Pandemic Moral Panic and Soft Totalitarianism | Marco Navarro-Génie
In this episode host Sean Rasmussen speaks with Marco Navarro-Génie, president of the Haultain Research Institute and co-author of the book Canada’s Covid: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic. If you want to understand what happened during Canada’s pandemic response this is a must-listen.
Topics discussed:
- Canada’s response to the covid pandemic and how moral panic derailed it.
- What did we know and when?
- Why we jettisoned solid emergency plans and instead put medical doctors in charge.
- Abuse of power by unelected administrators and bureaucrats.
- Sweden’s highly effective national emergency plan.
- The political ramifications of Canada’s response to the pandemic including the erosion of trust in institutions.
- The failure of Canada’s culture where individuals did not say “no” to what was going on.
- How cancel culture played a role in the lack of meaningful dialogue.
- How incentives in the modern media landscape led to panic.
- Soft totalitarianism.
About the guest
Marco Navarro-Génie is president of the Haultain Research Institute and co-author of the book Canada’s Covid: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic.
From the book jacket:
Nearly four years later, the moral panic that accompanied and compounded the medical and public health responses to COVID remains a lingering feature of Canadian public policy.
Why do medical administrators and policy makers persist in fear-mongering? This is a political question, not a question of epidemiology. Without disputing the seriousness of COVID-19 for some Canadians, we find the overall national response to COVID has been excessive.
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