So could you just start by saying your name and your current position?
Yeah. So I'm Samantha, the slot. I'm a university research lecturer at the Oxford Vaccine Group.
I do research on attitudes to vaccines, policies, comparisons across countries and media representation of vaccination find.
So just without telling me where time, life, history, books, we don't really have time for that.
But if you could, could, in just a few sentences go from how you first got interested in the subject you were
interested in the subjects you have been interested in from from then until where you are now?
Yeah, I suppose so. My PhD was about neglected tropical diseases and that policy developed through.
Let's go back and think, oh, that. Oh, sure, I got you to say yes.
Sorry. Your microphone is inside. Sorry.
Yes. I twisted it again. Sorry. That's because that's better service in the wrong way round.
Oh, yeah. So before that, I did my undergraduate degree in economics and international development,
and I found I was a bit more interested in politics and governance.
Ended up doing a master's in that kind of subject institutionally.
So that's when I came to Oxford to do a master's and realised I liked it a lot and probably would like to return at some point.
Then I worked for the Civil Service for about three years and then during my time at the Civil Service I realised the problem.
So I was in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills at the time.
It's since changed its name in the time and it's just, just annoyed me.
And then you have to explain what this was. And anyway, at that point in time I was working on innovation,
entrepreneurship policy and I realised I was more interested in the research side of things rather than yeah,
actually policy and having a career in the civil service.
And I thought, how can I do this for more of my time?
And that's when I decided to do a Ph.D. and go down the academic route.
So I did a Ph.D. in a science and technology studies department in UCL.
And so my field there was really sociology of science, and I chose, as my research topic, neglected tropical diseases.
And I thought this was a really interesting category from a sociological point of view in terms of how did this group come about?
How was it named as a neglected group and selected by who?
Yeah, invented by whom? Who has been neglected? Why?
Why is it deemed as neglected? What diseases make up that group and why?
So this the background and the events that led to the this group of diseases being neglected was was interesting to me.
And after that, I, I saw the position in Oxford for social sciences research working on vaccine attitudes and policy.
And I thought, well, I know, I know vaccines are a contentious topic and won't it be interesting to work on a topic that gets
a lot of attention rather than this other topic which was labelled as not not getting attention?
And that has been a really interesting contrast as a social scientist to see what happens in in public health and global health,
to lead to certain topics being of interest or not.
So yeah, that's really how I ended up in my my current role.
Were you surprised to see an advertisement for a social scientist working in a clinical department?
I think at that time I was also aware of embedded research roles and a lot of the
time that would have been something suggested by the researcher to go into a lab,
will go into a research group. And that's something that I've paid a lot of attention to at the time.
And so, yeah, to have that role proposed from the clinical group or the research group was more, more unusual.
So that did kind of spark my interest.
And it was actually I think my supervisor had seen this post and thought looked, looked good and thought I might be seated for it.
So it was passed on to me and I applied and got it and managed to stay open since then.
So what you sense that you came?
Oh, so that was back in 2016 and I hadn't finished the study, so I was writing up and I did that during the first year.
And then the postdoc. And so what topics were you addressing in your role as personal care when you first got here?
So I was given quite a lot of freedom to pick what I wanted to work on, so it had to be something about vaccines and society.
I actually originally joined a program that was funding me, the Oxford Martin School,
and that was called Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease.
Oh, right. Yes, yeah. Yes. So that was quite nice because I knew I was coming into a group of academics from different disciplines.
So that mean that's where the funding came. That's that's where the funding came from for the post.
And Andy Pollard was one of the senior fellows in this in this project.
And then there were peers from psychology, philosophy and maths, biology.
So it was quite an history thing.
It was quite a nice mix of different disciplines that I was kind of I'd had more interaction with historians in the Ph.D. department,
those in but the other the other disciplines not.
So I thought, wow, this is going to be a nice mix of different people.
And I like the fact that I would almost be like an embedded researcher.
I think I had to stop myself in my first day from just kind of writing notes
about people that I'd been introduced to here as if as if they were my subjects.
And I think it's been a really good opportunity to build my own research interests, but it's also had some challenges.
So I haven't had that normal group or team that you go into where you're doing similar work.
I'm very much the outsider here,
but hopefully I've managed to work my way in and show my use within the group and I've now worked quite closely with people at Ovg as well.
So yeah, I think physically in the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine, that's, that's where you are, as you say.
Exactly. I mean, during COVID, someone like me has been working from home.
Anyone who has a really need to be. Yeah.
Hasn't had to be in the lab or so say the research nurses have to be and the project managers have to be physically
in quite a lot to have access to the files and and for meetings where they will have to do that face to face.
So I have been away for a while now.
But yeah, that kind of physical presence has been useful to get to know people.
People know who you are, and I think it's made it easier to work together.
But probably COVID did prompt more collaboration with people at ABC.
So what? Let's just talk a little bit more about the programme on collective responsibility.
Yes, because that's a I mean it's an interesting concept too.
It's rather visionary. I think for those for people to decide that was something that was worth a particular focus.
So so what in the simplest possible terms, what, what are the issues around collective responsibility in health?
Sorry, I know that's an enormous I have to revisit that again because from the different disciplinary perspectives,
I think that there were quite different ideas being brought in.
I was quite interested to see how individual responsibility sometimes clashed with collective responsibility,
how that interacted and also what what were the concepts that were related to the idea of being responsible for the collective?
And something like Herd Immunity was a good example and looking at how different countries have
dealt with the problem of having to care for others and how to propose that to your population.
So the main the main output actually from that work had been a collaboration with the historian colleague who I've been working with quite closely,
Klaus Cassio, and we've been working on a history of typhoid,
and that has been a really great collaborative project from looking at the history of the disease,
but seeing how that history can be made relevant for today as part of an engagement project and.
Also part of the exhibition. Alison Typhoid Land.
So yeah, it just seemed like a very long time ago that it was on that programme.
And the legacy has been this work on, on typhoid which also we saw is a neglected disease in that it was,
it was a disease that has been dealt with in richer countries and forgotten about in poorer countries.
But now with drug resistance is becoming more of an issue in in wealthier countries as well.
And it's another thing easily so.
And yes, so that was one project you were working on before that became available.
Yeah, but you also started looking at vaccination and vaccine hesitancy at that time.
Yes. I mean, yeah, I actually decided to concentrate on people who were very pro-vaccine and try to understand what that
meant and how groups were organising in civil society to promote vaccination and influence policy,
influence the media to these people who were engaged in react about this.
Yeah. So I concentrated on to two groups, one in Australia and one in the US.
And the US group was trying to counter an anti-vaccine group and they were doing that quite literally by almost
having an aggressive policy and they they would react on social media to posts that that group were making.
And if they were going to be speaking at events, they would call up the event space and say,
do you know who the who says if they if they had sponsorship, they would contact the sponsors and say, yeah, do you know who you're sponsoring?
And we don't think this is a good idea. So with a kind of general public interest group or did they have some kind of institutional base?
I would say more of a general public interest group, which had mainly arisen from a sceptics group,
which is confusing the name, but it meant that they were very science focussed and almost pro science collective before.
So that group would be made up of quite a few scientists themselves, but also political activists and uh,
other people who have, have wanted to have a vocal stance in the public arena.
So, but I suppose what unified them all was that they were very pro-science and.
So I suppose that brings up the question of what messaging is effective when you're trying to do that.
And it sounds to me from what you're saying, that they didn't take the most effective approach.
If they were, it sounds as though they were essentially ignoring the concerns of the the anti-vaccine groups and just saying, no, we have the science.
We're right. Yes. And I think that's where they have been criticised.
But you can see that they they were effective in their aims in quieting the quieting down the the anti-vaccine lobby.
And so whether that creates problems in the future is another question and whether
there will still be ongoing issues that they're not addressing that that might be true,
but in terms of directly countering, they were very effective.
And what about the Australian case? Oh, so this was in Australia.
So I can't imagine what it was like.
Yeah, America was a bit different because this group were for mothers who were concerned about the rise in measles cases in California,
and they had responded to a call by a US senator to basically try and find a parent or alliance for
changing policies on vaccination and getting rid of the personal belief exemption in California.
So that was a mixture of a data scientist, a lawyer and also a scientist medical person.
So they were almost and they were all mum. So some of the some of them had also given up their work to be full time, full time parents.
So their method was really just to show there are there is public support for vaccination
and there is public support for this particular Senate bill that was being put through.
So that, yeah, their way of promoting vaccination was quite different to this activist countering more aggressive action taken in Australia.
And so I think that just and this was another big piece of what you were doing before COVID started that I hadn't come across that you'd think.
But I think that would be the main one that yeah.
Okay. So arriving finally at a COVID, can you remember where you were when you first heard about it?
I mean, clearly in this environment, it would have been on the radar pretty quickly.
Yeah, you'd think so.
I must have heard about it quite early in dissent at the end of December.
And I remember having a dinner with an epidemiologist friend of mine in Oxford, and I'd heard the reports of a novel coronavirus.
I think already by then it was being called a novel coronavirus.
And in December and I, I must have referred to it as this this flu, this this flu that's around the epidemiologist, ologist friend.
And he got a bit annoyed with me. Oh, no, it's not. It's not. It's not a flu, is it?
And I remember him being a little bit I wouldn't say he was worried, actually.
He said, okay, this is like kind of my topic. I'm going to start working on it.
And then I was wondering how this was going to develop.
And after that, I remember in January a couple of people being more worried about it than me as well.
So this historian colleague that I mentioned, he was probably the one who was most alert to this being a potential issue across class.
Yeah. So yeah, and that was very interesting. I thought, wow,
with then with history comes knowledge of past outbreaks and and we were meant
to go I forget when it was in February to Bangladesh and he was asking me,
are we still going? And what do the infectious disease people say?
What do people I would say? And I said, Yeah, everyone's still planning to go.
It's still yeah, as far as I know it's going to be as normal.
I just remember at that time in February,
more people were wearing masks that starting to wear masks at the airport I was in and I hadn't really started doing anything like that by then.
And Bangladesh seemed to be reacting quite quickly, especially compared to the UK actually.
So in our hotel they were already putting out.
Measures mainly to do with handwashing and hand sanitisers.
I think that was what we were all used to at the time,
and I remember us talking about it then and also talking a bit in the office about the vaccine that was being thought about already.
And I think it was around January time I was in the office and I was speaking to someone and they said,
Oh, they just they had Sarah on the radio talking about a vaccine.
But it all seemed like a problem for someone else to say that that was where we were and just going across.
And I had started a had just launched an exhibition at the end of January,
and I don't think we really thought anything would would go wrong, that we would be affected directly.
We like to say the exhibition would be affected. And then it just became apparent at the end of February and start of March that
obviously the cases were going up exponentially and this was going to be a major issue.
And the reports from Italy seeing the quarantines begin in Italy and I have uh, my sister's partner is from Bergamo and yeah,
we realised there's a major issue here but didn't really know how Oxford Vaccine Group was going to be so closely involved.
And yeah, how, how would we play a part in, in the pandemic at that stage.
So how did you come to decide that you would put.
Well, obviously, the rest of the group were doing their thing and eventually running clinical trials.
Yeah, but there were a lot of questions that were relevant to your area of expertise.
When did you start thinking about doing research and did you need to have more funding?
Did you have to give up what you were doing? Well, I had to do it.
I think I still felt like I wanted to be involved somehow, but didn't know how.
And I think there were quite a few people in the group who might have felt like that, even if, say,
they were in the overseas team or another team, which wouldn't directly normally be part of the trial over here.
And then they had to kind of volunteer and say, I'd like to help, I'd like to do something I didn't do.
I remember much during a march or April time directly on COVID, I think.
Right. And I had some some press interested in asking about past epidemics and also about misinformation, which I'd done a bit of work on.
So I remember writing a couple of things at that time, but it was really I paid a lot of attention to our team meetings.
I mean,
we were all quite keen to know what was going to happen with this vaccine in the group and that it did look like it was going to be tested by then,
and that that was going to be a close collaboration with the Jenner Institute to form the Oxford Vaccine Centre.
So I was still maybe more on the sidelines and thinking, okay, there might be a vaccine coming out here.
I want to keep abreast of what's happening and at some point it's going to be really
important to know what people's views are and how the policy arrangements develop.
And I think with a lack of information and the uncertainty,
it's either looking for past experiences and also other country experiences and then trying to think about how this might develop.
What are the other health society issues at the moment, like misinformation and social media discussions and so on?
So that I think that was where I was at that period.
And then still quite early on when the trial had been announced,
I had some doctors within a week who were interested in doing some qualitative work with the trial participants.
So that's when they got in touch with me via Andrew Pollard to find out whether we could do a
qualitative study together and that that was the main COVID related work that I'd started at that time.
And so what kind of project was that look?
Yeah, we've had to ask that. Yeah, actually this question I should have asked you previously.
I'm into film list, but I'm trying not to look at it. It's about how you gather data.
Yeah. What methods? So the methods I normally use are interviews and focus groups.
So I would do semi-structured interviews where I'd use a guide with key points that I want to bring up
in the interview and or focus groups with slightly larger numbers of people and discussing topics.
So those have been my main methods, but I've also been doing social media of meta analysis,
which normally isn't just a slight mix of qualitative and quantitative methods.
And then even more recently it's been surveys as well.
So that's that was the design for this.
And this project with COVID 19 participants was to survey and then interview them.
And it took quite a while to get ethical approval and get up and running.
So by the time we were able to send out that initial survey, it was August,
September time, and then we did interviews from September to October, November.
So yeah but those are questions that there are other a select group of people.
Yeah. At these volunteers of questionable medical backgrounds themselves we get quite a well-informed group.
Why did do you think or you and your colleagues think that they made a particularly good sample and they're clearly not representative?
Why did they make a good a good sample?
And my next question, so you can also discuss, but the next question is going to be, what specifically were you asking them about?
I was keen to speak to this group because like the pro-vaccine people,
they might not be seen as the problem group, but I think their views are really important.
So I wanted to know. And collectively as a team, we wanted to know what was motivating them to take part in this research,
what had been their experiences of COVID and and of taking part in this trial.
And the trial was under a high amount of scrutiny and public and media attention.
And that made that group and that experience, I think, even more interesting to focus it on.
And then their in their wider views about taking part in research that attaches to risk
and then what reactions of friends and family were having about them taking part.
And finally their wider views about vaccines and also of people who who might be against vaccination and policies related to vaccination.
These were things that we were asking them in the the survey and the interviews.
So you collected it because I was just reading the paper this morning about
that was particularly about focussed on vaccine nationalism and nationalism.
Yeah. Was that part you didn't have to go back to them and think, oh that would have been a good question.
But you didn't ask them everything at once. Yeah. And analysed it bit.
Bit. Exactly. Yeah. We tried to make it very explorative so I did think about what did the what are the themes
that I think are going to be important coming up say something something like how,
how a successful vaccine will be allocated and uh, also attached to national identity.
Seemed like that was already being considered at least in media.
And that was, that was sort of a topic that was coming up.
And who would be prioritised, how would that allocation happen, which I know is, is a part of developing new vaccines and the rollout of new vaccines.
So I had that in mind as a topic that would be important, and that was something that I wanted to ask the participants.
But we had really a long range of different topics.
And even so, another paper that we we published already was about animal testing,
and I included that from a conversation I had with a geography colleague of mine.
And she she was asking me questions about the trial participants and what they might think about the speed of the vaccine
being developed and possibly also the speed and different arrangements for animal testing before they were tested on.
And I just thought, yeah, that's that's a very relevant question to include.
So we had that in both the survey and the interview.
And did you I mean, do you just pick out a few examples? Did you find that they were quite a homogeneous group or did you have quite a range of views?
Yeah, so a tried that, there were a lot of interviews, so there were about 100 interviews and I probably did 30 to 40 of them.
And what I what really struck me was how people experience the pandemic quite differently.
And I found it very reassuring to speak to people about this because I did hear a lot from people who were quite introverted,
who actually found that what they describe themselves as introverted,
and they found the the pandemic as a relief from having to have social interactions.
And I thought, well, that's quite a nice positive spin on the experience of the pandemic and lockdown particularly.
And a lot of people that also commented on it was a good thing to do during lockdown and they
felt it was very worthwhile and and also something that could be positive coming out of this a.
Experience. So this was all very uplifting, I think, hearing these stories.
I mean, some people talked about the difficulties, but I think because they had very good impressions of the trial as well,
they were they were quite happy to speak about their time and they saw.
Yeah, with quite a uplifting lens really I suppose.
And so it did, I did really enjoy doing the interviews and I think others on the team did as well.
So I need to take the question about whether people thought the vaccine having been developed in the UK should be deployed in the UK the first time.
How did they have at that point out of them? So most of the participants said that they ideally would like a more equitable allocation of the vaccine,
but they knew in reality that that might not be the case.
And there are practical and also political barriers that would prevent that.
So there was this tension between what's the ideal and what would happen in reality.
And I thought that was very reflective of the participants, too, to make this point.
And and this was already before we knew we had a successful vaccine.
So yeah, I think that there's a lot to be garnered from getting views from this this type of group,
which are quite nuanced and do consider a lot of different issues at once and then mentioned.
And yeah, I think we did find that that data really rich and we're still kind of going through it and writing up.
So did you. I'm just curious, did you ask them whether they thought they had the real vaccine?
Yeah. Yeah. So this was one of any way of finding out afterwards, you know?
So they were completely delinked from their participation in the trial, but it did end up being.
So what did most people most people said that they didn't know either way,
but the ones that I think there was quite an even split between thinking that they did or didn't from the rest.
And uh, I think, yeah, probably from the symptoms some people could have guessed which rich group they were in.
Um, and also at that stage because there was some follow up, some, some of them would have known as well.
Yeah, I just threw that in because Danielle opener my interview with a couple of things but if you come across in New
Zealand TVI was he was a volunteer himself was actually certainly had it I think it was unlike if he hadn't.
Yeah, yeah. But he felt very good because he thought he had it, I mean he felt that, that,
you know, gave him, he felt less threatened by the vaccine because he thought he'd had.
Yeah. By the sorry. By the virus. By the news. Yeah.
And I think we did ask that as well whether you think you've changed your behaviour because you suspect that you're protected.
And uh, yeah, a few people did say that they were feeling more relaxed, but I think most were quite God to say that they were.
And I don't know whether that was part of knowing that that was the right thing to say.
So we can't completely know about why people responded to that question in that way.
And also, there were a few questions that you did.
Even though we prompted the participants, you did wonder whether they were saying it because it was the expected answer.
So about how they talked about the trial on social media and with other people.
I think they were maybe a bit more guarded to say that they didn't talk about it so much.
I mean, we, we have to believe what they say.
But, um, that was where we, we were keen to encourage the participants that we're not checking up on anyone.
There is no right or wrong answer and yeah.
We just came to know isn't it. Yeah. So I was very interested in the social media research that you did.
And I mean this is presumably it's opened up a whole new source of rituals of of opinion.
But it's quite, uh, in some ways it seems unmanageable that.
How do you deal with that? It is a good source, but I think it is a.
So limited in its own way. So the type of data that you can access isn't always very representative and has its own limitations.
So Twitter data is the most easily accessible,
but we know that that's only going to be a certain demographic and might not be a very representative sample.
So yeah, there's this balance between the ease of getting hold of some of the social media data and what the results show.
And that's why I would also prefer using a mix of methods.
So not just relying completely on, say, Twitter information and either look for other platforms as well and take other approaches to analysing data,
but combining that with major policy analysis,
um, and also maybe include in interviews and all the techniques in there,
I think it's useful not to just rely on the one single source, especially, I think, Twitter data.
We know that there are drawbacks. But having said that, you do you have a paper is it difficult with with some some while to.
Yeah, that's right yeah. I think the subject how to do it is just talk me through that.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point.
So for some topics I think can you you can rely solely on that data if it's if you're looking for a contentious discussion.
So that was what we were keen to see people who were being very pro anti masks
and also vaccines and how they were discussing that specifically on Twitter.
We did we did actually want to include more platforms, and we've done that in our initial analysis.
But through the review process, we were told to only concentrate on one, one platform, I think for for ease of understanding.
And if that was the main data source, then just clarify some results more.
How did you actually get the data on fabric from nuts and bolts?
Yeah. Yeah, of course. So what we would normally rely on is a media monitoring software,
and these are originally designed as commercial softwares to be used by companies and most of the time to to to know what their online presence is.
So for brands, how people are talking about their brand and what is the sentiment and that sort of thing.
But researchers have started to adopt techniques from from that field.
So we do use that kind of commercial software for research and that that helps to scrape the data.
So collect the data in a way that's easy to manage.
And and that, again, has its upsides and downsides.
And that's where with things like their in-built programs for measuring sentiment,
we like to apply our own frameworks for that and not just rely on the framework sheets, buy the commercial software and try and plug in.
This is trying to tell whether they're saying something positive. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we, we like to take a sample and train the AI to recognise what,
what is positive or negative and from our perspective, following all framework and parameters.
So that's how we've really been using it. Um, and it does end up being a bit similar to doing a systematic literature review.
So you, you put in your terms and then you kind of get a huge amount of results that are related to these terms of tweets.
We're talking about it in your days of so it depending on where we're course constrained.
And I think typically we've gone between 50000 to 100000 tweets for a lot of these searches.
And then we might do smaller searches within that for particular time frames and
also particular events and do more deep dives within those bigger searches.
And that does make it more manageable and does allow us to use qualitative methods when they're actually being.
Yeah, but we read every every tweet and we do it does mean that the bigger the team, the more also feasible it is to go through.
Those individual tweets and try and understand and try and assign themes, try and construct a narrative around them.
So do you have students or of people doing that with you or was it.
Yeah. So, yeah, a lot of it has been the two of us working together.
And then normally we've had one other researcher, um,
we've been collaborating with a group at UCL where we have been able to draw on a wider group of researchers for various projects.
So that has been useful because it does take more hands.
So yeah, we have had to reach out the room.
And what were the conclusions that you drew from your this particular study almost to say that a study about masks and vaccines,
we already had noticed that there might be some overlap between these these different groups who seem to be convergent.
And that was really confirmed by looking through tweets and the online information.
So you saw those and said people who who seem to be very anti-vaccine,
also being anti-mask and using some of the sort of markers and ways of describing themselves and within the anti-mask and anti-vaccine areas.
So, uh, yeah, that was something that we saw for those two groups, but also that the pro, the pro mask and the pro-vaccine and um,
trying to work out where the overlaps were between what seemed like slightly separate groups and was, was the core of them that work.
But I mean what you were right that if I understand it correctly that that the people
who were anti what they were actually anti was being told what to do by the government.
Is that is that fact? Yeah, I think that that was one of the key points and.
Seen how those different groups were responding to political events.
You could you could kind of see how it was a libertarian approach.
And yeah, what were the unifying concepts that were connecting these groups together and how they were almost, um.
Uh, form an anti anti measures group as a whole.
Mm hmm. And so put.
I mean, it's what extent have the surveys and the results that you've done been able to inform policy at that,
at the government level, at work, I suppose, obviously in terms of messaging?
Yeah. I suppose as someone who's doing primary research and being the publishing and academic journals,
it is a bit hard to say where the policy connections are and the policy implications are that you are being called in yourself to brief ministers.
No, no, no, not directly. So that the main direct impact would probably have been in the vaccine hesitancy within the BAME community.
So black and minority ethnic groups.
And that's where myself and also a colleague in the Oxford Vaccine Group had been reaching out to different community groups during COVID 19.
And what we did was a lot of Q&A sessions, a lot of kind of on online forums with these groups.
And then we were in contact with policy people in government to give our advice really on what we found from working with within those communities.
So that that was where there was probably more of a direct connection and see what actually happened to published papers so that you were,
you were directly trying to help the situation.
Yeah. And that really came from my colleagues side.
Cannavaro, the he's a paediatric consultant, and he was just really concerned with the high level of hesitancy,
but also the higher death rates and the worse outcomes within minority ethnic groups.
So he had reached out to me and said, What can we do about this?
And Can we work together? Can we go and speak directly from a grassroots level to community groups?
And yeah, we got the okay also from our group lead and that's what we did for a few months during the pandemic.
And also we thought it was important to write up that work mainly in comments and in,
in some media articles and also connect up with with policy people,
with the government to, to make sure that those lessons were coming out and those views were being represented.
And what did you learn about the reasons for that whole hesitancy?
So we said we did actually get some pushback, whether that was really hesitancy.
And I mean, this is something that I've experienced through through the research anyway,
whether that it was a question of access and practical issues for some people, but also whether that hesitancy is also justified.
If people have felt like they haven't had a good treatment in the past from both health providers,
but also within government policy and historical abuses as well.
So that that's something that really struck me that even even thinking about this problem was quite political and controversial in itself.
And having that discussion with people was, was really informing.
And I think the main takeaway was that they wanted to be heard and they didn't just want to be talked about as this as another group.
And BAME is a terribly yeah.
And especially since they,
it was a very popular label and and that's something that we saw community groups really and being on the front foot with during COVID,
knowing that they wanted to have their voices heard more and they knew that government
was also reaching out to them to make sure that their communities were well represented.
So yeah, it was observing how this was happening, but the feedback was that it was all very slow,
so the right processes were put in place, but it could have all been a lot faster.
And that's where you want these channels to be ready and prepared for future pandemic or crisis situations and not having
to to scramble to hear views of communities and find out what their needs and concerns are when there's a problem.
So do you think you've learned anything new about.
Approach to the issue of vaccination as a result of the experience of the vaccine, or is it just more of the same of what you've seen before?
Whether in this country or overseas? And it's definitely new because we've seen what it's been like to have a vaccine
developed during a global pandemic and at a speed that has been unprecedented.
And I think we we we could assume these problems of what being worried about speed,
safety, new technologies and the intentions of different actors involved.
I think I mean, I was already thinking about multiple vaccines,
but we weren't exactly sure how that was going to pan out on the political and and
national level and the kind of controversies that were created around side effects.
A. Yeah. It's hard to imagine exactly how that's going to play out, but I think you could predict some of those general issue areas.
So. Hmm.
I suppose what has been surprising is the high adoption and the high support in the face of challenges.
So. It still is still very worrying that vaccines aren't available in all countries.
And even though we have COVAX, that there are still major problems in getting COVID 19 vaccines to low and middle income countries.
So this is this is an ongoing issue, and it's not clear how that is going to change into manufacturing changes.
And until. Those countries have are in a better position to make their own vaccines,
which goes back to your early interest in the economics of helping countries in that regard.
Uh, which is, I mean, that's not directly part of your research interest these days, but it's something that you obviously, you know.
Yeah. And is part of the structure of global health and uh, why, why, why we have the issues that we are seeing in this pandemic.
So I think it is still the political, economic and social issues that they're all, they've all been highlighted through COVID.
And we can see that it's not just about the science and it's not just about creating a vaccine.
Now, all these other factors play a big role as well. I mean, we've been talking all along says vaccination is a sort of self-evident good.
And I did have a question I meant to ask you earlier, but I can just ask you now,
is it possible to characterise the impact of vaccination on global health really since the JAMA?
Yeah. I mean there have been some statements to the effect of apart from clean water vaccines
have had the biggest impact on global health and you are able to make these estimates,
but they're always kind of and it's quite hard to measure the counterfactual, say and say exactly what's what's caused the change.
But there's a reason why governments and international institutions really put vaccines high up on the list of technologies and
interventions that would be really important for health because it's a preventative technology and along with something like clean water,
that there's consensus has been a major reason why we have low mortality today for many infectious diseases.
Mm hmm. And do you think that there's now a greater awareness of the impact that social science can have in these global health questions?
I think there is, and especially for not just caring about behavioural science, which unfortunately,
I think at the start of the pandemic that was that was the area of social science that was concentrated on and they made a big mistake.
Yeah. I mean, there's talk of fatigue.
Yeah. That people wouldn't put up with. Yeah. And there have been major say we should talk about it as you have written about that happened.
Is that the. So there was this idea early on that if you brought in a lockdown too soon, people would get fed up and stop complying.
Very quickly, before you got anything else in your in your arsenal to deal with the pandemic.
What turned out to be the case? Yeah, exactly.
I think it is a concern, but that didn't quite pan out exactly how that was imagined.
So there's a need to be really careful about imagining how the public will behave.
And I think that's something that has been really clear from COVID 19 that maybe a higher trust should be placed in public reactions and actions.
But this really nice analogy with doing press ups or that this was going to be open to the press.
Oh, I'm not sure if I that with, you know, even first.
I think I said in the press that it was something you said that.
But there are some things that are low cost like models which you just get used to do it and become habituated to it.
But something like lockdown is high costs and it's like being asked to do press ups over and over and over and over again.
You get to the point where you just can't do it anymore.
I think that that was a distinction between that you can't you can't treat all mitigating approach.
It must be something else.
And I remember there might be bit of stuff that you've got to be aware of the cost of taking a step before you decide how they're going to respond.
Yeah, we're get to be prepared to comply. Yes.
And not to. It's kind of over. Expect a certain response that seems to be really key.
But people do want really clear rules and really clear messages and to to flip flop or I think Google.
Yeah. Oh, I was just yeah.
It was a that was going to be like did with benefit three weeks.
Okay. Yeah. So that before the break you can. Yeah.
So, yes, we said we were just talking about the social science and you said that to make it all about behaviour was a mistake.
Hmm. So what are the other areas that people need to look at a bit more closely?
So sociology and anthropology have added quite a lot to understanding the social side of epidemics and outbreaks.
And also history, I think, has been really important.
But I would say keep an open mind to social science and humanities research and not not
just thinking that there's a certain type of research that AIDS pandemic response,
which does seem to been the case at the start of this pandemic and in the UK at least.
So has this work raised new questions that you were interested in working on in future?
I've been more interested in in trials and understanding what motivates people
to take part in trials and seeing Charles within a wider political economy.
And I think I mean, there have been quite a lot of important pieces of research on clinical trials.
But I'd I'd like to focus more on the profile and portrayal of trials in media and in the public domain and how that
also might be changing since COVID and how the structure and interest in trials might be changing since COVID.
So that's something that I'm exploring further and and might do a kind of similar
format to these surveys and interviews that I did for COVID 19 participants.
So it was quite unusual to have a trial that was going on in the full glare of publicity.
Yeah, because what normally happens is a trial takes place. Nobody really knows about it except that it's involved.
And then you have a press release when the result comes out. Yeah, but I had a trial that was great.
You know, we have pictures in the paper of the first trial volunteers having their injection, but that was really very different.
Exactly. And these people and the research participants that take part in clinical trials are so important for scientific progress.
But the. They're really forgotten about and not really known in public awareness.
So I think that crucial role is something that should be explored further to know.
I think across AusAID, across countries and across time, how, how that position as a trial participant has changed and what that involves.
There's been really good work in America and that's a lot of the time been looking at the the gendered and racial dimensions to trial participants.
But in other countries there's been less of a focus on those social and political representations of trial participants and.
So in America, it's it's almost something that people don't want to talk about doing.
What we've seen in the UK and in in Europe and taking part in COBRA trials,
people have been very proud and wanted to tell others that they've taken part and that's a whole different way of thinking about child participation.
And that's yeah, that's something that I'd like to find out more about.
Does that fit within the context of a general, a wider community response, doing things like running food banks or making masks?
And there was this tremendous explosion of voluntary activity that happened particularly early in the pandemic.
Yeah, all coming from, I guess that same place of being.
I want to be able to do something. It does seem to be part of that ethos.
And and so that would be it.
I mean, did you ask that new questions, whether those people were also engaged in that kind of activity?
Yes. So we did actually ask them in the interviews whether they did other things during the pandemic to help
their community or whether they saw maybe taking part in the trial is the main way that they could help.
And I think a lot a lot of the people we spoke to were doing other things.
But they they did think, oh, I'm a healthy person. I live in near where this trial is happening.
This is the way that I can contribute. Or or they might apologise and say, well, I'm not a doctor.
I can't save lives, not a nurse. This is something I can do.
And although there were quite a few have co workers said that did take part and I think they just wanted to see results happen as soon as possible.
So almost from seeing the effects of COVID meant that they were motivated to try and get a vaccine and see this one could possibly be made.
So, oh, so what do you think of obviously it's nice for the participants to have a better recognition of their role,
but do you think it could actually feed into the way trials are designed and executed?
So I think it can because we we do need to know one thing about recruitment for trials under such scrutiny,
but but also how to better support trial participants when there is this kind of scrutiny and attention.
So I think on both sides it can be useful to feed into future trials.
And so I think I hope there would be some direct feedback from surveying these participants and interviewing them as well.
And I think to see more questions about just about how the pandemic impacted on you personally and to
what extent did you actually feel threatened by the risk of infection or other members of your family?
Yeah, I was very worried about my my parents and my in-laws and other people that I knew were more vulnerable.
And and that's yeah, that's been the ongoing worry, I think with vaccines we've been been less worried,
but with people who are immune compromised is still an ongoing issue that they have to deal with.
So and. Yeah. I think that it doesn't go away and it hasn't gone away yet.
So. And I would also say because then I've had long periods of.
Oh, really? Yeah. Probably been more the case.
So where did you when did you get the infection? So it was the end of 2020, November just before.
Was that right? Yeah. Before the vaccines came out in April 2021.
No, that was the year before. So it was nice to be I think in the end it was the end of December.
The very first. Yeah. So the first the first thought was the Pfizer one was approved at the end of November.
Yeah. So I think the first vaccinations took place and. That's right.
And then I had one in February. Yeah. But it's yeah.
So I got it in the November and that was before the vaccines came out.
Yes. Yeah, yeah. And Halloween. And so I haven't been as bad as others.
So for like I don't really want to complain, but I do have sympathy for people who are having long cold symptoms because it has been
quite difficult to manage and and just really having not knowing when it's going to end.
I think also for anyone with chronic conditions, um, do you feel, do you still feel the effects?
Yeah, I still feel the effects of it. It's and it's improved over time, so I hope it will go away at some point.
But, um, my, my problem is that many had symptoms like with, with that and, but headaches and like a feeling of being hung over every day.
And that really didn't go away for a long time. So that's been quite annoying.
And then I got other things like shingles for my parents and it just was unrelenting.
But I hope it will eventually go away.
And I know other people who've had worse long COVID symptoms.
So I'm it's just something that I feel quite strongly about and that we shouldn't forget that there are long lasting consequences to COVID and
obviously in people who are still dying and people who are still affected by Long-covid and any other effects after having the infection.
So I next question was about how the lockdown impacted on what you were able to do.
But added to that, the fact that you couldn't get to work and the fact that you were on.
Well, yeah, I didn't actually mind the lockdown so much.
And maybe I'd been used to working from home and been in charge of my own time for a while,
which I think a lot of my my friends found difficult because they're used to going into the office every day.
Well, I've had more control over where I am and what I'm doing.
So and for me, it didn't feel like so much of a change and I like doing outdoor things.
So, um, yeah, I think similar to everyone else that the social constraints have been hard and annoying.
But for me I just see the, in the, in the whole picture.
It hasn't been so bad personally for me. And you were quite productive during that time.
Yeah, maybe a bit too much. I probably should have another question about your hours.
Yeah, you went very long. Um, I probably worked a bit too much, and I don't think that helped with the long COVID either.
And, um, so how quickly did you get back to trying to try to work?
I was, I was still always, always working.
So that was the one thing that I could do. And even if I couldn't get up out of bed, I would probably just, um, stay in work.
Because if I had my laptop and I'm just lying down, that's something that I could do.
And I was more constrained by walking about doing any exercise.
And, um, yeah, actually, unfortunately, work was something that I could always do,
but I don't think it's actually so helpful if you're unwell to carry on working all the time.
And I a few were involved in teaching at all.
And how was that impacted? A little. A little bit. So I do I do some teaching, but mainly master's students.
And yeah, I felt quite bad for them because especially at the beginning of the pandemic, they were really disrupted.
And, uh, there's a shortage of the masters and they really did have to change their schedules quite a bit.
And the whole experience is not what they were expecting.
So I, yeah, I did feel bad for their students.
I think they w pretty well to get in lectures and do homework online.
Um, and maybe it is easier with this with the older group compared to school students.
So um, yeah, it was quite encouraging that the switch to online could be, can be done and it was doable.
And I think they still got a lot out of their courses and were carrying on with, with more of a hybrid mix between in-person and online.
It does also mean that I mean, there are some upsides for people who is more convenient to do the online lectures.
Um, I think some students might prefer and for whatever reason, but, um,
and some of them just not come back full speed with a yeah, I mean, the problem with some of the masters,
at least the one that I teach on, which is international health and tropical medicine, and that is nearly all overseas students pretty much.
And that's I mean, it's some of it not based, not for, not for these students, but uh,
there are practical aspects, but mainly to do with public engagement and also maybe clinically based.
But if there is something that they're interested in that they want to do for the, um, the thesis, for example.
Um, so yeah, they, they were quite affected at the beginning of the pandemic because it meant
that some couldn't travel over or some had to go back to their home countries.
But I think that has improved a lot.
And, and well, we've all adapted, we've all had to adapt.
So now I would say that that that course has been delivered very well.
And I think all the students are getting a lot out of it.
And um, even if there is more on my teaching and how he felt about the precautions that are being taken and since since you have come back and.
So I'm not I'm not in so often.
I think it was quite a shock during COVID because whenever you come into the Oxford Vaccine Group, it was the busiest place in the whole of Oxford.
So that is how participants come here to have their jobs, not not really in the building.
So we had an portacabin set up and there is a small facility on the side of our offices where I think some of the jobs might have taken place.
So some of the follow up consultations might have taken place, but it is a bit separate from us, so we wouldn't bump into participants.
But obviously actually when I got my first job it was from a colleague in the portacabin and I suppose it is a
bit busy but and that that they were done not really in a spacious way to comply with the social distancing.
So I'm just surprised how everything sprung up so quickly and, and all these extra things like donations of meals.
And suddenly we've got free teas and coffees and in the kitchen.
And I think all of the goodwill around the trial was just really nice to see.
And I mean, I've witnessed this already with being around some of the trials that have happened in the past.
The there are really some enthusiastic participants who sent in hampers food for
the staff and sent in thank you messages and cards and things and little gifts.
And this this happened even more during COVID. And it was just really nice to see and you can see a lot of vaccine group on some of
the walls and put up cards and messages of support from people all over the world.
So yeah, that that's made it a nice environment, but also a bit strange that things not only carried on as normal within this building,
but ramped up even more and was was busier and more people were employed.
Uh, you know.
Kind of the other things that changed all that kind of stickers and signs showing what we have to do and how we're adhering to the guidelines.
Yeah, so it's been interesting to see how this place is operating during COVID and now so we're speaking
towards the end of 2022 when the government has said we don't need to take any precautions at all.
And I've been going around different departments talking to people and it seems to be up to departments exactly what they do.
And most of them are more cautious than the government's guidelines, but there is variation among them.
But I have a sense that this one is still quite big, quite careful about things like health.
And so yeah, I think they are more cautious and I probably say, uh,
the perspective of doctors sometimes seems to be not to be as worried about diseases as maybe I would be.
So, uh, I think perhaps I'm more on the cautious side and maybe because that just deal with it more and see it more.
Sam feels less of a threat.
And, but that doesn't mean that people don't adhere to the rules, because I think people are following the rules and are told that they shouldn't.
So they do this in this group.
Yeah, but you're right. Across colleges, across different departments.
Um, it's, it's been interesting to see what the approaches have been and you can kind of see,
oh, that's quite a liberal college or that's quite a conservative college.
And whether they put in a mask mandate, a mask rule or not, depending on their approach and.
So do you think the fact that you could work on something that was related to the pandemic helped to support your well-being?
I'm not sure. I think it would have been strange not to have worked on something to do with COVID.
As someone who is generally interested in how often society topics.
So it was immediately a topic of interest for my well being.
It was nice to know what was going on in terms of a vaccine being developed, and I think that really gave a lot of hope to people,
even if for me not directly working on the vaccine development,
but knowing the people quite well who were working on it and who were involved in the trial.
And I think that was really encouraging.
Uh, in some ways you, you may be feel like you're a bit too close to the subject matter as well.
So it's nice to work on other things.
And I think at the beginning of COVID, I wasn't that keen to do too much about Cambridge.
It felt a bit too close. And I actually wrote the script for an animation that I worked with my colleague class with about Typhoid Mary,
and I think I really enjoyed working on a different disease at a different time and not having
to think about COVID for a bit and those those daily broadcasts of cases and deaths per country,
I think a lot of people found very stressful.
And so I'm glad in a way, I'm glad that they're not reported on like that anymore in this very sensationalist, alarmist way.
But at the same time, we're seeing daily deaths and daily cases are rising.
And I don't like that that's not being thought about or or people don't like to look at it anymore.
I think we have to know that there's still a problem. It was back on Will.
That won't take. Yeah, there hasn't been for a while, but yeah.
Um. But yeah, I suppose this is difficult to get that quite right.
You either either were paying too much attention or less to. Yes. And has the experience of of kind of it changed your attitude or your approach
to your work in any way and the things you'd like to see change in the future?
It's interesting because I remember thinking I didn't work on Ebola, but I knew a lot of people that that did work on Ebola and.
Their reflections, it seemed like it was also something quite traumatic to be a part of and but also obviously really topical and important.
So I remember looking at those researches and thinking, Oh, it's good that they were able to contribute.
They were part of something that needed their input.
And I feel a little bit like that about COVID, although I would say in my field, maybe everyone has been working on COVID as well.
So we don't want to forget that there are other academic topics and maybe the quality
of scholarship might not have been the same during this pandemic as in other times.
That's something else to think about. And yeah,
I'm going to be looking at how this is this is going to be panning out post-pandemic when that happens and what my colleagues
will be working on and how they might add up to two other topics if they have been concentrating mainly on COVID.
You're going to be looking at that. So you're essentially a study in your own colleagues?
Yeah, I do like doing that.
And I, I have to admit, if I if I am if I do do interviews about a topic, I do like to speak to some academics as research subjects.
At the same time, maybe this is getting way too reflexive, but there is an overlap between academia and policy and society and media and,
and there are definitely individuals who fit that criteria where I.
I do like to include them in the research gathering.
But now I suppose more from an informal point of view and less as a research topic.
But it's something that I would like to reflect upon how, yeah, my, my field or research community will adopt of the code.
Um, and not everyone's been working on COVID, but a lot of, a lot of people have been, especially in vaccine attitudes, vaccine hesitancy and policy.
Great.