Past COVID policies & public expectations
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
In this episode, I chat with Dr. Andrea Bower about her new book, Pandemic: How to Manage a Pandemic, a book that looks at how the world responded to the Black Plague pandemic in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Andrea's book focuses on the psychological, sociological and political aspects of the pandemic, looking at why the world went mad and how governments and the medical community responded to it.
Transcript
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Hello Ms. Bower, thank you very much for joining us today. Oh my pleasure. So I mean I guess I'll
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get right into it you know the book is talking about hindsight it's I guess a review it's looking
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at what the responses were how we reacted to the pandemic how governments reacted people reacted
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and I guess maybe if you could kind of sum up in a nutshell what you're covering in this book.
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Um okay it's a little I've read a lot of pandemic books as part of my research this one is a little
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bit different and then it really focuses on the psychological sociological dimension so it's not
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as much about you know data this fact or that fact although there certainly are uh some of those but
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it's um you know why did the world go mad what happened you know why was there this level of
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fear why was there this level of groupthink uh why was there this level of shaming and snitching and
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where did that all come from and so in order to make my case I don't just talk about my own
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views but I enlist the expertise of people 46 people from various disciplines not just science
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and that's really important because I think you know novelists and artists and lawyers and philosophers
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they all have really important things to say about a pandemic so I bring together all these people
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including scientists and through them um you know I make the case for some of what happened and why it did
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yeah and I mean it was at 46 uh dissenting thinkers I believe is what you've got listed in that book
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who have come out and then we can't dismiss the the people on the grounds the musicians the novelists
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I mean with that they've traditionally been part of our social fabric they've uh put out social trends
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from their you know periods of observation historically and it's very important to hear what they say
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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
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almost a temporary madness the world went into uh I mean we'll be studying this for for a long long time
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but I mean now at least we're allowing some of the voices to come out and even talk about it I mean
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that was part of the trend everybody was being shouted down if they uh swam against the current
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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
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although although I'm not one yet no 63 when this all started and so but I never you know even though
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you think I might be in a demographic that wanted to stay home and say stay safe no never that never
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made sense to me and in fact I could not understand why my friends and colleagues and family were so
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on board with this I could not understand it and it troubled me mightily and the first few weeks I
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tried to sort of understand this and start some conversations online and the the degree of of
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outrage and vitriol I received I've never seen anything like it I mean no one had called me a sociopath
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before you know or a mouth breathing trump tart or you know people telling me to go lick the virus
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I mean it was unbelievably toxic you know and and it was damaging you know and I mean I think
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everybody's sort of seen it I hope some are looking back shamefully but some rifts haven't been healed
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I've seen that within some aspects of more my uh extended family a couple of siblings who couldn't
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talk with each other over the period of this because they were on different sides of the vaccination
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and masking issue like we shouldn't have a a political issue ripping apart tight family units
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well it's not a political issue it shouldn't have turned political and that's something that's
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interesting too was the left right divide I mean you didn't think this was all just based on health
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and data but there was a very distinct uh split between people who were traditionally I guess leaned
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towards conservative views and people who weren't well yeah absolutely I do want to address one thing
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you said you'd think it would all be about the science and data one of the points that have has
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always been important to me and that I make in the book is that managing a pandemic is never just about
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science and data no matter which side of the divide you're on there's always values that go into it
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you know and in a chapter on um kids and schools I talk about that how important is it to the society
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for children to go to school you know there are no formulas to tell us when to close schools and when not
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to it's always going to be a value judgment I mean data can inform that value judgment but it's never
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just a question of the science so to speak no matter how good the science is um so and yes as far
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as the political divide and that's another issue that I address in the book you know about this this
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ridiculous left right thing because traditionally the left has really paid attention to um the working
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class and the struggles and the need to earn a living and a dignified living and all that stuff and
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that completely went out the window and um there are so many people like myself that I've met um
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through all this that came from perhaps a more left-leaning um background and and just got thoroughly
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disillusioned with the left over the past three years three years and now find ourselves politically
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homeless you know I mean we appreciate some things from the right but we still are kind of in this no
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man's land and and we disrupted socially disrupted an entire generation at some of their most formative
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periods I mean that the fear and and the division and some of the things imprinted upon children when
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the schools were shut down and so much fear was being spread around and even when the numbers were
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coming in I can understand some panic in the early part of a a crisis okay we don't know how this is
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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
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under control but I mean after a year we had a pretty good idea that thankfully children were
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virtually immune from harm from this virus but even then we couldn't get them back into the schools we
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had hazard tape going around playgrounds we wouldn't let them get outdoors and socialize and and that's
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gonna affect them for the rest of their lives yes and then and to add to that all the guilt that we lay
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on them that was another thing that just really disturbed me from the start is this idea of
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telling children well don't do xyz or else you might kill grandma well no I mean if you inadvertently
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transmit a virus to someone you're not killing anyone you know of course we try to be careful
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and we don't do these things on purpose but humans and viruses have coexisted since the beginning of time
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you cannot make a child feel guilty for inadvertently doing something that is just biology you know so I
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found that outrageous and I think that really affected a lot of children and I'm still hearing
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about it today where they just you know oh my god if I take off my mask who am I gonna kill you know
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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
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own book the year the world went mad by an epidemiologist a mainstream epidemiologist and
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that is in fact what happened the world went mad I believe for three years without doubt and
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rationality went out the window and so many things that we can't take back you know we had family
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members who might be passing away of something that is clearly terminal nothing is going to save them
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the most important thing in the last period of their lives is to try and see some loved ones one more
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time before they go and we kept loved ones out who cares if you're going to give them an infection of
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covid when they're going to die of cancer in a week they just exactly somebody's hand one more time
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and exactly that it just amazed me that that people lost sight of that you know and that is a theme that
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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
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want in the last moments of our lives do we want to be you know protected from humanity or do we want
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to reach out and and sort of look over our lives and think and connect and make memories you know
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it just it was such a monolithic response you know there's these epidemiologists with with their
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hammer is just looking for this one nail and that is you know probably the central theme in the book is
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that this is not just an epidemiological problem it's a human problem that has mental health dimensions
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social dimensions spiritual philosophical dimensions and the response just swept all that aside which
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really went against all previous pandemic guidance you know and that's why i enlist even the the sort
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the thoughts of a comedian some musicians um several novelists i found that novelists often had the
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deepest insights about the pandemic you know obviously they can't advise us on virology or transmission
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patterns but they can tell us a lot about sort of the philosophy of of managing a pandemic and what
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needs to be done and what shouldn't be done well and these things matter i mean the distrust in the
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entire system and authority in general i mean we were ill used or a lot of us certainly feel we were
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and if an emergency comes down the road i imagine there's always another one coming there's going to
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be a lot of people resisting possibly perhaps resisting on the wrong side but they've just lost
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so much trust in the authorities and the establishment that they won't listen to them when when the time
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comes that they probably should well that's right you know and i didn't see any sense of restraint
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it was always you know great overreach um i didn't see any sense of restraint oh well things are
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looking better you know let's pull back now let's talk let's bring in some expertise from other areas
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um and of course we all know you know the whole the push the insane push toward vaccines is the only
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solution now i'm vaccinated myself i'm boosted like i personally didn't have an issue with the vaccines
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i worried about the vaccines as little as i worried about the virus which might seem strange to some
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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
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in 2021 2022 and i just saw how insane the vax wars became a lot of us remember that cover spread on the
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toronto star um with quotes from the people who wanted you know the anti-vaxxers to die and go to
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hell and wanted their children to die and i mean like what is this that just seemed far far more harmful
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to me than any virus you know and one thing that i guess i take pride in is that you know although i got
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vaccinated myself i i resolved very early on that i was never going to question or shame anyone for
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their decision because i trust that my friends who decided not to get vaxxed have good reasons for it
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and so i never asked them i never made socializing contingent on it and it became also clear very soon
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that the vaccine was not stopping transmission which really removed any ethical justification for the
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mandates um so i just didn't get into any of that you know so many of my friends are you vaccinated
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are you not you know and i remember meeting a friend who was not vaccinated and um we were walking
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outside and she burst out crying in the middle of our walk i described this episode in the book and she
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she just said she was so afraid of meeting me because she thought maybe that i wouldn't want to
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hang out with her once i found out she wasn't back we were outside walking you know i just thought wow
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yeah and then another aspect that turned into almost a bizarre measure of i i think two degrees
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virtue signaling maybe began with some medical rationale but was masking i i think part of it's
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because you wear a mask you're showing your visible effort that you're trying to stop this
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despite the fact that it was showing that it wasn't doing a heck of a lot to stop anything
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but it was annoying the heck out of people it was dividing people and again it just came down to i think a
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symbolic thing of uh of just showing authority and pushing down on people absolutely and as you
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say virtue signaling and i and i have to admit i have a little bit of an allergy to that you know
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the holier than thou look at me i'm a good person you know and that was so much a part of this
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um so i've written quite a lot about masks like you know if anyone looks on online they'll find a
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lot of my articles about masks um because ultimately it my most recent one of my most recent ones was
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it's it's really not even so much about the data you know you go on twitter and you're gonna see these
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endless arguments masks work no they don't yes they do no they don't yes they do no they don't and
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both sides just fling data at each other and stats and studies and all that underlying all this i
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firmly believe and have from the start is really a difference in world view you know and the side
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that just believes that protection from a certain threat from a biological threat trumps everything
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else in life that side is going to justify masking they're going to interpret a five percent reduction
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as well it's worth it even if it's a one percent reduction whatever it takes the side that sees
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humanity in what i call a more holistic way and sees safety from a biological hazard is only one
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dimension and who also appreciates human connection and um in that holistic way is is going to resist
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the idea of a perma-masked society and so that's why i've always believed that there are what i call
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data agnostic arguments behind all this you know there's just two sides that see the world a little
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differently and that want a different kind of world and my book sort of argues for side b you know this
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is the kind of world we want and this is why you know yeah and in the battles unfortunately you're still
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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
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correct some of our past actions the next time we hit a challenge uh so i mean that's part of i guess
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what you kind of go through and come towards in the book we've kind of run out of time but where
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then i i see the brownstone institute you have plenty of columns there where can people find copies
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of blindside is 2020 along with with your other books um well you can always go on my website
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gabriellebauer.com uh and all the information is there blindside is 2020 uh i mean brownstone institute
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is a non-profit so the book is available through all amazon stores on lulu as well um so it's very
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easy to find you just google the book google my name you can find uh ways to order the book if anyone
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speaks spanish um it has also been published in spanish by a madrid publisher so all that's uh available
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on my website and just by googling my name well excellent well thank you for writing that we really need
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to examine what we've done to ourselves and and try to do better in the future and this this book's an
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important part of that and thank you for coming on today to to share part of that uh with us uh well
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i thank you all right well i hope we get the the chance to talk again soon i'm certain there'll be
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more to discuss okay thanks cory you can become a western center member for just ten dollars a month