August 14, 2025 • 43 mins
Aaron Pete breaks down how COVID exposed the West’s immaturity—through lab leak denial, unexamined social distancing, flip-flopping mask mandates, prolonged lockdowns, and divisive vaccine policies—revealing a culture that chose fear over nuance and control over trust.
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Episode Transcript
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Aaron Pete (00:32):
Thank you.
In early 2020, while sitting ina constitutional law lecture at
Allard Hall, I saw that firstheadline mysterious novel virus
in Wuhan, China.
Like everybody else, I assumedthis will pass, but what
happened instead was a globalmoral stress test.
And here we are, five yearslater, still arguing over the
(00:55):
foundations of trust, fear andcontrol.
I know many of us want toforget about this period, but
those who don't learn fromhistory are doomed to repeat it.
This was the issue of thedecade and we need to learn from
it.
So today we're not just goingto be talking about a virus.
Five flashpoints revealed ourtendency to opt for fear over
(01:33):
nuance, panic over debate,slogans over science, binaries
over balance.
We will examine the lab leaktheory, social distancing, the
mask, u-turn, lockdowns, thevaccine mandates, mandates.
These aren't just policies.
They're mirrors showing howWestern societies, lulled by
decades of comfort, recoiledfrom complexity, shut down
discourse and let culturalimmaturity shape public life.
(01:55):
Let's begin.
In January 2020, a fewscientists in the United States
and Europe began whisperingabout a possibility no one
wanted to entertain publiclythat SARS-CoV-2, the virus that
causes COVID-19, might haveoriginated not from a wet market
(02:18):
, but from a laboratory,specifically the Wuhan Institute
of Virology.
The theory wasn't new.
It had been discussed inbiodefense circles since SARS.
What was new was how quicklythe theory was politicized,
stigmatized and suppressed.
In the early weeks of thepandemic, the World Health
(02:39):
Organization, the US NationalInstitutes of Health and leaders
like Dr Anthony Fauci movedswiftly to downplay the
possibility of a lab origin.
In a now famous March 2020paper published in Nature
Medicine, five prominentvirologists, including Christian
Anderson, wrote that theiranalysis showed the virus was
(03:01):
not a laboratory construct orpurposefully manipulated virus.
The paper became the gospel ofnatural origin, but what wasn't
revealed until 2023congressional testimony was that
Anderson himself initiallybelieved the virus did look
engineered.
In private Slack messages andemails obtained by the US House
(03:25):
Select Committee, he wrote someof the features look engineered.
We have to look into this.
The paper became central to thenatural origin consensus, but
what wasn't known at the timewas that Anderson initially
believed the virus lookedengineered, writing privately to
Fauci that parts of it lookedinconsistent with expectations
(03:47):
from evolutionary theory.
So why the reversal?
In hearings and investigativereporting by the Intercept and
Vanity Fair, it became clearthat the senior figures,
including Anthony Fauci, wereclosely involved in steering the
narrative.
Scientists feared their fundingwould be pulled or their
(04:08):
reputations destroyed if theysupported the lab leak theory.
Tony doesn't want to go there,one NIH email said, referring to
Dr Fauci.
Dr Fauci and Dr Francis Collins, the then head of the NIH, held
a call with authors of theNature Medicine paper shortly
(04:28):
before it was submitted.
Though they did not author it,the call gave the clear
impression.
If this gets out of hand,funding and careers are on the
line.
Meanwhile, tech platforms likeFacebook, twitter and YouTube
began deplatforming orsuppressing content discussing
the lab leak theory.
(04:49):
Journalists who raised it werelabeled conspiracy theorists.
Meanwhile, media outletsdismissed the lab leak idea
entirely.
The New York Times called itfringe.
Npr implied that evenentertaining the theory was
rooted in xenophobia.
Public health authorities inCanada and the US followed suit.
(05:09):
But behind the scenes, the USintelligence community kept
digging and by 2023, theDepartment of Energy and the FBI
had each issued independentassessments concluding that a
lab-based origin was plausibleor likely, though it held low to
moderate confidence.
(05:30):
By mid-2025, the CIA concludedthat a lab leak was more likely
than natural origin, though thecase was still not definitive.
Let's be clear this isn't aboutbeing right or wrong.
The lab leak theory might stillturn out to be incorrect.
The point is we were neverallowed to have the conversation
(05:54):
.
Institutions didn't say we'llwait for evidence.
They said don't ask thequestion.
That that's not science, that'sscientism and it's not maturity
.
It's cowardice masquerading ascaution.
And here's the damage.
By labeling all discussion asdisinformation, we undermined
(06:15):
institutional trust.
Surveys from Pew and Edelmanshowed trust in scientists,
health officials and journalistshas dropped dramatically since
2020, especially among younger,politically independent or
skeptical populations.
When truth becomes inconvenient, when debate threatens status,
(06:38):
when power silences questions,that's not resilience, that's
rot.
The lab leak debate was neverjust about a virus.
It was about how muchcomplexity the modern West can
tolerate in the face ofuncertainty.
And the answer was not much.
Instead of saying we don't know, we said shut up.
(07:00):
Instead of inviting questions,our leaders issued decrees.
That's what immature societiesdo.
They mistake criticism forattack.
They mistake transparency forbetrayal, and then they wonder
why no one believes them anymore.
Social distancing Within weeksof the first cases of COVID-19
(07:23):
appearing outside China,countries around the world
rolled out a public healthstrategy few had ever imagined
Social distancing.
Overnight, schools closed,businesses shuttered,
grandparents were cut off fromtheir families, parks were
wrapped in caution tape.
Tape Xs appeared on grocerystore floors.
Two meters became gospel.
(07:45):
It was framed as a moralimperative Flatten the curve,
protect the vulnerable.
But behind the marketing of thephrase, something critical was
missing Discussion.
Where was the cost-benefitanalysis?
Where were the trade-offconversations?
Where was the transparency onthe research?
(08:08):
Social distancing is not a newconcept in epidemiology, but its
widespread deployment inresponse to a respiratory virus
like SARS-CoV-2 was largelyuntested at scale.
Prior pandemic planningdocuments, including Canada's
2018 pandemic influenzapreparedness guidelines, warned
(08:28):
that prolonged school closures,travel restrictions and
widespread quarantine shouldonly be used with caution.
Why?
Because of the massivedownstream effects on mental
health, education, the economyand basic civil liberties.
But in March 2020, caution wasabandoned.
(08:49):
Politicians, public healthofficers and media outlets
declared consensus, leaningheavily on modeling from places
like Imperial College London,which projected 500,000 UK
deaths without sweepinginterventions.
Those projections and the fearthey induced became the pretext
(09:10):
for the largest mass behavioralexperiment in modern history.
Yet from the very beginning,there were voices of dissent.
Epidemiologists like Dr JohnLundis at Stanford warning that
we lacked data on infectionfatality rates and were
overcorrecting.
Economists flagged potentialcollapse of small businesses.
(09:34):
Psychologists forecasting acoming wave of anxiety,
loneliness and suicidality,especially among the young
people and the elderly.
Especially among the youngpeople and the elderly, but none
of those critiques made thenews unless they were framed as
(09:54):
selfish, reckless or ideological.
Dissent was equated withindifference to human life.
In October 2020, a coalition ofrespected scientists from Oxford
, harvard and Stanford releasedthe Great Barrington Declaration
, arguing for an alternativestrategy focused on protection
Shield the vulnerable, includingthose in long-term care, while
(10:17):
allowing younger, healthierpopulations to return to normal
life.
This, they argued, would buildherd immunity while minimizing
social and economic harm.
The reaction Public shaming.
Dr Anthony Fauci called thedeclaration total nonsense.
(10:38):
Dr Francis Collins, the thenhead of the NIH, wrote in a now
public email that it needed adevastating takedown, and the
media complied, dismissing it asa fringe libertarian stunt.
Facebook downranked its linksto it.
Youtube demonetized contentdiscussing it.
Even when the recommendationswere echoed later by public
(10:59):
health experts, includingtargeted vaccinations,
proportional restrictions andharm reduction, the authors of
the Great Barrington Declarationremained blacklisted in many
circles.
And here's the key they weren'tnecessarily right.
Their model had flaws, but theyweren't allowed to be wrong in
(11:20):
the open.
They were treated like heretics.
And that's the problem, becausein the years since, we've had
time to look at what happened,and the results are sobering.
A meta analysis by Johns HopkinsUniversity found that lockdowns
, a more extreme form of socialdistancing, reduced COVID
(11:42):
mortality by just 0.2% onaverage.
The Lancet and JAMA publishedsimilar findings.
The impact ofnon-pharmaceutical interventions
varied widely and mostreductions in transmissions
likely came from voluntarybehavioral change, not mandates.
Meanwhile, the costs of socialdistancing are undeniable.
(12:06):
The United States NationalAssessment of Educational
Progress scores in math andreading fell by the largest
margins in 30 years.
Mental health surveys showedspikes in anxiety and depression
, particularly among youth.
Elderly residents in care homesdied not only from COVID, but
(12:27):
from isolation and neglect.
And yet there's been noreckoning, no public inquiry
into how these decisions weremade, no apology for the damage,
no promise to debate trade-offsmore seriously next time.
Instead, we doubled down,valorizing restriction and
vilifying anyone who hesitatedto enforce it.
(12:49):
This wasn't science.
It was the performance ofcertainty in the absence of
humility.
In law school, we're trained toweigh the competing values
liberty versus security, rightsversus responsibilities.
In public health, the sameprinciples apply, but during
COVID we forgot that trade-offsare not cruelty, they are
(13:11):
reality.
We acted like any considerationof cost was equivalent to
selfishness and that the kind ofthinking absolutist, panicked
moralizing is the opposite ofmaturity.
In my 2021 interview with RickHansen.
He said resilience isn't builtby hiding from the storm.
(13:32):
It's built by facing it,learning from it and adapting.
That's true for individuals andit should be true for
governments, but instead oftrusting people with the
complexity, we simplified themessage Stay home, save lives,
don't ask questions.
What a tragic missedopportunity for public education
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, civic engagement andcollective growth, because
nuance isn't a luxury, it's anecessity, especially in a
crisis.
The mask you turn.
In March 2020, if you wore amask in a grocery store, you
were more likely to get astrange look than a thank you.
(14:14):
Not only were masks notrecommended, they were actively
discouraged.
Dr Anthony Fauci on 60 Minutessaid bluntly there's no reason
to be walking around with a mask.
Dr Theresa Tam, canada's publichealth officer, echoed that
guidance, saying masks mightgive a false sense of security.
(14:34):
And in British Columbia, drBonnie Henry described masks as
unnecessary for the generalpublic, saying there was no
clear evidence they helpedoutside clinical settings.
The reasons given were, on thesurface, understandable there
was a global shortage of PPE andgovernments feared public
hoarding.
But instead of saying we needto preserve these for frontline
(14:58):
workers, the message to thepublic was they don't work.
In other words, officials liedto shape behavior.
That decision to manipulaterather than level would have
ripple effects far beyond thespring of 2020.
By April, the messaging shifteddramatically.
New evidence had emergedAsymptomatic and pre-symptomatic
(15:21):
individuals were spreading thevirus.
Suddenly, masks were a key toolin controlling the pandemic.
The CDC reversed its position.
So did the Public Health Agencyof Canada.
In July 2020, mask mandateswere introduced in jurisdictions
across North America.
To many, it felt like scienceevolving.
(15:42):
To others, it felt likegaslighting.
And here's the problem thereversal itself wasn't the issue
.
Science changes, dataaccumulates.
That's normal.
What broke trust was therefusal to admit this change was
strategic, not scientific.
Fauci later admitted that maskswere discouraged to preserve
(16:05):
supply, in his words I don'tregret it, but I was concerned
that people would go out and buymasks and leave healthcare
workers without them.
But that admission came monthslater.
In the interim, the public wasexpected to obey guidance that
contradicted prior advice, withno accountability or
(16:26):
transparency.
People weren't asked to trustthe science.
They were told to trust thespokesperson of the science,
even when these spokespersonshad misled them.
The result Mass confusion andworse, mass division.
People who continued toquestion mask efficacy were
(16:48):
labeled irresponsible ordangerous If you wore a mask
before April, you were paranoid.
If you didn't wear one afterMay, you were selfish.
Overnight, a piece of fabricbecame a symbol of moral
allegiance.
Meanwhile, the science itselfremained, and still remains,
nuanced.
(17:08):
A 2021 Cochrane review foundthat high-quality masks like
N95s can reduce viral spread,especially in clinical settings
and when fitted properly.
Cloth masks.
The evidence is mixed at best.
Real-world efficacy depends onmultiple factors Ventilation,
(17:29):
mask quality factors,ventilation mask quality,
consistency of use and socialbehavior.
But none of that nuance made itinto the public briefings or
school board decisions.
Instead, the messaging becameabsolute Masks work, end of
story.
Except it wasn't the end.
Dr Bonnie Henry, despite thenational trend, resisted making
(17:52):
masks mandatory in BC schoolsand public spaces until much
later than other provinces.
In her words, masks are a blunttool.
They can be divisive.
They should be the last resort,not the first.
She wasn't denying theirusefulness.
She was acknowledging theirlimits, both scientifically and
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socially.
But for that she was attacked,by some for being too soft and
by others for being tooinconsistent.
In other words, she waspunished for nuance, and that's
the heart of the problem.
Public health messaging,especially in a crisis, has to
be clear, but it also has to behonest.
(18:34):
Instead of what we got was amixed fear-driven directives and
moralistic scolding.
Questions weren't answered.
They were treated as threats.
Even respected medicalprofessionals who questioned
mandates were reprimanded,censored or fired.
A doctor in Ontario was removedfrom hospital duty for calling
(18:58):
for better mask fit testing.
In the US, some physicians werethreatened with disciplinary
action for saying cloth masksweren't effective.
This wasn't about scienceanymore.
It was about control and,ironically, the very attempt to
assert the control underminedthe goal.
By the end of 2022, publictrust in health authorities had
(19:22):
plummeted.
Pew Research found that only29% of Americans had a great
deal of confidence in publichealth officials, down from 43%
in 2020.
In Canada, confidence in thefederal COVID-19 response
declined by 14 percentage pointsbetween March 2020 and November
(19:44):
2021.
I spoke with former healthminister Patti Hajdu in 2024.
She acknowledged the confusionconfusion, stating that tough
decisions had to be made quickly.
If institutions want tomaintain public trust, they must
model what we demand ofcitizens honesty, humility and
(20:04):
responsibility.
The mask U-turn wasn't a signthat science failed.
It was a sign that our culturedoesn't tolerate uncertainty and
our governments don't trust usto handle the truth.
That's not public health,that's paternalism, and that,
more than anything, explains whywe're still cleaning up this
(20:26):
mess.
Lockdowns, flatten the curve.
That was the slogan, the chant,the ethical compass of March
2020.
Lockdowns were pitched as theonly responsible response to a
looming tsunami ofhospitalizations and death.
For a time, they felt like amoral necessity Protect the
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elderly, preserve ICU capacity,break chains of transmission.
Politicians and public healthofficials repeated the phrase
like gospel this is temporary.
We were told A few weeks to buytime.
That was the social contract,but it was never renegotiated
(21:15):
contract, but it was neverrenegotiated.
Weeks turned into months,months into seasons, and what
began as an emergency responsehardened into the long-term
governance by executive order.
Restrictions extended far beyondflattening the curve.
In Canada, religious serviceswere banned, parks and
playgrounds were taped off.
People were fined for walkingoutside without a mask.
In Quebec, a literal curfew wasintroduced, the kind used
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during wartime.
Initially, these restrictionshad broad public support.
But here's the thing aboutconsent it doesn't last forever
if you don't revisit it.
The ethical foundation forlockdowns became shakier the
longer we went on.
Why?
Because governments stoppedtreating them like emergency
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measures and started defendingthem as indisputable public
goods.
Let's steel man the case.
First, early on, there waslittle data about COVID's
lethality or transmissibility.
The virus overwhelmed NorthernItaly and New York hospitals.
Leaders had to act fast.
Many epidemiologists, like DrMichael Mina, believed that
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early, aggressive suppressioncould avoid long-term
catastrophe.
Others feared a second 1918.
So the logic was overreact nowrather than underreact and
regret it later.
But steelmanning is not thesame as surrendering.
Even in March 2020, many expertswarned that broad, indefinite
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lockdowns would carry profoundcosts, especially for the most
vulnerable.
Dr Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanfordphysician and economist, argued
that school closures woulddevastate poor families, cause
irreparable learning loss andexacerbate inequality.
He was right.
By 2022, us National Assessmentof Educational Progress scores
(23:09):
showed the largest decline inmath and reading scores in 30
years.
Canada saw similar losses,especially in working class
districts.
The World Bank found that anadditional 70 million people
globally fell into extremepoverty during the pandemic, not
because of the virus, butbecause of the economic
(23:30):
shutdowns.
Even the World HealthOrganization's 2019 pandemic
planning guidelines warned thatlockdowns should be used
sparingly and only withtransparent, time-limited goals.
Those goals never came.
What we got instead was afeedback loop of justifications
without benchmarks.
(23:50):
And then there was the mentalhealth crisis.
The Center for Addiction andMental Health in Toronto
reported that anxiety,depression and suicidal ideation
among young people spiked torecord levels during lockdowns.
Calls to suicide hotlinesincreased across the board,
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domestic violence shelters wereoverwhelmed, people struggling
with addiction lost access toharm reduction services and
counselling.
As of 2023, british Columbiawas recording its deadliest
years ever for drug overdoses,surpassing even pre-pandemic
highs.
These weren't just bugs in thesystem.
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They were features of a policythat prioritized one kind of
risk viral spread above allothers.
Still, those who raisedconcerns were treated as threats
to the public good.
Critics of lockdowns, even whenciting peer-reviewed studies or
mental health data, were oftenaccused of being anti-science,
(24:56):
selfish or right-wing.
It didn't matter if you were alifelong progressive or a
trauma-informed psychologist.
If you opposed the dominantnarrative, you were marginalized
.
And the media didn't help.
They rarely covered the harms.
They reported COVID case countslike sports scores but failed
(25:16):
to contextualize them againstdeaths from untreated cancer or
delayed surgeries.
In Canada, we sawrecord-breaking wait times in
ERs but very little criticalreporting on how restrictions
impacted non-COVID healthoutcomes.
In my 2024 interview with HealthMinister at the time, patty
(25:38):
Hajdu, she acknowledged howunprepared our institutions were
.
She described how she neverexpected to wield that type of
power and that she didn't havethe systems in place to manage
that kind of stress acrossmultiple departments.
It was an honest moment, but itraises a chilling question why
did we normalize uncheckedexecutive authority for over two
(26:02):
years with so little debate?
To her credit, bc's Dr BonnieHenry showed a more cautious
hand.
She resisted blanket maskmandates in schools, warning
they could become divisive.
She hesitated on curfews andtravel bans unless they were
tied to clear, evidence-basedjustifications, but she too
(26:23):
eventually capitulated topressure, caught between public
expectations and politicalinertia.
The great tragedy is not that welocked down.
It's that we never reopened theconversation.
We didn't revisit the data, wedidn't apologize for the harms,
we didn't re-earn the public'strust.
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We acted as if criticism itselfwas more dangerous than the
virus, and that, more thananything, proves how immature
our system became under pressure.
Lockdowns were supposed to be atemporary emergency measure.
They became a long-term socialoperating system, one built not
(27:05):
on public dialogue but on moralpanic, political optics and an
unaccountable power.
We need to ask how do we builda system that can respond to a
crisis without defaulting toauthoritarianism?
The next emergency is coming,whether climate, cyber or
(27:25):
something else.
If our only playbook is panic,we'll repeat the same mistakes.
If our only playbook is panic,we'll repeat the same mistakes,
and next time we may not be inthe same grace period to learn
the vaccine mandate.
The vaccine rollout in late 2020was supposed to be the light at
the end of the tunnel.
After months of isolation, fearand lockdowns.
(27:48):
Vaccines represented a way out,a miracle of modern science,
delivered in record time and inmany ways they were exactly that
.
For high-risk individuals, forthe elderly and for
immunocompromised people, themRNA vaccines offered genuine
life-saving protection.
But what began as hope quicklytransformed into something else
(28:13):
A tool for social sorting,political posturing and moral
punishment.
Let's start with what wasindisputable.
The first wave of clinical datafrom Pfizer, moderna and
AstraZeneca showed that thevaccines were highly effective
at preventing severe disease andhospitalization.
Health authorities around theworld rushed to distribute them.
(28:37):
The public queued up in recordnumbers.
Doctors volunteered on weekends.
There was a moment of sharedoptimism, but it didn't last.
As soon as supply caught upwith demand, a new conversation
began, not about access, butabout compliance.
Within months, governmentsintroduced vaccine mandates for
(29:00):
healthcare workers, federalemployees, travelers, even
children.
In some jurisdictions, proof ofvaccination became a
requirement for boarding a plane, entering a restaurant,
attending university or visitingfamily in long-term care.
These weren't fringe policies.
In Canada, by fall 2021, mostprovinces had introduced vaccine
(29:23):
passport systems.
By fall 2021, most provinceshad introduced vaccine passport
systems.
In British Columbia, thevaccine card became a
requirement for gyms, theatersand events.
Those who refused, often citingmedical concerns, personal risk
assessments or principledobjections, were sidelined,
fired, silenced.
And let's be clear, not all ofthese people were anti-vaxxers.
(29:46):
Many had received othervaccines.
Some were even pro-vaccine butanti-mandate.
But nuance had already left thebuilding.
The public narrative hardenedVaccination equals good,
unvaccinated equals bad.
The binary logic dominatedpolitical rhetoric, media
framing and even public healthmessaging.
(30:10):
Among those most revealingmoments came from Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau himself.
In January 2021, trudeauclearly stated that vaccine
mandates would divide Canadians.
In an interview with Reuters,he said we know that vaccination
is a personal choice and we'renot going to create a situation
where people are forced orcoerced.
(30:32):
That would be divisive andthat's not the Canadian way.
It was a rare moment offoresight.
He understood the risks, he hadnamed them and then he ignored
them.
Less than a year later,trudeau's government implemented
one of the most aggressivevaccine mandates regimes in the
Western world, requiring federalworkers, cross-border truckers
(30:57):
and air travelers to getvaccinated or face job loss and
travel bans.
Canadians who chose not tocomply were excluded from public
life, treated as if they weredangerous, unclean or
uncivilized.
It wasn't just policy, it waspolitical escalation During the
2021 election.
(31:17):
Trudeau went further, strokingdivision in explicit terms.
Speaking in French on a Quebectalk show, he said of
unvaccinated Canadians they areextremists, they don't believe
in science, they are oftenmisogynists and racists.
Do we tolerate these people?
He didn't just reverse hisposition, he vilified Canadians
(31:42):
he had already warned would bealienating by this approach.
That wasn't public health, thatwas wedge politics.
This shift from cautious unityto calculated division wasn't
backed by new science, it wasbacked by polling.
Vaccine mandates became acultural fault line used to
(32:05):
rally urban and suburban voters,while framing the hesitant as a
threat to national virtue.
In a crisis, you see the truecharacter of leadership.
Trudeau didn't just abandon hisprinciples, he exploited fear
after predicting it.
And we haven't even talkedabout the money.
In 2021 alone, pfizer reportedover $80 billion in revenue,
(32:30):
setting a pharmaceuticalindustry record.
Moderna followed close behind.
These were government-backedcontracts with liability waivers
and media partnerships.
Yet any public questioning ofprofit incentives was quickly
labeled as anti-science orconspiratorial.
Meanwhile, legitimate concernsabout the vaccines themselves,
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rare but real side effects, likemyocarditis in young people,
men and menstrual irregularitiesin women, were initially
dismissed or ignored.
It took months for HealthCanada and the CDC to formally
acknowledge these outcomes.
But even after acknowledgement,the public debate remained
(33:14):
off-limits.
Doctors who spoke cautiouslyabout booster frequency, dosage,
timing or natural immunity weredeplatformed.
Others were professionallycensored.
The message wasn't disagreerespectfully, it was comply or
disappear.
And the science?
It didn't always support thepolicies.
(33:37):
By 2022, evidence from Israeland the UK showed that
vaccinated people could stilltransmit COVID-19, particularly
after six months, calling intoquestion the foundational
premise of the vaccine passports.
But no apology came, no policywas reversed, no media mea culpa
(33:58):
.
Let's be clear Vaccines savedlives.
They were a scientific triumph.
But the coercive architecturebuilt around them the mandate,
the exclusion, the moralabsolutism undermined trust in
science and damaged the socialfabric.
In my 2024 interview with PattiHajdu, I asked her about her
(34:23):
role in all of this and therewere a lot of lessons learned
and tough decisions were made.
But emergency is not immunityfrom accountability.
The vaccine rollout wasn't justa medical operation.
It was a test of our societalvalues and we failed.
We punished legitimatequestions, we politicized health
(34:43):
decisions, we traded complexityfor moral certitude and we
divided a country on purpose.
A mature society would say wedid some things right, we did
others wrong, let's learn.
An immature society says we dideverything right.
Shut up and guess which onewe're still living in.
(35:09):
Conclusion, today we've walkedthrough five flashpoints of the
COVID-19 pandemic, five momentswhere our institutions, media
and culture were tested underpressure, and five times we
chose the immature path.
We chose censorship overconversation.
We chose panic overproportionality.
(35:29):
We chose obedience over trust.
We chose moral certainty overscientific humility.
We chose scapegoating overunderstanding, and we paid for
it with jobs, with fracturedfriendships, with delayed
surgeries, with collapsed trust,with children who now read two
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grades below where they shouldbe, grades below where they
should be.
We saw a plausible lab leaktheory instantly labeled a
conspiracy, not because itlacked evidence, but because it
was inconvenient.
We later learned thatscientists themselves had doubts
about natural origin but fearedbacklash.
What could have been atransparent debate became a
(36:10):
closed door whisper network.
That's not scientific maturity,that's institutional
self-protection.
We saw social distancingpolicies rolled out with no
cost-benefit transparency.
Children were locked out ofschools, the elderly died alone
and mental health collapsedacross age groups.
(36:31):
Economists warned,pediatricians warned,
psychologists warned we didn'tlisten or worse, we called them
selfish for caring aboutcollateral damage.
We saw mask policies reverse,not because the data changed
(36:52):
overnight, but because officialslied to shape behavior.
Fauci, tam and Henry allinitially discouraged masks to
preserve supply.
Then they reversed course andpretended nothing happened.
What could have been a momentto say we made a hard choice
under pressure became yetanother instance of message
control over honest leadership.
We saw lockdowns drift fromemergency measures to operating
(37:16):
system, with no sunset clause,no second look, no transparent
benchmarks.
When people asked whether thecure was worse than the disease,
they were treated as politicalenemies, not as citizens seeking
accountability.
And finally, we saw maskmandates mutate from public
health policy into a politicalweapon.
(37:37):
Justin Trudeau warned thatvaccine mandates would divide
Canadians and then use them todo exactly that.
He called unvaccinated citizensmisogynists and racists, not
because science demanded it, butbecause his political calculus
did.
We turned a breakthrough inscience into a bludgeon for
(37:57):
cultural conformity and in allfive cases we did it with the
best of intentions.
That's the hardest part to sayout loud.
Most people weren't trying todeceive or dominate.
They were trying to do theright thing.
But good intentions don'texcuse bad behavior and panic
doesn't justify permanent policy.
(38:18):
So where do we go from here?
We have to stop treatingdissent as dangerous.
We have to stop treatingdisagreement as disinformation.
We have to stop treatingprecaution as permanent.
We have to stop treating policyas morality.
Precaution is permanent.
We have to stop treating policyas morality.
(38:39):
The only way out of thiscultural immaturity is through
institutional humility andpublic courage.
Humility means admitting we gotthings wrong, that early errors
were forgivable but sustainedsuppression was not.
It means building systems thataren't just reactive but
reflective.
Courage means letting citizensinto the conversation, not just
(38:59):
experts, not just politicians,but real people with real lives
and real stakes.
We must relearn whatparticipatory democracy looks
like under pressure.
Let's lay out some principlesfor the next time, not because
we planning for covid too, butbecause the next crisis is
coming.
Whether it's climate, cyber war, ai or inflation, we will be
(39:24):
tested again.
So here's the checklist for amature society in a crisis,
don't say trust the science.
Say here's what we know, whatwe don't and what we're still
figuring out.
Two proportionality Everyrestriction must come with a
(39:44):
cost analysis and a sunsetclause.
Three is pluralism.
Let ideas compete in the publicsquare.
Censorship is not caution, it'scowardice.
Accountability Every leader whowielded power in the pandemic
should be asked what did youlearn and what would you do
(40:06):
differently?
Redemption Forgive people forwhat they believed in April 2020
.
What matters now is what wechoose to do and what we learn
from it, because the realpandemic wasn't just viral.
It was psychological, it wasepistemological, it was cultural
.
It revealed that many of ourinstitutions don't trust the
(40:29):
people and many people in return, no longer trust the
institutions.
Trust can't be rebuilt withoutpublic relations.
It has to be rebuilt withaccountability.
Rick Hansen once talked aboutresilience is earned, it's not
given.
He wasn't just talking aboutspinal cord injuries.
(40:49):
He was talking about life,civic life, political life, the
life of a free and thinkingpeople.
David Suzuki told me that realscience starts with doubt, not
certainty.
We forgot that, but we canremember it again.
The goal isn't to be perfectthe next time.
It's to be better, smarter,more honest, more open, less
(41:14):
reactive, more resilient.
A mature society isn't the onethat makes no mistakes.
It's the one that can admitthem publicly, soberly and
bravely.
If we want to grow up as aculture, it starts there.
Not with rage, not with revenge, with reflection.
Thank you.
In early 2020, while sitting ina constitutional law lecture at
Allard Hall, I saw that firstheadline mysterious novel virus
in Wuhan, China.
Like everybody else, I assumedthis will pass, but what
happened instead was a globalmoral stress test.
And here we are, five yearslater, still arguing over the
(00:55):
foundations of trust, fear andcontrol.
I know many of us want toforget about this period, but
those who don't learn fromhistory are doomed to repeat it.
This was the issue of thedecade and we need to learn from
it.
So today we're not just goingto be talking about a virus.
Five flashpoints revealed ourtendency to opt for fear over
(01:33):
nuance, panic over debate,slogans over science, binaries
over balance.
We will examine the lab leaktheory, social distancing, the
mask, u-turn, lockdowns, thevaccine mandates, mandates.
These aren't just policies.
They're mirrors showing howWestern societies, lulled by
decades of comfort, recoiledfrom complexity, shut down
discourse and let culturalimmaturity shape public life.
(01:55):
Let's begin.
In January 2020, a fewscientists in the United States
and Europe began whisperingabout a possibility no one
wanted to entertain publiclythat SARS-CoV-2, the virus that
causes COVID-19, might haveoriginated not from a wet market
(02:18):
, but from a laboratory,specifically the Wuhan Institute
of Virology.
The theory wasn't new.
It had been discussed inbiodefense circles since SARS.
What was new was how quicklythe theory was politicized,
stigmatized and suppressed.
In the early weeks of thepandemic, the World Health
(02:39):
Organization, the US NationalInstitutes of Health and leaders
like Dr Anthony Fauci movedswiftly to downplay the
possibility of a lab origin.
In a now famous March 2020paper published in Nature
Medicine, five prominentvirologists, including Christian
Anderson, wrote that theiranalysis showed the virus was
(03:01):
not a laboratory construct orpurposefully manipulated virus.
The paper became the gospel ofnatural origin, but what wasn't
revealed until 2023congressional testimony was that
Anderson himself initiallybelieved the virus did look
engineered.
In private Slack messages andemails obtained by the US House
(03:25):
Select Committee, he wrote someof the features look engineered.
We have to look into this.
The paper became central to thenatural origin consensus, but
what wasn't known at the timewas that Anderson initially
believed the virus lookedengineered, writing privately to
Fauci that parts of it lookedinconsistent with expectations
(03:47):
from evolutionary theory.
So why the reversal?
In hearings and investigativereporting by the Intercept and
Vanity Fair, it became clearthat the senior figures,
including Anthony Fauci, wereclosely involved in steering the
narrative.
Scientists feared their fundingwould be pulled or their
(04:08):
reputations destroyed if theysupported the lab leak theory.
Tony doesn't want to go there,one NIH email said, referring to
Dr Fauci.
Dr Fauci and Dr Francis Collins, the then head of the NIH, held
a call with authors of theNature Medicine paper shortly
(04:28):
before it was submitted.
Though they did not author it,the call gave the clear
impression.
If this gets out of hand,funding and careers are on the
line.
Meanwhile, tech platforms likeFacebook, twitter and YouTube
began deplatforming orsuppressing content discussing
the lab leak theory.
(04:49):
Journalists who raised it werelabeled conspiracy theorists.
Meanwhile, media outletsdismissed the lab leak idea
entirely.
The New York Times called itfringe.
Npr implied that evenentertaining the theory was
rooted in xenophobia.
Public health authorities inCanada and the US followed suit.
(05:09):
But behind the scenes, the USintelligence community kept
digging and by 2023, theDepartment of Energy and the FBI
had each issued independentassessments concluding that a
lab-based origin was plausibleor likely, though it held low to
moderate confidence.
(05:30):
By mid-2025, the CIA concludedthat a lab leak was more likely
than natural origin, though thecase was still not definitive.
Let's be clear this isn't aboutbeing right or wrong.
The lab leak theory might stillturn out to be incorrect.
The point is we were neverallowed to have the conversation
(05:54):
.
Institutions didn't say we'llwait for evidence.
They said don't ask thequestion.
That that's not science, that'sscientism and it's not maturity
.
It's cowardice masquerading ascaution.
And here's the damage.
By labeling all discussion asdisinformation, we undermined
(06:15):
institutional trust.
Surveys from Pew and Edelmanshowed trust in scientists,
health officials and journalistshas dropped dramatically since
2020, especially among younger,politically independent or
skeptical populations.
When truth becomes inconvenient, when debate threatens status,
(06:38):
when power silences questions,that's not resilience, that's
rot.
The lab leak debate was neverjust about a virus.
It was about how muchcomplexity the modern West can
tolerate in the face ofuncertainty.
And the answer was not much.
Instead of saying we don't know, we said shut up.
(07:00):
Instead of inviting questions,our leaders issued decrees.
That's what immature societiesdo.
They mistake criticism forattack.
They mistake transparency forbetrayal, and then they wonder
why no one believes them anymore.
Social distancing Within weeksof the first cases of COVID-19
(07:23):
appearing outside China,countries around the world
rolled out a public healthstrategy few had ever imagined
Social distancing.
Overnight, schools closed,businesses shuttered,
grandparents were cut off fromtheir families, parks were
wrapped in caution tape.
Tape Xs appeared on grocerystore floors.
Two meters became gospel.
(07:45):
It was framed as a moralimperative Flatten the curve,
protect the vulnerable.
But behind the marketing of thephrase, something critical was
missing Discussion.
Where was the cost-benefitanalysis?
Where were the trade-offconversations?
Where was the transparency onthe research?
(08:08):
Social distancing is not a newconcept in epidemiology, but its
widespread deployment inresponse to a respiratory virus
like SARS-CoV-2 was largelyuntested at scale.
Prior pandemic planningdocuments, including Canada's
2018 pandemic influenzapreparedness guidelines, warned
(08:28):
that prolonged school closures,travel restrictions and
widespread quarantine shouldonly be used with caution.
Why?
Because of the massivedownstream effects on mental
health, education, the economyand basic civil liberties.
But in March 2020, caution wasabandoned.
(08:49):
Politicians, public healthofficers and media outlets
declared consensus, leaningheavily on modeling from places
like Imperial College London,which projected 500,000 UK
deaths without sweepinginterventions.
Those projections and the fearthey induced became the pretext
(09:10):
for the largest mass behavioralexperiment in modern history.
Yet from the very beginning,there were voices of dissent.
Epidemiologists like Dr JohnLundis at Stanford warning that
we lacked data on infectionfatality rates and were
overcorrecting.
Economists flagged potentialcollapse of small businesses.
(09:34):
Psychologists forecasting acoming wave of anxiety,
loneliness and suicidality,especially among the young
people and the elderly.
Especially among the youngpeople and the elderly, but none
of those critiques made thenews unless they were framed as
(09:54):
selfish, reckless or ideological.
Dissent was equated withindifference to human life.
In October 2020, a coalition ofrespected scientists from Oxford
, harvard and Stanford releasedthe Great Barrington Declaration
, arguing for an alternativestrategy focused on protection
Shield the vulnerable, includingthose in long-term care, while
(10:17):
allowing younger, healthierpopulations to return to normal
life.
This, they argued, would buildherd immunity while minimizing
social and economic harm.
The reaction Public shaming.
Dr Anthony Fauci called thedeclaration total nonsense.
(10:38):
Dr Francis Collins, the thenhead of the NIH, wrote in a now
public email that it needed adevastating takedown, and the
media complied, dismissing it asa fringe libertarian stunt.
Facebook downranked its linksto it.
Youtube demonetized contentdiscussing it.
Even when the recommendationswere echoed later by public
(10:59):
health experts, includingtargeted vaccinations,
proportional restrictions andharm reduction, the authors of
the Great Barrington Declarationremained blacklisted in many
circles.
And here's the key they weren'tnecessarily right.
Their model had flaws, but theyweren't allowed to be wrong in
(11:20):
the open.
They were treated like heretics.
And that's the problem, becausein the years since, we've had
time to look at what happened,and the results are sobering.
A meta analysis by Johns HopkinsUniversity found that lockdowns
, a more extreme form of socialdistancing, reduced COVID
(11:42):
mortality by just 0.2% onaverage.
The Lancet and JAMA publishedsimilar findings.
The impact ofnon-pharmaceutical interventions
varied widely and mostreductions in transmissions
likely came from voluntarybehavioral change, not mandates.
Meanwhile, the costs of socialdistancing are undeniable.
(12:06):
The United States NationalAssessment of Educational
Progress scores in math andreading fell by the largest
margins in 30 years.
Mental health surveys showedspikes in anxiety and depression
, particularly among youth.
Elderly residents in care homesdied not only from COVID, but
(12:27):
from isolation and neglect.
And yet there's been noreckoning, no public inquiry
into how these decisions weremade, no apology for the damage,
no promise to debate trade-offsmore seriously next time.
Instead, we doubled down,valorizing restriction and
vilifying anyone who hesitatedto enforce it.
(12:49):
This wasn't science.
It was the performance ofcertainty in the absence of
humility.
In law school, we're trained toweigh the competing values
liberty versus security, rightsversus responsibilities.
In public health, the sameprinciples apply, but during
COVID we forgot that trade-offsare not cruelty, they are
(13:11):
reality.
We acted like any considerationof cost was equivalent to
selfishness and that the kind ofthinking absolutist, panicked
moralizing is the opposite ofmaturity.
In my 2021 interview with RickHansen.
He said resilience isn't builtby hiding from the storm.
(13:32):
It's built by facing it,learning from it and adapting.
That's true for individuals andit should be true for
governments, but instead oftrusting people with the
complexity, we simplified themessage Stay home, save lives,
don't ask questions.
What a tragic missedopportunity for public education
(13:53):
, civic engagement andcollective growth, because
nuance isn't a luxury, it's anecessity, especially in a
crisis.
The mask you turn.
In March 2020, if you wore amask in a grocery store, you
were more likely to get astrange look than a thank you.
(14:14):
Not only were masks notrecommended, they were actively
discouraged.
Dr Anthony Fauci on 60 Minutessaid bluntly there's no reason
to be walking around with a mask.
Dr Theresa Tam, canada's publichealth officer, echoed that
guidance, saying masks mightgive a false sense of security.
(14:34):
And in British Columbia, drBonnie Henry described masks as
unnecessary for the generalpublic, saying there was no
clear evidence they helpedoutside clinical settings.
The reasons given were, on thesurface, understandable there
was a global shortage of PPE andgovernments feared public
hoarding.
But instead of saying we needto preserve these for frontline
(14:58):
workers, the message to thepublic was they don't work.
In other words, officials liedto shape behavior.
That decision to manipulaterather than level would have
ripple effects far beyond thespring of 2020.
By April, the messaging shifteddramatically.
New evidence had emergedAsymptomatic and pre-symptomatic
(15:21):
individuals were spreading thevirus.
Suddenly, masks were a key toolin controlling the pandemic.
The CDC reversed its position.
So did the Public Health Agencyof Canada.
In July 2020, mask mandateswere introduced in jurisdictions
across North America.
To many, it felt like scienceevolving.
(15:42):
To others, it felt likegaslighting.
And here's the problem thereversal itself wasn't the issue
.
Science changes, dataaccumulates.
That's normal.
What broke trust was therefusal to admit this change was
strategic, not scientific.
Fauci later admitted that maskswere discouraged to preserve
(16:05):
supply, in his words I don'tregret it, but I was concerned
that people would go out and buymasks and leave healthcare
workers without them.
But that admission came monthslater.
In the interim, the public wasexpected to obey guidance that
contradicted prior advice, withno accountability or
(16:26):
transparency.
People weren't asked to trustthe science.
They were told to trust thespokesperson of the science,
even when these spokespersonshad misled them.
The result Mass confusion andworse, mass division.
People who continued toquestion mask efficacy were
(16:48):
labeled irresponsible ordangerous If you wore a mask
before April, you were paranoid.
If you didn't wear one afterMay, you were selfish.
Overnight, a piece of fabricbecame a symbol of moral
allegiance.
Meanwhile, the science itselfremained, and still remains,
nuanced.
(17:08):
A 2021 Cochrane review foundthat high-quality masks like
N95s can reduce viral spread,especially in clinical settings
and when fitted properly.
Cloth masks.
The evidence is mixed at best.
Real-world efficacy depends onmultiple factors Ventilation,
(17:29):
mask quality factors,ventilation mask quality,
consistency of use and socialbehavior.
But none of that nuance made itinto the public briefings or
school board decisions.
Instead, the messaging becameabsolute Masks work, end of
story.
Except it wasn't the end.
Dr Bonnie Henry, despite thenational trend, resisted making
(17:52):
masks mandatory in BC schoolsand public spaces until much
later than other provinces.
In her words, masks are a blunttool.
They can be divisive.
They should be the last resort,not the first.
She wasn't denying theirusefulness.
She was acknowledging theirlimits, both scientifically and
(18:13):
socially.
But for that she was attacked,by some for being too soft and
by others for being tooinconsistent.
In other words, she waspunished for nuance, and that's
the heart of the problem.
Public health messaging,especially in a crisis, has to
be clear, but it also has to behonest.
(18:34):
Instead of what we got was amixed fear-driven directives and
moralistic scolding.
Questions weren't answered.
They were treated as threats.
Even respected medicalprofessionals who questioned
mandates were reprimanded,censored or fired.
A doctor in Ontario was removedfrom hospital duty for calling
(18:58):
for better mask fit testing.
In the US, some physicians werethreatened with disciplinary
action for saying cloth masksweren't effective.
This wasn't about scienceanymore.
It was about control and,ironically, the very attempt to
assert the control underminedthe goal.
By the end of 2022, publictrust in health authorities had
(19:22):
plummeted.
Pew Research found that only29% of Americans had a great
deal of confidence in publichealth officials, down from 43%
in 2020.
In Canada, confidence in thefederal COVID-19 response
declined by 14 percentage pointsbetween March 2020 and November
(19:44):
2021.
I spoke with former healthminister Patti Hajdu in 2024.
She acknowledged the confusionconfusion, stating that tough
decisions had to be made quickly.
If institutions want tomaintain public trust, they must
model what we demand ofcitizens honesty, humility and
(20:04):
responsibility.
The mask U-turn wasn't a signthat science failed.
It was a sign that our culturedoesn't tolerate uncertainty and
our governments don't trust usto handle the truth.
That's not public health,that's paternalism, and that,
more than anything, explains whywe're still cleaning up this
(20:26):
mess.
Lockdowns, flatten the curve.
That was the slogan, the chant,the ethical compass of March
2020.
Lockdowns were pitched as theonly responsible response to a
looming tsunami ofhospitalizations and death.
For a time, they felt like amoral necessity Protect the
(20:49):
elderly, preserve ICU capacity,break chains of transmission.
Politicians and public healthofficials repeated the phrase
like gospel this is temporary.
We were told A few weeks to buytime.
That was the social contract,but it was never renegotiated
(21:15):
contract, but it was neverrenegotiated.
Weeks turned into months,months into seasons, and what
began as an emergency responsehardened into the long-term
governance by executive order.
Restrictions extended far beyondflattening the curve.
In Canada, religious serviceswere banned, parks and
playgrounds were taped off.
People were fined for walkingoutside without a mask.
In Quebec, a literal curfew wasintroduced, the kind used
(21:39):
during wartime.
Initially, these restrictionshad broad public support.
But here's the thing aboutconsent it doesn't last forever
if you don't revisit it.
The ethical foundation forlockdowns became shakier the
longer we went on.
Why?
Because governments stoppedtreating them like emergency
(21:59):
measures and started defendingthem as indisputable public
goods.
Let's steel man the case.
First, early on, there waslittle data about COVID's
lethality or transmissibility.
The virus overwhelmed NorthernItaly and New York hospitals.
Leaders had to act fast.
Many epidemiologists, like DrMichael Mina, believed that
(22:22):
early, aggressive suppressioncould avoid long-term
catastrophe.
Others feared a second 1918.
So the logic was overreact nowrather than underreact and
regret it later.
But steelmanning is not thesame as surrendering.
Even in March 2020, many expertswarned that broad, indefinite
(22:44):
lockdowns would carry profoundcosts, especially for the most
vulnerable.
Dr Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanfordphysician and economist, argued
that school closures woulddevastate poor families, cause
irreparable learning loss andexacerbate inequality.
He was right.
By 2022, us National Assessmentof Educational Progress scores
(23:09):
showed the largest decline inmath and reading scores in 30
years.
Canada saw similar losses,especially in working class
districts.
The World Bank found that anadditional 70 million people
globally fell into extremepoverty during the pandemic, not
because of the virus, butbecause of the economic
(23:30):
shutdowns.
Even the World HealthOrganization's 2019 pandemic
planning guidelines warned thatlockdowns should be used
sparingly and only withtransparent, time-limited goals.
Those goals never came.
What we got instead was afeedback loop of justifications
without benchmarks.
(23:50):
And then there was the mentalhealth crisis.
The Center for Addiction andMental Health in Toronto
reported that anxiety,depression and suicidal ideation
among young people spiked torecord levels during lockdowns.
Calls to suicide hotlinesincreased across the board,
(24:11):
domestic violence shelters wereoverwhelmed, people struggling
with addiction lost access toharm reduction services and
counselling.
As of 2023, british Columbiawas recording its deadliest
years ever for drug overdoses,surpassing even pre-pandemic
highs.
These weren't just bugs in thesystem.
(24:32):
They were features of a policythat prioritized one kind of
risk viral spread above allothers.
Still, those who raisedconcerns were treated as threats
to the public good.
Critics of lockdowns, even whenciting peer-reviewed studies or
mental health data, were oftenaccused of being anti-science,
(24:56):
selfish or right-wing.
It didn't matter if you were alifelong progressive or a
trauma-informed psychologist.
If you opposed the dominantnarrative, you were marginalized
.
And the media didn't help.
They rarely covered the harms.
They reported COVID case countslike sports scores but failed
(25:16):
to contextualize them againstdeaths from untreated cancer or
delayed surgeries.
In Canada, we sawrecord-breaking wait times in
ERs but very little criticalreporting on how restrictions
impacted non-COVID healthoutcomes.
In my 2024 interview with HealthMinister at the time, patty
(25:38):
Hajdu, she acknowledged howunprepared our institutions were
.
She described how she neverexpected to wield that type of
power and that she didn't havethe systems in place to manage
that kind of stress acrossmultiple departments.
It was an honest moment, but itraises a chilling question why
did we normalize uncheckedexecutive authority for over two
(26:02):
years with so little debate?
To her credit, bc's Dr BonnieHenry showed a more cautious
hand.
She resisted blanket maskmandates in schools, warning
they could become divisive.
She hesitated on curfews andtravel bans unless they were
tied to clear, evidence-basedjustifications, but she too
(26:23):
eventually capitulated topressure, caught between public
expectations and politicalinertia.
The great tragedy is not that welocked down.
It's that we never reopened theconversation.
We didn't revisit the data, wedidn't apologize for the harms,
we didn't re-earn the public'strust.
(26:44):
We acted as if criticism itselfwas more dangerous than the
virus, and that, more thananything, proves how immature
our system became under pressure.
Lockdowns were supposed to be atemporary emergency measure.
They became a long-term socialoperating system, one built not
(27:05):
on public dialogue but on moralpanic, political optics and an
unaccountable power.
We need to ask how do we builda system that can respond to a
crisis without defaulting toauthoritarianism?
The next emergency is coming,whether climate, cyber or
(27:25):
something else.
If our only playbook is panic,we'll repeat the same mistakes.
If our only playbook is panic,we'll repeat the same mistakes,
and next time we may not be inthe same grace period to learn
the vaccine mandate.
The vaccine rollout in late 2020was supposed to be the light at
the end of the tunnel.
After months of isolation, fearand lockdowns.
(27:48):
Vaccines represented a way out,a miracle of modern science,
delivered in record time and inmany ways they were exactly that
.
For high-risk individuals, forthe elderly and for
immunocompromised people, themRNA vaccines offered genuine
life-saving protection.
But what began as hope quicklytransformed into something else
(28:13):
A tool for social sorting,political posturing and moral
punishment.
Let's start with what wasindisputable.
The first wave of clinical datafrom Pfizer, moderna and
AstraZeneca showed that thevaccines were highly effective
at preventing severe disease andhospitalization.
Health authorities around theworld rushed to distribute them.
(28:37):
The public queued up in recordnumbers.
Doctors volunteered on weekends.
There was a moment of sharedoptimism, but it didn't last.
As soon as supply caught upwith demand, a new conversation
began, not about access, butabout compliance.
Within months, governmentsintroduced vaccine mandates for
(29:00):
healthcare workers, federalemployees, travelers, even
children.
In some jurisdictions, proof ofvaccination became a
requirement for boarding a plane, entering a restaurant,
attending university or visitingfamily in long-term care.
These weren't fringe policies.
In Canada, by fall 2021, mostprovinces had introduced vaccine
(29:23):
passport systems.
By fall 2021, most provinceshad introduced vaccine passport
systems.
In British Columbia, thevaccine card became a
requirement for gyms, theatersand events.
Those who refused, often citingmedical concerns, personal risk
assessments or principledobjections, were sidelined,
fired, silenced.
And let's be clear, not all ofthese people were anti-vaxxers.
(29:46):
Many had received othervaccines.
Some were even pro-vaccine butanti-mandate.
But nuance had already left thebuilding.
The public narrative hardenedVaccination equals good,
unvaccinated equals bad.
The binary logic dominatedpolitical rhetoric, media
framing and even public healthmessaging.
(30:10):
Among those most revealingmoments came from Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau himself.
In January 2021, trudeauclearly stated that vaccine
mandates would divide Canadians.
In an interview with Reuters,he said we know that vaccination
is a personal choice and we'renot going to create a situation
where people are forced orcoerced.
(30:32):
That would be divisive andthat's not the Canadian way.
It was a rare moment offoresight.
He understood the risks, he hadnamed them and then he ignored
them.
Less than a year later,trudeau's government implemented
one of the most aggressivevaccine mandates regimes in the
Western world, requiring federalworkers, cross-border truckers
(30:57):
and air travelers to getvaccinated or face job loss and
travel bans.
Canadians who chose not tocomply were excluded from public
life, treated as if they weredangerous, unclean or
uncivilized.
It wasn't just policy, it waspolitical escalation During the
2021 election.
(31:17):
Trudeau went further, strokingdivision in explicit terms.
Speaking in French on a Quebectalk show, he said of
unvaccinated Canadians they areextremists, they don't believe
in science, they are oftenmisogynists and racists.
Do we tolerate these people?
He didn't just reverse hisposition, he vilified Canadians
(31:42):
he had already warned would bealienating by this approach.
That wasn't public health, thatwas wedge politics.
This shift from cautious unityto calculated division wasn't
backed by new science, it wasbacked by polling.
Vaccine mandates became acultural fault line used to
(32:05):
rally urban and suburban voters,while framing the hesitant as a
threat to national virtue.
In a crisis, you see the truecharacter of leadership.
Trudeau didn't just abandon hisprinciples, he exploited fear
after predicting it.
And we haven't even talkedabout the money.
In 2021 alone, pfizer reportedover $80 billion in revenue,
(32:30):
setting a pharmaceuticalindustry record.
Moderna followed close behind.
These were government-backedcontracts with liability waivers
and media partnerships.
Yet any public questioning ofprofit incentives was quickly
labeled as anti-science orconspiratorial.
Meanwhile, legitimate concernsabout the vaccines themselves,
(32:52):
rare but real side effects, likemyocarditis in young people,
men and menstrual irregularitiesin women, were initially
dismissed or ignored.
It took months for HealthCanada and the CDC to formally
acknowledge these outcomes.
But even after acknowledgement,the public debate remained
(33:14):
off-limits.
Doctors who spoke cautiouslyabout booster frequency, dosage,
timing or natural immunity weredeplatformed.
Others were professionallycensored.
The message wasn't disagreerespectfully, it was comply or
disappear.
And the science?
It didn't always support thepolicies.
(33:37):
By 2022, evidence from Israeland the UK showed that
vaccinated people could stilltransmit COVID-19, particularly
after six months, calling intoquestion the foundational
premise of the vaccine passports.
But no apology came, no policywas reversed, no media mea culpa
(33:58):
.
Let's be clear Vaccines savedlives.
They were a scientific triumph.
But the coercive architecturebuilt around them the mandate,
the exclusion, the moralabsolutism undermined trust in
science and damaged the socialfabric.
In my 2024 interview with PattiHajdu, I asked her about her
(34:23):
role in all of this and therewere a lot of lessons learned
and tough decisions were made.
But emergency is not immunityfrom accountability.
The vaccine rollout wasn't justa medical operation.
It was a test of our societalvalues and we failed.
We punished legitimatequestions, we politicized health
(34:43):
decisions, we traded complexityfor moral certitude and we
divided a country on purpose.
A mature society would say wedid some things right, we did
others wrong, let's learn.
An immature society says we dideverything right.
Shut up and guess which onewe're still living in.
(35:09):
Conclusion, today we've walkedthrough five flashpoints of the
COVID-19 pandemic, five momentswhere our institutions, media
and culture were tested underpressure, and five times we
chose the immature path.
We chose censorship overconversation.
We chose panic overproportionality.
(35:29):
We chose obedience over trust.
We chose moral certainty overscientific humility.
We chose scapegoating overunderstanding, and we paid for
it with jobs, with fracturedfriendships, with delayed
surgeries, with collapsed trust,with children who now read two
(35:50):
grades below where they shouldbe, grades below where they
should be.
We saw a plausible lab leaktheory instantly labeled a
conspiracy, not because itlacked evidence, but because it
was inconvenient.
We later learned thatscientists themselves had doubts
about natural origin but fearedbacklash.
What could have been atransparent debate became a
(36:10):
closed door whisper network.
That's not scientific maturity,that's institutional
self-protection.
We saw social distancingpolicies rolled out with no
cost-benefit transparency.
Children were locked out ofschools, the elderly died alone
and mental health collapsedacross age groups.
(36:31):
Economists warned,pediatricians warned,
psychologists warned we didn'tlisten or worse, we called them
selfish for caring aboutcollateral damage.
We saw mask policies reverse,not because the data changed
(36:52):
overnight, but because officialslied to shape behavior.
Fauci, tam and Henry allinitially discouraged masks to
preserve supply.
Then they reversed course andpretended nothing happened.
What could have been a momentto say we made a hard choice
under pressure became yetanother instance of message
control over honest leadership.
We saw lockdowns drift fromemergency measures to operating
(37:16):
system, with no sunset clause,no second look, no transparent
benchmarks.
When people asked whether thecure was worse than the disease,
they were treated as politicalenemies, not as citizens seeking
accountability.
And finally, we saw maskmandates mutate from public
health policy into a politicalweapon.
(37:37):
Justin Trudeau warned thatvaccine mandates would divide
Canadians and then use them todo exactly that.
He called unvaccinated citizensmisogynists and racists, not
because science demanded it, butbecause his political calculus
did.
We turned a breakthrough inscience into a bludgeon for
(37:57):
cultural conformity and in allfive cases we did it with the
best of intentions.
That's the hardest part to sayout loud.
Most people weren't trying todeceive or dominate.
They were trying to do theright thing.
But good intentions don'texcuse bad behavior and panic
doesn't justify permanent policy.
(38:18):
So where do we go from here?
We have to stop treatingdissent as dangerous.
We have to stop treatingdisagreement as disinformation.
We have to stop treatingprecaution as permanent.
We have to stop treating policyas morality.
Precaution is permanent.
We have to stop treating policyas morality.
(38:39):
The only way out of thiscultural immaturity is through
institutional humility andpublic courage.
Humility means admitting we gotthings wrong, that early errors
were forgivable but sustainedsuppression was not.
It means building systems thataren't just reactive but
reflective.
Courage means letting citizensinto the conversation, not just
(38:59):
experts, not just politicians,but real people with real lives
and real stakes.
We must relearn whatparticipatory democracy looks
like under pressure.
Let's lay out some principlesfor the next time, not because
we planning for covid too, butbecause the next crisis is
coming.
Whether it's climate, cyber war, ai or inflation, we will be
(39:24):
tested again.
So here's the checklist for amature society in a crisis,
don't say trust the science.
Say here's what we know, whatwe don't and what we're still
figuring out.
Two proportionality Everyrestriction must come with a
(39:44):
cost analysis and a sunsetclause.
Three is pluralism.
Let ideas compete in the publicsquare.
Censorship is not caution, it'scowardice.
Accountability Every leader whowielded power in the pandemic
should be asked what did youlearn and what would you do
(40:06):
differently?
Redemption Forgive people forwhat they believed in April 2020
.
What matters now is what wechoose to do and what we learn
from it, because the realpandemic wasn't just viral.
It was psychological, it wasepistemological, it was cultural
.
It revealed that many of ourinstitutions don't trust the
(40:29):
people and many people in return, no longer trust the
institutions.
Trust can't be rebuilt withoutpublic relations.
It has to be rebuilt withaccountability.
Rick Hansen once talked aboutresilience is earned, it's not
given.
He wasn't just talking aboutspinal cord injuries.
(40:49):
He was talking about life,civic life, political life, the
life of a free and thinkingpeople.
David Suzuki told me that realscience starts with doubt, not
certainty.
We forgot that, but we canremember it again.
The goal isn't to be perfectthe next time.
It's to be better, smarter,more honest, more open, less
(41:14):
reactive, more resilient.
A mature society isn't the onethat makes no mistakes.
It's the one that can admitthem publicly, soberly and
bravely.
If we want to grow up as aculture, it starts there.
Not with rage, not with revenge, with reflection.
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