1 00:00:01,790 --> 00:00:06,680 So can you just start by saying your name and your position in the video? 2 00:00:06,780 --> 00:00:10,360 Sure. My name is Erica Charters. I'm a historian. 3 00:00:10,370 --> 00:00:18,020 I'm an associate professor at the History Faculty, and my official title is Associate Professor of Global History and the History of Medicine. 4 00:00:18,410 --> 00:00:23,150 Great. Thank you. And so, first of all, just you just tell me a little bit about yourself. 5 00:00:23,840 --> 00:00:29,000 Starting from when you first got interested in history to how you came to be where you are now. 6 00:00:30,740 --> 00:00:34,770 So I actually did not do an undergraduate in history. 7 00:00:34,790 --> 00:00:39,619 I did an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree books, but I did a masters in history, 8 00:00:39,620 --> 00:00:45,290 and I took a course on the history of disease and became hooked at that point. 9 00:00:45,290 --> 00:00:49,070 So I did my doctorate at Oxford with you first. 10 00:00:49,430 --> 00:00:53,960 So my first two degrees were in Canada and Carleton University in Ottawa and then University of Toronto. 11 00:00:54,620 --> 00:01:02,920 And then I came to England to do a doctorate under Mark Harrison and Lawrence Brock Lewis, and that was on the history of medicine. 12 00:01:02,930 --> 00:01:07,879 So I looked at disease during the seven years war in the British Army, in the British Navy. 13 00:01:07,880 --> 00:01:11,630 And that was when I really, I think, really came into the fold. 14 00:01:11,630 --> 00:01:18,050 And in terms of doing research in the history of disease and I taught at various universities, 15 00:01:18,050 --> 00:01:24,710 but I started here as a historian of medicine here being the University of Oxford in 2009. 16 00:01:25,250 --> 00:01:39,360 So some time. And if you have to define a single kind of big question that really sort of animates your interest in your subject, what would it be? 17 00:01:40,770 --> 00:01:46,200 I think that so I work on because I work on war and I work on disease. 18 00:01:46,410 --> 00:01:53,100 One of the things I've found is I'm very interested in the relationship between the physical and the tangible. 19 00:01:53,640 --> 00:02:00,810 And I would say are more kind of cultural, intellectual ideas about our experience of life. 20 00:02:01,110 --> 00:02:07,559 So I'm very interested in in bodies, but I think especially disease, because I find as a historian, 21 00:02:07,560 --> 00:02:14,520 it's both a biological phenomenon, but it's also, of course, a social and political and cultural phenomenon. 22 00:02:14,520 --> 00:02:22,070 And we need to have a framework where we can interpret this this physical and this biological experience of disease. 23 00:02:22,080 --> 00:02:33,270 So in many ways, it's it's the tension between that kind of physical, biological and our our experiences as cultural and as as humans. 24 00:02:33,660 --> 00:02:46,800 That really interests me. Mm hmm. So why do you think a long term perspective is important when thinking about disease and human society? 25 00:02:49,230 --> 00:02:56,010 I suppose. I mean, I don't know when when I should start talking about it. 26 00:02:56,010 --> 00:03:05,250 But of course, one of the things that strikes me is, especially when we talk about an epidemic, is that it's usually a moment of crisis. 27 00:03:05,610 --> 00:03:12,750 And so I think when we're living through a moment of crisis than we have, we're thinking more immediately. 28 00:03:13,140 --> 00:03:14,250 And I think to me, 29 00:03:14,250 --> 00:03:21,030 the kind of fascinating thing about being a historian is when you realise that there's actually human patterns that might be universal, 30 00:03:21,510 --> 00:03:29,010 some things that might not be. But obviously it's only when you have that long term context, then you can start to pinpoint and identify. 31 00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:38,330 Ways in which this is a human experience rather than just a unique experience that we're living through now. 32 00:03:38,540 --> 00:03:41,330 I find it comforting. I'm sure some people might find it. 33 00:03:41,660 --> 00:03:47,870 Maybe it can seem boring, but to me actually there's something quite reassuring to know that what we're experiencing now, 34 00:03:47,870 --> 00:03:53,960 other people have experienced before and that they developed techniques and methods of responding to it. 35 00:03:55,280 --> 00:04:01,520 How good are we at remembering? Well, good question. 36 00:04:02,930 --> 00:04:07,630 I think we're good at remembering some things. I would say we probably have a selective memory. 37 00:04:07,640 --> 00:04:13,670 There's many things that we pass on. I have been struck, uh, when? 38 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:19,190 Whenever. Well, I have been struck by the way that people talk, especially about epidemics, 39 00:04:19,490 --> 00:04:24,890 what it is that we remember of previous epidemics and how we tend to emphasise novelty. 40 00:04:25,610 --> 00:04:30,770 And that's actually something I see in the other topic that I research, which is the history of war, 41 00:04:31,670 --> 00:04:38,420 where we also tend to talk about every experience of war as novel and unprecedented. 42 00:04:38,540 --> 00:04:44,239 And I think as a historian, it's actually very useful to be able to have that kind of historical distance, 43 00:04:44,240 --> 00:04:49,070 to try to reflect on actually how that very often is not the case. 44 00:04:49,100 --> 00:04:57,170 Some parts, I think, definitely are unprecedented and novel, but many things that we assume to be novel, I think actually are quite longstanding. 45 00:05:02,690 --> 00:05:11,840 Yeah. Can you can you say that more about some examples of previous pandemics or epidemics that you think are relevant to thinking about this one? 46 00:05:14,570 --> 00:05:20,310 So I was thinking how for historians of medicine, there's this, uh, 47 00:05:20,420 --> 00:05:31,590 key article written by Charles Rosenberg called What Is an Epidemic that he wrote during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s based in America. 48 00:05:31,610 --> 00:05:37,160 And it's a key text in the sense that I teach it to my students every year. 49 00:05:37,550 --> 00:05:42,110 I've been reading it and rereading it now for 15, 20 years. 50 00:05:42,770 --> 00:05:51,770 And that's an interesting text in that Rosenberg uses the text to argue that in some ways all epidemics are the same and therefore can be compared, 51 00:05:52,160 --> 00:05:59,209 and that they, they have a, um, a social and cultural framework and follow a certain progression. 52 00:05:59,210 --> 00:06:06,200 And that's how we make sense of them. And but I was struck when I was reading it how much of the language he uses. 53 00:06:06,200 --> 00:06:08,209 So he talks about how, you know, 54 00:06:08,210 --> 00:06:15,530 we've never lived through an epidemic in which there's been so much media reporting in which people have been so reflective about being an epidemic, 55 00:06:15,530 --> 00:06:21,230 how we've never lived through an epidemic in which when we thought that there would be no more epidemics to worry about. 56 00:06:21,530 --> 00:06:29,329 And of course, that strikes me as being interesting to read that coming from the 1980s and then to be teaching it and rereading it now during COVID, 57 00:06:29,330 --> 00:06:30,990 when people actually say similar things, 58 00:06:31,010 --> 00:06:38,660 I think it's a it's an interesting example of the kind of cyclical nature of what we remember and then what we forget very quickly. 59 00:06:41,180 --> 00:06:49,550 So there's ways in which I think you could say that historians have tended to argue that actually all epidemics have an underlying similarity. 60 00:06:49,970 --> 00:06:52,580 But of course, that's also a dangerous assumption, I would say, 61 00:06:52,580 --> 00:06:59,300 because the more I've done research to me there's also a bigger question of when something is called an epidemic, 62 00:06:59,780 --> 00:07:04,340 because we can actually see in the historical record for some of the periods that I look at in the 18th century, 63 00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:14,420 that people might not have seen what they were living through as a, as a discrete, uh, medical crisis that they would have called an epidemic. 64 00:07:14,570 --> 00:07:17,299 But there were a lot of people dying, but there were lots of people dying from disease. 65 00:07:17,300 --> 00:07:23,510 And in retrospect, we might want to say, well, according to quantitative measurements, perhaps that's an epidemic. 66 00:07:23,510 --> 00:07:26,719 So I think there's also there's a there's a way in which the historical record can get 67 00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:32,330 us to think about what we should categorise as being an epidemic and why we do so. 68 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:45,239 Hmm. So what narrative tools do you have available to you and how do you explore the narrative of an epidemic like the one that's happened already, 69 00:07:45,240 --> 00:07:53,730 one that's set in progress? So I'm I'm very much a traditional historian in that I work with archives. 70 00:07:53,880 --> 00:08:04,590 I work mostly on the 1700s. So I work on very often the letters, the correspondence, sometimes of officials. 71 00:08:06,870 --> 00:08:12,389 Often I'm interested in those who are writing, who aren't actually medical experts, 72 00:08:12,390 --> 00:08:19,230 but how they write about disease, um, and partly when they think disease is a problem. 73 00:08:19,380 --> 00:08:21,540 One of the things that I'm interested in is, 74 00:08:21,540 --> 00:08:29,370 I suppose this question of when do people feel that they should remark and observe on disease and when actually is disease so, 75 00:08:30,270 --> 00:08:35,460 uh, almost so widespread that it's not even worth commenting on. 76 00:08:35,520 --> 00:08:36,840 Can you give an example? 77 00:08:37,380 --> 00:08:46,170 So I suppose the that is, I actually work more on endemic disease on um, during the 18th century on what they call crop diseases. 78 00:08:46,170 --> 00:08:52,200 So things that we would recognise as typhus, um, kind of low grade fevers, things like that, 79 00:08:52,200 --> 00:08:58,889 which were very common amongst anyone living in urban populations and even things like smallpox, which of course was endemic. 80 00:08:58,890 --> 00:09:05,780 So it was common in urban centres but was um considered an epidemic in rural areas. 81 00:09:05,790 --> 00:09:13,320 So I'm interested in how of course people therefore didn't necessarily comment on these rates of disease and yet they were quite fatal. 82 00:09:14,910 --> 00:09:19,739 And then there are certain points at which disease becomes a problem, and especially because I'm working on war, 83 00:09:19,740 --> 00:09:25,410 as you can see, when disease becomes something that you say encourages people to debate foreign policy, 84 00:09:25,410 --> 00:09:35,910 or they might exploit reports of disease in order to criticise, um, political positions or in order to criticise military strategy. 85 00:09:36,120 --> 00:09:42,390 So I'm kind of interested in how disease isn't necessarily a problem in the historical record. 86 00:09:43,050 --> 00:09:47,570 Some diseases are, and at other times they're just not remarked upon, 87 00:09:47,610 --> 00:09:55,050 even though you can kind of tease out that actually it's a it's a it's a constant presence in most people's lives. 88 00:09:56,550 --> 00:10:03,520 So it's finally arrived? Yeah. Can you remember where you were, what you were doing when you first heard about it, 89 00:10:04,350 --> 00:10:10,530 or how you became aware that actually it wasn't just something that affected some people in a city in China? 90 00:10:11,730 --> 00:10:16,220 I do remember when I have to say that the origins are murky, 91 00:10:16,230 --> 00:10:24,640 which is interesting that I remember when we were talking about it, and I remember across what in Oxford is Hillary's term? 92 00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:29,430 Across February there was a lot of discussions. 93 00:10:29,940 --> 00:10:30,570 Um, 94 00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:40,410 I remember in March realising that the kind of attention that we were paying to this disease seemed different than some of the other diseases were. 95 00:10:40,410 --> 00:10:42,330 All very often it seemed like a false alarm. 96 00:10:43,590 --> 00:10:49,590 And one of the reasons I remember that is because I got invited to go on BBC NEWSNIGHT, because I worked on the history of disease. 97 00:10:49,590 --> 00:10:54,170 And up to now, no one's been that interested in this kind of disease. 98 00:10:54,180 --> 00:11:03,000 So that was clearly a ah marked difference. Um, and I also remember this kind of feeling across March of a kind of, 99 00:11:03,300 --> 00:11:09,690 maybe there was an impending doom and people were talking about when lockdown was going to happen and what form it would take. 100 00:11:10,390 --> 00:11:17,850 Um, so you, you just had a sense that something different was coming and yet no one knew exactly what kind of form that might be. 101 00:11:17,860 --> 00:11:22,049 So I don't remember the exact discussions early on about COVID, 102 00:11:22,050 --> 00:11:30,150 but I do remember a kind of it felt like an unrolling of a different feeling about this outbreak. 103 00:11:31,650 --> 00:11:41,160 And at what point did you realise that this was something that you as a historian had a contribution to make to it? 104 00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:45,660 So and I suppose I would have been across. 105 00:11:46,720 --> 00:11:51,580 Starting maybe in March, April and May of 2020. 106 00:11:52,060 --> 00:11:56,090 For me, this was very different. As a historian, I'd always been. 107 00:11:56,350 --> 00:12:04,330 I think what I research is interesting and I think it's significant, but I don't usually think that it's of direct relevance to people's lives. 108 00:12:04,630 --> 00:12:10,510 And I remember because borders were closed, I knew I couldn't go to archives. 109 00:12:10,510 --> 00:12:17,790 I was now teaching my students online. And so the context of discussing the history of disease was completely different. 110 00:12:17,800 --> 00:12:20,200 And so for the first time in my career, 111 00:12:20,650 --> 00:12:29,860 I worked with some other historians and I edited a special issue that looked at the history of medicine and science in the context of COVID. 112 00:12:30,190 --> 00:12:34,089 And it was a very I remember very intense working process. 113 00:12:34,090 --> 00:12:34,989 And what was very interesting, 114 00:12:34,990 --> 00:12:42,280 I was contacting scholars who were based all over the world to get them to to write short pieces in the context of lockdown. 115 00:12:42,280 --> 00:12:43,630 So what they could draw on, 116 00:12:44,050 --> 00:12:53,860 but reflecting on their expertise and their scholarship and how COVID was making them rethink that or how this might help us think about COVID. 117 00:12:54,460 --> 00:13:03,520 And so that was a very different experience for me to be saying maybe history actually might be relevant and in fact it might be of direct relevance, 118 00:13:03,520 --> 00:13:08,020 not necessarily. Maybe it won't reshape policy, but it might help people. 119 00:13:10,180 --> 00:13:15,339 It might help people to maybe digest some of their experiences and again, 120 00:13:15,340 --> 00:13:21,460 to put it into this long term context and to realise that a lot of the practises and a lot of the fears we have, 121 00:13:22,330 --> 00:13:33,460 a lot of the anxieties that we have also have a history and I think to give people the kind of vocabulary perhaps to be able to, 122 00:13:33,550 --> 00:13:34,990 to discuss that and to think. 123 00:13:34,990 --> 00:13:40,990 Also what I thought was very fascinating is of course when you have different histories in different contexts than people realise, 124 00:13:40,990 --> 00:13:49,540 of course there's a variety of ways in which you can respond to an epidemic and to all of the pressures that, that, that, that provides. 125 00:13:49,630 --> 00:13:54,070 So I remember that as being very new because since then I've done much more research that's 126 00:13:54,070 --> 00:14:00,010 been more directly relevant and that explicitly discusses COVID in historical context. 127 00:14:00,610 --> 00:14:07,300 But we'll move on to that. So this was a special issue of which on this it's called Centaurus. 128 00:14:08,560 --> 00:14:14,440 Yes, it's the journal for that's put up by the European Society for the History of Science. 129 00:14:16,110 --> 00:14:23,230 And I mean, can you pick out from that a couple of particular approaches that your colleagues took? 130 00:14:23,380 --> 00:14:29,110 Yeah. So there was a there's a really I mean, there's a range of topics I thought was very interesting. 131 00:14:29,120 --> 00:14:34,300 For example, a colleague here at Oxford who's now retired, Margaret Pelling, 132 00:14:34,990 --> 00:14:40,510 who has worked on cholera in the 19th century, worked on early modern diseases. 133 00:14:40,510 --> 00:14:47,230 And she wrote an article talking about the concept of excess mortality and the definition of an epidemic. 134 00:14:47,530 --> 00:14:50,739 And I remember even though she's retired, she still very research active. 135 00:14:50,740 --> 00:14:58,180 And it was interesting to talk to her when she felt that all this research that she'd been doing for many years across her entire career, 136 00:14:58,180 --> 00:15:01,870 she could now kind of mobilise to a different audience. 137 00:15:03,160 --> 00:15:10,440 There's a really thoughtful contribution by two anthropologists who'd had to leave. 138 00:15:11,610 --> 00:15:19,299 I think it was to leave West Africa very quickly. So it's an article by Geissler Prince where they talked about the context of 139 00:15:19,300 --> 00:15:24,400 how to think about COVID in Africa and pointed out that where they worked, 140 00:15:26,140 --> 00:15:33,820 there was still traces of Ebola. There was still in some ways, well, there's still tuberculosis, high rates of cancer. 141 00:15:33,820 --> 00:15:39,340 And so, from their perspective, COVID was part of what they called one long epidemic. 142 00:15:39,670 --> 00:15:40,960 And I thought that was, again, 143 00:15:41,350 --> 00:15:48,999 this very useful reminder about these different perspectives and what gets classified as an epidemic and into what context is being introduced. 144 00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:53,740 And so, again, getting us to rethink the novelty, I suppose, of some of this. 145 00:15:54,260 --> 00:16:03,579 Mm hmm. So you mentioned that you did move on to focus your research more on things that were relevant to COVID. 146 00:16:03,580 --> 00:16:06,459 So, yeah, tell me a little bit more about that. Yes. 147 00:16:06,460 --> 00:16:13,960 So we published this special issue, and I think that was kind of a it was like a heady adrenaline rush was very fast, 148 00:16:13,960 --> 00:16:19,960 I think we'd never done and the Journal said they'd never done something in such a quick turnaround because it came out before. 149 00:16:20,050 --> 00:16:28,690 Yeah. So it was really a space of a few months and a very collaborative project in that sense with reviewers and everyone coming on board. 150 00:16:29,200 --> 00:16:37,420 And part of that, someone who contributed to that special issue, who works on early modern builds mortality in London and Kristen Heitman. 151 00:16:37,750 --> 00:16:42,159 We'd started discussing the epidemic and she she'd asked this question about how, 152 00:16:42,160 --> 00:16:45,850 you know, it would be really nice to have a conference talking about how epidemics and. 153 00:16:46,380 --> 00:16:51,510 And the more I had discussions with other people across the end of 2020, 154 00:16:52,830 --> 00:16:58,020 it just kept coming up as this question I realised in my historical research I didn't 155 00:16:58,020 --> 00:17:03,870 actually know how epidemics and and it just kept nagging at the back of my brain. 156 00:17:03,870 --> 00:17:09,900 And even though I had this plan that I was supposed to be working on a much more standard book to do with French history, 157 00:17:10,770 --> 00:17:14,010 it was clear across 2020 that wasn't going to be normal research. 158 00:17:14,070 --> 00:17:21,780 And so Chris and I worked together and we ended up assembling, I think there's about 35. 159 00:17:23,110 --> 00:17:27,009 Scholars who are working on different parts of the world. 160 00:17:27,010 --> 00:17:29,740 They all work on epidemics, but they're from different disciplines. 161 00:17:30,040 --> 00:17:36,250 And the idea is to bring them together and to see how they answer the question of how epidemics end. 162 00:17:36,700 --> 00:17:44,319 And I think what's to me, what's interesting about the project is, of course, different disciplines have different ways of answering that question. 163 00:17:44,320 --> 00:17:48,970 And I think actually, of course, disciplines probably disagree with each other. 164 00:17:50,260 --> 00:17:54,010 We've seen a lot of work from mathematical modellers during COVID. 165 00:17:54,010 --> 00:17:57,160 So I think there's a a dominance of having quantitative approaches. 166 00:17:57,550 --> 00:18:01,630 Historians tend to be thinking about social and cultural endings and. 167 00:18:02,570 --> 00:18:11,320 And so what I like about the project is it's a way to bring those people together and to discuss what it is that we measure when we say an epidemic 168 00:18:11,320 --> 00:18:20,020 is ending and how those those factors that we're measuring actually might not they might be different and they might be in conflict with each other, 169 00:18:20,020 --> 00:18:24,040 but also, therefore, how this process of ending is a kind of negotiation. 170 00:18:24,430 --> 00:18:28,300 So we did some workshops, online workshops early in 2021. 171 00:18:28,750 --> 00:18:35,530 And basically there's a number of what we're calling case studies right now. 172 00:18:35,530 --> 00:18:41,559 People are writing short pieces, either talking about a previous epidemic and how it ended, 173 00:18:41,560 --> 00:18:46,510 or thinking about how they're disciplined and what kind of methodology they use for ending. 174 00:18:46,780 --> 00:18:53,170 And that will be coming out in a special issue in early 2022. 175 00:18:54,490 --> 00:19:00,490 So give me some examples of different ways you might think of an epidemic as ending. 176 00:19:01,060 --> 00:19:11,770 So, for example, we have a historian, Sam Cohen, who works on, especially on, uh, say on many things, 177 00:19:11,770 --> 00:19:19,850 but he's focussed on Renaissance Italy and he's been interested in the celebrations that happen upon ending a plague. 178 00:19:19,870 --> 00:19:27,309 So he's pointed out that actually, of course, although in general we tend not to notice when an ending happens because in some ways I would 179 00:19:27,310 --> 00:19:33,830 say what happens when an epidemic ends is that we become focussed on more interesting things. 180 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:38,230 So in some ways the way that, you know, an epidemic has ended is because we stop paying attention to the epidemic. 181 00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:43,239 And he's found these cases of the fireworks and the celebrations and the parades and whatnot that 182 00:19:43,240 --> 00:19:48,060 go on at the ending to kind of point out that you can also see when epidemics end with a bang. 183 00:19:48,070 --> 00:19:53,800 And so this need for these kind of cultural and social rituals to mark an ending. 184 00:19:55,870 --> 00:20:04,569 There's a number of mathematical modellers who've written a literature review of the way in which modelling works to define an ending, 185 00:20:04,570 --> 00:20:08,500 which of course is very focussed on tracking a decline in the number of cases. 186 00:20:08,500 --> 00:20:12,550 And again, it's a complete contrast with what you find with some of the anthropologists. 187 00:20:13,600 --> 00:20:18,160 And indeed we have one anthropologist who's written about a disease in Brazil 188 00:20:19,240 --> 00:20:23,190 that he's pointed out has never really been declared as being an epidemic. 189 00:20:23,200 --> 00:20:29,389 And so in some ways therefore will have no end because it's not defined as being a problem disease. 190 00:20:29,390 --> 00:20:35,469 So you can kind of see how there's just these very different approaches to identifying what is an epidemic, 191 00:20:35,470 --> 00:20:41,430 but also what factors and what variables you're trying to to pin down and measure. 192 00:20:41,470 --> 00:20:49,360 When you talk about something ending end that even with a quantitative approach, you don't necessarily mean there are no more cases? 193 00:20:49,420 --> 00:20:58,000 No, and I think so for the project, Chris and I published what we called a framework piece to kind of start off the discussion. 194 00:20:58,310 --> 00:21:06,220 I think one of the the main points and again, I think this might come from my background in working on endemic disease is that of course, 195 00:21:08,950 --> 00:21:12,040 there's not ever a time when there's no disease in the world. 196 00:21:12,250 --> 00:21:16,510 And so actually, of course, if we were to think about epidemics in the context of endemic disease, 197 00:21:16,510 --> 00:21:23,890 then what we are really looking at here, fluctuations and cycles rather than something like a full stop. 198 00:21:24,220 --> 00:21:28,690 And so and I think this is why, especially with a novel disease such as COVID, 199 00:21:29,140 --> 00:21:36,490 it really does open up these broader questions because of course, there's no baseline level to which the disease is going to return. 200 00:21:37,090 --> 00:21:42,850 And so as a historian and a humanities scholar, to me, that's where I feel very strongly. 201 00:21:42,850 --> 00:21:48,910 This is why this needs to be a kind of a multidisciplinary discussion, 202 00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:54,040 because there's not going to be a number that's going to answer when the epidemic is going to end. 203 00:21:54,040 --> 00:22:00,159 It's going to have to be a discussion where all of society is involved to try 204 00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:04,420 to come to some kind of negotiated agreement or maybe just a disagreement, 205 00:22:05,680 --> 00:22:10,370 which could mean a just a level of acceptance that it's become endemic and will always have. 206 00:22:10,390 --> 00:22:12,459 It'll always be around. Yes, I agree. 207 00:22:12,460 --> 00:22:23,140 And I think and again, this is why I'm I'm I'm fascinated by endemic disease, because I think this notion that the clinical definition is about, 208 00:22:24,220 --> 00:22:33,550 I quote unquote, normal or acceptable rate, and that's fascinating to me that we have accepted certain things and certain diseases and certain rates. 209 00:22:34,510 --> 00:22:39,010 And again, that means that this is something that a society decides. 210 00:22:39,010 --> 00:22:43,000 It's not necessarily a medical question or a biological question. 211 00:22:43,420 --> 00:22:48,370 Rather, it's about humans deciding how they live with disease and in what ways they live with it. 212 00:22:49,450 --> 00:22:58,690 And that rather leads us to this concept of excess deaths, which I think you've looked at in in terms of deaths and in warfare. 213 00:22:58,750 --> 00:23:06,820 Yeah. What's regardless acceptable. Yeah. But that also has a bearing, doesn't know what we regard as acceptable in in diseases. 214 00:23:07,030 --> 00:23:14,859 Yes, I so it's it's again, I think this is something that I've been working on recently, kind of returning back to my history of war work. 215 00:23:14,860 --> 00:23:18,340 But it's been a big talk. Yeah, I do have a big talk coming up. 216 00:23:18,730 --> 00:23:25,330 But it's it's a it's an interesting point to me because I think, um, you know, 217 00:23:25,330 --> 00:23:29,890 were I to give I'm giving this talk on what is called the metrics of war. 218 00:23:29,980 --> 00:23:37,120 So the history of, of measuring casualties in wartime, but also the concept of of excess death. 219 00:23:37,300 --> 00:23:45,220 And of course, if I was giving this talk three years ago, the term excess mortality or excess death would not have been widely known. 220 00:23:45,520 --> 00:23:52,610 But now in this context, um, I would suggest that we're living through a period in which you could say we were numerate, right? 221 00:23:52,630 --> 00:23:59,890 In which people use numbers and talk about numbers and read things containing numbers and just more frequently, 222 00:24:00,280 --> 00:24:04,750 um, and, or thinking about concepts such as excess death and excess mortality. 223 00:24:05,260 --> 00:24:12,100 And again, what interests me there is you can only really call something excess if you have it compared with something that's acceptable. 224 00:24:13,030 --> 00:24:16,810 And again, that that doesn't have a number on it. 225 00:24:17,350 --> 00:24:23,800 Again, that's a decision that's often political or social. And I don't find that there's a clear historical pattern. 226 00:24:24,310 --> 00:24:34,900 You know, I'd like to tell a narrative where we suddenly move towards the modern age and we have lower rates of acceptable excess mortality. 227 00:24:34,900 --> 00:24:43,990 But that's not always true. We still have very violent wars, just like we have very fatal diseases throughout different parts of the world. 228 00:24:43,990 --> 00:24:50,320 So it strikes me that there's not a, there's not a, uh, a kind of satisfying historical narrative, 229 00:24:50,590 --> 00:24:57,760 but there's ways in which we can think about how we've become more interested in numbers and in precise numbers. 230 00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:01,479 And I think they hold a lot of authority in our lives. 231 00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:07,930 But the question is still who makes the decisions and how we use those numbers when we're making decisions? 232 00:25:09,430 --> 00:25:11,300 I'm just to put some figures on it. 233 00:25:11,510 --> 00:25:19,690 I think that these are examples that you just how many people have died of COVID relative to say how many died in World War Two? 234 00:25:20,020 --> 00:25:24,489 Yeah, so I won't know. There's no way I can know exact numbers. 235 00:25:24,490 --> 00:25:31,870 But one of the things I was struck by, I've, I've been looking at, um, I mean, partly I think it's a proportion of population, 236 00:25:32,140 --> 00:25:35,870 partly, of course, it's a very interesting notion that we might even have an exact figure, 237 00:25:36,010 --> 00:25:45,820 a population which again is a, is a recent to the fact that we have some notion of our population now is a fairly recent phenomenon and of course, 238 00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:54,640 really only in some parts of the world. So when we talk about this data, it's in some ways exact only for certain areas and in certain times. 239 00:25:55,360 --> 00:26:00,160 But I was also really struck by, was looking at, uh, 240 00:26:00,670 --> 00:26:10,299 death records for a village in England during one of the plague epidemics, I think at 1646 and 47. 241 00:26:10,300 --> 00:26:13,390 And they have a list of everyone they bury during a plague epidemic, 242 00:26:13,390 --> 00:26:18,640 and it ends up counting up to about 20% of the entire villages population was buried. 243 00:26:19,180 --> 00:26:26,170 And that's a very striking number when you think about it, especially this small village and what kind of, 244 00:26:26,710 --> 00:26:33,310 um, social disruption took place across just three or four years. 245 00:26:33,730 --> 00:26:38,740 Um, COVID has been devastating, but again is a much smaller number. 246 00:26:38,740 --> 00:26:46,209 But I think again, the fact that we want to even compare these numbers and if we even think it's satisfying to say, 247 00:26:46,210 --> 00:26:49,960 oh, well, if it's only this percent, then it's only that percent. 248 00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:58,740 And I think it's the same thing. You get into discussions with wars when people say, Oh, it's only 100,000 as opposed to say 600,000, 249 00:26:58,750 --> 00:27:02,680 and you start to realise that this is where I think the numbers give us some insight, 250 00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:08,950 but it's actually of course very limited and there's other ways in which we want to be making our decisions. 251 00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:18,970 Did you need to raise funding for your job to take your work in this direction? 252 00:27:19,570 --> 00:27:31,380 I did so. I applied for grants and had internal university funding and internal welcome funding to run the projects, which is very useful. 253 00:27:31,390 --> 00:27:34,300 I think one of the things that I realised is, 254 00:27:34,780 --> 00:27:40,180 and I'm sure that this is I actually think it's an interesting point about the process of ending is I think, 255 00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:47,020 you know, as I said, the first special issue in 2020, there was a kind of heady adrenaline rush of being in a crisis. 256 00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:58,840 And I think now in 2021 and the end of 2021, and I keep thinking it's only been two years, but you can see how the adrenaline at least has gone. 257 00:27:58,990 --> 00:28:03,070 And I think a lot of people in the project where I'm working with were in different parts of the world. 258 00:28:03,850 --> 00:28:07,659 Um, it's not even about money, it's about time and energy. 259 00:28:07,660 --> 00:28:14,020 And I think people are now dealing with not just COVID, but the kind of maybe we can call the fallout of COVID. 260 00:28:15,490 --> 00:28:19,330 And so you can see how it's an interesting point about different stages. 261 00:28:19,330 --> 00:28:27,910 And yet I keep being reminded of cycles of plague and which was 20 years or a cycle of 50 years or even longer. 262 00:28:28,780 --> 00:28:35,440 And so, again, as you mentioned at the start, this this long term perspective and what it reminds us of is that, 263 00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:40,240 you know, it can seem like forever to us, and yet it's really only been two years. 264 00:28:41,170 --> 00:28:46,000 And actually that's a very short period of time in the grand scheme of our lifetimes as well as. 265 00:28:46,460 --> 00:28:54,760 In the scheme of history. So how has the historical research that you or colleagues or any, for instance, 266 00:28:55,540 --> 00:29:00,370 had, to your knowledge had any impact on policy or practise in public health? 267 00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:09,910 I do know that there have been I have some colleagues who've been involved in policy work, especially, I think, 268 00:29:11,740 --> 00:29:20,200 thinking not just about disease per se, but thinking about social responses to disease, but also to public health restrictions. 269 00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:23,980 Because I think, again, that's a very interesting part of this, is if you work on the history of public health, 270 00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:31,300 what you might find as familiar and what you might see as unfamiliar during this pandemic. 271 00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:40,490 I, I don't know if I can pinpoint precisely anyone who said this is what they've done that might have shaped policy per se. 272 00:29:40,510 --> 00:29:45,100 And my sense is the decision making that goes into policy must be so complex. 273 00:29:46,900 --> 00:29:49,030 I'm never sure what what feeds into it. 274 00:29:50,920 --> 00:30:00,910 So I definitely would say, at least in my experience, what's been interesting is just talking to a broader audience, 275 00:30:01,450 --> 00:30:07,480 but also talking with people who I would call science and medical practitioners 276 00:30:07,750 --> 00:30:13,270 who perhaps up to now we might kind of know that I work on the history of disease, 277 00:30:13,270 --> 00:30:20,660 but I've been part of panels. I gave a kind of closing talk to medical Congress. 278 00:30:21,310 --> 00:30:25,090 And so that's been very interesting. It's a feel like that hadn't happened before. 279 00:30:25,390 --> 00:30:32,080 No, I don't. Yes. And so that's what I was going to say, is that it's obviously I think for me, it's a very weird thing being a historian. 280 00:30:32,080 --> 00:30:37,000 Obviously, for most historians, research has kind of slowed down or stopped or been frustrated. 281 00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:42,580 And I feel like I've been much more active than I've ever been before. 282 00:30:42,820 --> 00:30:49,510 But also it's been to me very it's been very enjoyable and very stimulating to have these different 283 00:30:49,510 --> 00:30:54,010 audiences and to be having discussions with different with different people and to be thinking precisely. 284 00:30:54,010 --> 00:30:56,230 I think like this epidemics, ending projects, 285 00:30:57,310 --> 00:31:03,250 do disciplines actually agree or actually in some ways do they are they focus on very different processes? 286 00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:14,260 Have you had to find a new language to talk to people in these different disciplines, or has that been relatively straightforward? 287 00:31:15,190 --> 00:31:17,230 It's been relatively straightforward, I think. 288 00:31:19,090 --> 00:31:28,660 There was one I did do a presentation in which I realised that, uh, the, obviously I think if you do medical research, 289 00:31:29,710 --> 00:31:37,060 you do things like send your PowerPoint and your references beforehand and uh, I think a historian will appreciate this. 290 00:31:37,510 --> 00:31:41,080 They were asking for copies of all my references, and many of them were books, 291 00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:47,679 and I think they just never dealt with anyone who uses books as references instead of articles that are freely available online. 292 00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:53,080 And I think that kind of stumped everyone because I had never thought about books as being an unusual source. 293 00:31:53,350 --> 00:31:57,850 But I think the the language itself, I don't think is that different. 294 00:31:57,850 --> 00:32:01,299 And actually, I think that's been one of the and it shouldn't be surprising. 295 00:32:01,300 --> 00:32:08,260 Right. But I think that the only difference is for me, probably no, I'm interested in disease, 296 00:32:08,260 --> 00:32:11,260 but I'm interested in the relationship between disease and society. 297 00:32:11,260 --> 00:32:18,579 And so obviously what I'm bringing is an emphasis on these social aspects, and that's obviously a bit different. 298 00:32:18,580 --> 00:32:21,850 But I think this is precisely to me what gets at the heart of an epidemic, 299 00:32:21,850 --> 00:32:28,450 which is thinking about it as this social phenomenon, not just not just the disease in and of itself. 300 00:32:28,450 --> 00:32:33,700 Because I think if you're only tracking the disease, then it's very hard to make sense of what's going on. 301 00:32:34,900 --> 00:32:43,290 So what impact did the disease have on on you personally when it started in terms of how you were able to work, conduct your life? 302 00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:47,470 Actually, the I think I've been very lucky. 303 00:32:47,740 --> 00:32:55,870 I think like many academics, because my a lot of things that I, I that I can use are online. 304 00:32:56,290 --> 00:33:03,609 Um, I've been able to continue on and in some ways because I did this pivot away from my original research project, 305 00:33:03,610 --> 00:33:11,140 which would have required archives and international travel to, I would say, this kind of new area of research that I've been able to work around it. 306 00:33:14,020 --> 00:33:20,799 So in that sense, it's the the closures which and the uncertainty which obviously is a problem. 307 00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:28,000 But I also feel that in many ways, because I was able to continue to do my research and I could actually engage with the broader audience. 308 00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:31,330 I know I've been very lucky. I think the teaching. 309 00:33:32,350 --> 00:33:42,430 Teaching online has been an interesting experience and I, I, I think we might not have realised how crucial. 310 00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:53,350 Actually the human the human interaction that's required and that it you can kind of make do with online teaching. 311 00:33:53,350 --> 00:33:59,499 But one of the things that has been very difficult to see is how for students, 312 00:33:59,500 --> 00:34:05,550 even though we could say they can still read books online, they can still have discussions with me and other students online. 313 00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:11,440 It's quite clear that the kind of in-person research community and the informal nature I think, of, 314 00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:18,640 of intellectual discussion and intellectual enquiry is very crucial to the process of learning. 315 00:34:18,970 --> 00:34:26,770 And so that's obviously something that has. That has been held up due to COVID restrictions. 316 00:34:27,580 --> 00:34:31,450 And in the studio, it's affected the well-being of your students or even your colleagues. 317 00:34:31,570 --> 00:34:43,530 I think it has. I think. I always think even though we have this image of research and scholars as being these kind of lone, lone bookworms. 318 00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:47,730 I think scholarship is actually a very social activity. 319 00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:58,140 And I think especially for I've seen it with my undergraduates, but I think they in Oxford were very lucky to have this collegiate atmosphere. 320 00:34:59,220 --> 00:35:04,860 But I think especially for, say, doctoral students who are already in some ways doing isolating work, 321 00:35:06,150 --> 00:35:15,660 I think this experience of of being isolated, physically isolated and therefore also socially and intellectually isolated has been very difficult. 322 00:35:16,110 --> 00:35:20,219 And I think Oxford is a has been a strange experience because of the huge international 323 00:35:20,220 --> 00:35:26,840 community of students and I think especially for the the the previous academic year. 324 00:35:26,850 --> 00:35:36,150 So 2020 to 2021 when we had international students who arrived and then lockdown happened and many of them hadn't yet made friends with anyone else. 325 00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:39,870 And then of course, that was, that option was kind of taken away from them. 326 00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:47,700 Um, so I remember kind of one of the last classes before we were, we were moving to teaching online. 327 00:35:47,700 --> 00:35:51,089 One of the students saying, can you please just keep teaching us in person? 328 00:35:51,090 --> 00:35:55,919 Because they, of course, were allowed to leave their rooms if it was for educational purposes. 329 00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:59,880 And so for them, having a class in person just meant a huge amount. 330 00:36:00,510 --> 00:36:04,650 And obviously up to then you kind of take an in-person class for granted. 331 00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:12,750 But so I do feel on the if if we could be optimistic about it and obviously people have dealt with all sorts of much more serious problems. 332 00:36:12,750 --> 00:36:17,879 But I feel like we'll never take the in-person teaching for granted again. 333 00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:25,380 And the way in which it's very important to have a, uh, a social as well as intellectual community for the student. 334 00:36:26,490 --> 00:36:29,700 I mean, is there a positive side to the online side of it as well? 335 00:36:30,630 --> 00:36:34,980 It is true that you get a lot of people coming to the talks into seminars and you can have people all together. 336 00:36:35,100 --> 00:36:42,179 Um, one of the first things that actually we started during the very, very first lockdown, 337 00:36:42,180 --> 00:36:50,999 I guess in March or April is we did an online reading group which we called kind of revisiting the history of medicine, um, with the grad students. 338 00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:53,190 And people were all over the world. 339 00:36:53,190 --> 00:37:00,239 The students were, many of them were, some of them were in hotel quarantine in foreign places, very anxious and upset. 340 00:37:00,240 --> 00:37:07,410 But we'd come together once a week and do a kind of in some ways very old fashioned reading group reading some of the classes. 341 00:37:07,410 --> 00:37:11,910 So reading. Rosenberg, reading these things that I've taught forever. 342 00:37:12,690 --> 00:37:19,349 But the fact that we could all do it online, even though everyone was apart, I think was it was very reassuring. 343 00:37:19,350 --> 00:37:29,420 So it's a very strange mixture of the new and the old. Yeah. 344 00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,600 And. I mean, this is the question I've got. 345 00:37:33,350 --> 00:37:38,210 This is this genetically modified that will take on it. 346 00:37:38,810 --> 00:37:43,730 Why do you think it's been difficult to medical science to some extent to achieve 347 00:37:43,730 --> 00:37:49,300 consensus the in essentially in the advice that they give to government. 348 00:37:49,310 --> 00:37:54,290 I mean let's leave this like the most difficult it's being for governments to decide what to do. 349 00:37:54,860 --> 00:37:59,660 But even within the medical community, there hasn't been unanimity about what the best approach is. 350 00:38:01,310 --> 00:38:06,980 I mean, I guess I would say as a historian, why would we assume that there would be consensus? 351 00:38:08,240 --> 00:38:14,000 Obviously, there is usually competing theories and there's competing frameworks. 352 00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:18,740 And and, of course, some people would argue even the way that science. 353 00:38:19,720 --> 00:38:22,900 Develops is by having competing theories. 354 00:38:24,070 --> 00:38:27,880 You could add into the mix having a novel disease. 355 00:38:28,990 --> 00:38:34,629 But it strikes me that if if you do think and I guess I do think as a historian, 356 00:38:34,630 --> 00:38:40,870 that medical research and scientific research takes place within a a social and cultural context. 357 00:38:40,870 --> 00:38:48,519 And that doesn't undermine it at all, I don't think. But if it takes place in that context, then you are bound to have competing theories. 358 00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:53,110 And I also think I mean, maybe this is the historical point. 359 00:38:53,180 --> 00:39:02,200 It always strikes me that it amazes me how even you can read about an epidemic that happened 300 years ago and historians are still debating, 360 00:39:02,680 --> 00:39:10,299 was it caused by this or was it caused by that? So it strikes me that even if we think now, we will figure it out in the next five years, 361 00:39:10,300 --> 00:39:14,020 there's actually a very high likelihood, according to the historical record, 362 00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:22,390 that we will be constantly uncovering not only new research, but maybe new ways of thinking about the problem and defining what that problem is. 363 00:39:22,400 --> 00:39:27,040 So I suppose I'm not entirely surprised by a lack of consensus. 364 00:39:33,190 --> 00:39:38,680 So did you to an extent, feel personally threatened by the virus? 365 00:39:39,830 --> 00:39:44,950 Did you think it was very. I look, I feel lucky. 366 00:39:44,950 --> 00:39:48,100 And maybe this is the kind of thing that people say before bad luck happens to them. 367 00:39:48,580 --> 00:39:54,580 But in terms of age group and health, I think I'm fairly lucky. 368 00:39:55,270 --> 00:39:56,740 If I were to get ill. 369 00:39:57,040 --> 00:40:04,480 I think because of the nature of my lifestyle that I'm used to travelling, it was the restrictions that were much more noticeable to me. 370 00:40:05,530 --> 00:40:08,170 My family and my close family are not based in this country. 371 00:40:08,530 --> 00:40:15,400 And so that's one of the things that probably affected me much more so actually, than than fear of the disease. 372 00:40:15,580 --> 00:40:23,140 And to me, maybe this is the interesting point about epidemics is there's different parts of it that will affect people in very different ways. 373 00:40:24,490 --> 00:40:29,260 So I feel like it's it's wrapped up in responses to the disease as well. 374 00:40:30,670 --> 00:40:36,460 And what about people around you? I mean, have you have you had close friends or colleagues will sick with COVID? 375 00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:43,269 I have had friends and colleagues fall ill with it with COVID. 376 00:40:43,270 --> 00:40:46,750 And luckily no one seriously. 377 00:40:49,130 --> 00:40:54,950 My husband got COVID in the summer and surprisingly we didn't realise for four days and I somehow didn't get it. 378 00:40:55,250 --> 00:41:00,680 And it actually struck me because I was reading about the 1918 influenza epidemic at 379 00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:06,440 the same time and how they'd done a survey in one of the US or cities to see the rates 380 00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:11,749 of household infection and how they were surprised at this that a 50% rate of people 381 00:41:11,750 --> 00:41:16,819 even living in the same household in very close quarters not catching influenza. 382 00:41:16,820 --> 00:41:23,640 And so again, it made me realise that it's it's so hard to kind of disentangle our personal experience, 383 00:41:23,670 --> 00:41:29,930 this kind of anecdotal experience to from this broader, more kind of population level statistical experience. 384 00:41:30,680 --> 00:41:35,930 And then even to put that into a historical context. Yeah. So I feel like I said I feel very lucky. 385 00:41:39,590 --> 00:41:42,950 And did you work longer hours than normal, you say? 386 00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:53,269 I did. I did. I but I will also say the so the building we're in right now, which is the extreme medicine and science building. 387 00:41:53,270 --> 00:41:57,980 And I remember when the offices reopened and we could come in with that. 388 00:41:59,540 --> 00:42:06,670 It must have been I think we reopened right for the start of the 2020 academic year. 389 00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:13,819 So somewhere around September, October, I remember we were working on the paperwork to reopen and coming to our offices 390 00:42:13,820 --> 00:42:18,080 and it was a very strange thing and that of course it was just the researchers, 391 00:42:18,350 --> 00:42:28,909 so not the administrative staff who could come in. And I remember how much I miss my office and then also my colleagues and how it was this weird 392 00:42:28,910 --> 00:42:33,620 thing in which there were just a few of us coming in but very regularly working very long hours. 393 00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:40,940 But again, I think this is part of, to me, the interesting point of coming back and feeling like you were part of a research community. 394 00:42:41,270 --> 00:42:44,690 We have a library downstairs in the bottom floor. 395 00:42:44,690 --> 00:42:51,160 And so we were amazingly lucky that we can access that library, even though there was no library staff. 396 00:42:51,170 --> 00:42:53,990 And so, for example, when the Epidemic Centre Project, 397 00:42:55,490 --> 00:43:03,050 I just spent a lot of hours in that library just taking books off the shelf to read about every step and stomach I could find. 398 00:43:05,090 --> 00:43:16,010 So, yeah, so it was a, it was a, it was very nice to be back and be able to access the research space and to work with other researchers. 399 00:43:19,860 --> 00:43:25,979 And you've talked about teaching. Yeah. Do you think the fact that you were able to work on something, 400 00:43:25,980 --> 00:43:32,040 that you had a real mission help to support your own well-being at a time when a lot of people just felt rather helpless? 401 00:43:32,220 --> 00:43:33,370 Yes, I do. 402 00:43:33,390 --> 00:43:41,610 And I think I think there was actually a point when because I remember thinking when I took on the new project, do I really have time for this? 403 00:43:42,180 --> 00:43:47,759 And the truth is, I don't, because I took on major projects on top of normal teaching duties. 404 00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:53,610 And I think many of us felt that the administrative and teaching load, of course, increased. 405 00:43:54,900 --> 00:44:00,450 But I also felt actually because otherwise I felt like I was living in a kind of uncertain world. 406 00:44:01,350 --> 00:44:03,450 And I agree that, you know, again, 407 00:44:04,470 --> 00:44:11,580 I would say historians would point out that epidemics are just this kind of crisis in which the world becomes out of control. 408 00:44:11,790 --> 00:44:15,359 Right. You don't know anymore what is going to happen. 409 00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:19,290 And so then we might develop all these techniques to try to impose some kind of control on it. 410 00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:24,540 And for me, I really did feel lucky that I could use my research, 411 00:44:24,540 --> 00:44:29,220 this historical expertise that I felt like I've been able to enjoy for so many years, 412 00:44:29,490 --> 00:44:36,330 but to focus it into something and to feel like I was productive and not feeling like I'm changing the world because I'm 413 00:44:36,330 --> 00:44:40,770 quite aware that there's people who are doing all sorts of research and policy work that really is changing the world, 414 00:44:40,770 --> 00:44:46,800 but at least gave it a kind of meaning for myself and maybe for, you know, media colleagues. 415 00:44:49,870 --> 00:44:55,840 So how do you think future historians will frame the global response to COVID 19? 416 00:44:55,870 --> 00:45:04,830 Good question. I mean, I will say again, I think historians don't agree about things. 417 00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:13,870 I remember I was having a discussion with a friend at the start of medicine and she was saying there should be more historians directing policy. 418 00:45:14,170 --> 00:45:18,520 And I was kind of saying, well, but there's not a historical consensus. 419 00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:22,470 Historians don't agree about epidemics from 200 years ago. 420 00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:23,710 We disagree about those. 421 00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:31,130 And of course, that's actually why it's interesting to be a historian, because obviously we all agree that we nothing to talk about. 422 00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:40,920 So I can imagine in all sorts of ways that there will be a revision even in 50 years and 80 years. 423 00:45:40,930 --> 00:45:44,049 I can imagine that there will be completely new frameworks. 424 00:45:44,050 --> 00:45:48,040 And I suppose the thing that actually I think is most satisfying is that we 425 00:45:48,040 --> 00:45:53,980 really cannot predict how people in the future will interpret what we've done, 426 00:45:54,910 --> 00:45:58,920 even if we seem very certain of what is going on. 427 00:45:59,410 --> 00:46:06,399 I do think that the the historical perspective should remind us that people will look at us many years 428 00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:15,400 later and kind of be astonished at what we thought was was obvious or right or what upsets us now. 429 00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:25,780 And they will be surprised and they will need to work hard to try to explain to future generations and in good ways and bad ways what we did. 430 00:46:26,290 --> 00:46:32,320 When I think I'm sort of probably wondering whether in in 100 years time. 431 00:46:33,250 --> 00:46:43,600 I guess it depends how many pandemics we have. Yeah. I mean, the last really major pandemic that gets talked about was the 1918 influenza pandemic. 432 00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:52,630 But in fact, most people, that's probably true to say, are very unaware of it and certainly very unaware of the massive mortality that was associated. 433 00:46:52,660 --> 00:46:59,430 Yes, that's true. That's true. Yes, that is true, I think in terms of a proportion of the population. 434 00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:04,360 But again, interestingly enough, we're 1918. We don't have data from all parts of the world. 435 00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:14,290 So it's still kind of guesstimate. And of course, I think it's also it's an interesting point, even if we can kind of figure out what is cause, 436 00:47:14,290 --> 00:47:19,060 because it's mixed in with all sorts of other events that were going on in 1918. 437 00:47:19,420 --> 00:47:27,800 Um, yeah. So it's a, you know, to come back to your original point, do we get to discover it anew each time? 438 00:47:27,820 --> 00:47:33,700 Will it change our framework and our way of thinking about our relationship with disease? 439 00:47:35,230 --> 00:47:42,310 I think it's you know, the one thing historians should not predict since the historical record, 440 00:47:43,090 --> 00:47:46,960 you know, has told us how how terrible we are predicting. 441 00:47:48,070 --> 00:47:52,209 Yeah. So how's the work you've been doing this year? 442 00:47:52,210 --> 00:47:55,360 Raised new questions that you're interested in exploring in the future? 443 00:47:56,410 --> 00:48:06,970 It has. I mean, it's in some ways it's in some ways it's return me back to it reminds me of why I love doing historical research, 444 00:48:07,390 --> 00:48:14,860 why it is that I've always found, as you said, fascinating. But I become very I was partly interested already in the history of measurement, 445 00:48:16,030 --> 00:48:22,540 but I become much more interested in the history of measurement, but also thinking more carefully about what it is that we measure. 446 00:48:22,840 --> 00:48:28,840 And I suppose, one, I mean, this comes back to some of your opening questions. 447 00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:29,260 But of course, 448 00:48:29,260 --> 00:48:39,309 something I've been really thinking about is the sources that we have when we're studying the past because because we're so consciously archiving. 449 00:48:39,310 --> 00:48:48,549 Now, it's a very interesting question to think about what people think is historically significant in the time that they're living through 450 00:48:48,550 --> 00:48:56,700 and then what people will wish that we had archived 100 years from now and that we just didn't think of as being all that important. 451 00:48:57,880 --> 00:49:03,459 So we've been thinking a lot more about the sources we have and the sources that we don't have and why 452 00:49:03,460 --> 00:49:09,910 it is that those in the past measured some things which we would not measure or to to also help us. 453 00:49:10,270 --> 00:49:14,200 You know, I am kind of curious, though, with what we're measuring today and what we're not measuring, 454 00:49:15,430 --> 00:49:17,500 is there anything we're not measuring that you think should be? 455 00:49:18,730 --> 00:49:24,790 I think there's I mean, there's it's an interesting point about what we can measure, I guess, for the academic sending project. 456 00:49:24,790 --> 00:49:33,370 I think it's a very interesting point about how we would like I think we would like tangible, quantitative, we would like precise numbers. 457 00:49:34,660 --> 00:49:40,420 And I think this is where the my work on war and disease slightly ties together because I do think in times of crisis. 458 00:49:41,810 --> 00:49:48,530 Numbers are very. In some ways they're soothing because they seem to give us with the kind of certainty in what is an uncertain time. 459 00:49:48,980 --> 00:49:55,860 But the but I think there's also fundamental things that are very difficult for us because we cannot quantitatively measure them. 460 00:49:55,880 --> 00:50:00,260 And I think as a humanities scholar, it's those are the things that often I think are the most important. 461 00:50:01,430 --> 00:50:09,080 When I think about my students and their experience or when I think about welfare issues, those are things that are much harder to put a number on. 462 00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:15,050 And yet I think this is why I'd like to be able to articulate their historical significance. 463 00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:24,920 I think that may have covered my final question, which was the experience of how we changed your attitude or your approach to your work. 464 00:50:25,520 --> 00:50:32,570 And is there anything you'd like to see change in the future? Goodness. 465 00:50:36,210 --> 00:50:38,060 You know, if that's an interesting question, 466 00:50:38,070 --> 00:50:45,600 partly because I think historians have this kind of underlying point about whether or not epidemics changed society. 467 00:50:46,170 --> 00:50:50,940 One of the things I've been struck by is how the question that I get asked the most like this was the question I think BBC, 468 00:50:50,940 --> 00:50:56,040 NEWSNIGHT wanted me to answer was How have epidemics changed society? 469 00:50:56,310 --> 00:51:01,770 And I felt as a historian of disease, it's it's kind of the wrong question, right? 470 00:51:01,770 --> 00:51:05,920 Because I don't think disease is external to society. 471 00:51:05,940 --> 00:51:12,150 And so I actually don't think this is when we ask the question in that way, it suggests that disease kind of acts upon us. 472 00:51:12,420 --> 00:51:16,230 And actually because I think because disease is so enmeshed within society. 473 00:51:16,950 --> 00:51:23,770 I also have this kind of pet theory that I've been working through, which is, does it actually change us? 474 00:51:24,150 --> 00:51:32,730 Or does it confirm a lot of principles and values and beliefs that we already had in place and perhaps actually reinforce them? 475 00:51:33,750 --> 00:51:39,090 And I think it's because historians are interested in continuity as much as they're interested in change. 476 00:51:39,100 --> 00:51:42,959 So I suppose I actually do. Sometimes I can kind of say to myself, 477 00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:46,410 I feel like many of the things that I already thought were very important and that I 478 00:51:46,410 --> 00:51:53,940 wanted to do in my work might have been reaffirmed rather than substantially changed. 479 00:51:54,270 --> 00:51:58,079 And perhaps it's been a very useful reminder of what I think is important and 480 00:51:58,080 --> 00:52:02,280 why why I enjoy doing historical research and why I think it's so important. 481 00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:05,650 Great. Thank you very much.