authority and pushing down on people absolutely and as you

00:11:41.520 say virtue signaling and i and i have to admit i have a little bit of an allergy to that you know

00:11:45.600 the holier than thou look at me i'm a good person you know and that was so much a part of this

00:11:50.880 um so i've written quite a lot about masks like you know if anyone looks on online they'll find a

00:11:55.600 lot of my articles about masks um because ultimately it my most recent one of my most recent ones was

00:12:03.120 it's it's really not even so much about the data you know you go on twitter and you're gonna see these

00:12:09.200 endless arguments masks work no they don't yes they do no they don't yes they do no they don't and

00:12:13.600 both sides just fling data at each other and stats and studies and all that underlying all this i

00:12:19.840 firmly believe and have from the start is really a difference in world view you know and the side

00:12:27.520 that just believes that protection from a certain threat from a biological threat trumps everything

00:12:35.840 else in life that side is going to justify masking they're going to interpret a five percent reduction

00:12:42.240 as well it's worth it even if it's a one percent reduction whatever it takes the side that sees

00:12:47.360 humanity in what i call a more holistic way and sees safety from a biological hazard is only one

00:12:55.600 dimension and who also appreciates human connection and um in that holistic way is is going to resist

00:13:06.320 the idea of a perma-masked society and so that's why i've always believed that there are what i call 0.83

00:13:13.680 data agnostic arguments behind all this you know there's just two sides that see the world a little

00:13:19.520 differently and that want a different kind of world and my book sort of argues for side b you know this

00:13:25.760 is the kind of world we want and this is why you know yeah and in the battles unfortunately you're still

00:13:31.600 going on but i mean part of what we can hope for the most we can hope for is that we learn from it and

00:13:35.680 correct some of our past actions the next time we hit a challenge uh so i mean that's part of i guess

00:13:40.160 what you kind of go through and come towards in the book we've kind of run out of time but where

00:13:44.960 then i i see the brownstone institute you have plenty of columns there where can people find copies

00:13:49.120 of blindside is 2020 along with with your other books um well you can always go on my website

00:13:55.520 gabriellebauer.com uh and all the information is there blindside is 2020 uh i mean brownstone institute

00:14:03.440 is a non-profit so the book is available through all amazon stores on lulu as well um so it's very

00:14:10.480 easy to find you just google the book google my name you can find uh ways to order the book if anyone

00:14:17.040 speaks spanish um it has also been published in spanish by a madrid publisher so all that's uh available

00:14:23.120 on my website and just by googling my name well excellent well thank you for writing that we really need

00:14:28.240 to examine what we've done to ourselves and and try to do better in the future and this this book's an

00:14:33.360 important part of that and thank you for coming on today to to share part of that uh with us uh well

00:14:39.440 i thank you all right well i hope we get the the chance to talk again soon i'm certain there'll be

00:14:43.600 more to discuss okay thanks cory you can become a western center member for just ten dollars a month

00:14:48.800 or 99 a year for unlimited access

Western Standard - June 01, 2023

Past COVID policies & public expectations

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