0:01

Hello everyone, I'm speaking today with Steve Templeton.

0:14

He

0:18

wrote a recent book, very

0:20

relevant to the times,

0:22

entitled Fear of a Microbial

0:24

Planet How a Germophobic

0:27

Safety Culture Makes Us

0:29

Less Safe. It

0:31

seems to me that a safety culture, all

0:33

things considered, probably makes us globally

0:36

less safe, but that seems particularly

0:38

the case in relationship,

0:41

let's say, to germophobic

0:44

safety culture, given what happened in the pandemic.

0:47

So what

0:50

specifically motivated

0:53

you to write this book, and when did you start writing

0:55

it? What did you see happening? Yeah,

0:57

so first of all, thank you for having me on your show,

1:00

on your podcast. I'm very grateful

1:03

to be here. I've been a fan since 12 Rules for Life,

1:05

so thanks so much for having me on. But

1:08

you know, what originally happened was, just with

1:10

anyone else, the pandemic took

1:13

me by shock, surprise. I

1:16

didn't anticipate how

1:18

we would respond to the pandemic,

1:21

and I didn't anticipate the

1:24

appetite of people

1:26

for

1:28

being able to have

1:30

their lives completely shut down and

1:33

controlled by politicians

1:36

and other people, public health experts.

1:39

So I was really floored by the type

1:41

of response and the way that people

1:43

were behaving, and it made me think,

1:46

you know, they don't really have an

1:48

idea of their

1:50

microbial environment. Because

1:53

you know, you're seeing things like people wearing masks outside,

1:56

you're seeing playgrounds being shut

1:59

down. hiking

2:01

trails, things like that,

2:03

that there was absolutely no evidence that there'd

2:05

be any sort of risk

2:08

to those activities. And

2:11

I was really floored by

2:13

how widespread that was.

2:15

I mean, and people really bought into it. I

2:19

saw a single child

2:21

at a playground that was shut down. I

2:23

mean, this was probably a teenager and someone came up

2:25

and berated him for

2:29

being on a playground by themselves after

2:31

it had been shut down. So this type

2:33

of behavior was really eye-opening

2:36

for me. It was something that I didn't expect. And

2:38

I really started to think, why is this happening?

2:42

I know as an immunologist,

2:45

there are going to be pandemics. This

2:48

one particularly seemed to be age-stratified

2:51

in terms of mortality. Children

2:53

weren't really affected. These were all things that we were known,

2:57

that we knew very early on. And

2:59

so I was really surprised by

3:02

that response. I started thinking about

3:04

how to explain

3:05

it

3:07

in a way that I

3:11

could understand. So I've

3:13

kind of been interested in writing a book and this

3:17

theme sort of kept popping into my head

3:20

of

3:21

all these things that weren't necessarily controversial

3:25

three years ago. Then

3:27

all of a sudden became controversial. And

3:30

so that was kind of the

3:32

impetus for writing a book. Well,

3:35

it's interesting because your

3:37

training is an immunology, but what you

3:40

said, what you're describing here is the fact

3:42

that you're actually struck by

3:44

the social and the political response,

3:47

psychological, social and political response.

3:49

And so I've got a couple of questions about that.

3:52

The first is psychologists

3:55

have started to outline

3:57

and I don't know if this is research

3:59

that... with what you study, the

4:02

operations of what's called, often

4:05

called, sometimes called the behavioral

4:07

immune system. And I suppose part

4:10

of the behavioral immune system is the disgust

4:12

response, right? And it has a physiological

4:14

basis. The

4:17

gag reflex, for example, is part of that. The

4:19

fact that poisons taste bitter to us, the

4:21

fact that we can be, that we sneeze,

4:25

the fact that disgust will

4:27

evoke a different kind of

4:30

defensive and avoidance reaction,

4:33

the fact that we'll regard things as contaminated, those

4:36

are all parts of the behavioral immune response.

4:39

And one way of conceptualizing what

4:41

happened

4:42

with regard to the pandemic was that

4:44

it was,

4:45

you can get an immune response

4:48

that goes out of control like a cytokine storm,

4:51

but this looked to me like it was the equivalent of a cytokine

4:53

storm on the behavioral immune

4:55

front.

4:57

What do you think of that line of theorizing?

5:00

Does that strike you as plausible? Yeah,

5:02

absolutely. So first

5:04

of all, I've written about the

5:07

connection, or at least the metaphor

5:09

of an immune response to our own pandemic

5:12

response because in an immune response, things

5:15

start out pretty nonspecific

5:17

at first. You have a lot of inflammation,

5:20

you have a lot of tissue damage. But

5:22

then as it progresses, you

5:24

get more of a specific or an adaptive response,

5:27

and that is more

5:29

antibody cells

5:31

that are more specific to any given pathogen,

5:34

and there's a lot less collateral damage because of

5:36

that specificity. And so

5:38

you would hope

5:41

that a pandemic response would be like that. I

5:43

mean, obviously in the first few weeks, you're not going

5:45

to know what you're dealing with, but

5:47

as the pandemic spread through different

5:49

populations, you got to see who

5:52

the vulnerable people were, who wasn't

5:54

affected, how transmissible

5:56

it was, which was very highly transmissible.

6:00

And you would hope the immune, the pandemic

6:02

response would kind of look like that, like

6:05

an immune response that was successful

6:08

in defeating a pathogen. But I thought it became

6:10

more like an autoimmune response

6:13

where we started attacking things that

6:15

didn't matter, like schools and

6:18

issuing mandates without

6:21

evidence that they were really going to make

6:24

a difference. And so I've

6:27

used that metaphor before. In

6:29

terms of the behavioral immune response, I

6:31

think that's a really interesting thing.

6:33

And I've thought about it and written about it as well.

6:37

Because obviously, if you're thinking about the fear

6:40

of this being an immunologist,

6:42

I had to delve into some psychology, which is another

6:45

reason I'm fascinated to talk to you about this.

6:48

But the political sort of tribal conflict

6:55

that we have here in the United

6:57

States seems to override some of the

7:00

studies on disgust, because you would think

7:02

that based on studies,

7:04

more people who are conservative

7:07

would tend to be more easily disgusted.

7:09

And that's been done in studies.

7:12

And early on in the pandemic, that was very

7:15

much covered in the press because

7:18

Donald Trump is a germaphobe,

7:21

and everyone wanted to kind of talk about that.

7:25

Media people covered that a lot.

7:28

But then

7:29

it turned out that people

7:32

who are more conservative tended to reject mandates

7:35

and coercive

7:37

public health measures, whereas

7:40

liberals were more likely to just buy into

7:43

all of it and enforce

7:45

it almost to the level of it being

7:48

a religion. And so

7:50

I think that's really interesting, that

7:53

the sort of political considerations overrode

7:55

that research.

7:56

Well, so, okay,

7:59

well, let's... Let's walk down that

8:01

road for a minute. So I did, my

8:03

lab did some of the research on disgust,

8:06

sensitivity and conservatism.

8:08

And we looked at it in relationship,

8:11

for example, to treat conscientiousness

8:13

because there's some indication that conscientious

8:15

people are more disgust sensitive. Now,

8:19

and it was striking that,

8:22

as you pointed out, that what you

8:24

might've predicted to begin with, and

8:27

there's also a fair bit of research. I

8:30

can't unfortunately remember the

8:33

researcher's name at the moment, but I had him on my podcast

8:36

who's documented quite clearly the relationship

8:39

between contamination, the

8:41

prevalence of contaminants, transmissible

8:43

contaminants, state by state

8:46

and country by country. And the

8:48

probability that especially

8:50

right-wing authoritarian beliefs will

8:53

arise culturally and

8:55

individually, and the relationship is

8:57

quite tight. But as you

9:00

said,

9:01

it looked like it was the left in particular

9:03

that was gung-ho about the

9:05

lockdowns, even

9:09

more so than the conservatives, although they were also

9:11

complicit. Now, but what seems

9:13

to have emerged recently, there's

9:15

another line of psychological research that

9:18

bears on this. And so for 70

9:20

years, psychologists denied the agreement of

9:24

the existence of left-wing authoritarianism.

9:27

And I'm going to lay that denial at the feet

9:29

of social psychologists, because I believe

9:32

that they turned a blind eye

9:34

to left-wing authoritarianism 100% for

9:37

political reasons, although it

9:39

might also be because some of them were also

9:41

left-wing authoritarianists. But there's

9:43

been a new line of research developed,

9:45

and there's probably only about 10 studies

9:48

in total. We did one in 2016

9:50

before my research career came

9:53

to an abrupt end. First

9:55

of all, establishing that left-wing authoritarianism

9:57

was identifiable on social

9:59

media. statistical grounds, but then second,

10:02

looking at the predictors. We found

10:04

low verbal intelligence and being

10:06

female and having a feminine temperament

10:09

were solid predictors of left,

10:12

radical left-wing beliefs

10:14

combined with the willingness to use compulsion

10:17

and force to enforce them.

10:19

But more recently, people have been

10:21

examining the role

10:23

played by dark tetrad traits.

10:26

So Machiavellianism, psychopathy,

10:29

narcissism, and

10:31

sadism, which is a

10:33

late addition to that horrible triad,

10:35

let's say.

10:38

I read one study last week showing

10:40

that the relationship between

10:42

the malignant narcissism

10:45

and left-wing authoritarianism

10:48

was so strong that

10:50

they're almost indistinguishable on the measurement

10:53

front. So I wonder if what

10:56

we saw wasn't so much a disgust

10:58

reaction of the sort that you would associate

11:01

with conservatives, but an opportunity

11:03

for malignant narcissists to use

11:06

fear to manipulate the population,

11:09

to put themselves in positions of power. Like

11:11

your book, you make that case to

11:14

a fair degree because you concentrate

11:17

not so much on disgust, but on fear,

11:19

and then on, well, on

11:22

the machinations that were used by people

11:24

who manipulated fear to

11:26

gain notoriety and political power.

11:29

In Canada, I'll give you one other example. So

11:32

in Canada, I know for

11:35

a fact, because I've been told by

11:37

the people who were involved,

11:39

even though they were embarrassed to have been

11:41

a part of it, that

11:43

virtually all the COVID lockdown

11:45

policies were implemented

11:49

on the basis of opinion polls

11:52

and then provided with

11:54

a post hoc justification with

11:57

the science. Right? So it was 100%

12:00

instrumental manipulation. So anyways,

12:03

that's a set

12:05

of ideas.

12:06

Yeah, I think that you

12:08

can reduce it maybe to instead

12:11

of left and right, authoritarian

12:14

versus non-authoritarian. And I think that that's

12:16

what you said is correct. I think the

12:20

level of authoritarianism has changed

12:23

between left and right in recent

12:26

years. And that's because

12:28

the amount of relative power I think

12:30

has changed. I mean, you

12:32

know, when I grew up in the 80s and

12:34

I remember, you know,

12:37

censorship drives and, you

12:39

know, music was being attacked and everyone was

12:41

joking about it. And because

12:43

conservatives wanted to censor things and,

12:47

you know, none of that really happens anymore. It's kind

12:49

of the other way around where people

12:51

can't joke about certain things

12:54

and they have to demonstrate

12:56

how virtuous they are

12:58

in sort of a left wing kind

13:00

of way. So I think that

13:02

you can reduce it to changes

13:06

in authoritarianism, definitely. Yeah,

13:09

well, it's still uncertain

13:13

the degree to which, let's say, we

13:15

could make the hypothesis that oversensitivity

13:19

to disgust

13:20

will drive an authoritarian response on

13:22

the right. You definitely saw that in the

13:24

Third Reich under the Nazis because

13:27

Hitler, for example, appeared to be extremely

13:29

disgust sensitive. And I

13:32

read a fair bit of his spontaneous

13:34

utterances about the Jews and all

13:37

the other people who persecuted. And he

13:39

used the language of purity and

13:42

contempt and disgust constantly. It wasn't

13:44

the language of fear. I mean, he

13:47

did, you

13:47

know, foster fear, let's say, in relationship

13:50

to the people he targeted. But more

13:52

specifically, he fostered disgust.

13:56

And so maybe, and no one

13:58

knows if this is the case, maybe a different way. a disgust

14:00

reaction that goes overboard, fosters

14:03

at least part of right-wing authoritarianism

14:06

and

14:07

the dark tetrad psychopathy,

14:09

Machiavellianism, narcissism and sadism

14:12

fosters something like radical left-wing

14:14

authoritarianism. No one's cleared that up

14:16

yet, but

14:18

it seems at least tentatively plausible.

14:20

I mean, I was struck by the recent research

14:24

in particular because the relationship

14:26

between malignant narcissism and left-wing authoritarianism

14:30

is unbelievably strong. I haven't

14:32

seen correlations. Correlations, I think we're 0.6, crazily

14:36

high correlations for two constructs

14:39

that can't be measured that accurately.

14:41

So, well, so

14:44

it'd be good to sort that all out

14:46

as rapidly as we possibly could, assuming

14:49

it would do some good. Yeah, I agree. It's pretty

14:51

complicated. The use

14:53

of fear was very, going

14:56

back to what you said a little bit earlier,

14:58

was definitely widespread. And I think at the beginning,

15:00

it's interesting to look at the contrasting

15:04

messages that were given by the

15:06

authorities. In the beginning, they really were

15:08

trying to prevent panic

15:10

and they were really trying to lessen

15:13

the fear of people because studies

15:16

have shown, if you are anticipating

15:19

a pandemic, actually the fear is higher

15:21

than when it has actually arrived.

15:23

So many of the messages

15:26

were calming. And then all

15:29

of a sudden there was this switch and

15:32

once there was community

15:34

spread, we knew that there was a lot of

15:36

virus around that

15:39

wasn't being detected. Then there

15:41

was this sort of mysterious switch to

15:44

basically the exact opposite, this fear-based

15:47

messaging. And yeah,

15:49

so that was really surprising

15:52

to me. And pretty

15:54

infuriating because I knew it wasn't going to work.

15:57

Yeah, well, maybe

15:59

what happened. is that maybe

16:01

that reversal took place when

16:04

the more narcissistic, psychopathic,

16:06

power mongers started

16:12

to understand that they could cement their

16:14

positions and broaden them with

16:16

the use of fear. You mentioned earlier,

16:18

I thought this was very interesting, you mentioned earlier

16:20

that

16:22

in an immune response that is

16:24

actually healthy, you get kind

16:26

of flailing about on the part of the

16:29

immune system to begin with as it attempts

16:31

to get a purchase on the virus or the bacteria.

16:34

And so you get an overgeneralized response

16:36

that's not very specific and

16:38

sophisticated, but as the system, immune

16:41

system learns, the response

16:43

gets more and more targeted and more specific

16:45

and that you saw the opposite happen

16:48

in the public response. And that begs

16:50

the question, right? What

16:52

drove the opposite

16:54

response, like the opposite of learning? And

16:57

the we want to accrue power

16:59

to ourselves narrative and we'll

17:01

use fear to do it does seem to

17:04

fit

17:06

the explanatory bill, let's say.

17:09

Yeah, that's the million dollar

17:11

question is how did that happen? And

17:13

my explanation of thinking

17:15

about this, because it happened

17:18

a lot in Western countries,

17:22

many, many Western countries, but it didn't happen

17:24

everywhere. And so what

17:27

I started to think about was, I'm

17:30

a parent of have a child

17:33

that's 11 and one that's seven. They were obviously

17:36

three years younger when the pandemic hit, but being

17:39

a parent, I've really noticed

17:41

since I was a child, this sort of emergence

17:44

of

17:46

safety is this sort of overriding virtue

17:48

of all the,

17:51

taking risks as

17:53

being something that's left

17:56

to reckless people. And

17:58

you can't. even use

18:02

sort of probability to assess

18:04

whether something is risky or not. If it's

18:07

determined to be risky, then it's hazardous. So

18:10

I think the distinctions that used to be sort

18:13

of surrounding child

18:16

rearing in terms of allowing

18:18

them to develop

18:21

on their own and take risks and

18:25

get injured if they make a mistake

18:27

or fail, a

18:30

lot of that has been removed.

18:33

And I feel like

18:34

this example

18:37

really leads us to the response

18:40

to the

18:41

pandemic. I feel like it's

18:43

a cultural problem

18:46

because if you look at places that

18:48

don't have this very strong safety culture,

18:52

Nordic countries are a great example. They

18:55

did not have the same type of authoritarian

18:58

response that we did in

19:01

Europe and other Western countries, specifically, you know, Anglosphere

19:04

countries, Canada, United States, UK, Australia,

19:07

New Zealand. They

19:10

didn't have that, and they actually don't have

19:12

a safety

19:15

culture that's the same. I mean, I heard

19:17

a story when I was in Denmark a few years ago, it

19:21

was covered widely at the time about

19:24

parents that went to New York City,

19:27

and these were Danish

19:29

parents, they brought their child in a stroller, and

19:32

in Denmark it was very common at

19:34

the time to leave their child

19:37

in a stroller outside the restaurant so

19:39

that they could watch people that are passing

19:42

by. And

19:45

they got arrested for doing that

19:47

in New York City. So that was

19:49

something brought up by my host in Denmark. It

19:52

was really interesting that their view

19:54

of raising children is different than a father.

19:59

they believe much more

20:02

in challenging

20:03

them, allowing them to

20:05

make their own decisions. And so I

20:07

really think that that explained a lot. And that's

20:10

how I get to the point of having

20:12

the safety culture in the title or in

20:14

the subtitle is

20:16

because of that explanation.

20:19

I mean, anyone who's been a parent

20:21

has had to deal with or had to deal with like public schools.

20:24

I mean, you know, the threshold

20:26

for canceling school even before the

20:28

pandemic got pretty low.

20:31

I mean, now they even predict

20:33

snow in Indiana here. They cancel

20:36

school. It could never actually

20:38

snow. So

20:40

these things are much different

20:42

than when I was a kid.

20:45

And I feel like that has, you

20:47

know, as children have been raised that way

20:49

and are now adults, now young adults, I

20:52

have a feeling that that is one way to

20:54

explain what happened.

20:57

Yeah, well, there is some psychological

20:59

research pertaining to that that's

21:02

associated with some of the things we've discussed

21:04

already, which is that mothers

21:07

who have cluster B personality

21:10

pathology. And so that would be associated

21:13

with what's called externalizing

21:16

behavior in women. And that's borderline

21:18

personality disorder, for example,

21:21

are much less likely to

21:23

foster independence in their children.

21:27

And so and that cluster B

21:29

is also associated with some of the

21:31

dark tetrad traits that we discussed

21:34

that malignant narcissism, that

21:36

psychopathy, Machiavellianism,

21:40

sadism, you know, perhaps is

21:42

pushing it, but perhaps not. Because

21:45

the

21:48

question, of course, is why does that

21:50

safety culture emerge? And you can

21:52

attribute some of that to neuroticism, to

21:54

fear, but you can also attribute it

21:56

to the

21:57

willingness of hyperpathy.

22:00

protective parents to use their

22:03

purported concern for

22:06

the security of their children to justify

22:09

their use of excessive power and control.

22:12

You know, and this is part of the reason why

22:14

your book and the title of your book

22:16

is interesting and the tack you're taking on

22:19

this, right? Because you are looking

22:21

at the nexus between the use

22:23

of fear and the justification for

22:25

power. And the safety culture,

22:28

it's got that virtue signaling element,

22:30

right, which is extremely dangerous.

22:32

It's like, well, listen, dear,

22:35

the reason I'm doing this for you is

22:37

because I care so much about you.

22:40

And all I really care is about

22:42

your, let's say short-term security.

22:45

And

22:46

it's hard to argue against that because

22:48

of course safety is a paramount concern

22:51

or an important concern when you're dealing with children.

22:54

But the problem is that it can be gamed

22:56

by people who want to

22:58

exert

22:59

power and who can use their putative

23:02

moral superiority as a justification.

23:05

And I do think this

23:07

is a kind of epidemic. I guess a

23:09

question I would have for you too is like,

23:13

I'm increasingly bothered

23:15

by the fact that we even refer to a pandemic.

23:18

You know, Jay Bhattacharyya, no, Iainides,

23:21

Iainides, who's a very good statistician

23:26

and researcher.

23:28

And I mean, he was the person who

23:30

initiated the so-called

23:33

replication crisis in psychology,

23:35

showing that so much of psychological

23:38

research actually didn't replicate, not

23:40

that it's necessarily worse in other disciplines.

23:42

But he just published

23:44

a paper or has published papers

23:46

showing that the

23:48

case fatality rate for COVID

23:51

is way lower than we had been led

23:53

to believe. In fact, it's so

23:55

low, I think that you could argue

23:57

that there wasn't a pandemic at all.

23:59

in some real sense. And you see this

24:02

echoed

24:03

in the Swedish data because if you, I

24:05

believe, if you average

24:07

out the death rate over a two year period,

24:09

there's no statistical blip in

24:12

deaths in Sweden during the so-called

24:14

COVID years. And so I

24:17

think our terminology for what happened

24:19

during that time might also be

24:22

deeply wrong. And that what we had

24:24

was,

24:25

we had an epidemic of tyrannical

24:28

lockdown

24:29

with a putative novel

24:32

illness, well, the illness was novel,

24:34

but a putative pandemic as

24:36

the excuse.

24:37

Now, maybe

24:39

that's too radical, but I'm not sure it is

24:42

too radical. It certainly was

24:44

a disease that I think the Israelis

24:47

recently announced, if I remember

24:49

correctly, that they didn't have

24:52

any deaths at all

24:54

for people under 50 who

24:56

had fewer than four comorbidities.

24:59

It's something like that. And so

25:01

like,

25:02

do you think it's completely preposterous

25:04

to proclaim that we didn't have a pandemic

25:07

at all

25:08

except one of tyranny?

25:10

Yeah, I would say

25:12

we had a pandemic, but the response was

25:16

something that we really, really

25:21

blew and didn't focus

25:24

on the people who were actually affected. I mean, if you have a

25:26

population of people who are average

25:29

of 81, of people who are dying,

25:32

that's gonna be actually pretty difficult to measure

25:34

in terms of excess deaths. And

25:36

because a lot of people in that age group

25:39

and with comorbidities, if

25:41

you have a pandemic that lasts two years, the

25:44

chances of many of those folks

25:46

living two years is much lower

25:48

than it is in populations

25:50

of, say, young people. So the

25:54

ability to measure that becomes

25:56

more difficult when you're dealing with

25:59

an old and poor person.

25:59

or frail or infirm population, I think.

26:02

Well, that's especially true too, if

26:05

you then purposefully confuse

26:07

dying with COVID, with

26:10

dying from COVID, which clearly

26:13

happened, right? And I mean, I talked to physicians

26:15

who said that they were instructed by their

26:18

other professional organizations.

26:20

They were encouraged by their professional

26:22

organizations to list any death with

26:24

COVID as a death from COVID.

26:27

And God only knows how that gerrymandered the

26:29

statistics. And I think it was the

26:31

London Times, even the Times now

26:34

reported

26:36

two days ago on the fact that

26:38

all the evidence in the UK suggests

26:41

that

26:42

the costs to the lockdown

26:44

were

26:45

orders of magnitude above the

26:47

costs that were actually associated with

26:49

the biological pathogen itself,

26:52

right? They're not even in the same league. It's not like

26:54

the lockdowns were a little worse than the

26:56

virus. They were stunningly

26:59

worse than the virus. And we haven't

27:01

even seen the accruing

27:03

catastrophe that's emerged from that

27:06

yet.

27:08

I mean, I don't know what to

27:10

make of the excess death statistics,

27:12

for example, that just

27:15

don't seem to go away. Do

27:17

you have any thoughts on that matter? Meaning,

27:19

in the

27:21

last few years, we have more excess deaths. Yeah,

27:24

yeah, yeah. Well, even

27:26

right now, it doesn't like the excess

27:29

deaths in Europe are between 15 and 20%, something like that,

27:33

10 and 20% above normal. And

27:35

that doesn't seem to be going away. And

27:38

I think the simplest explanation for that

27:41

is that

27:42

we hurt people very badly with

27:44

the lockdowns. But then the

27:46

other open question is,

27:48

is there some degree to which the actual

27:51

vaccines are contributing to this? And

27:54

that's an absolutely horrifying possibility,

27:56

but I don't think it's off the table statistically

27:59

at the moment.

28:00

Yeah, I mean, the vaccines

28:03

were very promising for people who were

28:06

in that vulnerable age group. But,

28:08

you know, what happened was politics

28:11

took over, especially here, and

28:14

mandates, in addition

28:16

to removing all liability

28:19

from the vaccines themselves,

28:22

which had been tested minimally

28:24

and not necessarily on the

28:26

population you'd want to test them on, that

28:28

is older and infirm people. They

28:31

were minimally tested. And so,

28:34

you know, for an emergency, you'd

28:36

want to focus on the vulnerable population,

28:39

because that would where the biggest benefit would

28:42

be obvious. But that didn't happen. I

28:45

believe that there was a lot of influence from

28:48

pharmaceutical companies acting

28:51

upon government agencies. Their

28:53

incentives were actually

28:55

not to promote actual public

28:58

health of people here in the United

29:00

States. And I'm sure in the UK

29:02

and Canada, it was exactly the same. There was outside

29:05

influences. The same is true for,

29:07

you know, just counting COVID deaths. If you provide

29:09

an incentive to overcount,

29:12

if you give hospitals more money for

29:15

COVID patients, whether

29:18

they're, and if they're on a ventilator or their

29:20

type of treatment, you're providing an incentive

29:23

for those hospitals

29:25

and health care providers to

29:29

increase those numbers so that they can increase

29:32

their profits. And these are

29:34

just, it's just a matter of incentives. Giving

29:36

people perverse incentives is going to

29:38

lead to perverse outcomes. And

29:41

I think that's exactly what happened.

29:44

When you started

29:46

writing this book, when you started observing

29:48

what was happening around you, how

29:51

would you characterize your political

29:54

stance? Because people who are listening are going to be wondering, and I think

29:56

it's a reasonable thing to wonder. how

30:01

your a priori political stance

30:03

might have formed the lens through

30:06

which you were viewing what was laying

30:08

itself out. How would

30:10

you have characterized your political views, let's

30:12

say five years ago, and how would you

30:14

characterize them now?

30:16

I've always been in academia

30:18

for a long time. I

30:22

was in graduate school for a

30:24

while and here in Indiana for about 12 years.

30:27

So being around other

30:29

scientists, being around other people in universities

30:32

and medical schools, I was

30:34

never the most, I

30:37

was not a liberal person in

30:41

relation to my peers in

30:43

that way. If you put me in

30:45

a room of people

30:48

who are hardcore, Trump supporters, I

30:51

wouldn't fit in with that group either.

30:53

So I

30:55

haven't actually voted

30:57

for someone who's won an election in a very long time.

31:00

So if that gives you an idea, I

31:04

would probably say I was a center right.

31:07

But one of the things that this really became associated

31:09

with anyone who's willing to speak up, there

31:12

was this fear that you'd be automatically

31:15

put into this camp of, well,

31:17

you're doing this for political reasons, you're doing this

31:20

because you support Trump or something like

31:22

that. And I really encountered

31:24

that both from friends

31:28

and acquaintances that were, and

31:30

even people just on social media that I didn't

31:32

know, but that

31:34

were liberal,

31:36

they would assume that I was hardcore

31:39

right wing

31:40

Trump supporter. And even Trump supporters

31:42

would assume that, which

31:45

when it comes to closing schools, this

31:47

became so politicized that

31:50

even wanting to open schools became

31:53

a sign that you didn't wanna necessarily agree

31:56

with Trump on something. And

31:59

that was, I was really unfortunate. I heard this

32:01

firsthand from people that

32:03

I talked to. And it's not something that I anticipated

32:06

really at all because I've

32:09

lived in a world where a lot of people

32:11

I know and like, you know, disagree

32:13

with me. My

32:15

wife and I disagree on a lot of things and

32:18

I'm used to that. But this is kind of the world

32:21

that we're in now where

32:23

those kind of disagreements are not allowed

32:26

and discussion and debate are shut

32:28

down.

32:29

Yeah, well, the question, I guess one of the questions

32:31

that we might want to address today is what do we

32:33

think we could do to make sure that

32:35

the next time this happens, assuming there is the next

32:38

time, we're not quite so insane about it.

32:40

And I would say also,

32:42

what can we learn so that

32:44

we don't respond the same way to other

32:47

hypothetical crises that confront us?

32:49

Because I feel that we

32:51

could do precisely the same thing and that there

32:53

are many people hoping this will happen in some

32:55

real sense that we could do exactly the same thing.

32:58

For example, on the climate doom front

33:00

and you know, the more paranoid conspiratorial

33:03

types

33:04

have presumed that this was just a warmup

33:06

for that. But I have a certain degree of sympathy

33:09

for their concerns given what happened. Now

33:11

you start your book out, part one

33:13

of your book is fear and germs. And one

33:16

of the things you do to begin with

33:18

is to lay out a little

33:19

bit of background for people about the

33:22

nature of the microbial environment that

33:24

we do find ourselves in, right?

33:26

So that you can, I suppose, you

33:28

can give people some sense of

33:31

how much the relative risk increased

33:34

because of the introduction of this new

33:36

pathogen. Do you wanna walk us through that a bit? Yeah,

33:39

so I use my oldest

33:42

sister as an example of a germaphobe because

33:45

she was a nurse in a cardiac

33:47

surgical team. And you know, obviously

33:49

her job was very much

33:52

involved in

33:54

being very diligent about preventing infections

33:56

in patients and so I think

33:58

that sort of. translated into,

34:01

you know, she brought that home and

34:03

became very diligent about avoiding infections

34:06

and sanitizing and,

34:08

you know, any sort of exposure to germs, she

34:11

became sort of interested in

34:14

and obsessed with

34:16

dealing with. And so I use her

34:18

as an example, and I talk about

34:20

how, you know, that

34:23

way of thinking is not helpful

34:26

because we're already in a microbial

34:28

world and we're exposed to

34:31

all sorts of things. We have, you know, at least 10

34:33

viruses latently infected

34:36

in our system, in our body,

34:38

at any given time, possibly

34:41

more. And that's not counting

34:44

viruses that infect the bacteria that inhabit

34:46

us, which are

34:48

astronomically high numbers. So

34:51

I kind of lay out just how much

34:55

exposure we have to

34:57

microbes that we don't realize. And,

35:02

you know, it's just everywhere

35:04

in the environment and it's not something

35:07

you can avoid. And then I talk

35:09

about, you know, although that's the case,

35:11

there are definitely instances where

35:13

we've become very clean and

35:16

our ability to avoid microbial

35:18

exposures has resulted in some

35:21

first world diseases like

35:24

increased autoimmunity, increased

35:26

allergy, asthma, those

35:29

type of things. These are all first

35:31

world diseases. You don't see them in developing

35:33

countries at nearly the same prevalence that

35:35

you see here and in Canada

35:37

and UK and other places. So

35:40

I talk about why that is. And mainly

35:43

it's because we're not exposed to the same level

35:45

of environmental

35:48

microbes or even pathogens that we

35:51

used to be because of obviously

35:54

huge gains that we had from sanitation

35:57

revolution. We don't want to go back

35:59

to that, but something. has definitely been lost. And

36:02

I give many examples of

36:05

that in terms of pandemics.

36:08

Polio is an example where polio was

36:11

endemic for a very long time until

36:15

sanitation improved to the point

36:17

where people weren't being exposed

36:19

to polio until they were older,

36:22

and then it became a lot more severe and

36:24

noticeable when

36:26

you're talking about older children as opposed to

36:28

a baby. Who's nursing, who

36:30

just has a mild infection and their mother

36:33

breastfeeds and helps them clear

36:35

the virus. So,

36:37

you know, that was an example of a trade-off. And

36:40

so I wanted to sort of highlight

36:42

that all of these things were trade-offs

36:45

and, you know, people have been, this

36:47

hasn't been controversial

36:50

at all for a long time.

36:54

There's no reason to aim

36:56

for something like zero microbial

36:58

exposure because that's completely preposterous.

37:01

And so I think if I remember correctly,

37:04

in terms of sheer cell number,

37:07

I think you have more bacteria in your

37:09

body than cells. Now they happen to

37:11

be very, very tiny, but it gives

37:13

you some, that gives the listeners

37:15

and watchers, let's say, some indication of

37:18

just exactly how

37:19

prevalent, as you said, the microbial load

37:21

is. And then do you have any sense

37:24

of what actually constitutes,

37:26

let's say,

37:28

reasonable precautions? You

37:30

don't want to sterilize everything in sight,

37:32

partly because maybe you make your immune system

37:34

hyper-responsive if you're over-protected,

37:37

but obviously we don't want to return to the filth

37:40

of the

37:41

centuries prior to the 20th century

37:43

where

37:44

people were dying of infectious

37:46

diseases at an incredible rate, especially

37:49

in hospitals, let's say. So

37:52

what, and I don't

37:54

imagine you made yourself particularly popular

37:56

with your older sister, by the way, using

37:59

her as

37:59

example. But so

38:02

what do you think of as a reasonable

38:04

response to cleanliness

38:08

given the necessity of minimizing

38:11

both kinds of error?

38:12

Yeah. So, you know,

38:14

certain

38:16

viruses

38:18

are pretty nasty and cause really

38:20

awful infections in people.

38:23

But it turns out that in

38:25

a general sense, the

38:27

nastier the virus, the harder it is

38:31

to transmit it. And so

38:33

there's sort of an association

38:35

between the ability to transmit something

38:37

and then the severity of the disease that it

38:40

transmits. And so if you take something

38:42

like

38:44

HIV, it's a nasty

38:47

infection. It has a very long

38:51

period where there's not a lot of

38:53

symptoms, but then becomes

38:56

very awful in terms of destruction

38:59

of the immune system leading to opportunistic

39:01

infections. However, you can avoid

39:04

getting HIV for the most

39:07

part, unless you have some sort of accidental

39:09

exposure directly to your blood,

39:11

which did happen, but

39:14

has been

39:16

greatly reduced. The same thing

39:18

is true about something like hepatitis. These are

39:21

nasty infections, but you don't necessarily

39:23

get them from

39:26

just being in contact with other people.

39:29

In terms of respiratory infections, those

39:32

are much more harder to avoid because

39:35

they are very

39:37

easily transmissible. They

39:39

have a lot of genetic variability.

39:42

And so

39:45

the immune system is able to, might

39:48

be able to prevent severe disease, but

39:51

not the actual infection itself.

39:53

So, you know, there are some

39:57

viruses that you want to avoid and some that you

39:59

really can't. and

40:02

people should kind of understand the

40:04

distinction between that. Yeah, well, the rationale

40:07

was,

40:08

I think once that became obvious,

40:10

that the rationale was, well,

40:13

if we slowed the rate at which

40:15

it spread, we wouldn't overwhelm the

40:17

hospital systems. And one of

40:20

the things I saw in Canada that was particularly

40:23

remarkably

40:24

dim and pathological was

40:27

that

40:29

the governments took almost no actions

40:31

whatsoever to increase the availability

40:34

of emergency, of intensive

40:36

care unit, intensive

40:38

care units, which was

40:40

seemed at least at the time, and maybe you

40:43

can correct me if I'm wrong, seemed like the

40:45

logical thing to do, especially after this extended

40:47

over a multi-year period. I

40:49

mean, we knew,

40:50

how early did we know that virtually everybody

40:53

was going to get COVID? You said, as you

40:55

pointed out, respiratory illnesses are transmissible

40:57

and there isn't really a damn thing you can do about

41:00

it. Yeah, I mean,

41:02

the response was very much like,

41:06

a behavioral modification was

41:09

absolutely necessary and everyone had to completely

41:11

change their behavior. And

41:15

that sort of did not consider the

41:18

length of time that was gonna be necessary. And

41:21

the fact that the whole

41:23

world doesn't operate that way, we're so

41:26

interconnected. You'd

41:28

read articles about how

41:31

I would read them and think people

41:33

would talk about, yeah, just get groceries

41:36

delivered and

41:39

you don't have to leave your house. But

41:41

somebody somewhere is gonna have to leave

41:43

their house in order to support that. And

41:47

these things weren't really thought out. And

41:51

as a result,

41:52

in some cases it could be delayed,

41:54

but not completely eliminated

41:57

by behavioral modifications. Yeah.

41:59

Well, when you say they're not completely

42:02

thought out, I mean, I think that's what

42:04

you might say, that's the understatement of the decade.

42:07

I watched recently a viral video

42:09

of the new CDC director

42:12

talking about how she made this decision

42:14

to lock down football.

42:18

And she

42:19

is giggling while she's saying this, which

42:21

is appalling beyond comprehension.

42:23

And it doesn't really seem to me to be a nervous

42:26

giggle. It's more like, well, isn't this cute?

42:28

It's so funny that this is the way it happened.

42:30

She talks about talking to one

42:32

of the health officials in Massachusetts

42:35

and just sort of bandying back and forth

42:37

ideas about who should be locked down next.

42:39

In this case, it was anybody who wanted to

42:42

go watch football game. And that

42:44

kind of random scattershot

42:47

approach to depriving

42:49

people of their civil liberties seemed to be

42:51

par for the course. And this particular

42:53

video is an incredibly egregious

42:55

example of that because it combines

42:57

an idiot cuteness with

42:59

this terrible

43:01

proclivity to, well, to really

43:03

deprive people of their fundamental mobility

43:06

rights, except for the expendable people,

43:08

let's say who were doing the grocery deliveries.

43:11

And there was a really nasty element to that

43:13

as well, is that the important

43:15

people could stay at home and lock themselves

43:18

up and protect themselves, but the expendable

43:20

working class could go about their business as usual.

43:23

Right, I mean, there are all sorts of exceptions

43:25

too, right? So, I mean, if there were

43:28

lots of videos of, you

43:30

know, where,

43:31

I don't know what the video version of a hot

43:33

mic is, but where, you know, officials

43:37

would know that they were off camera or think that

43:39

they were off camera, and you could see them immediately

43:41

take their masks off, you know, because they're

43:45

truly believing that this is something they have to

43:47

perform, to show for people. And

43:50

they don't necessarily believe

43:52

that it's gonna

43:55

be 100% effective in

43:58

reality. And so, So there were lots

44:01

of examples of that where people

44:03

didn't actually believe what

44:05

they were saying. I mean, when there were protests, there

44:09

were lots of public health people

44:12

that said, you know, protesting racism

44:14

is public health necessity or

44:16

something like that. And

44:18

a lot of people rightfully identified that as

44:22

just being completely based

44:25

on nonsense. I

44:27

mean, the idea that,

44:29

you know, the same thing happened with COP26 in the

44:31

UK, right?

44:32

So it

44:34

wasn't just like black lives matter

44:36

protests. It was also climate change

44:39

meetings. The UK government

44:41

completely inverted its rules to allow

44:43

the

44:44

delegates to the climate change

44:46

conference to proceed apace with no

44:49

restrictions, because apparently

44:51

that was what the important people got to do. Whereas

44:54

ordinary people who were going about their lives weren't

44:56

able to continue. And one of the things we did

44:59

see, and this is going to have extraordinary

45:01

long-term consequences, is that there

45:03

was a massive transfer of wealth from

45:07

the like essentially

45:09

working class and lower middle-class business

45:12

owners who got demolished by the pandemic

45:14

restrictions to

45:16

huge retailers like Amazon.

45:19

And once those little businesses

45:22

are gone, and many

45:24

of them disappeared, it's very hard to get them back.

45:27

And so, and

45:29

I don't know, you know, I don't know how you count

45:31

up that kind of collateral damage when you're

45:33

trying to derive the statistics about exactly

45:35

what the pandemic lockdowns cost us, because

45:38

the toll that took on families, well,

45:40

there is no one even interested in measuring that,

45:43

I suppose, in some fundamental sense.

45:46

Yeah, I mean, you could not put a

45:48

single number on it because there's so many areas

45:50

of life that are affected

45:53

by it. I mean, healthcare in a way of

45:56

treatment of cancer, treatment of heart attacks,

45:59

screening. that kind of diagnostic tests,

46:01

all of these things were completely

46:04

eliminated. People

46:06

who were dependent on

46:08

communities, Alcoholics

46:11

Anonymous, that kind of thing, all those things were shut down.

46:16

And some people needed that

46:18

to survive and were unable

46:21

to continue something that would have,

46:23

that kept them in a healthier

46:26

state than they would be otherwise. And

46:28

so this sort of singular COVID monomania

46:31

is so damaging

46:33

in so many areas. And

46:35

you see it every

46:38

day, there's some news that

46:40

comes out. BMI

46:43

has doubled and

46:46

retention rates are still low

46:49

in terms of kids staying in school, even

46:52

three years after the pandemic and

46:54

test scores. Right, right. And a huge

46:57

number of kids never returned

46:59

to school.

47:02

Yeah, absolutely. And so

47:06

there's studies that have shown that even

47:09

three months of disruption in a child's

47:11

education can affect their long-term

47:14

ability to earn

47:18

money and make a living and you

47:20

know, to have this happen on kind of a global

47:22

scale, people who are already in a poverty

47:26

type situation are going to

47:28

be forced further into that than

47:32

they would be otherwise. And so it's

47:34

going to be so pervasive that it's going to be

47:36

very difficult to measure.

47:39

But we're seeing so much of it in

47:41

terms of other healthcare costs,

47:44

inflation, all that stuff. This

47:46

is all very

47:47

related to what happened. Well,

47:51

there's another interesting political

47:53

issue here too that's, I guess, relevant

47:55

to the use of fear and also to some

47:57

of the topics we discussed earlier.

47:59

One of the things I found

48:02

that was virtually miraculous in terms

48:04

of its incomprehensibility was

48:06

the fact that people particularly on the

48:08

left lined up on the side of the

48:11

pharmaceutical companies. And

48:13

if you would have told me 10 years ago that

48:16

left-wing

48:18

politicos and believers would

48:21

have aligned themselves with pharmaceutical

48:23

companies, I would have thought you were completely

48:25

out of your mind because

48:27

the bug bearer of the left, the

48:29

bug bearers of the left on the corporate front for the last 60

48:32

years likely have been oil

48:35

companies and pharmaceutical companies.

48:38

And with some justification, especially

48:40

in the latter category. And yet

48:43

there was this unholy alliance between

48:45

the

48:46

left-wing authoritarians and the pharmaceutical

48:49

companies. And I can't help but think that that's

48:51

likely mediated by this

48:54

association, heretofore, unexamined

48:58

association between psychopathy,

49:00

narcissism, Machiavellianism, sadism,

49:03

and the desire for power. Because

49:05

one of the things that aligning

49:08

with the pharmaceutical companies did

49:10

for the power-mongering left

49:13

was,

49:15

what would you say, justify

49:18

their

49:18

willingness to use power to compel

49:21

and force people.

49:23

And I can't find another explanation because

49:25

it runs so counter to what you would

49:28

assume the leftist narrative would be. Because

49:30

of all the people who should be skeptical of gigantic

49:33

pharmaceutical corporations, you'd

49:35

think the leftists would be number one.

49:38

So I don't know if you've had any thoughts about that.

49:40

Yeah, absolutely. You would think that

49:43

with the sort of natural distrust

49:46

of big business and pharmaceutical

49:49

companies that has historically

49:51

been on the left, combined that

49:53

with the distrust of the

49:56

ability of government on

49:59

the right. to take over

50:02

massive projects, subsidize economies, regulate

50:08

all healthcare and things like that. You

50:11

think that there would be some bipartisan consensus

50:13

there, but that wasn't the case at all. And

50:17

I think for certain people, this

50:20

benefited them to

50:25

sort of push the,

50:27

they shared the same entrance interests

50:30

with pharmaceutical companies, people

50:33

who were in power. And even if that didn't

50:36

mesh with their political

50:38

beliefs in the past, the

50:42

promise of gaining power and influence

50:46

was simply too

50:47

much to, it basically overrode

50:52

that traditional stance. So

50:55

in the first part of your book, you talk

50:57

a fair bit about fear and germs,

51:01

and you try to make a case

51:04

for what the proper relationship might

51:07

be between a fear response

51:09

and the, say the overwhelming

51:12

prevalence of the microbial

51:14

biome around

51:16

us. In the second part of your book,

51:19

you concentrate more on a

51:21

pandemic in the time of safety. So

51:24

maybe we should delve into that a little bit more. I don't

51:26

feel that you've had the opportunity

51:28

to develop

51:29

your hypothesis about the

51:31

relationship between the safety culture and the

51:34

planning and pandemic planning

51:36

thoroughly. Do you want, one of your chapter

51:38

six is pandemic planning meets the safety

51:41

culture. Seven is all the doom

51:43

we need and the face badge of virtue. Do

51:45

you want to delve into that a little bit more and elaborate

51:47

that for everybody who's watching and

51:50

listening? Right, yeah. So the first part

51:52

of that is sort of the realization that

51:55

the safety culture has enabled

51:58

a lot of this to

52:00

happen. A lot of people like

52:03

to ascribe the

52:05

whole pandemic response and all the bad things

52:07

that happened to a select

52:10

few supervillains out

52:12

there. And while I am sure

52:15

that lots of people took advantage

52:18

of the situation in sort of odious ways,

52:21

I didn't feel like that's

52:23

just not my nature to

52:25

think in the sort of conspiratorial

52:28

terms and blame a small cabal

52:30

of supervillains

52:33

on

52:34

the whole pandemic response. But

52:37

instead, I feel like there

52:39

was a cultural problem that enabled

52:42

all of this. And I could see it in some of the things,

52:44

even on a local level. One

52:47

example I give is when

52:50

my daughter was probably about two years

52:52

old, she got what's called

52:54

hand, foot and mouth disease. And her daycare,

52:58

her hand, foot and mouth disease

53:00

is one of these things where if

53:02

it gets into like a daycare, it's not gonna

53:04

get out until everybody gets it and

53:07

gets over it and who's susceptible

53:09

at least. And adults, daycare

53:11

workers can get it and have very mild

53:14

or no symptoms and still be able to transmit

53:16

it to others. It's passed

53:19

through the stool. And so if

53:21

you're in a daycare and you've got toddlers and babies,

53:24

it's nearly impossible to keep that clean

53:27

and to prevent spread. Once it's there, it's gonna

53:29

spread. But it's very

53:32

sort of innocuous. This gives children,

53:35

it makes them very uncomfortable. They can't eat,

53:37

they have sores in their mouth.

53:39

They have sores in their body.

53:41

They have a fever for a few days. But then

53:43

it goes away.

53:45

And sometimes it takes a while for the

53:47

spots on their body to heal. And

53:50

what the daycare was telling us is that

53:53

my daughter had to stay home until she

53:56

was completely healed, which was...

54:00

of what

54:03

people had been told about hand,

54:05

foot, and mouth disease for a very long time. It

54:07

was generally what the American Academy

54:09

of Pediatrics said was that after

54:12

they've had fever, a day

54:14

later they can go back to school or

54:16

daycare or whatever. But

54:18

instead, we were told

54:20

to

54:23

keep our kid home and continue

54:26

to pay for daycare until

54:30

all of her lesions were completely healed. And

54:34

that wouldn't have made anyone safer. I

54:36

mean, obviously

54:38

she got the virus at the daycare, which means it

54:40

was in the daycare. It was going to

54:43

be spread. Lots of kids were going to get it. And

54:47

it's just going to blow through the daycare until

54:49

it was done. And

54:52

so keeping her home would have absolutely

54:54

had zero

54:56

effect on the spread

54:58

in the daycare. But at the same time,

55:01

the local health department backed

55:04

up

55:05

what the daycare owner said

55:09

and said that she should stay home for two

55:11

weeks, even though our pediatrician

55:14

agreed with us based on what the American

55:16

Academy of Pediatrics said. So

55:19

I mean, I went directly to the health department

55:21

and talked to

55:23

the head of the health department. And

55:25

she was basically unapologetic.

55:28

And

55:29

I really thought later

55:32

on that this way of

55:34

thinking

55:36

could be translated into how we thought about

55:39

the pandemic response. And it wasn't just

55:43

safety or keeping kids safe. It

55:46

was the appearance of it that

55:48

was important. And so I have a

55:51

chapter called Hurting Children

55:53

for the Appearance of Safety. And

55:55

that's one of the things that

55:58

really bothered me as a parent, not just for me. and

56:00

immunologists or infectious

56:02

disease scientists, the

56:06

ability of, you know, people

56:08

can remain ignorant about what their real

56:10

risks are and still

56:12

have a lot of control about

56:16

over these things just in the name

56:18

of safety, but not

56:21

real safety, just an illusion

56:23

of it.

56:23

It seems to me that, you know, you're chapter

56:26

nine hurting children for the appearance

56:28

of safety, part of the question

56:30

there is, well, why would people be concerned about the

56:32

appearance of safety? And

56:34

I think part of the reason for

56:36

that is that people like to use their

56:39

concern for children

56:42

and for other vulnerable people,

56:44

let's say, as a way of signaling just

56:47

exactly how morally virtuous they

56:49

are. It's a real demonstrative

56:51

performance of

56:54

look how much

56:55

I care. And it also

56:57

gives you the opportunity if you do that, not only

56:59

to elevate your moral virtue as a consequence

57:01

of doing that in an unearned way, but

57:04

to demonize anybody that would stand in the way,

57:07

which is also convenient if what you're trying to do

57:09

is to accrue power. You know,

57:11

you told the story about your daycare. When

57:14

you were in the midst of that,

57:18

what

57:20

was your personal reaction? I mean, how did

57:23

you find that out? How

57:26

did you find yourself responding to the

57:28

demands that the daycare was making

57:30

on you and your wife, your family,

57:33

given that you knew that

57:35

their actual factual concerns

57:38

were unwarranted? Yeah, well, I would

57:40

think that, you know, I had some

57:43

sort of relevant knowledge that

57:46

could affect

57:48

the outcome of this. It actually helped

57:50

other parents because this

57:53

was obviously gonna come up. Other kids were gonna

57:56

get the infection because

57:58

it's highly contagious. and

58:01

kids can transmit it for weeks after their

58:03

symptoms have resolved. So

58:06

even when

58:08

the spots had completely healed, she

58:10

could still give it to other kids. And so I wanted

58:14

the other parents to understand

58:17

that this had really no basis

58:19

in making their kids

58:22

safer. There was no

58:23

argument that could be made. And

58:25

I would think that that would have had an effect

58:29

on the owner of the daycare didn't

58:32

at all. In fact, we

58:34

ended up getting booted

58:36

from that daycare. But

58:39

that experience was, I think, really set up,

58:44

it helps set up the pandemic

58:47

response because there's something has changed in

58:50

the culture where we don't

58:52

accept any sort of risk. We

58:55

want risks to be completely minimized

58:57

away until there's none,

58:59

which in many cases is not possible.

59:03

And if that isn't possible, then

59:05

we wanna pretend that we can do that. And

59:08

the illusion

59:09

of control, the illusion of

59:11

being able to eliminate

59:13

any sort of risk, it

59:16

becomes very attractive

59:18

for people and any sort

59:20

of leader or official politician,

59:24

whatever. It becomes a very easy

59:26

sell

59:27

when people are afraid. And

59:30

that's kind of the way that I set up all

59:33

this safety culture explanation

59:36

for how we responded. So, Steve,

59:38

you said something

59:40

rather ruefully and interestingly

59:43

to me that you and

59:45

your child got the boot from that

59:48

particular daycare. And so, that

59:51

perked up my clinical years, let's say,

59:53

because that seems to me to be a perfectly

59:56

logical extension of exactly what happened

59:58

if we're using the power.

59:59

mongering theory here a bit. What

1:00:02

happened exactly there and what did that,

1:00:06

what did you derive from that? What

1:00:10

moral did you derive from that? Yeah,

1:00:13

I mean, I basically

1:00:15

contacted all the other parents in

1:00:18

an email chain and told them why

1:00:20

this was not

1:00:24

making any of their children safer. And

1:00:29

none of them really responded saying, thank

1:00:31

you or anything like that. It

1:00:34

was more the daycare owner saying, you don't

1:00:37

have a right to do that and we

1:00:39

don't want you to come back after your daughter

1:00:42

is better. So it was- On

1:00:45

what grounds? On what grounds exactly?

1:00:49

Well, I mean, that was kind of a personality

1:00:52

thing too that

1:00:55

we had discovered before with other

1:00:57

issues.

1:00:58

So I don't

1:01:01

think that's necessarily a cultural

1:01:04

thing. However, I do think what the health

1:01:06

department did and the way that they responded,

1:01:09

agreeing with the daycare owner, they would have

1:01:11

no other reason to support

1:01:14

her other than the fact

1:01:16

that they've sort

1:01:18

of been

1:01:19

conditioned to be over cautious

1:01:22

in ways that wouldn't actually make people safer.

1:01:25

And that was ultimately how

1:01:28

I made that connection once

1:01:30

people started behaving in a way, treating

1:01:33

children like they were disease vectors. I mean, the

1:01:35

way that my kids were treated at school, even

1:01:37

in a place like Indiana, which you wouldn't think would be

1:01:39

like Portland or

1:01:43

San Francisco, the

1:01:45

way that they were treated even in public schools

1:01:47

in my area

1:01:49

was just completely unnecessary and not

1:01:52

based on evidence at

1:01:54

all. And so

1:01:56

my futility of dealing

1:01:59

with-

1:01:59

the daycare situation was

1:02:02

kind of a

1:02:03

harbinger of my futility

1:02:05

to deal with anything in the local

1:02:09

area in terms of trying to quell panic

1:02:12

or irrational or non-evidence-based

1:02:16

responses and the way that children were

1:02:18

treated more specifically.

1:02:20

So let me throw a couple of hypotheses

1:02:23

at you with regards to the prevalence

1:02:25

of this safety culture.

1:02:28

So here's

1:02:31

five different reasons

1:02:34

perhaps why it's become more prevalent.

1:02:37

So one would be people

1:02:40

have children much later

1:02:43

than they used to. So instead

1:02:45

of having children in their early 20s,

1:02:47

they have their children in their early 30s. And

1:02:50

so that means that in some ways their grandparents by

1:02:52

the time they have children rather than

1:02:54

the

1:02:55

normal age for human beings to

1:02:57

have children. And I suspect that makes

1:02:59

them less risk

1:03:01

tolerant because younger

1:03:04

people are wilder and more

1:03:06

impulsive. And obviously there's a

1:03:08

downside to that, but God only knows what

1:03:10

the upside is. Then the next

1:03:12

problem, hypothetically, might be that,

1:03:15

well, you know, if you have six kids,

1:03:18

you're just not going to be able to exercise that much

1:03:21

control over them because they outnumber you

1:03:23

terribly and you're exhausted

1:03:25

and you're going to just let the tribe go out

1:03:27

and do like tribal things and

1:03:30

you're going to chase them the hell out of the house because,

1:03:32

you know, enough kids. But

1:03:35

if you have one,

1:03:36

well, then you have all your eggs in one basket,

1:03:38

so to speak. And so and

1:03:41

the child is also not being challenged

1:03:46

and provoked by his or her siblings

1:03:48

in that constant manner that might

1:03:51

have been the case more likely

1:03:53

when there were more siblings. And

1:03:56

then

1:03:58

also parents are rich.

1:03:59

now. And so that means

1:04:02

that they can

1:04:03

dote in a way that would have been

1:04:05

practically impossible before. And

1:04:08

then additionally, like we did find,

1:04:10

for example, in the study that I cited to you

1:04:12

at the beginning of our discussion, that one of the predictors

1:04:15

of left-wing authoritarianism was being female

1:04:18

and also having a female temperament. It was

1:04:20

quite a strong predictor and quite a surprising

1:04:22

predictor. And there are a lot

1:04:25

more

1:04:26

female-dominated families

1:04:28

and institutions now than there

1:04:30

were 40 years ago. I mean, there's

1:04:32

lots of single-mother families. And then

1:04:35

in schools, of course, the vast preponderance

1:04:37

of teachers are female.

1:04:39

And so,

1:04:42

well, there's five reasons why the safety

1:04:44

culture might have become

1:04:46

increasingly paramount.

1:04:48

So I don't know if you've, have

1:04:50

you, have you thought through at all

1:04:53

and, and written

1:04:56

about why

1:04:58

you think that culture has become more predominant?

1:05:00

I mean, we obviously have talked about its dangers.

1:05:03

Yeah. Well, to think about some of

1:05:05

the things that you said

1:05:08

with

1:05:09

the size of families, I mean, in the

1:05:11

age that people are having children, that

1:05:13

certainly might have something to do with it. If you look at places

1:05:17

like where I live, so in

1:05:19

the United States, there are a lot

1:05:21

of different areas where the average

1:05:24

age that someone, a family,

1:05:26

decides to have

1:05:27

children is different.

1:05:30

Here, it's probably much lower,

1:05:33

and I know it's much lower than it is on the coast. And

1:05:36

so there are lots of families here

1:05:39

where, you

1:05:41

know, they're having

1:05:43

three kids by the time they're, the

1:05:46

mother is 28 or something like that. I mean, that's

1:05:48

something that you wouldn't see

1:05:51

generally on a

1:05:54

major population, cosmopolitan city

1:05:56

on the coast. And

1:05:58

so you would. You would see differences, if

1:06:01

that were the main explanation,

1:06:03

you would see differences in safety culture. And

1:06:05

you see some of that, but I mean like

1:06:07

in the neighborhood I live in, there's a whole,

1:06:10

it's like a historic neighborhood, there's a whole degree

1:06:13

of socioeconomic levels in

1:06:15

the neighborhood. And there's just, it's

1:06:17

very difficult to find lots of children outside

1:06:21

playing.

1:06:22

And even

1:06:24

with those levels

1:06:26

there, and I think that, so

1:06:29

I think that's one possible contributing

1:06:31

factor, but it's

1:06:34

not,

1:06:35

it can't be the whole explanation,

1:06:39

because even here, I

1:06:40

try to get my kids to go outside, but

1:06:44

they don't want to, because there isn't an outdoor culture

1:06:46

like there used to be. I mean, I knew I would miss something.

1:06:49

I knew I was gonna miss something if I didn't go outside.

1:06:53

And they will miss something

1:06:55

if they go outside, because there's

1:06:58

computers and there's streaming,

1:07:02

and there's a whole lot of alternatives

1:07:05

that can keep them inside. So I think that's another

1:07:07

part of it, is that before

1:07:09

there wasn't any mechanism,

1:07:14

and you sort of alluded to that a

1:07:16

little bit in terms of being wealthy,

1:07:20

to dote on children to be helicopter

1:07:22

parents. The tools to do

1:07:24

that have become much

1:07:27

more available. And

1:07:30

so I think that's another

1:07:32

possibility, is in that, goes to

1:07:35

the whole explanation of, and

1:07:38

there's still this debate out there, did

1:07:40

Zoom enable

1:07:43

the pandemic response that we had? And

1:07:47

I think that there's a lot too that,

1:07:50

the technology became, matched

1:07:54

what the culture wanted to do, and

1:07:56

basically took it in that direction.

1:07:59

Whereas,

1:07:59

It wouldn't have been possible. So

1:08:02

Steve, you experienced on

1:08:04

a broader scale in the social world,

1:08:07

the same thing or something analogous to

1:08:09

what happened to you at your local daycare. And

1:08:11

you learned something about the opaqueness,

1:08:15

let's say of the general population

1:08:18

or maybe even of the human mind to

1:08:20

scientific research. I

1:08:22

mean, whatever we might be as human

1:08:24

beings,

1:08:26

it's not easy to make us into scientists.

1:08:28

And so what did you learn on that front? Yeah,

1:08:31

so it seemed to me like people really wanted to be

1:08:35

given certainty in things

1:08:38

that were not necessarily certain or fully

1:08:41

known. And they don't want

1:08:43

to leave

1:08:45

things up to chance. And like I said, they

1:08:47

want risks reduced to

1:08:50

zero, which

1:08:53

in any case can't

1:08:54

be done. I'd

1:08:56

see this with the

1:08:59

local schools. Sometimes

1:09:03

my children would come home and tell me even

1:09:06

things that weren't mandated by

1:09:08

the school, they were taking extra measures.

1:09:11

They

1:09:14

were

1:09:15

dousing them with hand sanitizer. Hand

1:09:18

sanitizer is not something that's

1:09:22

proven to be effective,

1:09:25

especially for respiratory viruses. It doesn't even actually

1:09:27

work that well for other types of viruses, like

1:09:30

GI viruses, which you would want it

1:09:32

to be more effective for that. Then hand

1:09:34

washing. So I mean, all these

1:09:36

measures, the other thing they

1:09:38

made them do was they could not

1:09:40

play with each other

1:09:42

unless they were in the same class.

1:09:45

So even when they were outside at recess, they

1:09:47

had to distance themselves from the other classes.

1:09:50

So if my daughter had friends in

1:09:52

another class, they couldn't interact

1:09:54

with each other. And outside-

1:09:56

For how long? For

1:09:58

how long was that?

1:09:59

for how long was that policy in place? Yeah,

1:10:02

probably a whole year. And

1:10:05

so I was asked at

1:10:07

some point to be on a

1:10:11

advisory board for the local

1:10:14

school district. And I think one

1:10:16

of the reasons I was asked is because I had

1:10:18

talked to the medical director of our

1:10:21

county health department and had become

1:10:23

kind of friendly with them. And even though we disagreed

1:10:26

with some things on,

1:10:28

in public,

1:10:31

there wasn't as much disagreement and we were, still

1:10:33

became fairly friendly with

1:10:36

one another discussing things that were happening.

1:10:39

But he recommended

1:10:42

to the superintendent that I be on this board because

1:10:44

a lot of the people, other

1:10:46

people were local physicians and

1:10:48

community people who would never really deviate

1:10:51

from what they were being told

1:10:54

by the CDC and other organizations. And

1:10:57

so they actually did want

1:10:59

somebody who was contrarian to kind

1:11:01

of challenge what

1:11:04

was being mandated and what was being done in

1:11:06

the school. So that was a pretty

1:11:09

good opportunity. Although, you

1:11:11

really encounter the cautiousness

1:11:13

of people, especially physicians,

1:11:16

I mean, they are used to being, avoiding

1:11:20

caution, and being very cautious

1:11:22

and avoiding any sort of risk in their

1:11:24

practices because they're afraid

1:11:26

of malpractice and they've been sort of conditioned

1:11:29

to think that way. And

1:11:31

so it was kind of a tall order

1:11:33

to be able to convince them that a lot

1:11:35

of these measures were hurting children and not actually

1:11:39

making them safer. And we're really only

1:11:41

there in sort of a theatrical

1:11:44

way to give people

1:11:46

this sort of illusion or appearance of safety.

1:11:49

And I started writing, I had been writing for

1:11:52

the local paper, on

1:11:54

some of these issues about, especially

1:11:57

how children were treated.

1:12:00

Obviously, those weren't going over well. But

1:12:03

then some of the writing started to get picked up on

1:12:06

a national level. One

1:12:08

of the reasons is I started really

1:12:11

putting together evidence

1:12:14

and compiling it for things like masks,

1:12:17

especially in a child

1:12:20

population, which there was really no

1:12:22

evidence that they would make a difference in

1:12:24

schools. There was no consensus

1:12:27

prior to the pandemic

1:12:29

that they would play an important

1:12:31

role in pandemic mitigation.

1:12:34

You could go back and read papers for 10

1:12:37

years before and really

1:12:40

see that just by looking at

1:12:43

the publications, even up until

1:12:46

the beginning of the pandemic. There was really no

1:12:48

consensus about whether

1:12:51

masks would work for the population, much less

1:12:53

for children. I put together a lot

1:12:55

of evidence and gave some presentations

1:12:58

to the physicians and

1:13:00

the other people. I

1:13:03

think it had an effect, but in the end,

1:13:05

the governor sort of overrode all

1:13:08

of the local district's power because

1:13:11

they had mandates for

1:13:13

masks

1:13:13

tied to things like the

1:13:15

ability

1:13:16

of classrooms

1:13:19

to operate with six

1:13:21

feet of separation between children,

1:13:23

which was impossible. Then

1:13:26

if they were masked, they would have... And arbitrary. ... completely

1:13:29

arbitrary. If

1:13:31

they were masked, then they could have three feet, which is

1:13:33

actually doable. Six

1:13:37

feet was something that schools didn't have

1:13:39

the space to do. That

1:13:41

was essentially a mask mandate without actually calling

1:13:44

it a mask mandate. But

1:13:46

anyway, because I put together these things,

1:13:49

it really became useful to

1:13:52

write about them and

1:13:55

it ended up getting some national

1:13:58

attention, getting picked up by certain...

1:13:59

in outlets like Brownstone Institute

1:14:02

and other outlets that a lot of people

1:14:05

read. And so that's how

1:14:07

I kind of got from the

1:14:09

local level to a little bit more national

1:14:12

exposure and

1:14:15

ultimately to the point where I had

1:14:18

enough to write a book. When

1:14:20

did your book come out? Yeah,

1:14:22

it came out in April. So it's been out less

1:14:24

than two months. And

1:14:27

how's it doing? It got a really good push.

1:14:30

And one of the reasons is because I have a lot of,

1:14:33

I've made a lot of friends. Jay

1:14:36

Bhattacharya talked with you about this.

1:14:38

The prevalence of social media

1:14:41

is a curse and a blessing

1:14:45

because it can

1:14:48

really put people together that would

1:14:50

normally not be able to define

1:14:52

each other. And so I've met a lot of people

1:14:55

through social media and through

1:14:57

my writing that

1:14:59

has really sort of formed a community

1:15:02

and given me a lot of other opportunities. I

1:15:05

was involved in writing

1:15:07

a document that you talked about with Jay,

1:15:10

which we call the Norfolk Group Document. Questions

1:15:14

for COVID-19 Commission that is being used

1:15:16

by people in Congress.

1:15:20

I was invited to be

1:15:21

on a public health integrity

1:15:24

committee for Florida, appointed

1:15:27

by the governor, DeSantis and the

1:15:30

surgeon general.

1:15:31

So because of all these connections,

1:15:34

when I released the book, I could

1:15:37

ask a lot of people to retweet

1:15:40

it and

1:15:41

write a little bit about it. And so I have a lot of connections

1:15:44

that way. So I think that really translated into a pretty

1:15:46

nice push at the beginning. Obviously

1:15:49

doing things like being on your podcast

1:15:53

will help tremendously as well.

1:15:55

So I haven't got the sales numbers yet,

1:15:57

but I think it's doing okay.

1:15:59

So there's some optimism

1:16:02

in what you just described. I mean, you

1:16:06

have attempted to

1:16:08

voice

1:16:10

a contrarian opinion, let's say, although

1:16:13

one that increasingly appears to be

1:16:15

in

1:16:15

accordance with anything,

1:16:18

with common sense

1:16:20

and with the facts on the ground.

1:16:23

I think that's got to the point now where

1:16:25

that's indisputable, unless you're

1:16:28

completely off your rocker. So

1:16:30

that's a positive thing. And here's another

1:16:33

mystery.

1:16:36

I think that

1:16:38

what we did during the pandemic was unforgivable.

1:16:42

However, we did stop doing it. And

1:16:45

it isn't exactly clear to me why. Given

1:16:50

everything we've talked about, given the

1:16:52

joy that people had, my

1:16:54

sense in Canada,

1:16:56

especially in Toronto, which is my home city,

1:16:58

was that 70% of people who

1:17:01

lived in Toronto would have been perfectly happy. They

1:17:03

would have worn a mask for the rest of their lives without

1:17:05

making a peep. And half of them would

1:17:07

have been happy about it just because it would have given

1:17:10

them an opportunity to

1:17:11

inform and spy on their neighbors. And

1:17:14

it was pretty appalling to see. But

1:17:17

in the final analysis,

1:17:19

we did back down, right? We backed

1:17:21

off this and we have lifted the

1:17:25

pandemic restrictions and requirements.

1:17:28

And we have returned to something approximating

1:17:31

whatever the hell the new normal is, right? I

1:17:33

mean, things are a lot

1:17:34

less bizarre than they were during

1:17:37

the lockdown. And why

1:17:39

do you think it is that we move back

1:17:41

from the brink, given all the

1:17:43

push there was to put us in this

1:17:45

authoritarian position to begin with? Well,

1:17:48

that's a really good question. I

1:17:50

mean, I think all of the

1:17:53

machinery of the

1:17:55

pandemic response is still

1:17:57

there. I

1:18:00

think

1:18:01

you have to have a

1:18:03

leadership class that

1:18:06

has learned a lesson

1:18:08

from what happened. And I'm not really sure

1:18:10

that

1:18:11

that's the case. Because

1:18:14

you can see it,

1:18:15

you know, there are some areas where

1:18:18

there is some concession of harms

1:18:20

of the pandemic response. You know, you see people running

1:18:23

away from the idea that we should have closed schools,

1:18:26

even to the point of pretending that they never advocated

1:18:29

for it, such as like Randy

1:18:31

Weingarten,

1:18:32

the American Federation of Teachers. You

1:18:35

know, you see that happening. It's sort of a tacit

1:18:38

admission that there are certain things that people

1:18:40

will actually understand

1:18:43

were very, very harmful. But

1:18:46

at the same time, it's still not enough

1:18:49

to have that sort of underlying

1:18:52

admission. There has to be a real accounting

1:18:55

of what happened and why it happened.

1:18:58

And I think, you know, some of that's happening on the

1:19:01

political level with COVID commissions

1:19:03

and

1:19:04

the US Congress and other countries.

1:19:08

But it's gonna be kind of a long haul because there's

1:19:10

a lot of people who will want

1:19:12

to sort of control how the history

1:19:14

is told in a way that

1:19:17

kind of whitewashes

1:19:19

the harms of what was done. So

1:19:23

has the fact that we did retreat

1:19:26

from the

1:19:27

authoritarian controls that were implemented,

1:19:29

has that restored a certain degree of

1:19:31

optimism to you? It doesn't exactly

1:19:34

sound like it. I mean, the argument that you just

1:19:36

made

1:19:37

seems to be, if I've got this right,

1:19:39

that you think that

1:19:42

it wouldn't take a lot of provocation for

1:19:44

the same kind of hammers to come down again. But

1:19:47

that does make the question, why

1:19:49

do you think it was lifted?

1:19:53

I mean, we kind of made an arbitrary decision

1:19:56

in some ways that the pandemic was over.

1:19:59

And...

1:19:59

I don't understand why we reverted

1:20:02

back to something approximating normality.

1:20:04

Well, I mean, was it finally that enough people

1:20:07

got tired of it, people like Jay

1:20:09

Bhattacharyya and started

1:20:12

to make enough noise so that there was some pushback?

1:20:14

It just took people a while to get organized? It was because

1:20:17

enough people got infected is what I think. You

1:20:20

know, you had these really highly transmissible variants

1:20:23

like Omicron that were actually quite

1:20:26

not as severe as

1:20:28

they're

1:20:29

not as severe as the earlier variants.

1:20:32

And they just spread like wildfire. And I mean, it's

1:20:34

been shown that if you're on the edge

1:20:36

of a pandemic and you haven't experienced

1:20:38

it, your anxiety and fear

1:20:41

levels are much, much higher in the population

1:20:43

because they're getting their information from

1:20:46

the news and they're getting their information from the

1:20:48

media in a way that's not

1:20:50

comforting because the media relies

1:20:53

on advertisements and clicks

1:20:55

and things like that. So

1:20:57

the fear level when you're not exposed

1:21:00

to the actual pathogen is quite

1:21:02

high. But then once it's actually burned

1:21:04

through the population and

1:21:07

people have gotten it, whether they were vaccinated

1:21:09

or not, they start

1:21:11

to see the reality of

1:21:14

what the actual risk was. It

1:21:16

burns through their entire family, their parents get

1:21:18

it. They might even have

1:21:21

some comorbidities. They might be 80 years

1:21:23

old or whatever, and they did fine. I

1:21:25

mean, so you have enough people

1:21:27

like that that even though they sort of bought

1:21:31

the story and the idea

1:21:33

of

1:21:35

sort of distorted risk that everybody had, the

1:21:39

reality of being infected and having that

1:21:41

direct exposure lessened

1:21:44

the fear and the willingness to go

1:21:46

along. But I

1:21:48

think, you know, so I mean, if some

1:21:50

pandemic happened right

1:21:53

now, I think there'd be a lot of pushback

1:21:56

because we're so close to what happened

1:21:59

with the.

1:21:59

the COVID-19 pandemic, but I do

1:22:02

think that there is gonna be, you know,

1:22:04

an official story that

1:22:06

has to be more correct than

1:22:08

incorrect, and I think that's gonna be

1:22:11

a fight that's gonna go on for a while.

1:22:12

So, well, so part of what you've concluded

1:22:15

actually is somewhat optimistic, because

1:22:17

your conclusion seems to be that

1:22:20

once the facts of the

1:22:22

severity of the illness were actually

1:22:25

thoroughly

1:22:27

and tangibly accessible,

1:22:30

because so many people ended up

1:22:32

with COVID, they weren't hypothesizing

1:22:35

it anymore, that we had enough

1:22:37

grounding in our civil rights

1:22:40

tradition

1:22:41

to return to normality,

1:22:45

right? So once the fear did decrease

1:22:48

to a

1:22:49

somewhat normal level,

1:22:51

we didn't find the attractions of the

1:22:54

authoritarian lockdown sufficient to

1:22:56

continue in that direction. So there is some

1:22:58

optimism in that,

1:23:00

right? We reverted back

1:23:02

to being a free society. There

1:23:05

is, I mean, but you still see hints of things

1:23:08

that are sort of leftover,

1:23:11

like drives to, you know,

1:23:13

I've

1:23:14

read articles about, you know, eliminating,

1:23:16

there's been several of them like this, eliminating

1:23:20

all respiratory

1:23:21

viruses from the air of

1:23:23

buildings based on their

1:23:25

ventilation and filtering and

1:23:27

building engineering, basically. And,

1:23:31

you know, I mean, one thing we

1:23:33

witnessed when kids had finally

1:23:35

been in

1:23:37

person schools is

1:23:39

that they were getting lots of viruses. I

1:23:41

mean, influenza, adenovirus,

1:23:45

RSV, these things spiked. And

1:23:47

sometimes it was even in the summer outside

1:23:49

of their normal seasons, because

1:23:52

these endemic viruses had been suppressed.

1:23:55

And it actually,

1:23:57

the separation and distancing worked better

1:23:59

for those.

1:23:59

those endemic viruses than

1:24:02

they did for the pandemic virus itself. And

1:24:05

so the idea of eliminating respiratory

1:24:08

viruses

1:24:09

from the

1:24:11

air that we breathe, I think is

1:24:13

not right. I think

1:24:15

it's a dangerous idea. And

1:24:19

much like people who fought when

1:24:21

antibiotics came out, that you could just give everybody

1:24:23

an antibiotic for anything,

1:24:25

that

1:24:28

there would be no downside to that. Now,

1:24:30

of course, we know that there is. So I think

1:24:33

there's a lot of sort

1:24:35

of hubris that's still out there about

1:24:38

eliminating

1:24:39

risk, even from sort

1:24:41

of everyday infections that

1:24:44

I think is gonna take a while to

1:24:46

go away. Yes,

1:24:48

well, the part of the hubris is that

1:24:51

we don't understand that the

1:24:53

demand to risk, to

1:24:55

reduce risk to zero is

1:24:58

as cardinal form of risk, right?

1:25:00

Because it requires a kind of impossible

1:25:02

totalitarian overreach. It's probably

1:25:04

the case when we're agitating for zero

1:25:07

anything, you know? Cause I think the same thing

1:25:10

with regard to the war on drugs,

1:25:12

I think the same thing with regards to net zero

1:25:14

on the climate front. It's like,

1:25:16

no, you're mitigating one

1:25:18

form of risk, but you're radically

1:25:21

increasing another form of risk. And

1:25:23

it's obvious that that's what we did with the pandemic.

1:25:26

Is there anything else you wanna bring to the attention

1:25:29

of our

1:25:30

viewers and listeners before we

1:25:32

close out? We've been talking, I'll

1:25:34

just let everybody know, we've been talking to

1:25:37

Steve Templeton today about his book, Fear of

1:25:39

a Microbial Planet, how a

1:25:41

germaphobic safety culture makes us

1:25:43

less safe. And so you can

1:25:46

obviously pick up that book and walk through

1:25:48

Steve's argument in more detail. Is there anything

1:25:50

else that you think people should

1:25:52

know that we haven't covered? Or are

1:25:55

we at a point where we can

1:25:56

reasonably

1:25:58

begin to bring this to a close?

1:25:59

Yeah, I mean,

1:26:02

I think, you know, just

1:26:04

when you ask something about how do you respond

1:26:07

to this, how do you fix things,

1:26:10

that's obviously a very difficult question. But

1:26:14

you know, some of the things that we've lost in

1:26:16

the previous three years,

1:26:20

you know, like our communities,

1:26:23

our education of our children, the

1:26:26

ability to sort of challenge them, which

1:26:28

has gone on for much longer in

1:26:30

terms of a safety culture. I

1:26:33

mean, it's important to

1:26:35

try to reverse some of that. And I think that

1:26:38

that could go a long way

1:26:40

to making things

1:26:43

better. Right.

1:26:44

Yeah. Well, it's difficult.

1:26:47

As we said earlier, we don't understand

1:26:49

the preconditions, all the preconditions

1:26:52

that were in place

1:26:53

to allow children to roam

1:26:56

and range more freely than they

1:26:58

do now.

1:26:59

And so it's very difficult to figure out what

1:27:01

we would have to

1:27:03

return to, let's say, or approach

1:27:05

in order for that to

1:27:08

occur again. I mean, to some degree,

1:27:10

encouraging parents to understand that

1:27:13

fostering independence in their kids is

1:27:15

the proper risk for you.