So can you just start by giving me your name and your current affiliation?
So my name is Schnetzer and I am a professor in what is soon to become the Department of Biology.
But we've been zoology and plant sciences so far.
And my official title is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology.
Thanks very much. And without telling me your entire story, because I think I didn't want to add to that.
Can you just in a few sentences, give me an idea of how you got to where you are now?
So I was born in Calcutta, spent some of my early childhood in Africa and in the United Kingdom,
and then returned to Calcutta for my what I call my formative years secondary school.
And then, by coincidence, almost ended up at university in the United States at Princeton.
And there I studied a combination of biology and mathematics,
which what I realised I was always very interested in applying mathematics to real world problems,
and I thought physics was perhaps the right field for me.
But then I found this new burgeoning area of mathematical biology as an undergraduate, which really attracts me.
And that's where I started thinking, I mean, engaging in all of that so that my graduation,
87, came to the United Kingdom to to London to do a Ph.D. in mathematical epidemiology.
That's the Imperial College at Imperial College, and then got a fellowship with the Wellcome Trust, early Career Training Fellowship.
Well, just last autumn, starting that fellowship, and then I got a senior fellowship.
And in the meantime, we've talks. And then in 1999, I secured this permanent position within the department zoology.
So how would you encapsulate the kind of big question that drives your science and your post you work?
So I'm broadly interested in how health well in host pathogen systems and how
they interact at an ecological level and how that drives that revolution.
So the evolutionary ecology of infectious disease systems is what I'm interested in.
And but you take a mathematical approach to. So my training, as I've said, has been in mathematical modelling.
So yes. But my my the fundamental approach is very much to develop mathematical models to try and gain insights into how these systems work.
But in the last decade or so, we have gone from these mathematical models to testing some of the hypotheses they generate.
And in fact, this has had some very significant translational impacts.
So a model we developed for influenza, which we published in 2007, so 50 years ago, that was quite controversial.
We tested it. How did you test?
And we tested it in the laboratory by.
So so the idea with mathematical models is we take what data we have and we try and
come up with a coherent hypothesis of what's actually going on in these systems.
And in 2007, we suggested that perhaps the conventional view of our influence that was evolving, the influenza virus population was not correct.
And that actually most of it was driven by immune responses targeting particular regions of the virus, which had a limited amount of variability.
So the human population was driving the evolution of the virus. That was already understood.
But the idea was that the the main targets of immunity were highly variable.
And we posited that actually the main targets of immunity were not as variable.
They were variable, but they had limited variability.
And so obviously this was. Met with some scepticism.
Obviously, the only way to resolve all of this is by experiment.
So the first experiment we did, because one of the testable predictions of this model was that children who had only,
for example, experienced a single flu strain would have immunity against previous flu strains.
Because of the limited amount of variability, the flu population would be forced to recycle some of these regions.
So we tested that by taking blood from children and looking to see if they could.
The antibodies in their blood from recent exposure could neutralise historic losses as far back as 1934, for example.
And we found very good evidence that that they could. Yes.
And then we went further and great Thompson as Doc had employed to do this, to finish step two,
to try and identify those regions which was successful in doing which then formed the basis of a new universal flu vaccine,
which we have patented and licensed to a an industry US investor who is now helping us to really take this.
So the idea being that instead of having to redesign the flu vaccine every year, which has happened recently and if we just have one vaccine.
That's correct. Yeah. And so that vaccine has made it to the clinic at.
Oh, no. Yes. But we have got the fewest know we have the patent for it that that's been granted and and it has been
licensed and we are now trying to develop it to a stage where obviously then it would have to be had over to.
Well, probably industry too to take it forward or month.
I mean, ideally for me it would be something that was done as a different level.
But that's because, I mean, I'm motivated very much by principles.
I guess you socialist in that I,
I think life saving treatments and vaccines should really be under the control of the government rather than before them.
Mm hmm. So that was was that essentially a new departure for you to to take one of your theoretical predictions and really test it in the lab?
I've always been a collaborator very closely with the laboratory scientists and clinicians and field workers to test hypotheses,
because I think it's fruitless to simply hypothesise and then not test something.
So that is what I've always done in my career.
But this was the first time that I had the opportunity to do so in my own laboratory.
And I, you know, did not anticipate that it would lead to such a tangible translation situation where,
you know, the impact and obviously we're a long way from saying this is actually going to work, but it's.
It's actually happening, which is it's not what I expected.
So it's it's it's a wonderful vindication of how theoretical work can be.
It can have obvious, it can have translational impact.
I do think that it it doesn't mean that I mean,
I strongly believe that theoretical work should that the work that people do within academic settings
that we should not be obliged to demonstrate sort of in the short term these sorts of tangible impacts.
But it's very pleasing. This is why what happened with our research and you know, it puts me in a position, I guess,
where I can say that this has happened and this is what will happen if we invest in academia and in basic scientific research.
But it's important also not to put scientists under pressure to provide examples of this kind of impact.
So let's finally arrive a bit can remember how you first heard about it and how soon you started thinking this was something that you fitted into.
Well, obviously, you're an expert in the evolution of of pathogens, so obviously going to be to support that.
Take me back to how you first. So give it.
So I think the report starts when we see early December 2019, when the first reports started coming out, coming out of China.
And my reaction was not very different to what it is now, which is that, you know,
I think we do regularly experience new waves of or in some senses known viruses.
So I consider SARS-CoV-2 to be part of a known family of coronaviruses.
And typically and this is true of South Sars-cov-1, what the toll that it takes is on the vulnerable sectors of the population.
And so right at the outset, I felt that we should be very you know, we should have a proper plan in place to protect the vulnerable.
And the rest of us would do we did not need to worry.
You probably get sick. Someone's might get quite sick. You know, we didn't need to worry.
And in fact, the way that we deal with these viruses,
including the fold that were in circulation time is by maintaining a state of endemic equilibrium where most of us are immune at any point in time,
which means that the risk to the vulnerable population is low or as low as it could possibly be.
And also because the vulnerable population will by then, you know, an endemic state,
most of the vulnerable population will have been exposed, you know, before they become vulnerable, they are at low risk.
But that's you could see that that was would be a state that it would evolve to.
Yes. But so in the interim, you really need to focus and focus focus on protecting the vulnerable.
Yeah, that was really the main the main thing.
And one way to protect the vulnerable, it's actually for the rest of the population to become immune.
But while that's happening. Hmm. So that's.
That's just fine. Yeah. Yeah. So. So that was my first my first reaction was and Andrew published a paper on that at the end of March.
Is that so? That was so this is December. So that was in December.
I just my feeling was, okay, this will spread to has already spread.
Mm hmm. It had to happen. I mean, knowing the rates at which these sorts of infections spread itself, I mean,
some people have been fairly relaxed because South one had been contained fairly well and measures had been contained in particular area.
So the idea that it might become globally significant was something that I think quite a lot of people were relatively complacent about it.
That's true that that was a possibility, that it would not spread far.
I think the reasons why.
Source who's actually content is because we have a lot of Cros immunity to these things because they are part of the family of coronaviruses.
So, yes, some kinds of common cold I. Yeah, I know that they are, they typically have very little impact except of course, sadly,
you know, some people will die, but far fewer than pneumococcal disease, for example.
Um, so, yes, there was a possibility that it would remain, uh, you know, it wouldn't spread, spread out.
So that was one possibility. But I think it was clear already by mid-December that it was exponential.
And so my you know, that was expensive.
But I would have my gut feeling was that this is going to spread and that it was already spreading.
And so when I got ill at the end of December, I thought, I've got I think I've got this.
And several other people were very ill between that period, that time in March when we locked down.
And I think they that it was that.
I still strongly believe that the virus had spread quite substantially in some parts of the country in that period.
So, yes. So there are two possibilities.
One is that it would have been contained, and that was a very reasonable thing to think.
It's very unfortunate that the whole discussion on this has been so polarised.
And, you know, it's not it was not unreasonable to believe that it would not spread.
Not unreasonable to think it had only just arrived. But it was also not unreasonable.
And I think the right answer was that it was already spread.
And that one of the reasons I thought so is because the detection was by a very
obviously bright clinician to detect a cluster of a particular type of pneumonia.
And to get to that point where you see a cluster of cases in the hospital to me
suggests it's been spreading for at least a month or so in that population.
And given the amount of air traffic and just general connectivity and social connectivity, it seemed very unlikely that it hadn't arrived here.
That one possibility would have been it arrived soon, fizzles out. Was it, you know, at that point?
But I did feel that there was a strong likelihood that it would spread widely and that we needed to be worried not for the general population,
but for those at risk. Mm hmm. And so what was that?
I may not have gone back far enough. Was that there was a march publication. Was that your first?
Okay. So what happened after that is that it was clear it was spreading.
And so by the time it got to Islington. Yes, exactly.
Initially, but it was also very obvious that it was doing exactly what these coronaviruses or many of these viruses do,
which is particularly affecting vulnerable,
you know, people who are either immune senescence, meaning their immune systems wanted to handle this or people with co-morbidities.
So it seemed to me that what needed to happen straightaway was some very, you know, proper shielding.
Measures to be put in place, proper recommendations to put in place for those who might be at risk.
And for the rest of the population to simply go about their business as normal seemed to me to be the rational strategy.
But it also seemed clear, and I did not expect lockdowns which have never, ever been part of any public health policy to be institutions in this case.
But then it became clear they were going to be instituted. And that filled me with dread because I come from India.
The idea of locking down in a slum. Is instant death.
It's an instant loss of life, instant hunger, instant lack of access to the limited kind of forms of education and social care.
Anything that you receive as it is, of course, in this country for a segment of the population.
So that was what that was what motivated me to intrude into this debate, because up to that point,
of course, and subsequently, I was never consulted by the university on this.
I mean, you're a professor of epidemiology with a believed to be fairly decent track record in this area also with the next thing you
know was making vaccines that um but nobody thought to talk to me speak to me obviously the government was interfacing with it,
understandably so.
And that's one I've always stated these things.
But at that point I was so concerned about this twist, this term that I felt I felt I wanted to do something.
But then what could I do? I mean. My expertise was in mathematical modelling.
So I went back to look. I mean, so then I did beautiful like I do,
which is to put out a paper to ask people to critically examine the assumptions under which we
were imprisoned and the wars that happened and what would have been produced by being killed,
which which is completely valid.
What they've done is that produces a model, a sort of computer simulation of a standard academic process,
and they had fitted to such data as were at the time that what our paper in March
for people to read was still preprint forms no journal be accepted to state.
So it seems to be a political statement rather than scientific paper.
So what that scientific paper says is that you can actually fit a whole range of models to theoretical data.
So rather than say this is what's going to happen and make it predict from prediction what we
need to do as we go out and collect data and see to what extent it's already spread and which,
you know, it might spin that once one has had that data, you'd still say, well, actually, we must lock down.
I'm not a policymaker, but I felt that that premise needed to be examined.
And the only way to do that is to try and find out how many people already out,
which in practice is uncontroversial and that there's nothing in that study.
Actually, what happened that, you know, David Stewart made this he made the spike protein so that he could do the ELISA test.
And, you know, even before that, we and in my life, Craig Thomson,
who had developed the flu vaccine for which we had to have this essay to test whether people would have neutralising antibodies.
Within a week, Craig had developed an essay to look for antibodies, to neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.
So we had that fact, but then we couldn't get the samples.
I mean, what should have happened at that point is there should have been a national coordination because the allies,
US and all of those other techniques at that point were still quite.
They have been validated, all clapping.
Yeah, there was a very big achievement in that. I'm not saying that the methodology that we developed results was perfect either,
but what we should have done is we should have all had a coordinated effort to try and understand what the level,
you know, how far the virus had spread and what was your hunch.
But I thought it might just be I still think it spread quite had quite spread quite considerably by then in certain parts of the country.
So we finally got some samples from Scotland which indicated that it had arrived there.
It had arrived probably around the end of March I'm sorry, end of February.
And we could see we were looking at blood donors. You could see that the rates were creeping up into April.
So it spread a bit, but then it was halted. And the reason it was halted is because of seasonality.
So once you move into the warmer. Yes, yes, yes.
Warm months. Yeah. Stop spreading. Yes. Yes.
So so what you had at that point was a heterogeneous profile where I think in London it had spread quite considerably.
In other parts it had not. But the illness serology study was only finding about 10%.
The earnest strategy study was conducted.
So one of the problems with doing serology, Juventus was the first one.
Not everyone develops antibodies. Secondly, they indicate a very rapid rate.
So unlike flu, you can't actually figure out the extent to which it's spread.
So under the throne had called for serology studies. But when they happened, do you think that actually the data were not?
Well, the data, yeah. I mean, they're reliable data, but they don't you have to factor in the decay rate of the antibodies you realise.
Well there are lots of things. First of all, what I said where I had hoped that we'd be able to throw out and say, look, 90% people already had it.
I mean, that I think about 30, 40% would have had it.
I think that's correct because in London in September, Seropositivity was 20%.
So if you factor in the decay rate, I think that was a pretty serious increase in seropositivity in exposure in the early January, February of 2020.
I think that's the well, now, two years on, it's the only way to explain the dynamics that we've observed at the time.
As you say, there was the seasonality, but though seasonality tends to come into it.
Yeah. But also the fact we had lockdown. Yes, but the lockdowns that we know, they did not do anything to stop the spread of the virus.
So we didn't them. So there were two competing hypotheses.
One is that the lockdown stopped the spread.
The other is that a combination of herd immunity and seasonality caused it can explain the epidemic patterns everywhere.
There's two opposite poles. Obviously, the truth lies somewhere in between.
But the data suggests that very much the lockdowns didn't.
And it's not something I just the lockdowns would do something is the question I was trying to get
into the to be debated was how we dealt with the situation given the lockdowns have a very high cost.
So I was not saying lockdowns don't work in 2020 because I didn't know nobody here.
What I was saying is that lockdowns have an enormous cost.
So let's try this other strategy of focus protection instead.
It's not because lockdowns don't work. I didn't know that had.
We haven't we know that some we don't know.
We didn't know then.
You know, obviously, again, with lockdowns, you know that a full lockdown, if everyone's locked into their homes, it's got to work.
You know that. You know, it doesn't it's logical to assume that some level of restrictions on movement will reduce the spread.
But what we don't know if you look at the way that these systems behave.
A small aid reduction, even half. So if even if you halve the rate at which something spreads, it will still spread.
And obviously, the lockdown wasn't ever total because that was those things that had to keep going in absolute health care settings, for instance.
That's exactly where we know that strong infection occurred.
Yes. They have to keep working. Exactly. So given that, you know, a complete, you know, gaffer tape looked at it,
you've seen what happens when you try and institute it, that that wasn't going to happen.
We know that if you completely lock everyone, that it can't possibly spread.
You know that if you do lock anyone down, it will spread. But what?
What's the shape of the curve in between?
We do not know that we didn't know about them. We do know now that it's actually that it goes up very quickly.
You know, as soon as you abandon the complete lockdown state.
Yeah, it very quickly, it just spreads.
And that is entirely in the nature of these of how infectious diseases of this sort spread.
And we've seen with them, for example, you know,
there was a study that came out showing that 25% of New Yorkers got infected between April and May this year.
Yeah. 2022 this year. Yes. Yes. Now, there is no reason to believe that exactly the same thing did not happen two years ago.
There is this idea that is more transmissible.
I think that's absolute garbage. I think there's absolutely no reason to believe that.
I think in the case, there is nothing in basic epidemiological.
You know, there is very little that I do. I think that's something that people are conveniently believing in right now.
But I think that's the first word that came along was very wrong.
You didn't need to be very transmissible anyway. If you just look at standard epidemiological model.
As long as you have an arm that's an excess of unity, it will spread.
And when you come into a naive population, it will spread very quickly.
And what the all these non-pharmaceutical interventions do is they lower I mean, they lower the herd immunity threshold.
Yes. A little bit or maybe a lot depends.
As I said, we didn't know at the time to what extent it could lower it, but they do low rates, I'm sure.
But it doesn't make a difference.
So there was an article in New York Times yesterday which said, yes, these interventions work, but they don't make a difference.
And although it's paradoxical, I think that's correct in some ways.
But they there's no reason to completely say, of course, it doesn't work and or not wear a mask when you're visiting your home.
But that's you know, one doesn't need to dismiss it all, particularly as an individual level.
I think you should take every precaution you possibly can if you're visiting a vulnerable person and also,
you know, locking down or isolating vulnerable people from risk, particularly at would risk, is very high.
I hope it works because otherwise, what else do we have really think?
Well, I think that was the crux of it. I mean, my reading of the responses to your initial paper and subsequent look come up to
me was not that you would use your theoretical approach was wrong in any way,
but that it simply wasn't practical on the grounds that, first of all, how do you identify who's vulnerable?
Because it doesn't just mean everybody over 80. If you've got ethnic issues, you've got people coming forward facing.
It's very public facing. So I think that actually comes to we all get into a great barrier.
Speculation because I didn't at that point. I mean, in May, I'm simply saying we don't we mustn't jump.
We already started using the term focus protection U.S.
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I thought that was the right way forward.
Okay, well, we can. Yeah, so let's just let's okay, let's talk about one sector focus.
Yes. I mean, how how in your mind is that going to work?
Okay. First of all, it was going to work.
A lot of a large part of it is simply a subset of what we instituted from lockdown, which is that vulnerable people stay at home.
But who are the vulnerable people?
That's what we we absolutely were very this is the point is absolute it was absolutely obvious to vulnerable people.
They were people of a certain age group. I mean, you can see it was in the data.
It was completely clear that the risk, the proportion,
the risk was located very much in those of certain age and those with certain conditions, certain comorbidities.
So I think that's you know, as with anything in life, obviously, one can't completely be sure.
You can't you can't protect everybody. You can't simply can't.
I mean, that's public health or any kind of just living society requires the risk of death for people who are not quite so old,
so that the figures for people between 40 and 79, I think the risk of death in that group is much higher.
Only if you that it was, you know, just by age group was much higher than for flu, for instance, with COVID.
But if you look at those cases that they were people, I mean, they knew the risk of death for people without comorbidities is very low.
But lots of people have come. But it's it's the.
No, yes. No, no, no. But yes, there's a there's but, you know.
But then so how do you that so that then. Okay,
so we've talked a little bit about how you people like co-morbidities but also also there was then there were people in certain employment categories.
You seemed to. Exactly.
And that's why I think lockdowns were so wrong that they were, to me a violation of the social contract, that they were highly non communitarian.
Because what we did is we said, you're a health care worker, okay?
You've got diabetes, you're a bus driver, you've got diabetes or you're obese.
But, you know, you're an essential worker so you can go out and do your job.
Those people should have been provided with the means to self-isolate.
They should not have been out there doing those jobs.
But now those of us like myself, who, as far as I'm for a bit of asthma, comfortably sat in the houses, the laptop classes.
We did what we could do. We had great times. I my daughters came out to, you know, spent six months with me when that happened.
We all had lovely lockdowns and we allowed the working classes, those who had no choice,
the front facing people who were at risk to go and do their jobs, that was unconscionable.
That's what you should know. I think that and we allowed many, but we told young people who are practically I mean,
except for those companies, of course, at low risk or very, very small risk of dying from COVID.
We locked them on. So I think that we did.
We did send people to their deaths by allowing people with obvious vulnerabilities
to go out and do the jobs that we needed because we needed to function.
So I do feel very strongly about what I feel that we did.
We failed people with vulnerabilities because we said, it doesn't matter if you've got volunteers, you can still clean the hospital.
And that's why then you see the sort of ethnic profile which has no basis in genetics or anything.
It's just because so many black people are poor and they clean up hospitals and drive our buses and deliver our food.
And some of these people should not have been sent to the hospital consultants.
Yeah. Who are not poor. Yes. And they died.
I think if you look at the statistics of. Very.
Yes. Well, obviously, there's some hospital consultants rooms available.
You should not be me. Not everyone. But there are people who are.
I suspect the hospital consultant who had a vulnerability had at all.
I mean, I'm also black. I had.
But I'm so privileged to live in a privileged community.
But what if I had a vulnerability?
And so I think privileged people, whether they had vulnerabilities or not,
were able to carry on, you know, carry on with their lives and protect themselves.
So largely, I think, you know, people with vulnerabilities, I think had would have been either state supported or supported by whatever mechanism.
Obviously, furlough was bought in, but furlough protected people who were not at risk skilled jobs.
So I think that our whole way, there is no way to protect it.
And there will always be you know, it is you know, look at people are dying who shouldn't be doing it, you know,
then the war in Ukraine, you know, this was an emergency to say that it wasn't an emergency and that some of us might.
I mean, I could have died. I'm glad I was mum. 50 of 55.
There was a risk, but that's a risk I feel as a member of society,
as a university teacher I should take in order to deliver to my students and to the younger generation the experience they deserve,
just like I take a risk with flu with many of the things. So.
Some of us might've had bad outcomes.
Uh, think that, um, those who were at any form of risk.
I think it should have been it should have been not recommended, but enabled.
In the way the furlough scheme did whatever that they should t teach remotely
or just isolate themselves over that period of time when the risk was high.
And, you know, I thought it was very likely that a vaccine would be available and so and so, so.
So yeah, I think that just provides the very, you know, tangible and sensible way of providing folks protection.
So I think we could have done a lot more to well, what we did is we we locked everyone down.
So part of offering folks protection would simply be to do the same, but for a much smaller group.
Yes. Yes. I suppose the difficulty with that. So you've got to do difficulty in my mind what is identifiable.
Well, I don't think that's I mean, I do the other I mean,
I'm not saying it's actually maintaining that barrier between the vulnerable population and everybody else.
But when the disease is rapidly spreading in that population.
Mm hmm. But what practical and how easy is that to do that?
It's no different to what we did during not I mean, there was no tangible difference, actually.
I mean, when you're locked down, if you're in your home and you get your groceries delivered properly,
not by somebody or you do, I mean, the things we did was to say,
okay, you phone will go to the shops wearing a mask, pick your vegetables,
won't let go to a self-checkout where you touch a screen that everyone else has been touching.
I mean, we really didn't do sort of how we did that. There were people who were advised to shield when they.
Yes. I mean, but that should have been a broader and actually, you know, that's what I'm saying.
You a job of making sure that they loved it. At least it doesn't.
Well, that's what I mean. You know what you did was it in some sense.
But, you know, just if you feel, you know, if there's a risk, I would out on the side of caution, definitely.
And if it's possible to remove yourself without any assistance from the government,
which many of us did have the opportunity to do, I think that was absolutely the right thing to do.
But also in practice,
what happened was that a number of hospitals found themselves under extreme pressure with the number of very sick people they were having to.
Okay, let's get that. Let's first. But let's just look at the fixed protection.
Oh, yes, sure. Yeah.
First of all, you know, the idea that we should go down that route rather than lockdown is based very much on the cost of lockdown.
Yes. Rather than whether fixed protection works. Right. It's what we were saying.
I was thinking and many of us, this is that lockdown is just too costly.
It has too much. We will be throwing the poor and the young under the bus completely, and that's not worth it.
So focus protection is sort of the best we can do now.
How do we do that? Is is was something we should have discussed rather than just this is my main point.
Far be it from me to suggest that it was a double. I mean, I didn't think it was at all.
I thought that much of it was already being enacted through the lockdown.
It just meant that in a smaller proportion, people get lockdown.
And then I did think there were things we can do, like, you know, multigenerational households to actually remove people, which is called evacuation.
That happens in crises. You evacuate the vulnerable, put them in a nice hotel for three months or something.
You know, you've just got to the amount of money that we wasted or spent on it could have been put towards protecting the vulnerable.
Or you. Yes, you do. You know, within households where there's a level of risk for the elderly, maybe you do find ways of homeschooling.
I mean, you've got we've got to try after. I thought so so that but but I mean it would be absurd to say that was a perfect storm.
You know, it's just lockdown. It's more that lockdown is going to hurt very, very badly.
So what can we do instead? Lockdown is going to hurt.
We also don't want the complete opposite, which is only able to do lockdown at all and we just let everyone get on with it.
Yeah, some people don't. They do. That's just not acceptable.
So, um. Yeah, but the point is, maybe this will work.
What do we do? We were just raising. This is a problem. Yeah, it's not that.
Maybe this is a solution. That's. But don't rush it a lot.
Okay. So hospital care homes be I mean, the whole health care system being overwhelmed is, of course, a big issue.
And again, that's where resources should go.
First of all, it is. A result of the continuing continued underfunding of systems.
So what it did. You know, what are we doing? It was saying we've underfunded these systems.
We've streamlined them so they can't hurt at a time like this.
I mean, part of the reason they couldn't cope is because, of course, we didn't institute focus protection on care homes.
You know that that should introduce the point where you introduce the virus.
What we should have done is spent that money into making care homes, you know, dividing them smaller units,
putting in care work cameras in residence for a period of two weeks, should we say, paying them a lot of money to just be there.
And then another set of carers when it comes and I'm sure there were ways that we could have tried it, maybe it wouldn't work, I don't know.
But I think we should have done everything. We should throw money at that problem.
Not just just folks who food scams and just not thought about it in hospitals.
We run hospitals. We have no resilience in the system.
And so in that regard, I think maybe shutting everything down on the 23rd of March was not unreasonable.
Mr. SCOTT Oh dear. We have a crisis and we have stupidly not invested enough in the NHS to deal with that problem.
Let's at least lock in, lock everything down for two weeks, three weeks, whatever it is to get on top of it.
You know, again, I don't think it would be reasonable for me to criticise that,
although locking down for even two weeks in India has an enormous impact in terms of deaths from lockdown.
So but in this country, yes, it made sense to do that.
But then that didn't happen. We didn't invest in what we should have done, which had fever hospitals to people, you know,
because there's a whole category of people who got very, very ill, who needed some oxygen, needed to be isolated from the vulnerable.
And that just completely messed up the hospital system.
And that's because we just that's what pandemic preparedness should be about,
is let's keep maintaining a hospital system where if we suddenly have a pandemic,
a new virus coming in, which will like this one, let's say,
require hospitalisation of a certain segment of the population, they're not going to die, but they need our care.
And if we put them in the hospital with all these other vulnerable people, they will post the wrong people in those will die.
Then you need to set up field hospitals for those people who need that care.
But we need to keep them apart from the vulnerable people.
I don't understand why that was a bigger ask than, you know, what we ended up spending money on.
So we spent money on trying to keep infection levels bright down, which I felt was.
Unlikely to work. I don't think it did, but at the time we didn't know.
But mostly I felt that the cost of trying to do that was going to be much higher than whatever else we did.
So how did the Great Barrington Declaration come about? It's just so terrible.
So I was initially, as I said, because I'm, you know, my ex, which is what I was trying to do, is just, you know,
just ask people to question the fundamental scientific premise on which we were enacting some of these.
So there was no evidence that these employees were working or anything except that we had these mathematical models saying, Oh, look.
Fewer people have died than predicted and therefore it must be working.
That's not really science. So I thought we needed a full discussion of that, and I thought that was the only role I could play.
But as time wore on, I could see the effects of lockdowns mounting, particularly in the global south.
And so because I'm from there, I'd like to think, even if I went from there and I'm sure that is true of many other people,
that you don't have to be from the global south to the responsibility to the global south.
I could see this was just causing enormous harm.
I could see having said, you know, my daughters, you know, they were fortunate.
One was finishing her degree, the other was starting to train contract law firm.
And they came in for six months and it was great.
And then they went back and it was a difficult year that followed.
But I could see that if this had happened at a different time in their lives, I could see other children.
I mean, and when you think of deprived children, it just to me,
it seemed that it was there was a strong humanitarian reason to not allow lockdowns to continue.
Obviously, also, the plight of elderly people being isolated in the way that they were and the ways in which they died,
which was also very difficult to to reconcile with the way that I felt society should be.
So in the end, I decided that, no, I'm not going to just stick to the science.
I'm going to say, look, we can all we've got to think about whether this is the right strategy.
So I started to become vocal on that front.
And it was an entirely lone voice where you you just you didn't have people on.
But overall, I would say that there were very few people, very few willing people.
A lot of colleagues. Thank you. You're absolutely right that very few willing to publicly say so.
Very few. And I also was surprised that, you know,
when I was first raising concerns that they were instantly interpreted as being anti-lockdown because I wasn't I wasn't anti anything.
I was just saying, let's find the right solution to this problem.
And lockdowns don't look to me like you're taking a hammer, as I've said before, to a pane of glass that a fly is sitting upon.
So but can we discuss this point?
But yes, there were a few voices sort of split that I became aware of who were also saying,
this is difficult, we have to look at this and different where at least have a debate.
And I was very pleased to see that some of them were because that unfortunately, there was another there were two types of resistance to lockdowns.
There was the resistance from those of us who thought it would harm, particularly the poor, which is advantaged globally and the young.
And then there was the I don't want to be locked down.
I won't do what I want to do that sort of I guess you'd call it libertarian.
But I think libertarians often use the individualistic, shall we say, kind of I don't want to be locked down.
I don't want the government to tell me what to do. Well, I mean, I have no time for that, because I think that's why you have a government.
That's why I'm in the societies. Because it's not the government. The government is us.
It's us deciding. So I don't have I'm not.
I'm actually I think you'd still call me very left wing.
I mean, a more, you know, kind of in the Corbyn camp.
So I think everything should be nationalised or the money should be put in special and education should be free.
I mean, I'm just I completely I've been very dismayed by the growth of what I think is the neoliberal capitalist
sort of approach to education and healthcare and everything that we've seen in the last 30 years.
So I was coming at it from that point of view. And then, of course, you have all these people saying, you know, I don't want individual freedom.
Now, obviously, personal liberty is an important part of the social contract,
but I think that personal liberty has to be negotiated within, you know, what's good for society as a whole.
So I have no problem with mandating vaccines, but I do have people mandating vaccines that don't do what they're supposed to be doing.
So anyway, I'm just telling you that that's my position, is that I'm not I did not say I had a problem with I didn't want to be I didn't I did not.
And I still don't align with people who believe that lockdowns are bad because they are an infringement of your personal liberty.
I do care about personal liberty of that. Obviously, everyone wants a certain kind of liberty, liberty that gives you human dignity or whatever it is.
But but at the societal level, I think no one's that's not important to me.
It is important that people or people, you know, people don't die.
So I was very pleased when Martin Kotov approached me because I just he's one of the signatories of that.
He was a professor at Harvard, and he had just written a piece for the Jacobin,
was a very leftwing magazine in which he'd made these points very clear.
So I thought, okay, this is my try. You know, this these are people with whom I have, you know, an affinity.
That's where I'm coming from. I'm not anti lockdown for any other reason.
So. So he said he had organised a sort of press conference, a small conference and would I come.
And he invited James Chariot, who's, who's at Stanford, an economist, health economist,
medic who had been voicing similar concerns and had also conducted a seroprevalence study in Canada.
Only two with the same idea, I think, of just saying, look,
we need to think about these questions before we can go ahead with these ideas about locking people down.
So so he invited me and I went along and the conference was in a very small kind of institutes that could be beyond which Martin had said to me,
they are quite right wing. But, you know, there are you know, this and this was in October 2020.
Yes, yes, yes. He said they're a bit right wing.
But having said that, I'm extremely left wing.
I don't have a problem. Also with talk, you know, it doesn't mean that I think of people who are right wingers as evil people.
I think they have a different perspective on how best to run an economy.
And I am completely respectful of their opinions.
So I didn't have a problem with having a meeting in the small institute which was established in the thirties,
which happened to have a sort of free market approach.
So we went there and had a meeting and then we decided on the spur of the moment to
write this all down and put it on the web just in case it was helpful to anybody.
And then it attracted a lot of attention. So but for some reason, it was dismissed, vilified by those very powerful members of the.
Academics, you know, of academia.
And the institutions that are funding it. And I mean, some of it I mean, I've read some of those responses.
Some of them were entirely academically respectful and said, yes, we understand everything you're saying, but we don't agree with you.
But I guess because it became such a media thing, it was a new it.
I mean, you use everybody's used to them there.
No disagreement, just one where nobody went in not in the public sphere.
It did become very personal. What was that like?
It was terrible. So even the academic, apparently respectful academic said the Johnson memorandum made very strange.
You know, the response was odd because first thing they said was there may be no immunity at all against this in October.
And then they said the immunity may not be lifelong, which was very likely not to be, but that therefore herd immunity is impossible.
That is a simple epidemiological mistake. That's what we have with other cranberries as well.
You just get re-infected as you sing and then. But the level of immunity in the population remains the same.
So it's dictated by your notes, not that the rate at which you get infected in a lot of them.
Now on Twitch, we're just coming round to this. Oh, my God, this is epi one anyway.
And then the very valid question. How do we institute for this?
Protection is very valid and it should have been discussed.
But like you say, it didn't. I mean, we had, you know, friends of mine on Twitter was saying, this is ridiculous.
You can't it's somebody. One of them said, it's like putting your antiques in one room when you have a fire fanning the flames.
It's not it's like putting your arms and hosing the rest of the house down.
But, you know, all of this sort of flourished. And yeah, it was quite mystical, so hardly.
But then, yes, what happened was this concert, it was a campaign.
It was set up, we know now by Dominic Cummings and his cronies.
So, you know, are these this is the the right.
It's not accusing us. You know, stooge is being paid by the Koch brothers.
I didn't even know the Koch brothers were. Apparently, the Koch brothers had given £20,000.
This institute that we visited, the Koch brothers, have funded, you know, huge big institutes in Harvard.
They gave Neil Ferguson a prize get I mean, if you think about it, Oxford, you know, we have the Blavatnik school, the scientists.
We have the donations from all over the place.
You know, Bill Gates funds a lot of funds. So I find that hypocritical.
But also, I mean, of course, we have received absolutely no funding from any of these groups.
What you don't need to be funded to write a one page declaration.
It. It was very, very unfortunate that that was the route that people took because as you say, you know, say I think you're wrong.
Of course, very may well be wrong.
Somebody has to be wrong. That's the whole point. I you had, in fact, both at this time being asked to to advance.
We had one meeting. This was before the grandparents? Yes.
Carl Hannigan and I with the cabinets in which we were simply asked to name 12 years and asked a few questions afterwards.
And then this was subsequently wildly misrepresented by Dominic Cummings.
Yes. Because it's a committee report.
Yes, sir. But I mean, what's Jeremy Farrar among those people?
Well, their line was that if we hadn't spoken to the government, apparently they would have locked down straightaway and this would have saved lives.
Now, the basic premise of transparency, the basic premise is incorrect.
I mean, maybe there's evidence that there are places that did lockdown, didn't mean its death rates.
But it's also incorrect. He said the government were influenced by us.
They never were. I mean, I think they called us for whatever reason to just.
Seems we to be canvassing on. Maybe somebody in the cabinet did say, look, we ought to maybe they had some giving.
I don't know. I was simply called in, presented my opinion, which is now in the public domain so they know what we said.
So this is another accusation that keeps being levelled against me, which is that apparently I said the pandemic is on its way out in May.
I do think I still believe and particularly not believe that there was a very large wave.
So the acute phase of the pandemic happened largely before March 2020,
but I didn't think it was on its way out in the sense that I knew that would be went away.
If I didn't think that, why would I have done it? I mean,
I wouldn't have gone to stuck my neck out if I didn't think that was an issue and that we would have problems in the winter of 2020 and subsequently.
So you just meant it was on its way out for the summer. It was on its way out for the summer.
And also that a large I did think that a lot of it had already happened.
And I still think that's the only way we can explain the patterns,
given that we now know they're not driven by the in-person lockdowns because that experiment has been done.
So but we didn't know at the time. So, you know, and this is the truth is that one or the other is somewhere in between.
But, yes, it was the whole experience of being vilified in that way was quite astonishing.
I mean, as you said, you may have been barking completely up the wrong tree, but it's your duty, your responsibility as a scientist and as a citizen.
And I think to say I think this is not the right way. And that's what we were doing and we were doing it.
We knew or we didn't I didn't expect this kind of backlash, but we knew we were not doing ourselves any favours.
We weren't doing this to promote some sort to get into the news.
I mean, now that it's been said, it's over.
But I feel that my I have nothing further really to say.
I'm turning down every single media opportunity.
I mean, I'll do things like tonight. It's an event where we all go to a conference, do those.
But I'm not appearing on the media because that's not my.
So what I want. So what I do and I suppose one of the reasons for that, the kind of amplification of it all, is that that there was,
as you mentioned earlier, there were political divisions on how to deal with me with the pandemic.
They did come from perspectives, you know, you might call them libertarian or whatever.
And I suppose some might have felt that you were giving them ammunition.
Yes. But I mean, that's absolutely not, you know.
No. But I mean, you can't the problem is, if you're giving someone ammunition, you know,
it depends if you think this is the right way forward and that this will save the lives of people globally,
then you have to do that even if someone might seize upon it and say, hey, I told you so.
This is actually also the sensible thing to do. I mean, if it happens to be the people who also don't really like lockdown, which,
you know, it seems most people didn't dislike lockdown within my community.
But if people who dislike being locked down, we also got ammunition from the fact that lockdown was good for people.
You know, that's not something we could prevent.
But, you know, if I'd done this, if I'd had a good PR person on board, maybe we would have made that clearer.
You know, I thought we had made it clear, but I didn't realise that there was this, you know,
I didn't realise how polarised and toxic the debate was already that it would then, you know, separate into the sort of factionalism.
Again, if I had known, maybe I would have been more careful or if I had, you know, that sort of thing.
But, you know, as I said, we've never in Oxford at the moment there's no sort of sense that, you know, that that I mean,
Oxford is at the moment following an extremely neoliberal strategy in terms of how
it obtains funding and what the relationship is between academia and the market.
So it seems to me that nothing I was doing was, in any case, terribly outside of the the ways in which the university operates anywhere.
So I don't really I do think it's it's quite strange that just having had a meeting in
which to sign this at a is a small think tank which doesn't even call itself libertarian.
It is a very free market organisation. But then I didn't think that was a huge risk, I didn't think it was a problem.
So subsequent to that, then we went and met with the Health Secretary for the time in the Trump administration.
I didn't want to meet Trump himself because I do feel that's not something I was prepared to do.
But, you know, I mean, not that we have had to talk, but I don't think that is a violation of any of our principles.
You talk to an embassy? I didn't. I'm not a big fan of Boris Johnson.
We have to speak to him. Yes, he was. The government's is the government.
He speaks government. It doesn't matter. Yeah.
And how I mean, how painful has it been personally do you hinted earlier that even friends on Twitter that that.
Yeah I think a lot of a lot of friends have been very vicious.
Uh, indeed. And, uh, you know, I think the university's tried its best to protect me, but also keep me at arm's length.
It's not and it's clearly had repercussions from.
Very clear. Um.
And that's unfortunate. But, you know. I'm not what I anticipated at all, but there have been very clear repercussions.
But and yes, the defamation, I think I think the university should take the defamation situation more seriously.
All universities read the fact that people can get on Twitter and say, why are you using your platform to spread this new word disinformation?
It is very unfortunate. So Dr. By the name of Rachel Clarke, one within my personal friends.
I tweeted that on the very same day that Sara Gilbert de Pollard had said exactly the same thing,
which is that vaccines do not produce provide durable immunity against infection.
So there is definitely a particular desire to target me on this from the community and.
And it's it's very problematic. I think the university should do more.
To discourage this.
And all the universities where, you know, people find it. Completely reasonable to get on Twitter or in the media.
Or indeed in books like Jeremy Farrar is saying that, you know, apparently the decision not to lockdown in September made by Boris,
which I don't think had anything to do with representations, cost 20,000 deaths.
That's just completely. I mean, you know, where does that come from?
And why is it okay for someone who is the director of the Wellcome Trust?
To say something publicly. You know, he may think that and it would be very it would have been very productive for perhaps civil society,
all the world countries to put on a debate where we discussed it.
And it could have been the case. Nobody knows.
You don't know that. So point being a scientist or a thinker or a policymaker, you just do the best you can.
But you have to follow your conscience. You have to do what you think is right.
And my conscience said. And my rational the rational possibly, which I think is connected to my conscience,
said that lockdowns are going to kill a lot of people and I have to do everything in my power.
Try to find alternative solution. And I thought when the vaccines came through and you know, again, of course, we've been labelled as anti-vaccine.
I mean, the AstraZeneca vaccine was first tested using that.
One of the first primary testing that occurred was in our lab with this methodology that Craig Thomson had developed.
So, you know, obviously we make that, you know, I'm trying to make flu vaccine.
It's it's I guess I haven't seen that accusation of Democrats that people are to because I don't think
we should use this vaccines to vaccinate to try and do that and we should use the Indian smartphone.
Or you know, when I say there's I that I do accept who's vulnerable.
So you know everyone over 15, let's say.
Plus those with obvious comorbidities. And what's the argument for not vaccinating people younger than that?
Because there is no benefit to the individual or the community, because most people of that age very low risk of death.
It doesn't stop you from passing and it stops for some period of time from being affected very shortly.
Your daughter actually got two weeks off to do so.
So it's not going to stop you from getting it focusing on. And does it reduce the severity of it?
In that age group, it doesn't make any sense to. And um, at the time I would have said we didn't have any notion of the risk there.
There is always a small risk associated with vaccination.
And now we're starting to get a better sense of access.
So it doesn't make any sense to me to. To subject people to that risk.
And when they're no risk covered, I want them to have a tool that as long has it.
I think term it is. You know, it's not surprising.
Post-viral syndrome is well documented.
And what I'd like, what I'd hope is that the observations of COVID would perhaps make people a bit more web.
I think there's been a slight tendency to dismiss this, follow symptoms.
And hopefully the fact that you I think because it all happened when you have an epidemic,
these things which you don't normally see all in one go happen or one becomes visible.
Normally you'd it's something that's regular rates.
But, you know, that's what you saw with COVID and then, you know, for example, Zika.
Because it suddenly had the susceptible population and it sweeps through.
And then you get kids being born with microcephaly. The following year, it's going to probably be one or two cases.
His mother was unfortunately not exposed previously, but you don't see that sort of concentration.
And I think Long-covid is a is a post-war phenomenon which became highly visible because
we were looking at the epidemic where a lot of people got infected in the same time.
But, you know, that's all it is. It's real.
That's that hopefully will make people who dismiss Post-viral complications a bit more cautious about doing so.
But you don't think the fact that it's a quite high prevalence is an argument for vaccinating people in Article 50?
I don't think it's there's enough sufficient evidence I haven't seen.
I mean, there's been lots of studies. Look at it. And I don't think there's any reason to expect some.
That's to take the vaccine to avoid longer. It's very, very unlikely.
It's real. But unlike. So I don't think there's any reasons.
And the vaccine doesn't really prevent you from getting symptomatic disease.
So I mean, a lot of people I know and it's very well documented, you can get pretty bad.
CURWOOD Off to cheap shots. So I'm not sure to what extent it.
May prevent. Long COVID.
I don't think it's I wouldn't vote me the risk benefit analysis dude.
You know flu gives you the same thing you do.
Investors don't take crucial things from the crucial so well that I think a similar accident could be different.
They didn't stop them from getting infected. They might stop it from getting severe disease, which is, you know, it's under valued.
But. You know, this is remarkable that you have the vaccine vaccine that you can give to vulnerable people and they think they don't need any more.
Well, I mean, you know, so I, I think it's a little bit sad, but that aspect of the vaccine has been not been.
Well, it's almost that's the problem with Rolling is trying to get something to do more than what it's actually capable of doing.
So for example, I might say that mathematical models are very good at giving you conceptual basis frameworks and understanding pandemic spread.
So how immunity works is even better.
They can improve vaccine, but it's the terrible tools for predicting what's going to happen next.
So if you push something beyond. And.
Mr. then discredit the whole process itself. So I think obviously a looking obsessing about how much more lethal bullets.
And that's very unfortunate. It's very.
It's kind of heartbreaking because I think, you know, I see such, you know, um, and, but it's because it was pushed to do things.
It can't do the good vaccination. I think it's been.
Just wonderful to produce a vaccine, which I think, you know, still does protect against severe disease.
That seems to be I mean, I do I don't think there's any doubt that there's still lots of code around.
But then being very. Yeah, exactly.
So. Right.
You know, certainly my elderly mother encouraged her to get the vaccine straightaway.
And, um, I was very relieved that she'd had it, so.
I don't know. Have you had it yourself? I've had two shots.
I didn't get it. I don't think that. That.
I think the boost to Nixon's. I think two shots should be.
Efficient. How often do you think that's it?
I think if you look at the epidemiology of the other coronaviruses, one exposure, I mean, once you've been exposed, once or twice, you're.
To protect. I mean, we don't talk criminals. No, that's because we have to.
So I don't think you need more than one shot.
To um, you need to because the first really doesn't do much.
Second does check out your antibodies. But I mean overall I think personally, I mean, I'd already had it, I think and then I have to again this much.
I mean, it's it's not I don't think it's really important.
People were not. Obviously vulnerable to to have the vaccine of a natural infection, which will inevitably happen anyways.
Well, actually, the data suggests it gives you more durable protection.
Natural infection. But, you know, it's not. I think those of us who are over 50 should just.
I think it's pretty reasonable for us to go get vaccinated.
But people under 50 I think that was this was a critical.
You know. It's. But again, I do know some of the motivation is that.
Why are we doing it? First of all, as vaccines should be getting in the arms of vulnerable people and.
The developing world. And, you know, if it doesn't give you.
If you go and you can see three months protection against infection, what are you going to do?
You can't keep vaccinating every three months.
And what form? I mean, as you seen it, what if you either vaccinate the vulnerable or they get natural infection?
You must remember the vulnerable category is dynamic. People die in the trenches.
So two years ago, someone who is not vulnerable.
If they've got COVID then and become immune now when they become or when they get older will be protected.
So you have to sort of factor all of that into your thinking about what to do.
But I would still say give that person oxygen.
But again, it's all about focus. It's about taking the resources we have and trying to protect those who would suffer.
And again. I might be wrong, but it deserves to be debated.
Yes. The fundamental point is that why was why were we shut down and smeared and why still is it?
Am I feeling the effects? Because I had this. So I mean, how how have those effects manifested themselves if they affected you?
Well, I continue with feel I, I well, I mean when the head of the Wellcome Trust.
Publicly declares that you are. Spreading disinformation, and you can imagine how reluctant people will be to involve you.
I had a recent experience, which I'm. Very unhappy about.
Which in which I was asked to give a keynote speech to a visiting contingent.
I'm going to be vague about this accident. And. And the day.
And I was, oh, this is so we were supposed to be showcasing vaccines of the vaccines to.
Those visits are important visitors. And I was to give the keynote.
And also to be in a power. And.
To attend the dinner. The very next day I was told, Oh, sorry, there was a mix up.
So someone's already been asked to give the keynote.
And then so I said, All right. What about the panel?
Oh, no. You're no longer needed on the panel like that. But the dinner invitations will follow.
Now, as such, I'm now no longer inclined to go to the dinner, but the dinner invitations have not arrived.
I am wondering whether to ignore this status of the university.
Because I find it very problematic indeed.
So but, you know, I don't want to make a fuss.
I really don't. It's exhausting to read her.
But yes, I think that affects the tangible. I mean, the idea of getting a grant from any of these places.
It's difficult for any papers that we've tried to publish have been turned down immediately.
Top German. Very flimsy.
Very flimsy, saying that they would not be of general interest.
Which is astonishing. So, yeah. Serious?
Mm hmm. But, you know, I'm old enough to.
Um. Have you picked up your flu work again? Well, yes, I have, because, of course, it's funded by industry.
So the company, the investor who wants to license his work, set up a company,
and they all have given us research grants and they've actually just extended and embellished it.
So we are about to hire someone to carry that work out before.
It is said to me that that work is ongoing and I intend I will carry on when we get funding from elsewhere.
Of course, I'm going to carry on. And in the meantime, of course, I've made connections with a bunch of social scientists.
Um, you know, I think with him, I think I can have a nuanced discussion.
Yes. Because that's important to me. It's not about being right or wrong.
But having nuanced discussions. And I overall do think that much of what happened is a consequence of the emergence of neoliberal capitalism as.
The way that academia and.
And. Other institutions operate.
And I think it's. Quite deplorable.
And do you think it's also to do with something like.
Few regrets about is that for me, I blame social media.
I feel that polarisation of almost every issue has just become the norm now.
So it's very much if you don't with me, all that's media, which is the death of nuance,
which is not just the death of violence, it's the death of all who make the death of any debate is any debate.
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think it's shocking.
It's it's I did not anticipate that at all.
You know, of course, there should be disagreements, and I can completely see why people would disagree with me.
That's fine. That's completely normal.
But, yes, this sort of we're not you know, we can't talk to each other now because you believe this.
And you must be. Supporting Trump.
That's Trump. I mean, it's so paediatric, but I think there's there's been an erosion of critical thinking.
There's just been this. I think that's part of the whole, you know, reducing the individual to consumer rather than the thinker, the passive consumer.
Has to find ways of expressing, you know, that's what they do. And then instead of critically gaining pleasure from critically assessing situation.
What you do is you join a group, you say, okay, your or you feel embarrassed to be part of a.
So it's very sad. So looking back, is there anything you would have done differently if you knew then what you know now?
I do. I mean, given that the forces against us were so strong.
So when you think about the people who. Decided that we should be silenced.
And I've been very quiet about saying anything about them. Because I don't do that.
But, you know, Jeremy Farrell, who's an old friend, very you know, it's very sad.
Very sad for me, you know, why didn't for example, why didn't Jeremy pick up the phone to me and say,
Schnetzer, I don't know where you're coming from. You know, I think you're wrong.
I think this could be damaging. Let's sit down and talk about it.
Why don't we meet for a coffee or whatever to confirm to a doctor?
Why don't we talk about this? No. Instead, he goes on social media.
He writes. He writes that. I actually found Chet games because I'm friends with Frank Collins.
But they I mean the emails in that public, they said, we've got to take this down.
Why take it down? Why not say, guys, we don't know where you're coming from?
Let's have a public debate and dismiss us.
Dismiss the. If you like. But through public debate.
So. Yeah.
I do find it. Certainly. What would I have done?
So could we have done it in a different way? I don't think so, because I think that there was so much pressure, there was this consensus.
It's something that's, I think, becoming characteristic of academia.
You have to confront it.
It's not okay. So it was as if they were colleagues, etc. completely agree with you.
But we had taken the decision not. Painful reversals in.
It's going to become toxic. That was not an option that I had.
I've just stayed silent. But yeah, I mean, I'm sure maybe we should have signed the Great Barrington Declaration and, you know,
the Kentucky Fried Chicken Declaration or something, you know, something that made it maybe the the optics of that weren't.
One. You know, if I thought about it.
But as I said, the context being a university where they have a blavatnik school of government does make you.
You know? You know, it just it doesn't make you think, oh, if I go to a small right wing institute and sign a declaration, it's going to become.
Seen as some sort of conspiracy. And with the oligarchs of this world.
I wouldn't even. Yeah, but.
But, but if somebody had said, look, what's the best way to do it, I, I think maybe I would have said, let's make that, let's sign it somewhere else.
And have maybe a broader group of people to sign it.
You know, I don't know. Just because there were a bunch of people who signed up for.
And there are others who have some misgivings who probably wouldn't you know, we didn't have time.
It was stealth. But, you know, we were in an emergency situation.
So we did what we could do under those circumstances.
Um, obviously we didn't get everything right in terms of that.
Have that debate, but. And everyone has their own way of doing things.
But I don't think I don't think I had much of a choice in terms of what.
What I could have done. But, you know, having said that, I'm sure there were many best ways to try to bring this attention.
And the truth of it now is that while I think in many respects we were right, that we failed,
and that's we have to we failed to convince people that lockdowns would cause this level of harm,
shutting schools for this length of time because this. To admit that the economy collapsing means young people.
You know, when you think young people are going to pay for this. When you see it with the NHS.
Yes. Four years you want to fund the NHS.
Then you come to this point, a critical point where now, in order to deal with it, we have to take these drastic measures.
What are we doing? We're transferring all of that onto the shoulders of the youth, the younger generation and all of that.
I still find really problematic and I feel very sad that that wasn't printed.
I mean, but we can start debate around.
So I think at some level I think you could say some things we've said anyway.
We've been vindicated. But there's very little comfort when you think of the home 20.
So what are you optimistic about? What what do you look forward to?
Well, I mean. Well, I am an optimist.
I mean, I obviously I live in hope that now we will emerge from this and learn the lessons.
I would like to try and.
Push. I don't know. There's got to be some there is some process coming in at Katrina, and it's been coming for a long time.
But I think this sort of typify I mean, it exemplifies some of the problems that.
Like to work a little bit towards creating a better environment.
People. I mean, there's so much emphasis on equality and diversity and all that.
But what I saw of the pandemic was that and it's interesting as a set of social science conference where people talk about object and subject.
If you are the be A or B object, then it's fine.
But if you become raise yourself in a position to become a subject subject, then you are completely disregarded.
And I think I do feel for the first time in my life that there was a discrepancy between how I was treated and how other people of the same,
you know, with the same level of qualifications and expertise to say how they were treated and mean from the same perspective.
You had the same perspective to you, the right thing to do? No, not just just generally.
But there was, you know, like right at the outset, I was not consulted at any point.
There was no point at which someone for. Oh, maybe we shouldn't have chose.
Yes, I do for other people in zoology because I know there was a big meeting initially, but it only involved people in medical science.
Um. No, I mean, the, you know, the.
The. There were people in SWAT team there, two heads.
I mean, one was incredibly supportive, but the other was very much.
Yes. But I mean, there was no consultation.
I mean, there were all of these groups that met to discuss what would happen with the pandemic.
The only person who invited me to contribute to any kind of discussion was, of course, his name.
It just happened. Communications problems are some public so some of the administrators.
But overall it was okay, where do I think it was?
I feel that was some sort of discrimination. One was one is that I was just simply not consulted.
So it actually. I mean, in this university, there aren't many people who work on exactly the street.
So I think it's strange. Secondly, I think that the ways in which I was dismissed by people, I wonder if they would do that to a white male colleague.
And I've never in my entire career I've never felt that.
But I just wondered whether people would be quite so dismissive.
Because, you know, you can do you can just see that, you know, here are people who have less the history and so they don't have the same expertise.
But you're privileging them and saying, I'm going to go with their opinion of yours rather than.
Let's let me here. And, you know, there are a lot of people who decided they knew it was right.
Which is interesting. I mean, you know, I'm not saying that you should always just say, well, you're the expert.
You. To completely dismiss me as many of these people did wrote it.
Yes. I'm not saying that didn't happen to other people. For what? You want to call around female.
But I think there are certain instances.
We just thought the first time would you really do to me?
I've had you considered taking this up with me. There's a citizen I like to make fun of, but it's something I felt.
And maybe I'm wrong, but I've never felt that. But I think my question is, what do you feel optimistic about?
I didn't. And so I do.
I mean, I feel. I don't feel I mean, I hope the cynics, the.
Generations. I think that right now our job is to try and make sure that the.
Next gen is. Good luck.
So that's how I see it. So I'm hoping that. What they've seen will give them the courage to.
Think about all of these things that way. And I'm I'm encouraged by actually I'm encouraged by the moral fibre that I see in my my own daughters.
One of whom is an immigration boy who gave up a commercial opportunity, a very high paying job to be in immigration or work in that area.
And the ongoing search to a Ph.D. in science.
But you know that they're just very, very committed to. A communitarian way of life.
And so that gives them and their friends off as well.
So, um. So. That that that's really my main source of optimism.
And with regard to my own self, I will be carrying on with the work I'm doing and I know that I will have to get funding from different sources.
But, you know, I consider myself very fortunate to have been in a position to recruit.
Make my position clear. And now with a clear conscience can.
Live the rest of my life. Even though with much sadness.
Lockdowns have caused so much. Thank you very much.