BLINDSIGHT IS 2020

Perspectives on Covid policies from dissident scientists, philosophers, artists, and more

By Gabrielle Bauer
Excerpt from her book available at Amazon and Brownstone.org

For the first 63 years of my life I don’t recall anyone calling me a selfish idiot, much less a moral midget or a mouth-breathing Trumptard. All that changed when Covid rolled in and I expressed, ever so gingerly, a few concerns about the lockdown policies. Here’s a sampling of what the keyboard warriors threw back at me:

• Enjoy your sociopathy.

• Go lick a pole and catch the virus.

• Have fun choking on your own fluids in the ICU.

• Name three loved ones that you’re ready to sacrifice to Covid. Do it now, coward.

• You went to Harvard? Yeah, right, and I’m God. Last I checked, Harvard doesn’t accept troglodytes.

• Village idiot, flat earther, inbred trash, negative IQ… Let’s just say that my constitutionally thin skin got the workout of a lifetime. And it wasn’t just me: anyone who questioned the lockdown orthodoxy, whether expert or ordinary citizen, got a similar skin burn.

Finding my footing

From the earliest days of the pandemic, something deep inside me—in my soul, if you will—recoiled from the political and public response to the virus. Nothing about it felt right or strong or true. This was not just a scientific problem, but a societal crisis, so why were we listening exclusively to scientists? Where were the mental health experts? The child development specialists? The historians? The economists? And why were our political leaders encouraging fear rather than calm?

The people in my life told me to adapt, but I already knew how to do that. Job loss, financial downturn, illness in the family—like most people, I put one foot in front of the other and powered through. The missing ingredient here was acquiescence, not adaptability.

And then, slowly, I found my tribe: scientists and philosophy professors and novelists and lay people with a shared conviction that the world had lost its way. Thousands and thousands of them, all over the planet. Giorgio Agamben, the famous Italian philosopher, spoke my language when he lamented the separation of “bare life” from meaningful living. Lionel Shriver, the spirited UK novelist of We Need to Talk About Kevin fame, zeroed in on the meaning of freedom and the steep cost of throwing it away. As I continued to discover such bright lights, it occurred to me that it might be valuable to gather their insights in one place.

A peek inside the book

As a medical writer I knew that writing critically about Covid could jeopardize my career, but when the opportunity to write such a book came along, I couldn’t say no. Called Blindsight Is 2020, the book was recently published in English by the Brownstone Institute and in Spanish by Mandala Ediciones.

A blend of reported journalism, polemic, and personal storytelling, the book showcases 46 scientists, ethicists, writers, and other thinkers who reflect on the societal harms of the Covid-19 lockdowns and mandates. There’s oncologist and public health expert Vinay Prasad, who explains why science—even very good science—cannot be “followed.” Jennifer Sey, whose principles cost her a CEO position and a million dollars, calls out the mistreatment of children in the name of Covid. Zuby, my personal candidate for world’s most eloquent rapper, calls out the hubris and harms of zero-risk culture in his pithy tweets. Rupa Subramanya, who interviewed Canadian truckers who participated in the 2022 convoy and protest, argues that the initiative sprang from something deeper and wider than vaccine mandates.

These and the other luminaries featured in the book help us understand the forces that shaped the dominant narrative and the places where it lost the plot. Through their voices, the book addresses the questions that troubled me most during the pandemic, which have less to with epidemiology than with ethics. Questions such as these: Is it fair to require the greatest sacrifice from the youngest members of society, who stand to suffer the most from pandemic restrictions? Do mandates and coercive measures help or hinder pandemic management? Should civil liberties simply disappear during a pandemic, or do we need to balance public safety with human rights?

The book takes the position—shared by many scientists, as it turns out—that managing a pandemic is not just about containing a virus, but about steering the human family through a societal upheaval. An upheaval that threatens not just lives, but livelihoods. Not just lung health, but mental health. Not just heartbeats, but hopes and dreams.

The thought leaders featured in the book address these tensions head-on. While they come from all points along the political spectrum, they all have a passion for freedom. They also share a fierce commitment to do right by all the children who were harmed by the Covid policies. None of them “deny” the virus; they simply understand that mitigation strategies will not succeed unless they respect biological realities, civil rights, and human nature.

Embracing reality

The dominant narrative positioned the virus as the enemy in a planetary war—an enemy we must fight to the bitter end, costs be damned. But as it became clear that the war was unwinnable, a second story began gaining momentum. This story cast Covid as a guest that, while not exactly welcome, was here to stay, so we needed to find a way to coexist with it without destroying our social fabric. In his Vaccine Moment essay trilogy, UK author Paul Kingsnorth calls the two stories the Thesis and Antithesis, respectively. My own book embraces the second story: attempting to eliminate all risk from Covid is a fool’s errand and carries too high a cost. The thought leaders featured in the book explain why.

Ultimately, the expert class and its acolytes hoped that Covid would fundamentally change human behavior. That it would make us keep our distance from each other, retreat into ourselves, dedicate more of our lives to gardening (assuming we had gardens) and sourdough breadmaking (assuming we had a functioning kitchen). They wanted this. They really wanted this. But it turns out human nature is more powerful than their smug and classist vision. With their blinkered focus on a virus, they failed to consider that most of us want more from life than avoidance of illness. We’re even willing to tolerate some illness to get to the good stuff.

Some experts and their media acolytes wanted to turn the world into an infection control zone, but they failed. My book celebrates the triumph of the messy human spirit over the institutional forces of regimentation and coercion. It is my hope that, whether or not you agree with their every point, the free-spirited and courageous characters featured in the book will leave you with some nourishing food for thought.

BLINDSIGHT IS 2020 currently available on Amazon and LuLu as a printed edition or in e-reader format. Spanish speakers can find it here.

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About the author: Gabrielle Bauer is a Toronto health and medical writer who has won six national awards for her magazine journalism. Along with Blindsight Is 2020, her books include Tokyo, My Everest, co-winner of the Canada Japan Book Prize, and Waltzing The Tango, short-listed for the Edna Staebler Creative Nonfiction Award.