1 00:00:06,530 --> 00:00:12,920 Welcome to you all and thank you very much for joining us for this Friday seminar of the Middle East Centre at this college, 2 00:00:12,920 --> 00:00:22,460 Oxford, our subject today is war on bodies, moral immunity, the psycho politics of the covid-19 pandemic in Iran. 3 00:00:22,460 --> 00:00:28,490 And I'm going to introduce our speakers, our main speaker and our correspondent in just a moment. 4 00:00:28,490 --> 00:00:35,390 But first, I've got just a couple of the by now traditional Zoome housekeeping notes for how the session will run. 5 00:00:35,390 --> 00:00:40,520 So the first thing to note is that the session is being recorded as members of the audience. 6 00:00:40,520 --> 00:00:47,570 You're not going to speak or appear. So you don't need to worry about appearing in the recording if you don't want to. 7 00:00:47,570 --> 00:00:56,420 But your questions, if you submit them in your name, I will give your name when I when I'm putting your question to al Qaeda and Maziar. 8 00:00:56,420 --> 00:01:00,050 So if you don't wish to have your name in the recording, 9 00:01:00,050 --> 00:01:08,920 then submit your question anonymously and and then you can be sure of complete anonymity in the recording. 10 00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:19,390 If you do have a question to put to the panellists, please do so using the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen is very helpful for us. 11 00:01:19,390 --> 00:01:24,520 If you begin to put your questions of questions and put them while the talking is 12 00:01:24,520 --> 00:01:29,290 going on rather than all suddenly putting your questions in the last 10 minutes. 13 00:01:29,290 --> 00:01:35,500 And if you want your question to be answered, then it has a much better chance of being answered if you put it in earlier. 14 00:01:35,500 --> 00:01:39,760 So I would urge you, please don't wait to write in your questions. 15 00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:43,240 We'll try and get to all of them, but we may not have time. 16 00:01:43,240 --> 00:01:47,710 So if you put your questions early, that will be advisable. 17 00:01:47,710 --> 00:01:51,190 The way we're going to run. This is in a moment. I'm going to introduce our speakers. 18 00:01:51,190 --> 00:01:55,960 Then Orchid's, who is our main speaker, will speak for about 20 minutes, perhaps a little bit more. 19 00:01:55,960 --> 00:02:04,390 Marzia will then respond for about ten minutes, and then I will give you their chance to come back on any of the points that Marzia raises. 20 00:02:04,390 --> 00:02:12,340 But then we should still have about 15, 20 minutes for questions from the audience before finishing the session promptly at six. 21 00:02:12,340 --> 00:02:22,480 So I think that's enough housekeeping. So it's now my great pleasure to to welcome to this Friday Middle East and seminar al-Qaeda. 22 00:02:22,480 --> 00:02:30,070 Behrooz on al-Qaeda is a physician, a medical anthropologist and an anthropologist of science and technology. 23 00:02:30,070 --> 00:02:34,480 And I would also call a historian, although she hasn't put that in her bio. 24 00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:42,190 She's the author of Prozac Diaries, Psychiatry and Generational Memory in Iran, which was published in 2016. 25 00:02:42,190 --> 00:02:50,050 She currently works at SOAS in London and previously held positions at King's College, also in London and at the University of Texas. 26 00:02:50,050 --> 00:02:55,390 Her PhD was in history and the anthropology of science and technology from MIT. 27 00:02:55,390 --> 00:03:03,490 And she's also the founder of the Beyond Trauma Initiative, which I recommend you all to look up and visit. 28 00:03:03,490 --> 00:03:07,270 And she's a bilingual author and poet in both Persian and English. 29 00:03:07,270 --> 00:03:16,660 So Workday's, our speaker this evening and our respondent is Musyoka Olby, whose welcome lecturer in medical humanities at the University of Exeter. 30 00:03:16,660 --> 00:03:23,020 He's worked extensively on illegal drugs and addiction in West Asia and the global south. 31 00:03:23,020 --> 00:03:32,680 And that was also the subject of his first book, Drugs, Politics Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was published in 2019. 32 00:03:32,680 --> 00:03:37,330 His current project is called Living Addiction in States of Disruption. 33 00:03:37,330 --> 00:03:45,190 Marzia has worked previously at South and Oxford and also the Ecodesign attitude and at the hospital in Paris. 34 00:03:45,190 --> 00:03:50,500 And Maziar obtained his fill in politics from Oxford University. 35 00:03:50,500 --> 00:03:57,910 So I think that's enough. By way of brief introduction, I'm now going to ask Orgeat, please, to speak to us. 36 00:03:57,910 --> 00:04:04,820 Thank you for your day. Hello and good evening, everyone is at the end of a long working Friday, 37 00:04:04,820 --> 00:04:11,660 so I really appreciate people joining us, especially in the U.K. and I thank you for it for this invitation. 38 00:04:11,660 --> 00:04:14,600 It's such an honour. It's lovely to be back in Oxford always, 39 00:04:14,600 --> 00:04:23,730 even if we actually and it's also a great pleasure to be in conversation with Muzzi again and discuss this topic. 40 00:04:23,730 --> 00:04:34,920 Today, as we emerge from Global Lockdown's, it's really easy to forget the life of the then epidemic of the coronavirus in Iran in early 2020, 41 00:04:34,920 --> 00:04:39,090 when he became the main epicentre of the outbreak outside of China. 42 00:04:39,090 --> 00:04:43,960 And this was before the pandemic was announced on March 11. 43 00:04:43,960 --> 00:04:52,320 So I refer to this as an epidemic up until March 11, because this has clinical implications in the timeline I present. 44 00:04:52,320 --> 00:05:01,470 And I want to today. I want to just in the interest of time, I just want to give you a very brief overview of an ongoing project that I'm working on. 45 00:05:01,470 --> 00:05:10,040 And I am really here for feedback. So please be patient with the unfinished nature of the analysis. 46 00:05:10,040 --> 00:05:19,130 Iran's pandemic response has been discussed widely by scholars including Malaysia, and what I want to add here is a different angle, 47 00:05:19,130 --> 00:05:24,080 sort of a small additional angle about what the pandemic reveals in terms of 48 00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:30,060 the psycho political life of an illness and hence a society and also immunity. 49 00:05:30,060 --> 00:05:39,320 And the key argument is that in Iran, the pandemic arrived in individual and social bodies that were already immunocompromised. 50 00:05:39,320 --> 00:05:45,350 And the reason why I'm working on this framework of immune deficiency and immunity and the 51 00:05:45,350 --> 00:05:50,900 immune system in terms of the political and social body in relation to the political body, 52 00:05:50,900 --> 00:05:59,470 is that I'll explain why this analytical framework is is helpful in understanding Iranian society at this particular juncture. 53 00:05:59,470 --> 00:06:05,170 I followed the outbreak both as a medical and social construction for over a year now, 54 00:06:05,170 --> 00:06:10,660 and the premise is that an epidemic or a pandemic is a biological and a political entity, 55 00:06:10,660 --> 00:06:20,530 and its emergence, its manifestation and its governance are intertwined with a complex cultural and historical context and also political agendas, 56 00:06:20,530 --> 00:06:28,570 as well as biological realities and so on, is very much interested in the psychological life of the pandemic, 57 00:06:28,570 --> 00:06:37,000 not just in terms of the toll it's taken globally on people, but also in terms of how it's shaped psychologically and psychologically. 58 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:44,230 So here I want to put a magnifying glass on the period between January 2020 and March 2020. 59 00:06:44,230 --> 00:06:52,010 And there is a reason why I'm doing this. The format of this book I'm working on is it starts in a in a diary form. 60 00:06:52,010 --> 00:07:00,010 So I kind of provide a timeline with it and updates from the grounds from the hospitals in Tehran and in major cities. 61 00:07:00,010 --> 00:07:04,780 And but there's no time for me to go over all of that right now here. 62 00:07:04,780 --> 00:07:14,850 So let's go back to February 2020. The most significant defining feature of the Clinton virus pandemic in Iran or the epidemic then, 63 00:07:14,850 --> 00:07:20,750 has been the politicisation of the outbreak and also the security securitisation of information about it. 64 00:07:20,750 --> 00:07:25,710 And it's been a trend all along, even now in relation to vaccines. 65 00:07:25,710 --> 00:07:36,270 This week we encountered another instance of securitisation of information and Şaban about publishing information about the import of Exxon's. 66 00:07:36,270 --> 00:07:42,480 So the first wave of the emergence of the infection in the holy city of Qom in early February 67 00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:47,910 was kept secret for weeks and there was a systematic cover up that's most of you know about. 68 00:07:47,910 --> 00:07:52,380 And these weeks were crucial as a golden window, as we say in epidemiology, 69 00:07:52,380 --> 00:07:59,430 for preventing the spread of the virus and limiting fatalities later in February when the outbreak was no longer a secret. 70 00:07:59,430 --> 00:08:03,330 Still, none of the standard public health measures to contain the outbreak, 71 00:08:03,330 --> 00:08:09,180 including social distancing and all of these things that have now become normal and routine were prohibited. 72 00:08:09,180 --> 00:08:17,780 And there are reasons for that. And this resulted in the spread of the illness outside of Gombe and the creation of several new epicentres, 73 00:08:17,780 --> 00:08:23,720 first in Gilan and et cetera, et cetera, and then also into the region. 74 00:08:23,720 --> 00:08:30,800 And one of the assumptions that people make is historically these kinds of cover ups have been associated with ideologies. 75 00:08:30,800 --> 00:08:37,040 We have Muzzi, an individual who knows that the cover up in relation to HIV AIDS, for example, 76 00:08:37,040 --> 00:08:48,860 in the 1980s and 90s was to some extent ideologically driven and are the reasons for the cover up are very conspicuously political 77 00:08:48,860 --> 00:08:57,770 and economic and the political and economic agendas or interests that were in conflict with public health policy in February. 78 00:08:57,770 --> 00:09:04,820 And I'm emphasising this very particular window of time had to do with, to some extent, 79 00:09:04,820 --> 00:09:10,250 with the strategic significance of the city of Qom as as a seat of the seat of 80 00:09:10,250 --> 00:09:14,420 the Shia religious establishment and political and economic power players. 81 00:09:14,420 --> 00:09:18,920 And also, there was a lot of I don't want to go into the details because we don't have time. 82 00:09:18,920 --> 00:09:24,770 But there is something about the the traffic in and out of school because of the pilgrims the 83 00:09:24,770 --> 00:09:31,640 city of Qom receives both domestically and from foreign affairs and some 2.5 million each year, 84 00:09:31,640 --> 00:09:38,330 and also the connexions with China in terms of clerical students as well as workers, 85 00:09:38,330 --> 00:09:44,210 as well as the infrastructure projects that China has in going including a solar plant. 86 00:09:44,210 --> 00:09:49,730 So all of these things have been discussed and I can go into them in the Q&A if anyone is interested. 87 00:09:49,730 --> 00:09:54,750 So coal was not an unlikely epicentre in a sense. 88 00:09:54,750 --> 00:10:03,880 The other factor that was very important was that an election was coming up on February 21st in 2020, 89 00:10:03,880 --> 00:10:10,350 and so a major impediment in the way of the circulation of information was that there was a very direct 90 00:10:10,350 --> 00:10:15,960 decree from the supreme leader that information about businesses should not be circulated until next week, 91 00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:22,440 until the election. So most of this was extremely sensitive information at the time. 92 00:10:22,440 --> 00:10:27,480 And at this point, a year, over a year later, it's public information. 93 00:10:27,480 --> 00:10:33,630 Everyone knows about these timelines in Iran and public health experts and political experts, 94 00:10:33,630 --> 00:10:38,130 including members of the parliament and medical, the medical establishment, 95 00:10:38,130 --> 00:10:47,280 were urging the government to intervene with quarantine measures, et cetera, et cetera, not unlike what happened here and in other countries later. 96 00:10:47,280 --> 00:10:52,980 They were encouraging the government to stop flights from and to China, closed the shrines, 97 00:10:52,980 --> 00:10:59,160 and at this point, shrines in Karbala and Najaf were already closed, but not in Iran. 98 00:10:59,160 --> 00:11:04,800 And also the mobilisation of reliable data by the media was sort of suppressed. 99 00:11:04,800 --> 00:11:09,900 Iran has a 24/7 health focussed TV channel called Szeptycki Salamat. 100 00:11:09,900 --> 00:11:18,510 And until late March, there wasn't a single word on this channel about called. 101 00:11:18,510 --> 00:11:29,980 So that's that in itself is telling. So this clash, internal clash was ongoing, so experts and factions of the government were encouraging one thing, 102 00:11:29,980 --> 00:11:37,060 actions were different and so similar things happen to calls for closing schools, universities, et cetera, et cetera. 103 00:11:37,060 --> 00:11:44,050 And at this point, most of my reliable data was coming from the students within hospitals in Iran. 104 00:11:44,050 --> 00:11:49,840 My former classmates, my colleagues, my friends were on the front lines, so to speak, so to speak. 105 00:11:49,840 --> 00:11:51,910 And also in social media, 106 00:11:51,910 --> 00:12:01,960 medical professionals were basically the main medium through which this information could travel on March three, on March 3rd. 107 00:12:01,960 --> 00:12:06,700 The epidemic was stopped, I think by March 3rd. 108 00:12:06,700 --> 00:12:11,260 The epidemic was not at different points as a conspiracy theory by the establishment, 109 00:12:11,260 --> 00:12:16,120 as a foreign, as an American conspiracy theory, as a transient issue. 110 00:12:16,120 --> 00:12:23,560 And there were backlash. There was backlash created in hospitals because high fatality rates were already, again, 111 00:12:23,560 --> 00:12:31,540 public knowledge in places like Illinois, which was the second epicentre outside of come in early March the next days. 112 00:12:31,540 --> 00:12:37,240 But really sad news about doctors and nurses and health workers dying. 113 00:12:37,240 --> 00:12:45,310 And a lot of my colleagues were very adamant to emphasise that this these deaths were preventable and they were not inevitable. 114 00:12:45,310 --> 00:12:51,430 Actually, this is quite personal for me because I have had classmates amongst them. 115 00:12:51,430 --> 00:12:59,920 And I know personally doctors at this point, many of the medical professionals know someone personally who has unfortunately passed. 116 00:12:59,920 --> 00:13:05,300 And the point they were trying to make was that this was not because of a shortage of PCP. 117 00:13:05,300 --> 00:13:09,580 It was because we didn't know this disease existed in February. 118 00:13:09,580 --> 00:13:15,520 So people were intubating patients without a mask. And so this is something that's now palpable. 119 00:13:15,520 --> 00:13:20,470 It's it's an open wound and I think it needs to be discussed. 120 00:13:20,470 --> 00:13:30,340 I'll get back to this then in March, schools and universities shut down, sort of basically ramped up, efforts started. 121 00:13:30,340 --> 00:13:34,490 So there was a delay, but the efforts when they started, they were very impressive. 122 00:13:34,490 --> 00:13:44,800 So there was now a covert task task force in the country, covid words, media campaigns, educational campaigns by television and the Internet. 123 00:13:44,800 --> 00:13:51,070 Health care workers were now called the Defenders of Health and Martyrs of Health. 124 00:13:51,070 --> 00:14:00,340 And not to the legacy of the Iran-Iraq war in terms of the defeat and also the defendants of the shrine being serious 125 00:14:00,340 --> 00:14:08,830 to the whole of this vocabulary and a new discourse of defence and martyrdom emerged mass mobilisation of the military, 126 00:14:08,830 --> 00:14:18,850 the Revolutionary Guard, NGOs, et cetera. And a lot of this, again, has been outlined by others and very aptly analysed by people, including Muzzi. 127 00:14:18,850 --> 00:14:25,010 So I'll just move on from this. By mid-March, 128 00:14:25,010 --> 00:14:29,750 all of these measures were in place and then there was there was a promotion of the stay at 129 00:14:29,750 --> 00:14:37,280 home messages and self isolation campaigns and something akin to test untraced started. 130 00:14:37,280 --> 00:14:44,000 And then, of course, on April 8th, many people had to go back to work. There was a phased lifting of the lockdown. 131 00:14:44,000 --> 00:14:51,880 And again, similar to other places that the question was whether we should save the economy or people. 132 00:14:51,880 --> 00:15:03,440 And and bear in mind that this is a this is a time where the economy is extremely studied and in the back of the US sanctions. 133 00:15:03,440 --> 00:15:16,590 And so at this point, even when there were measures in place, data was still securitised and also information, there was two things. 134 00:15:16,590 --> 00:15:27,930 There was one, the securitisation of information. People were still being arrested for tweeting or for or for spreading information about covid. 135 00:15:27,930 --> 00:15:37,740 And also asymmetric access to testing kits, so just like now when how we are relating to vaccines, if you remember back in, you know, a year ago, 136 00:15:37,740 --> 00:15:42,810 it was all about test kits and PPE and you had government officials and their 137 00:15:42,810 --> 00:15:47,870 families being tested and then front line workers and I users running out of tests. 138 00:15:47,870 --> 00:15:54,820 And we were seeing a similar pattern now with vaccines, unfortunately, with the black market and corruption and lack of transparency, 139 00:15:54,820 --> 00:16:01,760 we are now hearing really concerning reports about vaccines, which I'll get to later. 140 00:16:01,760 --> 00:16:14,480 So, you know, by mid-March, of course, covid has reached Canada, Europe, the United States, and on March 11, we have a pandemic on our hands. 141 00:16:14,480 --> 00:16:19,550 And lockdown's across Europe begin as the frenzy of the pandemic response in the US. 142 00:16:19,550 --> 00:16:27,180 And so a lot of this global condition is now creating a very helpful comparative perspective. 143 00:16:27,180 --> 00:16:33,870 The impressive plans that are implemented for screening calls, contact tracing, 144 00:16:33,870 --> 00:16:39,960 also people's compliance, were it at the beginning, they very much adhere to the rules. 145 00:16:39,960 --> 00:16:42,810 And then, of course, there were issues of travel due in holidays, 146 00:16:42,810 --> 00:16:49,110 very similar things to what we saw during Christmas here, for example, was happening last year. 147 00:16:49,110 --> 00:16:56,870 And the medical community's heroic efforts were also hard not to recognise. 148 00:16:56,870 --> 00:17:08,060 A lot of issues we're starting to talk to create controversies on social media, for example, at this point, there are a lot of uncoordinated efforts. 149 00:17:08,060 --> 00:17:16,820 The Revolutionary Guard was televising Manitas, disinfecting streets and trees and cars with portable cannons, 150 00:17:16,820 --> 00:17:27,920 parading on motorbikes and shouting slogans that really defeat us all the way to Iran's decision to reject the methods of Pontius Pilate and in fact, 151 00:17:27,920 --> 00:17:37,100 actually sending back the help that an MSF team that was supposed to create a temporary ward in Isfahan. 152 00:17:37,100 --> 00:17:45,710 So there was a lot of unaccounted for decisions that had, of course, implications for citizens and high death tolls. 153 00:17:45,710 --> 00:17:54,050 The first major peak happened in April, and this was followed by a second wave in June, a third in September. 154 00:17:54,050 --> 00:17:58,730 At this point, my medical colleagues were saying, know, the word peak doesn't mean anything. 155 00:17:58,730 --> 00:18:06,170 Always it's a plot. It's it's just when it's repeating so many times, they're not waves anymore. 156 00:18:06,170 --> 00:18:11,690 And then in October, November, there was a high fatality episode. In two thousand twenty one, 157 00:18:11,690 --> 00:18:20,370 the supreme leader banned the import of vaccines provided by Kovács on the basis of them being from the United States and European countries. 158 00:18:20,370 --> 00:18:27,350 The manufacture, manufacture and promises were made about the manufacturing of the Iranian vaccine. 159 00:18:27,350 --> 00:18:38,050 Right now, 15 trials are under way in Iran on the Iranian backs on creating a vaccine manufacturing vaccine. 160 00:18:38,050 --> 00:18:49,190 At this point, as we speak, Iran is slowly emerging from a fourth peak, why the politicisation of now vaccination has resulted in high rates of death. 161 00:18:49,190 --> 00:18:54,790 Vaccination is now underway primarily with Sputnik and Cinefamily, the Chinese and Russian. 162 00:18:54,790 --> 00:18:59,890 And recently, AstraZeneca talks with AstraZeneca provided by Kofax. 163 00:18:59,890 --> 00:19:07,400 But efforts are lagging behind me and not unlike many other countries in the region. 164 00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:11,650 And of course, at this point, there's the spirit of solidarity has worn off. 165 00:19:11,650 --> 00:19:16,090 And so the psychology of this April and last April are extremely different. 166 00:19:16,090 --> 00:19:20,860 Similar to how we're experiencing it here in other countries. 167 00:19:20,860 --> 00:19:27,730 So. In the conversations and I'll step in April now to to go back to the actual 168 00:19:27,730 --> 00:19:33,620 question and a lot of my conversations with medical clinics in hospitals in Iran. 169 00:19:33,620 --> 00:19:42,880 I keep finding us discussing this question. Which was this why is Iran showing different demographics of death? 170 00:19:42,880 --> 00:19:48,010 We know that covid was targeting vulnerable groups, older populations in Iran. 171 00:19:48,010 --> 00:19:53,170 The number of young people in our schools was already drawing attention. 172 00:19:53,170 --> 00:20:00,640 And you know, the Medicon, me immediately things, you know, if you're stressed, your immune system is compromised. 173 00:20:00,640 --> 00:20:06,760 We know that stress makes you weaker. And so, of course, I have to hold back and not think medically. 174 00:20:06,760 --> 00:20:11,920 But in those moments, these are the conversations that were happening between us and also in my own mind, 175 00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:23,080 which is why I have chosen the format of this like journaling and creating a chronological timeline for the first half of the project. 176 00:20:23,080 --> 00:20:29,080 I think a lot of the speculation is coming from and this is about ethnographic data. 177 00:20:29,080 --> 00:20:38,230 This is not about what we like to think. A lot of speculations from from people on the ground is summed up in sentences like this. 178 00:20:38,230 --> 00:20:45,970 What has the thirteen ninety eight, which is 12, 19, basically being let's stress. 179 00:20:45,970 --> 00:20:51,580 This is another colleague told me this is a list that loads of imposed on the body. 180 00:20:51,580 --> 00:20:53,170 What do you expect? 181 00:20:53,170 --> 00:21:06,550 And I also heard myself in finally having a little conversations with, again, people on the ground dealing with patients who were saying. 182 00:21:06,550 --> 00:21:15,760 It's very hard to separate deaths caused by covid from deaths caused by infrastructure and political issues. 183 00:21:15,760 --> 00:21:20,410 If you die of covid, it doesn't mean you've been killed by the virus. 184 00:21:20,410 --> 00:21:24,970 That was the bottom line of their actual situated knowledge and experience. 185 00:21:24,970 --> 00:21:34,660 And what does that mean? A lot of references to the 1980s at this point started to surface the terms, the Iran-Iraq war, the terms, 186 00:21:34,660 --> 00:21:42,700 trauma, grief and also military metaphors started to emerge in in public discourse, in the media. 187 00:21:42,700 --> 00:21:50,930 And, you know, here in the U.K. in spring 2020, there was a lot of parallels made with the metaphors of the World War, 188 00:21:50,930 --> 00:21:58,060 the Second World War and the spirit of solidarity. And it was mobilised after the lockdown that started in March 23. 189 00:21:58,060 --> 00:22:10,330 But the war metaphor in Iran is different. It's manifold, it's layered, and it's actually replying to ones that are still open and are still being in. 190 00:22:10,330 --> 00:22:15,020 For lack of a better metaphor. They're still bleeding. 191 00:22:15,020 --> 00:22:21,440 And this public anxiety around in this was something that I've always been very interested in and the dysphoria, 192 00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:24,410 which is not only the outcome of the epidemic, 193 00:22:24,410 --> 00:22:32,690 but also an underlying sense of what psychologists call learnt helplessness and internalised perception of powerlessness, 194 00:22:32,690 --> 00:22:40,790 uncertainty, mistrust, anxiety, and a sense that ordinary people's lives don't matter. 195 00:22:40,790 --> 00:22:45,300 Basically, these perceptions matter whether we agree with them or not. 196 00:22:45,300 --> 00:22:52,580 They matter because they shape the lived experience of an illness and that event of an epidemic, another pandemic. 197 00:22:52,580 --> 00:23:00,620 And the collective nervous system was overstretched at this point because this year that third in the calendar, 198 00:23:00,620 --> 00:23:06,320 thirteen ninety eight has been dubbed the annus horribilis of Iran. 199 00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:08,930 It started with national natural disasters. 200 00:23:08,930 --> 00:23:15,740 The Iranians call it a dark year, and it was a year that carried a lot of tragedies and losses akin to war torn, 201 00:23:15,740 --> 00:23:25,160 the war torn decade of the nineteen eighties. Floods and earthquakes aside, there were two new American sanctions. 202 00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:27,590 The economy was in trouble then. 203 00:23:27,590 --> 00:23:36,830 An estimated three hundred to fifteen hundred people were killed and some 7000 people were arrested during the protests of the month of November. 204 00:23:36,830 --> 00:23:43,400 In that same year, during which time the government shut down the Internet for a whole week. 205 00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:49,400 And so Iran was in a blackout. The cry on social media, the cry, can you hear us? 206 00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:54,470 Became the Iranian equivalent of I can't breathe in the movement. 207 00:23:54,470 --> 00:24:03,980 And in January, after the assassination of us and so many Iranians spent a long week dreading the spectre of a war with the US, that almost happened. 208 00:24:03,980 --> 00:24:09,860 And then that was shortly before they found that they had been lied to about the shooting. 209 00:24:09,860 --> 00:24:16,550 And now it's become apparently clear that this was an intentional shooting of the Ukrainian airline passenger 210 00:24:16,550 --> 00:24:22,550 flights by the Revolutionary Guard that killed one hundred seventy six innocent people this morning. 211 00:24:22,550 --> 00:24:27,890 And processing these perpetual losses has been a luxury that Iranians haven't had to. 212 00:24:27,890 --> 00:24:31,340 The general perception is one thing on top of another. 213 00:24:31,340 --> 00:24:34,610 We haven't had time to catch our breath, that kind of feeling. 214 00:24:34,610 --> 00:24:40,370 Do you have to imagine that mentality and also understand that public trust being at its lowest? 215 00:24:40,370 --> 00:24:44,780 We are looking at two parallel crises at this point in relation to the pandemic. 216 00:24:44,780 --> 00:24:52,310 One was a crisis of credibility and legitimacy because people don't trust data that's coming from the establishment. 217 00:24:52,310 --> 00:25:04,550 And in general, this divide has always existed, but now it's sharpened and also a crisis of expertise, which I talk about in my book, actually. 218 00:25:04,550 --> 00:25:08,030 As a long term legacy of the Cultural Revolution at this point, 219 00:25:08,030 --> 00:25:14,120 we are dealing with a generation of policymakers who are the basically what their 220 00:25:14,120 --> 00:25:19,820 cultural revolution aimed for policymakers that are not necessarily experts, 221 00:25:19,820 --> 00:25:26,930 but they are committed and even and at this point, of course, the commitment also is also the question, 222 00:25:26,930 --> 00:25:31,370 given the neoliberal directions that the establishment has gone towards. 223 00:25:31,370 --> 00:25:39,770 So at this point, I know this is the question. The actual question is what this context tells us and why it is different. 224 00:25:39,770 --> 00:25:44,840 And this specific context is not just a post war or structure context. 225 00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:53,600 It's a wartime peacetime symbiosis, an ongoing cohabitations with sensations of death and war and disintegration. 226 00:25:53,600 --> 00:25:58,460 So I work on this notion of a social and collective community, 227 00:25:58,460 --> 00:26:06,350 and I refer to notions in medical technology such as local biologies and also, I mean, these flexible bodies. 228 00:26:06,350 --> 00:26:11,750 The idea that immunity is a not something that's in the individual body, 229 00:26:11,750 --> 00:26:16,880 but is actually dependent on what's happening to the social body and to the political body. 230 00:26:16,880 --> 00:26:22,310 And the intersection of these two bodies is where the specific psychoanalytical 231 00:26:22,310 --> 00:26:29,350 processes and forces with which the pandemic gangs and local life come to surface. 232 00:26:29,350 --> 00:26:37,210 The two features, so in this what I'm calling it, the immunity by a politics of this space, 233 00:26:37,210 --> 00:26:43,870 and this is again, in reference to notions that we have, in fact, poverty is shaped by two key themes. 234 00:26:43,870 --> 00:26:48,220 One is the normalisation of death and decay. 235 00:26:48,220 --> 00:26:53,860 And this could be death or perception of death or metaphorical death and also war. 236 00:26:53,860 --> 00:27:04,330 And in times of war, I finish by this focus on war because for a social and political body that is ostracised, excluded or stripped of its resources, 237 00:27:04,330 --> 00:27:14,860 for a social body that is in a state of helplessness, a military response, responses that are needed to keep a body immune are not available. 238 00:27:14,860 --> 00:27:21,820 And so covid has both exasperated and uncovered social inequalities that happen everywhere. 239 00:27:21,820 --> 00:27:29,410 But if biological immunities interdependent on the lived experience of the social body and the political body, 240 00:27:29,410 --> 00:27:37,810 that has implications for social immunity. And it's not a coincidence that those hit hardest by covid in Iran are the poor, 241 00:27:37,810 --> 00:27:44,380 the marginalised and the politically oppressed and the social groups whose protests were also heavily cracked down. 242 00:27:44,380 --> 00:27:50,560 And it's in the juxtaposition of these individual life, of the illness and the social life of illness. 243 00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:50,800 I mean, 244 00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:59,170 one of the things that's what you might find interesting is that the word immunity in Farsi and the word security because you have the same groups, 245 00:27:59,170 --> 00:28:02,890 I mean, in fact in Arabic, emeny and amnesiacs. 246 00:28:02,890 --> 00:28:13,210 And these two discourses have become so intertwined that a lot of them are justified in the context of securitisation and security. 247 00:28:13,210 --> 00:28:18,700 Let me finish by saying that, you know, I can go, you know, in the in the second section, 248 00:28:18,700 --> 00:28:23,200 we can talk a little bit about this notion of living that gradual death every day, 249 00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:31,180 death that people talk about, especially in the realm of every day and what that means for the social body and the political body. 250 00:28:31,180 --> 00:28:35,470 This social immunity is a prerequisite for biological immunity. 251 00:28:35,470 --> 00:28:41,290 So if that infrastructure is not in place, the actual body is also not functioning. 252 00:28:41,290 --> 00:28:49,570 So in terms of the metaphor of the war, also there is you know, we are all familiar with the metaphor of the war in relation to the immune system. 253 00:28:49,570 --> 00:28:54,250 But in this in this space, we are also looking at covid itself as war. 254 00:28:54,250 --> 00:29:00,550 We are looking at the legacy of the war because this is a respiratory illness that's targeting actually veterans, 255 00:29:00,550 --> 00:29:04,780 chemical veterans as part of the vulnerable groups. 256 00:29:04,780 --> 00:29:10,540 There's the presence of a war as an economic war in the everyday life of citizens. 257 00:29:10,540 --> 00:29:13,750 There is the threat of war and securitisation of life. 258 00:29:13,750 --> 00:29:20,980 You know, this idea of there's always a war impending and the lived experience of the war and the discourse of war. 259 00:29:20,980 --> 00:29:26,000 So that language and imagine the imaginary of the pandemic are very much you know, 260 00:29:26,000 --> 00:29:33,640 there's a lot of images and pictures and snapshots I can show you on how these metaphors are mobilised. 261 00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:42,200 And then, of course, there's a war on health, war on health, on education and training, which has implications here. 262 00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:48,500 Yeah, so let's let's go to Mozzie, and then if there is time, I'll say something about this immunity by politics. 263 00:29:48,500 --> 00:29:56,390 That's great. I would love to listen to you more, but I'm very conscious that we have to find out and we want to get onto the Q&A. 264 00:29:56,390 --> 00:30:01,970 So without more ado, I'm going to ask Marziano, please, to respond. 265 00:30:01,970 --> 00:30:11,690 And thank you. Or it's a great pleasure to be back as Middle East centre virtually for the first time and very good to talk to to al Qaeda. 266 00:30:11,690 --> 00:30:18,360 It's our second conversation on covid a few years after our first conversation. 267 00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:22,310 So there's a lot to discuss and our ideas probably have changed. 268 00:30:22,310 --> 00:30:31,880 I'll start from actually a very interesting etymological connexion that you revealed to us the connexion between emeny and. 269 00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:37,700 Yeah, so immunity and security. And I would suggest that there is another one that connects these two, 270 00:30:37,700 --> 00:30:52,880 which is to believe Aminov know and believe is a key point in discussing and thinking about and also relating to the epidemic to health in general, 271 00:30:52,880 --> 00:31:05,150 actually, because of course, health is an epidemiological manifestation in this case of a virus, but it is also framed into an epistemological crisis. 272 00:31:05,150 --> 00:31:09,350 And this epistemological crisis in Iran is probably more evident than elsewhere. 273 00:31:09,350 --> 00:31:17,090 But it is evident all across the world from those who deny the virus in the US or Italy or elsewhere, 274 00:31:17,090 --> 00:31:25,610 to all those who argue that only following science would save us, even though we don't come to define what is science at this point. 275 00:31:25,610 --> 00:31:29,080 So I'll try to discuss a bit very briefly, of course, 276 00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:37,220 because I don't have much time this epistemological crises in which Iranians and the Iranian state, of course, find itself. 277 00:31:37,220 --> 00:31:43,340 And then over the last more or less, 14, 16 months now. 278 00:31:43,340 --> 00:31:48,800 This epistemological crisis is, from what I've gathered in my work, 279 00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:54,440 has been mostly if all has worked with physicians and people at the very frontline hospitals. 280 00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:57,470 My collaboration has been mostly with social workers, 281 00:31:57,470 --> 00:32:08,660 people who work mostly outside the hospital setting either in prevention or in post treatment facilities and with marginal populations, 282 00:32:08,660 --> 00:32:17,420 not all the categories that al-Qaida mentioned, but many of the marginal categories that have been heavily affected by the epidemic. 283 00:32:17,420 --> 00:32:28,340 Well, the epistemological crisis that covid has created in Iran is one that I identify as connected very much to fear, 284 00:32:28,340 --> 00:32:34,220 and it's a fear that it manifests itself on several levels. Let's start from the states. 285 00:32:34,220 --> 00:32:41,330 The states cover up that you very clearly mentioned in detail. 286 00:32:41,330 --> 00:32:48,740 It was one which I believe was very much framed in fear. It's a fear that, of course, confuses the mind. 287 00:32:48,740 --> 00:32:54,770 And you think that actually the virus actually didn't exist or you deny it because of the fear of either 288 00:32:54,770 --> 00:33:02,600 being accused in the context of March last year of wanting to stop the election electoral process. 289 00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:11,290 So if you put ourselves in a hypothetical situation in which the Iranian state stops the elections and sort of put everyone in lockdown measures, 290 00:33:11,290 --> 00:33:17,000 that would have been a sort of an outburst. And the short term of accusations of saying, oh, 291 00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:24,860 you want to stop the electoral process because of your fear of people's reaction or this is another authoritarian reaction. 292 00:33:24,860 --> 00:33:31,460 And so, of course, in the long term, the Iranians, they would have come out as a successful model. 293 00:33:31,460 --> 00:33:37,130 And this actually this fear in governance highlights one of the shortcomings in governance. 294 00:33:37,130 --> 00:33:45,890 They ran the state over the last many decades now, I would say, which is the short termism in the responses to the crisis. 295 00:33:45,890 --> 00:33:51,380 That was the case, as often mentioned in the 90s with HIV. 296 00:33:51,380 --> 00:34:00,020 It took a long time before acknowledging it once to acknowledge that the response was more effective than many other countries. 297 00:34:00,020 --> 00:34:07,130 We will see what the covid will produce long term responses that are more effective than other countries, 298 00:34:07,130 --> 00:34:11,510 from what I noticed, working with social workers in Iran. 299 00:34:11,510 --> 00:34:18,860 So the collaborating at this scale, in these situations is that there is a sort of important framework of solidarity 300 00:34:18,860 --> 00:34:25,250 and mutual aid that is emerging and has emerged in part over the last 15 months, 301 00:34:25,250 --> 00:34:35,000 which sees margins of the state. So official state institutions engaging in sort of grassroots participation with people and also private citizens 302 00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:43,460 and groups that have been able to provide services and help that would have been otherwise very difficult. 303 00:34:43,460 --> 00:34:50,330 And this is not simply a manifestation that of substitutes the states in a new liberal fashion. 304 00:34:50,330 --> 00:35:00,350 In my view, it's probably the antidote to the social and sort of fear that this organisation creates. 305 00:35:00,350 --> 00:35:07,430 And this connects to it another effect of fear, which is the rise of right wing politics in general. 306 00:35:07,430 --> 00:35:09,560 If you look at the globe, for instance, 307 00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:18,980 countries where the right wing parties have been in power have had the highest number of cases and the sort of more serious impact in the pandemic. 308 00:35:18,980 --> 00:35:27,390 Trump also Nado Modi. And I would say, unfortunately, even when our own Boris Johnson. 309 00:35:27,390 --> 00:35:30,330 Well, because fear and the lack of knowledge, 310 00:35:30,330 --> 00:35:41,650 the epistemological crisis produces reactions that are often very concerned with short term management, but lack the sort of commitment. 311 00:35:41,650 --> 00:35:49,550 To organising society in a different way and struggles around health, our struggles around future political setbacks. 312 00:35:49,550 --> 00:35:56,810 There is also another issue that I don't think I have much time so well, 313 00:35:56,810 --> 00:36:02,330 I covered two very minor impacts of fear, but I'll leave it to the to the audience. 314 00:36:02,330 --> 00:36:07,820 It was great. Marzio, thank you very much. But the eloquence of our speakers is eating into our time. 315 00:36:07,820 --> 00:36:12,800 And we have audience members who are here and we have some questions already. 316 00:36:12,800 --> 00:36:21,020 So I'm just going to ask Chalkida just if she wants to pick up on anything you said very briefly in just two or three minutes, please do so. 317 00:36:21,020 --> 00:36:25,250 And then I'm going to open the floor to the to to the questions that I'm collecting them. 318 00:36:25,250 --> 00:36:30,650 And please do keep putting your questions in the Q&A box. I'm sure we'll have time for a few more of that now. 319 00:36:30,650 --> 00:36:37,010 Thank you all today. Thank you. This was this is exactly what I want a conversation. 320 00:36:37,010 --> 00:36:41,240 And this idea is still in the making and is being shaped. 321 00:36:41,240 --> 00:36:46,250 The short termism that you've talked about is precisely related to that crisis of 322 00:36:46,250 --> 00:36:52,520 legitimacy and the anxieties that comes with it and and the crisis of expertise. 323 00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:57,620 So it's a combination of those two crises which mean that we have excellent doctors. 324 00:36:57,620 --> 00:37:02,300 I'm not talking about lack of expertise. I'm talking about policy and expertise. 325 00:37:02,300 --> 00:37:08,360 And the state of exception here is so important because it's in the interest section of an interaction 326 00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:12,770 of existing states of exceptions that have just sort of toppled over on top of each other, 327 00:37:12,770 --> 00:37:17,930 that the new form of what I'm trying to think about immunity is fabricated, 328 00:37:17,930 --> 00:37:24,680 not just political, but also moral and psychological, because the fear angle is very telling. 329 00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:32,030 This is about a psychological and moral construction as well, and only as forms of lethal immune deficiency, 330 00:37:32,030 --> 00:37:38,510 if you will, that predates covid and are shaped by at the intersection of various crises. 331 00:37:38,510 --> 00:37:50,240 I just want to say one thing in relation to how I see this sort of immunity landscape and bio politics working in the sense that it in in a way, 332 00:37:50,240 --> 00:38:00,320 it it masks many covid deaths because we have also this instance of not trusting which deaths were caused by covid, 333 00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:04,220 but at the same time it biologists and naturalise. 334 00:38:04,220 --> 00:38:12,680 There's a lot of deaths that are in fact depths of despair or people what have called them that's of decay and disintegration at the same time, 335 00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,440 if it politicises these deaths, 336 00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:26,210 but in some ways also politicises this form of moral immunodeficiency that the structural body of the society, the social body is suffering from. 337 00:38:26,210 --> 00:38:32,150 And I think this is a the establishment can use this strategically as it suits them. 338 00:38:32,150 --> 00:38:37,780 And the other thing it does is that it also reveals these emotional political fantasies of the state. 339 00:38:37,780 --> 00:38:42,680 So this idea that there is also something about fantasies I'm working on in terms 340 00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:51,110 of how security versus immunity and versus emeny and aspirations and fantasies. 341 00:38:51,110 --> 00:38:54,440 And of course, these discourses are mobilised as they think. 342 00:38:54,440 --> 00:39:01,940 And I think when we look at the question like these questions, like moral causal questions become very redundant. 343 00:39:01,940 --> 00:39:07,160 And we also deal with a lot of monocles questions in relation to within Iran. 344 00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:18,050 And I think the question of how these forces intersect and interact to compromise both biological and psychological and moral immunity is 345 00:39:18,050 --> 00:39:27,370 something that requires an engagement with what you were talking about and an engagement with historical context and political context. 346 00:39:27,370 --> 00:39:36,980 Thank you very much. So I'm going to forgo the usual chairs privilege of asking the first question in the interests of time. 347 00:39:36,980 --> 00:39:41,030 Our first question is from the Ascott here, and he asks, 348 00:39:41,030 --> 00:39:48,470 can you elaborate on the air carrier Mohan's flights to China and its significance and impact on the spread of the virus? 349 00:39:48,470 --> 00:39:54,200 But I'd like to broaden the question a little bit and ask you perhaps to reflect a little bit 350 00:39:54,200 --> 00:40:01,260 on how in Iran China is viewed in relation to covid we've seen in many parts of the world, 351 00:40:01,260 --> 00:40:12,950 the pandemic has led to instances of racism or very negative perceptions of China or the East Asian individuals and communities. 352 00:40:12,950 --> 00:40:20,570 But this, of course, is at a time when the Iranian government strategically has been wanting to align more with China. 353 00:40:20,570 --> 00:40:23,790 So so there's something of a potential paradox there. 354 00:40:23,790 --> 00:40:30,920 And I wonder whether you could speak to those points, of course, in relation to specifically to on the airline. 355 00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:38,000 It's important. I think the question is raised because of this reference to the fact that in the end of January, 356 00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:46,190 the Iranian government, the government actually confirmed that flights by Mörner airline will stop, will discontinue. 357 00:40:46,190 --> 00:40:53,280 And then it emerged a month and a half later that the 55 flights had actually operated throughout February and March. 358 00:40:53,280 --> 00:41:03,370 So there was, again, another instance of deceit and cover up. And with China, I mean, perceptions on the ground about China, of course, very. 359 00:41:03,370 --> 00:41:10,150 One of the important things is to understand that China has become a lifeline in part because of the American sanctions. 360 00:41:10,150 --> 00:41:17,140 And so in a way, it's a very important strategic ally economically, but also geopolitically. 361 00:41:17,140 --> 00:41:23,440 And so in terms of the perceptions about China and if I want to speak very 362 00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:29,890 anthropologically here in terms of the way these relations are imagined by the public, 363 00:41:29,890 --> 00:41:38,770 you know, the awareness of the for example, this this rumour or statement that was going around about the seven hundred clerical, 364 00:41:38,770 --> 00:41:45,460 Chinese, Chinese, Chinese clerical students in Guam who are travelling at the time of the Chinese New Year to Guam that 365 00:41:45,460 --> 00:41:52,120 was responsible for a businessman who was flying from Isfahan to China back and forth what this was. 366 00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:59,270 So there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that goes around. Also, the missionary activities are very important. 367 00:41:59,270 --> 00:42:08,350 Again, there is there was a lot of traffic between China and in February because it coincided with the Chinese New Year as well. 368 00:42:08,350 --> 00:42:13,300 Thank you. I think you wanted to add just very quickly, and I think, you know, 369 00:42:13,300 --> 00:42:21,460 what they just mentioned is very interesting because it brings out the question of the epidemic on a geopolitical level that not only works, 370 00:42:21,460 --> 00:42:26,470 of course, between states, but actually in the perception of everyday life amongst people, 371 00:42:26,470 --> 00:42:38,020 like a couple of vignettes from from talking to people is that many are refusing immunisation through now what is perceived, the British vaccine. 372 00:42:38,020 --> 00:42:41,740 So AstraZeneca is being refused by many. 373 00:42:41,740 --> 00:42:50,590 And instead they see, of course, the Russian Sputnik five and now increasingly the Chinese vaccine as a form, particularly the same. 374 00:42:50,590 --> 00:42:54,520 It goes with the pills being distributed in little villages. 375 00:42:54,520 --> 00:43:03,670 And I've heard of these which are capable of curing. The symptoms of covid amongst people and people trust them because now it's Chinese, 376 00:43:03,670 --> 00:43:09,550 you know, contrary to what you would think they made in China label would mean generally. 377 00:43:09,550 --> 00:43:17,250 So things are also changing with regard to that. Very quickly, I mean, I could thank you both. 378 00:43:17,250 --> 00:43:23,530 Our second question is, in fact, two questions, and it's coming from covid Moussavi. 379 00:43:23,530 --> 00:43:28,900 And he asks first of methodological question. He says, did you do this research while physically in Iran? 380 00:43:28,900 --> 00:43:35,330 And I guess actually both of you might respond to that. But I read the second part of the question. 381 00:43:35,330 --> 00:43:41,980 He says, if so, what was the impact of the publication of the health minister's letter confirming dispatch of 382 00:43:41,980 --> 00:43:48,880 the five of the vaccines to the supreme leader's household a week after the Security Council, 383 00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:54,400 I guess, had officially banned the US and the UK vaccines in Iran? 384 00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:58,720 So that really is, I think, speaking directly to these questions about mismanagement, 385 00:43:58,720 --> 00:44:11,660 inequality and perception of the way that privilege gets you access to scarce resources in a situation like the one Iran has found itself in al-Qaeda. 386 00:44:11,660 --> 00:44:15,490 Please. Yeah. So, no, I wasn't physically in Iran. 387 00:44:15,490 --> 00:44:20,380 I was actually not as impossible this year for me. 388 00:44:20,380 --> 00:44:26,860 But I think this is why I emphasise on this crisis of legitimacy and crisis expertise, 389 00:44:26,860 --> 00:44:34,780 because this pandemic response has been part deceit, part dysfunction, part incompetence, part US sanctions, whatever. 390 00:44:34,780 --> 00:44:38,620 That's not the point is a lot of these patterns are being repeated. 391 00:44:38,620 --> 00:44:41,380 Everything we're seeing now with the vaccines we saw with test kits, 392 00:44:41,380 --> 00:44:49,930 antipode a year ago that officials had access to tests when ICE use didn't appear with the vaccine. 393 00:44:49,930 --> 00:44:58,120 Yes, the supreme leader banned the import import of vaccines, and that's had implications that actually people on the ground. 394 00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:03,790 Again, I keep referring to people on the ground because it doesn't matter what we think sitting here. 395 00:45:03,790 --> 00:45:09,820 What matters is perception on the ground is that these are death murders. 396 00:45:09,820 --> 00:45:16,330 These deaths were preventable. These deaths were. And so a lot of health workers, again, in this sport died. 397 00:45:16,330 --> 00:45:22,630 And so that's you know, people see that as a direct result of the lack of access, the vaccine management. 398 00:45:22,630 --> 00:45:26,950 Then again, for vaccines to work, you don't need just a vaccine. 399 00:45:26,950 --> 00:45:32,350 You also need the chain of distribution that needs months of prior work. 400 00:45:32,350 --> 00:45:36,370 So what countries were fighting to secure contracts with Pfizer? 401 00:45:36,370 --> 00:45:39,340 Iran was dealing with this back. Right. 402 00:45:39,340 --> 00:45:48,470 And so right now, you have anecdotes of yes, of course, officials have all been vaccinated before, ordinary people. 403 00:45:48,470 --> 00:45:55,240 Yes. Vaccines are being sold at whatever price, but we don't have that infrastructure for the visas. 404 00:45:55,240 --> 00:46:02,020 And so there are all these questions and all these like black holes where that and this lack of information, 405 00:46:02,020 --> 00:46:06,820 this lack of transparency directly affects vaccine compliance. 406 00:46:06,820 --> 00:46:14,080 So people have hesitations because this is the Russian vaccine and the Russian and Chinese vaccine haven't been approved by the FDA. 407 00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:16,360 So that's another angle here. 408 00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:27,190 The resistance to AstraZeneca is also Mozi because of the global issues with clotting and that that became a very highly debated in Iran. 409 00:46:27,190 --> 00:46:34,510 And people are really scared you. Right. So I don't know if I answered the question about the Supreme Leader, I wouldn't comment on that. 410 00:46:34,510 --> 00:46:41,000 I'd be able to. Marzio, do you want to come in on that one or shall we go to the next question? 411 00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:50,230 I, I just the first one, I didn't do research in Iran, of course, no one, I think can do research legally, at least at the moment. 412 00:46:50,230 --> 00:46:58,310 But I relied on a network of collaborators, long time collaborators, which are social workers and have been on the front line. 413 00:46:58,310 --> 00:47:03,670 And so, yes, and also, you know, distant interviewing or talking on the phone. 414 00:47:03,670 --> 00:47:07,600 Thank you. So, Naheed Untrust has a question. 415 00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:12,020 So she she writes, thank you for your insights on social media. 416 00:47:12,020 --> 00:47:16,990 We have seen people comment on how the social sphere has become more permissive as a result of the life, 417 00:47:16,990 --> 00:47:22,120 death, urgencies of the pandemic that led other matters to pale in comparison. 418 00:47:22,120 --> 00:47:26,590 I wonder whether the speakers believe that there will be some permanent political, social, 419 00:47:26,590 --> 00:47:33,100 structural changes in governance that will flow from the conditions of the pandemic. 420 00:47:33,100 --> 00:47:37,990 Hello, doctor. It's good to hear from you. 421 00:47:37,990 --> 00:47:44,470 Of course, there will be implications in governance and governance as as be pointed out, 422 00:47:44,470 --> 00:47:51,460 the anxieties within the realm of governance have already been transformed throughout this past year. 423 00:47:51,460 --> 00:47:55,980 And I think the social response and public perception of that has also changed. 424 00:47:55,980 --> 00:48:02,390 So definitely there will be implications long term in terms of how these perceptions have changed. 425 00:48:02,390 --> 00:48:09,400 And I'm not sure if I follow the question in terms of the social space having become more permissive, permissive in relation to what? 426 00:48:09,400 --> 00:48:17,560 You mean certain social liberties or. This is this is the downside of having the questions done in the Q&A box, 427 00:48:17,560 --> 00:48:27,490 because we can't and I hate to have to also remember that we are we are also waiting for another election in June. 428 00:48:27,490 --> 00:48:33,940 And the question of vaccines, I mean, not unlike here and not unlike in Israel. 429 00:48:33,940 --> 00:48:40,480 And in February, that was the case in Israel, in the UK, that was the case for the elections in May. 430 00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:43,420 The question of vaccines and the election are also very intertwined. 431 00:48:43,420 --> 00:48:50,020 There is this is a very particular election and presidential election because the public trust is at its lowest. 432 00:48:50,020 --> 00:48:56,200 There is the very active campaigns of boycotting elections going on in a way that went before 433 00:48:56,200 --> 00:49:01,060 from inside Iran and from the families of the people who were killed in these protests. 434 00:49:01,060 --> 00:49:06,280 And so there are now grassroots campaigns so that those kinds of challenges to 435 00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:11,350 governance are in a way I wouldn't say they are the result of the pandemic. 436 00:49:11,350 --> 00:49:16,860 I think the pandemic is also uncovering a lot of what was already brewing. 437 00:49:16,860 --> 00:49:21,060 And do you want to add to that? No, not really, because it's hard. 438 00:49:21,060 --> 00:49:27,000 I mean, I can say that well, maybe I can add something that in the social sphere, I mean, 439 00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:33,540 it's hard to think of a more permissive social sphere under limited lockdown regime. 440 00:49:33,540 --> 00:49:36,660 It means that a lot of people couldn't actually go out much. 441 00:49:36,660 --> 00:49:42,630 So much of life has been quite restrained to home, especially for middle class, upper class people, 442 00:49:42,630 --> 00:49:50,820 whereas in lower class people, I'm more sort of the graphicly in touch with rural communities, completely different setting. 443 00:49:50,820 --> 00:49:56,620 People go on with their lives, but enclosed in the environment of the village and the surrounding villages. 444 00:49:56,620 --> 00:50:01,110 So DeSoto European Rural Connexion is a bit restrained. 445 00:50:01,110 --> 00:50:09,750 That's the comment I can say. As for like sort of southern Tehran and things like that, I haven't really been able to to know much. 446 00:50:09,750 --> 00:50:16,320 Thank you. We're getting close to the end of our time, we've got certainly time for one more question we might manage to squeeze into. 447 00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:22,590 So I have a question for me. Apologies for I don't pronounce the name correctly, Yasser Peracha. 448 00:50:22,590 --> 00:50:32,130 And the question is, if there is time, can Dr. Belarusan perhaps elaborate a bit more on everyday death and decay in the Iranian context? 449 00:50:32,130 --> 00:50:39,630 So a little tiny question in there. I will I will promise to discuss this with us. 450 00:50:39,630 --> 00:50:45,840 There is a wonderful one of my wonderful graduate students at says, given that we have three minutes. 451 00:50:45,840 --> 00:50:49,680 Do you really want me to go into this? It's it's a really big question. 452 00:50:49,680 --> 00:50:56,220 And it's, you know, but I'm glad it brought up because in a way, is the running theme in this book project, 453 00:50:56,220 --> 00:51:08,100 which is the shaping of this collective immune system, has been dependent on that and the knowledge, a tacit knowledge of things disintegrating. 454 00:51:08,100 --> 00:51:14,820 I mean, examples of ethnographic examples of that. Stetler, you're in the hospital, you've recovered from covid. 455 00:51:14,820 --> 00:51:18,060 And these are tragic stories that I'm constantly receiving. 456 00:51:18,060 --> 00:51:29,580 You'll recover from covid 27 year old woman and then you die because the hospital's oxygen supply suddenly collapses. 457 00:51:29,580 --> 00:51:33,930 So this awareness amongst people that a lot is dzakovic, 458 00:51:33,930 --> 00:51:46,170 that is this a death of decay and integration in the infrastructure in the way that the way public health policies have been working in that. 459 00:51:46,170 --> 00:51:52,990 And also juxtapose that with wonderful work that health workers then are doing with empty hats and so on. 460 00:51:52,990 --> 00:51:58,890 So I think it's a very big question. I think we will have to discuss this at another point. 461 00:51:58,890 --> 00:52:03,420 We have literally two minutes left. OK, I'm going to take the last question. 462 00:52:03,420 --> 00:52:08,850 So I didn't take the first one. And I know that both of you have been in touch with many professionals. 463 00:52:08,850 --> 00:52:13,680 I mean, health professionals and social worker professionals. 464 00:52:13,680 --> 00:52:19,260 I'll be very interested to know whether you think that there is any significant difference in the sort of experience 465 00:52:19,260 --> 00:52:27,420 and perception of the pandemic of the groups that you've been in touch with compared to the wider public. 466 00:52:27,420 --> 00:52:33,350 Do you see some big divide there, depending on profession and expertise working? 467 00:52:33,350 --> 00:52:36,630 Perhaps first, you mean with health care health professional? 468 00:52:36,630 --> 00:52:43,440 Well, the situation with health professionals as elsewhere is, of course, different from the general public, 469 00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:47,400 partly because of the viral load that they're exposed to, they've been exposed to. 470 00:52:47,400 --> 00:52:51,330 And that we know that that biologically speaking, they are at a higher risk. 471 00:52:51,330 --> 00:52:58,770 But what's what's significant now is that the fatigue and the emotional fatigue, 472 00:52:58,770 --> 00:53:03,690 again, not unlike other places, but there's an additional layer in Iran, 473 00:53:03,690 --> 00:53:12,590 which is, for example, Iran has a shortage of nursing staff and more and more nurses are now quitting because they're just they just can't. 474 00:53:12,590 --> 00:53:20,850 And a lot of private hospitals are even using nurses. So what that means in terms of the you know, I just let me just refer to this. 475 00:53:20,850 --> 00:53:25,110 I just did a project on the impact of sanctions on medical education. 476 00:53:25,110 --> 00:53:28,020 And a lot of these medical doctors were in training. 477 00:53:28,020 --> 00:53:39,060 Tell you that even if I go around things like access to the latest, whatever software, psychologically and morally demoralised, 478 00:53:39,060 --> 00:53:43,650 I mean, so that I think in that sense, if you put the experience of 14 months of the pandemic, 479 00:53:43,650 --> 00:53:53,040 15 months of the pandemic, plus demoralisation, plus thinking that your life as a people have referred to health workers lives as 480 00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:57,960 human shields because they were basically expended in the early that period of time. 481 00:53:57,960 --> 00:54:03,120 I talked about they were they were used and expended and no one is accountable for it now. 482 00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:06,780 So these these ones are open. And at the same time, 483 00:54:06,780 --> 00:54:16,950 there is this public appreciation for the work of health workers that has increased and that that has then healed another one that was open before, 484 00:54:16,950 --> 00:54:21,180 which was the distrust between public and health workers. So it's a bit complicated, isn't there? 485 00:54:21,180 --> 00:54:25,260 There's a lot of back and forth that very helpful. And I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it. 486 00:54:25,260 --> 00:54:32,910 You're going to have to write to Maziar for his answer to that question. I will bother him myself outside the context of this meeting. 487 00:54:32,910 --> 00:54:36,360 So it remains for me just to thank again very much all day. 488 00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:40,830 And Maziar, we're all applauding loudly, though. You cannot hear us. 489 00:54:40,830 --> 00:54:45,240 And I'd also like to thank our audience for joining us on this Friday afternoon. 490 00:54:45,240 --> 00:54:49,410 Thank you all very much for being here. Thank you so much for having us. 491 00:54:49,410 --> 00:55:01,554 Thank you. And take care of that. Pleasure. Thank you once again.