1 00:00:00,210 --> 00:00:06,930 Realise that this was going to be a political issue and an ideological issue and it was all about, 2 00:00:06,960 --> 00:00:11,760 you know, libertarian values and all the rest of it because it certainly isn't in Asia. 3 00:00:12,050 --> 00:00:17,820 You just put people masks on and that's that. It became heavily politicised. 4 00:00:17,820 --> 00:00:22,440 It became linked to the Christian right in America, you know, that kind of thing. 5 00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:34,180 And I got some very rude messages, shall we say, extraordinary messages, actually, from people who thought I should shut up. 6 00:00:34,200 --> 00:00:44,850 I also got an email actually from an email from Peter Horby saying, look, you're wrong about masks, which is a bit old, really. 7 00:00:45,120 --> 00:00:53,730 So why are you bending back? And I said, look, I don't think I'm wrong about masks and I don't really like the way you phrased that. 8 00:00:54,840 --> 00:00:56,940 I think he was the chair of Nervtag. 9 00:00:57,150 --> 00:01:05,070 What he meant was there is not definitive evidence from randomised controlled trials so you should stop behaving as if there is. 10 00:01:05,910 --> 00:01:10,980 My response to him was I know there's not definitive evidence from randomised controlled trials. 11 00:01:11,130 --> 00:01:13,950 I am not pretending that there is. 12 00:01:14,130 --> 00:01:21,540 What I am doing is invoking the precautionary principle and I'm saying even though there is not definitive evidence from randomised controlled trials, 13 00:01:21,750 --> 00:01:29,430 we should still bring in mask mandates because hundreds of thousands of people are going to die if we don't. 14 00:01:30,900 --> 00:01:35,729 And I think Peter would be still probably feels that I was I was jumping the 15 00:01:35,730 --> 00:01:39,510 gun on masks and I'd be very happy to have a conversation with him about it. 16 00:01:40,530 --> 00:01:50,429 So he wasn't the only researcher within Oxford who has published papers saying that not only that there isn't evidence that masks work, 17 00:01:50,430 --> 00:01:54,420 but that there isn't evidence that the virus is airborne. 18 00:01:54,600 --> 00:02:02,490 Yes. Yes. So that's there's a group led by Carl Hennigan at the Centre for Evidence based Medicine in my department. 19 00:02:02,730 --> 00:02:04,680 I worked very closely with Karl's team. 20 00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:14,009 Initially, we were putting out rapid reviews and I remember the rapid review where we basically parted company. 21 00:02:14,010 --> 00:02:19,050 So we had various medical students and relatively junior clinicians working on these reviews. 22 00:02:19,530 --> 00:02:27,480 And one of the questions that we've been asked was, should we be social distancing at two metres or one metre? 23 00:02:27,840 --> 00:02:37,049 So we had a paper called two metres or one question mark. And if you assume that the virus is airborne, if you take on board the evidence, 24 00:02:37,050 --> 00:02:41,730 the virus is airborne, of course it doesn't really matter whether it's two metres or one. 25 00:02:41,730 --> 00:02:49,290 If you are sitting in a room breathing the same air with the windows closed and you've been there for a long time because you know, 26 00:02:49,290 --> 00:02:56,490 just like if someone's smoking or if they farted it, these things travel through the air. 27 00:02:57,030 --> 00:03:01,979 So, yes, it is important to socially distance. 28 00:03:01,980 --> 00:03:12,090 And even with airborne viruses, the closer you are, the worse it is because airborne transmission happens at close contact as well as long distance. 29 00:03:12,090 --> 00:03:21,840 But it isn't. That's not the solution. And so the people came to me, the the junior academics came to me and said, 30 00:03:21,840 --> 00:03:26,010 look, we're struggling here because Carl didn't like what we've done, basically. 31 00:03:26,010 --> 00:03:29,100 And I looked at what they did and said, Well, you haven't gone far enough. 32 00:03:29,670 --> 00:03:35,820 What you need to do is link up with an expert in aerosol transmission. 33 00:03:36,120 --> 00:03:41,430 Now, experts in aerosol transmission do not assume that everything is an aerosol. 34 00:03:41,910 --> 00:03:45,360 What they're good at is deciding whether something is in aerosol or not. 35 00:03:45,810 --> 00:03:50,180 So I think Nick Jones, who was leading on that paper, I linked him video. 36 00:03:50,300 --> 00:03:56,610 Bob Riba, who is who studies the aerodynamics of coughs and sneezes. 37 00:03:57,120 --> 00:04:04,590 She's she's published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine called A Sneeze and kind of films them and that kind of thing. 38 00:04:05,010 --> 00:04:09,059 And Lydia and various others not only do this and they do. 39 00:04:09,060 --> 00:04:21,580 Maresca in Australia that Kimberly Prather and her team in America there's hosted Jimenez who's also in the different parts of America. 40 00:04:21,860 --> 00:04:31,950 There's lots of aerosol scientists and I linked my team with one of those aerosol scientists, 41 00:04:32,430 --> 00:04:42,480 and we produced a paper which brought in all this aerosol science that I hadn't really realised existed, interdisciplinary work again. 42 00:04:44,130 --> 00:04:52,680 And I then began to work with the aerosol scientists and I realised that the stuff they were doing was really pivotal. 43 00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:59,820 It was absolutely pivotal, but it was being ignored, completely ignored by public. 44 00:04:59,860 --> 00:05:08,589 Having been born W.H.O. and initially by the CDC in America, although they came round now there was a meeting in October. 45 00:05:08,590 --> 00:05:19,180 I think much of the aerosol scientist wrote to the W.H.O. on I think it was the 8th of July there, said an open letter to the W.H.O., say 2020. 46 00:05:19,550 --> 00:05:29,080 Yeah, still in 2020. So early July 20, 27th of July, an open letter from over 200 aerosol scientists. 47 00:05:29,080 --> 00:05:33,489 And look, the evidence is overwhelming that this virus is airborne. 48 00:05:33,490 --> 00:05:42,370 It's overwhelming. Your key infection control committee does not include any expertise in aerosol science. 49 00:05:42,580 --> 00:05:47,500 Please, can we help? We are available. And the W.H.O. 50 00:05:48,830 --> 00:05:55,250 Published two days later what they called a scientific brief, saying, well, we don't believe you, we don't value your evidence. 51 00:05:55,250 --> 00:05:59,430 We don't when you help. And I was gobsmacked. 52 00:05:59,450 --> 00:06:10,519 I was absolutely gobsmacked. I realised what was happening was and this sort of draws on my background as a social scientist who has 53 00:06:10,520 --> 00:06:19,090 read sort of critical sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu around the links between science and power. 54 00:06:20,150 --> 00:06:26,270 And again, I put out a tweet, actually, anyone an expert in Bonjour, 55 00:06:26,480 --> 00:06:33,440 we need to look at this through the lens of critical sociology, critical philosophy of science. 56 00:06:34,100 --> 00:06:45,440 So a couple of people, one guy from Canada and another chap who I showed published with before Moustafa was Belgian and Damien contact drew up us. 57 00:06:45,680 --> 00:06:49,970 So one sociologist, then a big sociologist really. 58 00:06:51,470 --> 00:06:59,060 And we did a deep dive into what was going on in key W.H.O. committees, 59 00:06:59,060 --> 00:07:09,080 Public Health England committees about how they had systematically dismissed and denied aerosol science. 60 00:07:10,150 --> 00:07:17,170 How, you know, the slogan I was using was Evidence is what powerful people say it is. 61 00:07:17,710 --> 00:07:24,970 And there were people who were on the key committees were saying, this evidence counts, that evidence doesn't count. 62 00:07:25,600 --> 00:07:29,710 And that needed to be analysed in an academic way. 63 00:07:30,430 --> 00:07:42,430 So we published a paper on Welcome Open Research all about orthodoxy and heterodoxy, which are these terms that Bill introduced. 64 00:07:42,850 --> 00:07:45,909 The Orthodox view code is spread by droplets. 65 00:07:45,910 --> 00:07:49,210 Handwashing is important, scrubbing surfaces is important. 66 00:07:49,480 --> 00:07:53,860 Quarantining your post is important. Aerosol isn't important. 67 00:07:53,860 --> 00:08:00,670 That was the orthodoxy. The heterodoxy was, look, this is an airborne disease. 68 00:08:01,330 --> 00:08:07,210 How did all that how did the choir get sick, you know, if it wasn't an airborne disease? 69 00:08:07,630 --> 00:08:18,550 And here is chapter and verse from aerosol science, but they weren't getting a look in because they weren't on the relevant committees. 70 00:08:19,000 --> 00:08:24,340 And so there were all these power plays from people who were on the committees and 71 00:08:24,340 --> 00:08:30,070 didn't want to backtrack on what they said because it would erode their power base. 72 00:08:30,670 --> 00:08:33,300 And that was happening internationally. 73 00:08:33,310 --> 00:08:42,760 The W.H.O. nationally in places like Public Health England and indeed in local public health departments and right down to schools. 74 00:08:42,760 --> 00:08:55,749 For example, I read only this morning of a nine year old child who had gone to school and said we really ought to 75 00:08:55,750 --> 00:09:03,309 still be wearing masks because the virus is airborne and the child being told off by the teacher saying, 76 00:09:03,310 --> 00:09:07,450 no, it's not. It's spread by droplets. You must keep washing your hands. 77 00:09:08,140 --> 00:09:12,010 And someone had tweeted me saying, Can you please help my nine year old? 78 00:09:12,640 --> 00:09:17,140 So I sent them a couple of things. But that is all about power. 79 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:21,309 The teacher can say to the child, I'm your teacher. 80 00:09:21,310 --> 00:09:24,490 Therefore my science is more correct than your science. 81 00:09:25,180 --> 00:09:34,750 It's scary, it's really scary. So we unpacked quite a bit of that and I think it's probably by putting a marker down for another paper, 82 00:09:34,840 --> 00:09:40,209 probably the paper that's had the most influence actually. So I've worked with Kim Prather, 83 00:09:40,210 --> 00:09:46,120 we've hosted Gimenez with a couple of infectious diseases guys to write a piece for The 84 00:09:46,120 --> 00:09:52,090 Lancet called Ten Scientific Reasons Why We Know that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is Everyone. 85 00:09:54,480 --> 00:10:03,480 It was very derivative. It was summarising stuff that had already been published. 86 00:10:03,720 --> 00:10:08,180 Stuff that was bombed for obvious to aerosol scientists. 87 00:10:08,400 --> 00:10:16,740 So I don't take any credit for having done this work myself, but I could see that we needed to make a rhetorical move. 88 00:10:17,100 --> 00:10:25,140 We needed to do a power play, if you like. And that was publish something in one of the world's leading journals, 89 00:10:25,320 --> 00:10:31,440 which was short enough from punchy enough for people to get their heads around it 90 00:10:31,980 --> 00:10:37,500 because they were publishing in journals such as this journal called Indoor Air. 91 00:10:38,310 --> 00:10:43,260 Well, when did you last pick up a copy of Indoor Air to read it? 92 00:10:43,350 --> 00:10:51,270 It was too nice, you know. So we needed to shift the publications from even from places like science. 93 00:10:51,450 --> 00:10:54,720 That's a pretty mainstream high impact journal. 94 00:10:55,050 --> 00:10:59,160 Actually doesn't read those, but they do read The Lancet. They do read the British Medical Journal. 95 00:10:59,760 --> 00:11:08,760 So we needed to get stuff in there anyway. We constructed that paper and we lobbied and lobbied the editors of The Lancet and they said, Yeah, right. 96 00:11:08,760 --> 00:11:17,970 Will publish it. Will publish it as a comment. So it wasn't exactly in the front bits of the journal, and that was in April 21. 97 00:11:18,180 --> 00:11:26,219 It was in April 21. And one reason why we did that, we did it fast, was that Carl Hennigan, his group, 98 00:11:26,220 --> 00:11:33,000 who'd been funded by this particular committee that didn't have any aerosol scientists, they'd been published to do that. 99 00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:38,280 They funded to do a systematic review which had just concluded that there was not 100 00:11:38,280 --> 00:11:44,730 really any there wasn't enough evidence of airborne spread to take any action. 101 00:11:45,930 --> 00:11:52,530 And I was still mourning the death of my mother. My mother had gone into hospital, 102 00:11:52,740 --> 00:12:00,450 having had a fall and having been completely isolated and in the nineties had spent while 103 00:12:00,450 --> 00:12:05,640 on a trolley in the A&E department and had come back and very quickly developed COVID. 104 00:12:05,850 --> 00:12:10,169 I jolly well knew she caught it through the air in the hospital. 105 00:12:10,170 --> 00:12:18,500 It was, you know, and I suppose that drove me to feel particularly passionate and to to give this a particularly strong piece. 106 00:12:18,510 --> 00:12:23,460 But, you know, we've had wave two. Wave two was worse than wave one, you know. 107 00:12:24,710 --> 00:12:28,580 Tens of thousands of people had died and was still dying. 108 00:12:28,580 --> 00:12:32,750 So that was the context of this. And then co-head and group having. 109 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:44,680 Had a very narrow and a theoretical approach to the question of whether this this virus was airborne. 110 00:12:45,490 --> 00:12:56,140 They published this systematic review as a preprint, and it has actually failed peer review and still has failed peer review that it was. 111 00:12:56,260 --> 00:12:59,409 It was published on an open preprint server, open peer review. 112 00:12:59,410 --> 00:13:02,950 And three scientists said, this is flaky. 113 00:13:02,950 --> 00:13:06,700 This is not good science. Now, this is not something I would normally do. 114 00:13:07,030 --> 00:13:12,189 I do not go around disparaging other scientists, and I'm not disparaging the scientists. 115 00:13:12,190 --> 00:13:24,550 But that particular systematic review, which was the official W.H.O. funded review on which international guidance was going to be based, 116 00:13:24,880 --> 00:13:30,400 was scientifically flawed, and we had to make noise about it. 117 00:13:31,300 --> 00:13:35,110 So within it took us ten days to pull together the evidence, 118 00:13:35,470 --> 00:13:44,410 and we published that paper in The Lancet ten scientific reasons why we know this and put on that paper. 119 00:13:45,290 --> 00:13:50,019 It's now it's still in the top 20 of out metric scores of all time. 120 00:13:50,020 --> 00:13:59,110 So out metrics is, you know what, how often is it tweeted about or how often is it on Facebook, you know, all those kind of social media outlets? 121 00:13:59,650 --> 00:14:04,700 It's also been cited hundreds of times and it was peer reviewed. 122 00:14:04,990 --> 00:14:17,680 It was independently peer reviewed. So I've never tried harder in my life to get a piece of a publication out there. 123 00:14:18,010 --> 00:14:25,190 We did loads of TV interviews all around the world and the W.H.O. took notice. 124 00:14:25,630 --> 00:14:31,090 So senior people in the W.H.O. contacted particularly Zeynep Tufekci. 125 00:14:31,090 --> 00:14:36,790 Actually, she's a social sociology professor, but she's also a leading journalist. 126 00:14:36,790 --> 00:14:38,559 She really understands how to play the media. 127 00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:49,270 And she co-authored that, Zain, that actually worked with a couple of senior people at the show and I think some of them. 128 00:14:50,790 --> 00:14:53,900 Said. You may be right. 129 00:14:54,740 --> 00:15:05,240 You may be right. And one or two publications from the W.H.O. started to acknowledge airborne transmission. 130 00:15:06,200 --> 00:15:17,360 But the relevant committee, the key committee, which was the one that puts out that scientific brief in July 2019, 131 00:15:17,930 --> 00:15:26,020 is still to this day saying that the virus is only situation of the apple, 132 00:15:26,030 --> 00:15:35,240 in other words, in aerosol generating procedures and in highly unusual settings where there's a high degree of crowding. 133 00:15:36,800 --> 00:15:42,140 And that is still something that I worry about and I'm cross about and I lose sleep about it. 134 00:15:42,350 --> 00:15:45,110 But I think we did move the needle with that paper.