Gabrielle Bauer, a prominent journalist in Canada, decided some time ago to write a book about the reactions of people of all stripes and backgrounds to the trials and tribulations of the COVID epidemic, and she has produced an energetic and ambitious book that takes a look at COVID from the eyes of 46 different people from various countries who have widely different backgrounds and areas of expertise.  These subjects are uniformly opposed to the management of COVID by international authorities, and their attitudes and criticisms are vetted and explained.

The book is Blindsight Is 2020: Reflections on Covid Policies from Dissident Scientists, Philosophers, Artists, and More (2023, Brownstone Institute, Austin, Texas, Paperback $17), and when I was asked to review the book, I immediately said yes because I have a great respect for Jeffrey Tucker, the founder of Brownstone and regular economics columnist at Epoch Times, and I know his attitude about COVID mitigation policies promulgated internationally.  I know of his opposition to the harsh and harmful mitigation promoted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Communicable Disease Centers and their officials and mouthpieces Drs. Walensky, Collins, Fauci, and Birx, but also the lockstep mitigation recommendations of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).  Tucker founded the Brownstone Institute because of his disgust with the COVID debacle. 

Ms. Bauer's book does not focus on early medical treatment of COVID or the advocates of early treatment; her book concentrates on the pushback opponents of the 2020 mitigation regime of lockdowns, school closings, masking and social isolation, social distancing, why and how they opposed the rules and the negative consequence of government officials pushing the measures, without regard to consequences and lack of benefit.

The ambitious book is written by an eloquent, lucid, and accomplished writer, published by the Brownstone Institute, an entity founded in 2021 by Jeffrey Tucker, a conservative economist and writer, in response to what he considered the insanity of the COVID response destruction of civil rights and freedoms of people around the world.  He asserts that the consequences of the COVID response will "live in infamy."

The author had an ambitious project, putting together 46 interviews of a wide variety of people, but she made it easy for the reviewer to give his readers an introduction.  The interviews are divided into chapters of one or more persons, and the themes of the interviews are summarized in a thematic summary section.  The themes were dissected and explained by the subjects of the interviews; Ms. Bauer just put the commentary on paper for consideration, and she did it well, not getting in the way.  She has a knack.

• The characteristics and attitudes of the two opposing sides on the COVID response
• Stoking fear and "nudging" efforts (influencing the public to agree with the government)
• Mass formation psychosis (psy ops) and its connection to authoritarian governance
• The nature of compliant personalities and the importance of celebrating disagreements in societies
• Medical leaders with alternative theories (the Great Barrington Declaration) and the toxicity of COVID shaming and antagonism to persons, even experts who oppose government edicts
• The danger of policy making with weak or unreliable evidence
• The risk of policy making by the precautionary principle
• The importance of honest, balanced risk-benefit analysis that includes general welfare and special considerations like vulnerable or special needs groups, the elderly, or children, for example
• Recognizing that bad policies about a risk can create significant downside effects
• The value of human freedom and autonomy and the dangers of tyranny of the nannies
• The danger of excess control efforts that set a precedent for tyranny
• Control policies that are uniform and rigid and not adjusted for local factors
• Recognition of the limits to human control over nature and realistic attitudes about policy in a health or environmental crisis event
• Consideration of the social nature of humans and the value of human contact and interaction

I found Ms. Bauer's book attractive and compelling.  She told real stories about real people and their reactions to the COVID crisis.

The book bounces along because of the format: multiple interviews of famous, articulate, expert, philosophical, regular people.  The sections on regular people end up being just as interesting and informative as the segments on terminal degree experts in the humanities, medical science, economics, or active journalists and bloggers/hell-raisers.  Ms. Bauer decided to write about the impact of COVID on the people of the planet, not just her friends and colleagues, so she Zoom-interviewed and corresponded with all kinds of dignitaries, prominences, and the not so prominent.  She even saved a good bit of space for her support group, who helped her live through the depth of the COVID trials. 

I liked her attitude and her book.  You will, too.  It's perfect reading for a busy person — little chunks from a philosopher, then a physician, then an economist, a teacher, a mother, a rabble-rouser, a rapper type, a doctor who is famous on social media.  Always something new in the next of so many segments.  Take a run at this book; it's a pleasure.

Also pay attention to the Brownstone Institute and Mr. Tucker.  They have the right attitude about liberty and the wonderful and extraordinary nature of America.

John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D. is a retired emergency physician and inactive attorney in Brownwood, Texas.