1 00:00:06,100 --> 00:00:12,460 Welcome, everyone, to Big Tent. Live events. The Lockdown Live Online event series brought to you by Torch, 2 00:00:12,460 --> 00:00:17,980 the Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities as part of the humanities cultural programme itself. 3 00:00:17,980 --> 00:00:24,730 One of the founding stones for the future, Stephen Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities here in Oxford. 4 00:00:24,730 --> 00:00:33,200 My name is Wes Williams and I'm a professor of French literature. A fellow is Edmund Hall and I'm also the knowledge exchange champion here at Torch. 5 00:00:33,200 --> 00:00:39,710 The Big Lie, Big Tent Live event series is our way of bringing together once a week researchers and students, 6 00:00:39,710 --> 00:00:44,630 performers and practitioners from across the different humanities disciplines. 7 00:00:44,630 --> 00:00:52,280 We will explore important subjects and ask challenging questions about areas such as the environment, medical, humanities, 8 00:00:52,280 --> 00:01:01,200 ethics and A.I. The public, the private and the common good will celebrate storytelling and music, performance and identity. 9 00:01:01,200 --> 00:01:07,020 We're bringing you this event programme online to complement social distancing with creative connexion. 10 00:01:07,020 --> 00:01:12,840 We hope that you're all safe and well during this difficult time. Everyone is welcome in our big tent. 11 00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:22,030 So please make yourself metaphorically as well as literally at home this evening as we explore living with Pandemic's, finding new narratives. 12 00:01:22,030 --> 00:01:25,450 In other words, how might we gain experiential, 13 00:01:25,450 --> 00:01:35,050 critical and historical perspective and insight into how societies have responded to pandemics throughout the world and throughout time? 14 00:01:35,050 --> 00:01:41,560 How might we use this understanding and insight to explore aspects of the new narratives and cultural forms 15 00:01:41,560 --> 00:01:50,060 that emerge from pandemics and give shape and meaning to our own emerging realities in our own critical time? 16 00:01:50,060 --> 00:01:53,380 Now I'm going to embarrass both our speakers by saying a little bit more about them, 17 00:01:53,380 --> 00:01:59,900 about their work and why we thought it would be good to bring them together to discuss these questions this evening before we start. 18 00:01:59,900 --> 00:02:05,120 But before doing that, I'd also like to remind you that if you would like to put forward any questions to us, 19 00:02:05,120 --> 00:02:10,070 because during the event this evening, please pop them in the comments box on YouTube. 20 00:02:10,070 --> 00:02:16,190 We encourage you to submit these as early as possible so that we have time to answer as many as possible in the Q&A, 21 00:02:16,190 --> 00:02:24,090 which will follow our initial discussion in about half an hour. Now onto our excellent speakers tonight. 22 00:02:24,090 --> 00:02:29,370 It's an honour to host and welcome Robin Gauna, international AIDS activist, 23 00:02:29,370 --> 00:02:34,410 feminist co-founder and now chair of the St. John's College Women's Network, 24 00:02:34,410 --> 00:02:38,250 and also Erica Charter's fellow of Wolfson College, 25 00:02:38,250 --> 00:02:46,020 associate professor of global history and director of the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Tech Technology. 26 00:02:46,020 --> 00:02:52,500 Welcome, both of you. Robin was until the end of her second year hard at work studying theology as an 27 00:02:52,500 --> 00:02:58,540 undergraduate whilst also spending a good deal of her time engaged in student drama. 28 00:02:58,540 --> 00:03:06,970 It was when she saw an early performance of The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer that she signed up as a volunteer with the UK's new AIDS charity. 29 00:03:06,970 --> 00:03:15,850 The Terrence Higgins Trust. The rest is, as they say, history for Robin became a leading part of the global response to AIDS and a meeting, 30 00:03:15,850 --> 00:03:26,650 an inspiring global and local campaigns and organisations, including, she decides, the global women's rights movement that she co-founded in 2017. 31 00:03:26,650 --> 00:03:29,920 The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, 32 00:03:29,920 --> 00:03:35,770 hosted by the WTO and a range of AIDS organisations from those supported by the UK's Department for 33 00:03:35,770 --> 00:03:42,340 International Development through to societies and social movements in Australia and most recently, 34 00:03:42,340 --> 00:03:49,050 South Africa. Robin's own experience has taught her that hope and massive social change must 35 00:03:49,050 --> 00:03:55,490 and do in fact do remain imaginable even in the midst of rage and death. 36 00:03:55,490 --> 00:03:59,920 Vamps, virgins and victims. How can women fight? AIDS was her first book. 37 00:03:59,920 --> 00:04:03,530 And it was, in fact, one of the first books about women and AIDS. 38 00:04:03,530 --> 00:04:10,070 And she's now working on a feminist memoir exploring a life lived between two pandemic's to today's discussion. 39 00:04:10,070 --> 00:04:15,980 She brings not only a good deal of recent critical writing on the many connexions between the two pandemics, 40 00:04:15,980 --> 00:04:22,660 but also reflections on her current experience of living with Koven 19 in her own body. 41 00:04:22,660 --> 00:04:30,700 There is, as we know, no simple answer to the problem of disease, but disease is also far more than a medical or scientific problem. 42 00:04:30,700 --> 00:04:34,630 This is something that Erica Charters has taught us in much of her own work, 43 00:04:34,630 --> 00:04:41,170 which explores the history of war, of disease and of bodies, particularly in the British and French empires. 44 00:04:41,170 --> 00:04:49,960 Her prise winning first book, Disease, War and the Imperial State, looks in particular the welfare of British armed forces during the seven year war. 45 00:04:49,960 --> 00:04:56,620 Back in the 1752 around 200 years ago, although it was of course, one of the things we might discuss today, 46 00:04:56,620 --> 00:05:03,700 the association between war and disease and indeed the rhetoric of war around disease is living and very strong. 47 00:05:03,700 --> 00:05:10,900 Even today, Erica's work traces both in rich detail and with a claw clear, strong narrative. 48 00:05:10,900 --> 00:05:16,270 The ways in which responses to disease shaped not only military strategy and medical theory, 49 00:05:16,270 --> 00:05:23,670 but also the culture, the metaphors, the language of British imperial authority and arguably still do today. 50 00:05:23,670 --> 00:05:28,940 Now, Waste based at Wilson College here in Oxford, though, speaking to us today from Texas, 51 00:05:28,940 --> 00:05:32,970 Erica's most recent work out just in the next few days, I think, 52 00:05:32,970 --> 00:05:37,590 and we'll try to put a link to it up on the website forms part of a collaborative special 53 00:05:37,590 --> 00:05:43,910 issue of the journal Centaurus on the history of epidemics in the time of Convit 19. 54 00:05:43,910 --> 00:05:47,360 I can't think of two better people to help us think about the disciplines of the 55 00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:51,470 history of science and medicine and how they might productively respond to the 56 00:05:51,470 --> 00:05:56,990 current pandemic and also how social movements and individual engaged action 57 00:05:56,990 --> 00:06:02,570 might help us to clarify our collective cultural understanding of covered 19. 58 00:06:02,570 --> 00:06:08,810 So without further delay, I'm delighted to hand over to Robin to get the conversation started. 59 00:06:08,810 --> 00:06:16,780 Robin. Thank you, Wes. Thank you, Erika, and thank you, Torch, for this extraordinary opportunity to join you today. 60 00:06:16,780 --> 00:06:25,840 And for a very generous introduction. I think that this conversation about finding new narratives is so important to me. 61 00:06:25,840 --> 00:06:36,280 And if before becoming becoming aware that I had covered symptoms and living for the past three or four weeks with with the 62 00:06:36,280 --> 00:06:45,990 complexities of this very strange and unusual disease that we're becoming aware of and starting to understand medically. 63 00:06:45,990 --> 00:06:53,440 But I think for me, one of things that's been really important as as Kovar has burst into our world over the past five months, 64 00:06:53,440 --> 00:06:57,430 is seeing how these narratives of a strange, 65 00:06:57,430 --> 00:07:08,890 terrifying killer disease fit with what I experienced all those years ago, 35, 40 years ago as HIV was emerging into our world. 66 00:07:08,890 --> 00:07:14,170 And many of these same conversations were happening of fear and contagion. 67 00:07:14,170 --> 00:07:21,280 And the combination of death, disease and people's personal behaviour wreaking havoc on society. 68 00:07:21,280 --> 00:07:30,120 And I think the sort of medicalisation of the conversational it has been really striking before I myself developed it. 69 00:07:30,120 --> 00:07:35,020 But also just in the way in which we think of this as something about science. 70 00:07:35,020 --> 00:07:40,480 And yet really it's something about society. And that was one of the great things we learnt about HIV. 71 00:07:40,480 --> 00:07:43,910 So I'm particularly excited to be learning from Erica. 72 00:07:43,910 --> 00:07:48,290 And I'd love to hear some more about your reflections with that longer history. 73 00:07:48,290 --> 00:07:54,100 My life's between two pandemics, but you know, far more about more. Thanks for that, Rob. 74 00:07:54,100 --> 00:07:56,100 And also thank you to us. 75 00:07:56,100 --> 00:08:03,480 I think one of the things that has really struck me in the midst of this current pandemic is, of course, the turn to history. 76 00:08:03,480 --> 00:08:07,800 And probably because I think the present and the future seems so uncertain. 77 00:08:07,800 --> 00:08:11,790 And so there's something kind of as I've written elsewhere. 78 00:08:11,790 --> 00:08:15,780 There's something fascinating and eerie when you're someone who works on the history of disease to 79 00:08:15,780 --> 00:08:21,770 have a pandemic playing out and to be seeing all of things which you've been researching in the past. 80 00:08:21,770 --> 00:08:27,570 So debates about quarantine and isolation and debates about contagion, about personal responsibility, 81 00:08:27,570 --> 00:08:35,000 about this very real tension in public health between individuals and the good of society 82 00:08:35,000 --> 00:08:39,810 to see them play out in real time and to try to think about what your role is also. 83 00:08:39,810 --> 00:08:44,430 I think I've been struck by this. What is it that has trains can offer? 84 00:08:44,430 --> 00:08:49,860 Historians have been frequently asked in the midst of the pandemic, what can we learn from history? 85 00:08:49,860 --> 00:08:51,960 What does history tell us about how to act? 86 00:08:51,960 --> 00:08:57,450 And as both someone who's a researcher but also thinking about discussions I've been having with my students, 87 00:08:57,450 --> 00:09:02,490 I think is a really important moment to be reflecting on. Are there lessons that history can tell us? 88 00:09:02,490 --> 00:09:07,170 What is it that we provide as scholars as well as humans to this discussion? 89 00:09:07,170 --> 00:09:12,510 So a lot about what I've been dealing with as thinking about narratives and how we write narratives, 90 00:09:12,510 --> 00:09:16,620 but also how we maybe rethink narratives and reframe them. I mean, Robin, 91 00:09:16,620 --> 00:09:24,330 I wonder if I could ask you I've been really fascinated thinking about your own personal experience of thinking about health and disease. 92 00:09:24,330 --> 00:09:28,560 And I was struck by when we had a brief conversation before your reflections 93 00:09:28,560 --> 00:09:34,380 on what made you enter into this world of AIDS and activism of public health, 94 00:09:34,380 --> 00:09:39,660 and especially because you mention you have this insider outsider relationship with public health. 95 00:09:39,660 --> 00:09:44,280 So would you want to talk a little bit about what that means? Sure. 96 00:09:44,280 --> 00:09:47,940 And as was mentioned in his opening comments, 97 00:09:47,940 --> 00:09:57,240 today is is a very significant day of reflection for those of us who've been involved in AIDS activism since the earliest days, 98 00:09:57,240 --> 00:10:02,490 because many of us had the privilege of knowing Larry Kramer and being shouted at by Larry Kramer 99 00:10:02,490 --> 00:10:10,160 or being inspired by Larry Kramer and my entry point to the global epidemic that is AIDS, 100 00:10:10,160 --> 00:10:15,870 the pandemic that AIDS is with through the theatre. And I was studying theology. 101 00:10:15,870 --> 00:10:18,270 I am very much of the humanities. 102 00:10:18,270 --> 00:10:27,630 And through my career and my activism in AIDS, I found myself five years ago in a very senior role in the World Health Organisation. 103 00:10:27,630 --> 00:10:36,190 I think perhaps the most senior non doctor in the organisation, which caused a whole pile of challenges. 104 00:10:36,190 --> 00:10:41,640 It is, of course, the World Health Organisation, and health is about the complete experience of being human. 105 00:10:41,640 --> 00:10:50,400 I think my favourite definition is health is a resource for living, and yet health is often reduced to medicine. 106 00:10:50,400 --> 00:10:58,530 Epidemics are often reduced to the test tube and the earnest picture of people looking down the microscope. 107 00:10:58,530 --> 00:11:05,550 But for me, the entry point to health was the rage that Larry Kramer brought through his play, 108 00:11:05,550 --> 00:11:09,480 The normal heart that I saw when I said I was an undergraduate. 109 00:11:09,480 --> 00:11:17,290 And that sparked something very deep in me, because at that time I was grieving the death of a dear friend who hadn't died of AIDS. 110 00:11:17,290 --> 00:11:27,810 But he was gay. And the homophobia that erupted around his death felt to me so poignant with the home phobia that was erupting around HIV. 111 00:11:27,810 --> 00:11:34,680 And so I entered this conversation of HIV from a perspective of human rights, of discrimination, upheld. 112 00:11:34,680 --> 00:11:42,930 The most vulnerable people who were early infected were the people who hated most who were discriminated against by the state. 113 00:11:42,930 --> 00:11:47,070 And its continued to be an epidemic of vulnerability. 114 00:11:47,070 --> 00:11:52,410 And I think that one of the shocks to make my early on in the Kovik narrative 115 00:11:52,410 --> 00:11:56,920 was that people were talking about Kofod as an equal opportunities virus. 116 00:11:56,920 --> 00:12:03,060 And we used to talk about HIV or AIDS as an equal opportunities virus in the first decade. 117 00:12:03,060 --> 00:12:06,960 Neither recal, opportunities, viruses and viruses. 118 00:12:06,960 --> 00:12:11,310 Very rarely are they. Can't they take the fault lines in society? 119 00:12:11,310 --> 00:12:17,960 It's people who are poor, who have such little choice, who end up in the main with the virus in their bodies. 120 00:12:17,960 --> 00:12:21,780 Now, that's not my case, but it is the majority case. 121 00:12:21,780 --> 00:12:27,260 And I think unless we look at it culturally and societally, we don't engage well with pandemics. 122 00:12:27,260 --> 00:12:33,330 Yeah, I think so. My interest in disease very much came out of first my interest as a historian. 123 00:12:33,330 --> 00:12:38,220 So thinking about how society is one of the things you often see in historians is whether or not they're 124 00:12:38,220 --> 00:12:44,340 thinking about the past as a kind of template for what the future then becomes or the present becomes, 125 00:12:44,340 --> 00:12:48,090 or whether you think about the past as a kind of past as a foreign country. 126 00:12:48,090 --> 00:12:51,600 So trying to imagine how things are different. And to me, working on the seventeen hundreds. 127 00:12:51,600 --> 00:12:58,240 Very often it is. Thinking about how different it is and what's often fascinated me throughout my career 128 00:12:58,240 --> 00:13:05,230 is how disease and bodies are thought to be these kind of stable biological entities. 129 00:13:05,230 --> 00:13:11,470 They're they're part of nature. They're natural. And yet when you read a history of disease or when you write a history of bodies, 130 00:13:11,470 --> 00:13:15,400 you realise that actually people have conceived of them in very different ways. 131 00:13:15,400 --> 00:13:20,260 And especially when it comes to something such as disease, you realise that it's a social entity as well. 132 00:13:20,260 --> 00:13:24,010 It's a cultural entity as well. People have very different ways of understanding them. 133 00:13:24,010 --> 00:13:30,400 So especially in my period, disease is not necessarily seen as something that's coming from the outside, 134 00:13:30,400 --> 00:13:35,020 which we see especially with the 19th century, the bacteriological revolution. 135 00:13:35,020 --> 00:13:38,950 But instead, is this kind of disorder that comes from within your body, which then, 136 00:13:38,950 --> 00:13:43,690 of course, has all these implications for who's responsible, how you cure it. 137 00:13:43,690 --> 00:13:47,530 What factors are taken into account. So if it's me, 138 00:13:47,530 --> 00:13:54,430 it's it's very useful to be thinking about how providing the history of something can help us to rethink some of the assumptions we have, 139 00:13:54,430 --> 00:13:58,780 including, like you said, the definition of health. 140 00:13:58,780 --> 00:14:05,540 The definition of what causes disease is much wider, broader, in some ways more encompassing. 141 00:14:05,540 --> 00:14:12,190 In the period that I research, I was really struck by even in those medicine, Viju, 142 00:14:12,190 --> 00:14:17,230 those people who are writing histories of medicine were very explicit that the experiencing 143 00:14:17,230 --> 00:14:24,070 AIDS in their lifetime also made them rethink their own approaches to the history of medicine. 144 00:14:24,070 --> 00:14:28,720 And I wonder, I mean, for you, obviously, it was a kind of watershed period. 145 00:14:28,720 --> 00:14:37,660 Can you talk a little bit about in your memoirs and in your own thoughts how you feel AIDS maybe reshaped some of these narratives? 146 00:14:37,660 --> 00:14:43,720 I think and I've been fascinated learning from you about the sort of long tail of history around this. 147 00:14:43,720 --> 00:14:49,310 And I suppose with HIV, you know, it's a disease of travel as we are now discussing. 148 00:14:49,310 --> 00:14:53,200 Curve 19 is the disease of travel. 149 00:14:53,200 --> 00:15:04,720 And that became evident very early on that there was something new happening in our world of intermingling between people. 150 00:15:04,720 --> 00:15:13,040 And I mention it because one of the things that I think happened with AIDS very early is a global response emerged. 151 00:15:13,040 --> 00:15:18,870 And and that response was both because the epidemic was spreading, which is a horrible term, 152 00:15:18,870 --> 00:15:22,480 rarely used, but it was expanding in different countries around the world, 153 00:15:22,480 --> 00:15:30,130 but also because that was happening with communities that had been connecting and often connecting from a rights based approach. 154 00:15:30,130 --> 00:15:33,700 So when I was with the 10 seconds trust in the mid 90s, 80s, 155 00:15:33,700 --> 00:15:39,790 a lot of our dialogue was with New York and San Francisco and Sydney and Paris and Berlin. 156 00:15:39,790 --> 00:15:45,760 And why? Because these were gay epicentres. And so there was a conversation inherent there. 157 00:15:45,760 --> 00:15:50,140 And I think something very special that has happened around the AIDS crisis is a real 158 00:15:50,140 --> 00:15:56,560 sense of global solidarity and people who would not normally connect with each other, 159 00:15:56,560 --> 00:16:06,400 becoming connected as as the epidemic expanded and different populations became infected and started to experience it in their lives. 160 00:16:06,400 --> 00:16:18,790 So you would see in the early 90s a sense of absolute outrage from often quite privileged white gay males in urban settings who had encountered a 161 00:16:18,790 --> 00:16:27,880 poor black woman at a conference and suddenly understood the poverty and difficulty of her life because she couldn't get treatment and they could. 162 00:16:27,880 --> 00:16:34,900 But the other major thing was that because the earliest cases were amongst people who, quite frankly, were often quite privileged, 163 00:16:34,900 --> 00:16:42,310 often had access and had a huge sense of expectation that their lives would continue, that they were beginning of their lives. 164 00:16:42,310 --> 00:16:46,540 They got very, very angry. And that's really the Larry Kramer story, 165 00:16:46,540 --> 00:16:54,640 is the story of a band of young gay men in New York who heard his rage and took up arms 166 00:16:54,640 --> 00:17:03,430 in a in a way of battling with the authorities for treatments to be made available. 167 00:17:03,430 --> 00:17:06,780 And here I am using military language, which I loathe. 168 00:17:06,780 --> 00:17:15,300 But there was a really strange shift yesterday in reflecting on Larry Kramer's life, Tony Fouchier, 169 00:17:15,300 --> 00:17:21,850 who's now well-known around the world because he has to stand next to Trump quite regularly. 170 00:17:21,850 --> 00:17:31,930 But a man who was fundamental to the AIDS response globally talks about how life pre Larry and post Larry changed in medicine because there 171 00:17:31,930 --> 00:17:44,320 was a complete flipping of the medical conversation and suddenly people living with the disease had access to the scientific establishment. 172 00:17:44,320 --> 00:17:51,580 And then a very early way with Kovik 19, I'm discovering that's a whole community of other people who've developed Kotick 19. 173 00:17:51,580 --> 00:17:55,730 And we have. Expertise in these areas of public health and global health. 174 00:17:55,730 --> 00:18:03,710 And we're starting to make demands collectively, which follows in the footsteps of those early AIDS pioneers. 175 00:18:03,710 --> 00:18:11,330 It strikes me that part of what this reminds us is the power of narratives and who can who can articulate those 176 00:18:11,330 --> 00:18:17,870 narratives and the power and kind of thinking about who's able to speak and to use them to achieve certain ends. 177 00:18:17,870 --> 00:18:24,600 So I was struck by how in the midst of this I've been rereading one of the things that's happening, 178 00:18:24,600 --> 00:18:27,710 the Mr. Crisis as a colleague and I have started a reading group in history, 179 00:18:27,710 --> 00:18:32,000 science and medicine with some of our doctoral masters students purely because they I think 180 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:34,970 they felt like they wanted some guidance that wanted to be able to talk about things. 181 00:18:34,970 --> 00:18:41,180 But also, I think this kind of comfort and just reading history to be able to rethink where we are. 182 00:18:41,180 --> 00:18:48,350 And one of the classic text which we've returned to is an article written by this writer in medicine, Charles Rosenberg, 183 00:18:48,350 --> 00:18:57,770 published in 1989, which was in published in the midst of the AIDS epidemic as a response called What is an Epidemic? 184 00:18:57,770 --> 00:19:04,580 And Rosenberg. Koop worked a lot on colour in the 19th century, but was also reflecting on what AIDS was making him rethink. 185 00:19:04,580 --> 00:19:11,960 As someone in America in that period and end, part of his point is that epidemics are social events. 186 00:19:11,960 --> 00:19:16,670 They're not just biological events. And he he writes how a true epidemic is an event. 187 00:19:16,670 --> 00:19:23,300 It's not a trend and ties it to the notion of it being a drama with different stages in which it unfolds. 188 00:19:23,300 --> 00:19:32,710 It's a narrative. It has plot. It has actors. And that's the interesting point in some ways, is how therefore all epidemics can be somewhat similar. 189 00:19:32,710 --> 00:19:38,900 Right. They have this kind of opening, this initial ignorance, but also in some ways initial denial. 190 00:19:38,900 --> 00:19:43,370 And then there's a middle period in which there's kind of the crisis unfolding, the middle of the plot, 191 00:19:43,370 --> 00:19:50,990 which is full of uncertainty, and how it also demands this collective response in which societies turn to rituals, 192 00:19:50,990 --> 00:19:59,990 to collective action, to demands for a response, and how even as, as Rosenberg pointed out, even this modern technological, 193 00:19:59,990 --> 00:20:07,430 secular 20th century America was still spreading to these very fundamental rituals and demands for action. 194 00:20:07,430 --> 00:20:11,690 And then how, in some ways, the disease slowly subsides or disappears. 195 00:20:11,690 --> 00:20:18,450 It doesn't have to, of course, actually disappear. But the kind of urgency of the situation disappears. 196 00:20:18,450 --> 00:20:25,970 And so I was really struck by how Rosenberg here was drawing on his work from the 19th century, was applying it to AIDS. 197 00:20:25,970 --> 00:20:30,410 And here we are using it again to talk about what's happening now. 198 00:20:30,410 --> 00:20:39,620 And it resonated with me as well, because my sense is in the AIDS epidemic, this notion of narrative of being able to speak right, 199 00:20:39,620 --> 00:20:46,520 which was such a constant slogan to to not be silent, was part of a response to, 200 00:20:46,520 --> 00:20:51,200 in some ways challenging, just having the medical establishment become behalf of patients, 201 00:20:51,200 --> 00:20:59,420 but rethinking political structures and really thinking power structures by having someone else give the narrative. 202 00:20:59,420 --> 00:21:07,160 I wonder how that also has played into your activism and your writing and thinking about who should be involved. 203 00:21:07,160 --> 00:21:16,850 I think that's so fascinating to take that long view and so many thoughts in terms of listening to to your reflections. 204 00:21:16,850 --> 00:21:22,250 And one of the things that feels very present is this whole point about the personal narrative and the personal story. 205 00:21:22,250 --> 00:21:27,680 And, of course, particularly initially amongst the New York the American gay community, 206 00:21:27,680 --> 00:21:34,580 there was this flipping of the dialogue around science, but that came about because patients became visible. 207 00:21:34,580 --> 00:21:41,440 They became agents. People were living with HIV not being HIV victims. 208 00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:47,540 And I was really struck in one of the ghosty press conferences the other day where Boris Johnson, 209 00:21:47,540 --> 00:21:51,410 I think it was yesterday, started talking about people as Kofod sufferers. 210 00:21:51,410 --> 00:21:58,820 You know, I had one of those moments of yelling at the radio and, you know, of course, I have suffered in the last few weeks is not been pleasant. 211 00:21:58,820 --> 00:22:03,110 But I know that I did suffer. I'm a human being. I haven't to it in my body. 212 00:22:03,110 --> 00:22:10,580 I'm hoping it goes away soon, you know. It's the decentralising away from the humanity of the individual. 213 00:22:10,580 --> 00:22:20,990 And I think because of the underlying hatred and discrimination against the types of people who were the majority of the early cases of HIV, 214 00:22:20,990 --> 00:22:26,330 very early on, there was this public testimony that evolved. 215 00:22:26,330 --> 00:22:32,210 And I've been joking with some of my friends with HIV that suddenly I'm becoming the expert patient. 216 00:22:32,210 --> 00:22:34,820 And it's been, you know, 217 00:22:34,820 --> 00:22:42,890 very interesting to watch friends of mine also kind of hesitate and eventually coming out and speaking about their life with the disease. 218 00:22:42,890 --> 00:22:45,920 And that changes a complete narrative to bring a proximity, 219 00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:51,960 because I think otherwise you have this concept of the tainted body that the dangerous Envisat. 220 00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:55,970 Well, epidemic walking down the street, are they wearing a mask? 221 00:22:55,970 --> 00:23:01,950 You know, we have very similar concept to the early days of HIV when people became aware that, 222 00:23:01,950 --> 00:23:10,540 like Kofod was an asymptomatic phase, you couldn't know who was infected, wasn't like TB, where they might cough low for you. 223 00:23:10,540 --> 00:23:20,710 So that this concept of personal testimony and making visible that the personal challenge seems to me to be a really significant similarity, 224 00:23:20,710 --> 00:23:26,220 but also about, you know, trying to make visible what is hidden. 225 00:23:26,220 --> 00:23:32,730 And another thing I feel very strongly about with pandemics and epidemics is they are spatial. 226 00:23:32,730 --> 00:23:39,870 They are about place and time. And so, you know, having left a part of the country and having left South Africa, 227 00:23:39,870 --> 00:23:46,620 where there very little cove that I'm flying into the centre of London, where there is a huge amount of Kofod, 228 00:23:46,620 --> 00:23:51,750 I place myself in an area where when I finally ventured out to the park last week, 229 00:23:51,750 --> 00:24:01,380 I was listening to a set of people talking to each other about their own experience of members of their family or themselves having virus. 230 00:24:01,380 --> 00:24:06,420 And that's not going to be the case in other parts of the country or other parts of the world. 231 00:24:06,420 --> 00:24:08,040 I think it's as I was trying. 232 00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:15,210 I think this is this it highlights both the kind of what I often see as being the particular value and usefulness of history. 233 00:24:15,210 --> 00:24:23,220 Right. We have when you're a historian, you have this luxury of distance, historical distance, which gives you the opportunity for reflection. 234 00:24:23,220 --> 00:24:29,790 And one of the you know, I'm very hesitant to think that there actually are clear lessons that we can take from history. 235 00:24:29,790 --> 00:24:34,170 But it often I think history is as good reminder that we're actually in the midst of this period of 236 00:24:34,170 --> 00:24:39,870 uncertainty in which actually it's very hard to see because we're within our individual experience. 237 00:24:39,870 --> 00:24:40,410 In some ways, 238 00:24:40,410 --> 00:24:48,810 we're wrapped up within how this is unfolding as opposed to what historians might then see many years later when they're writing the narrative, 239 00:24:48,810 --> 00:24:53,370 but also probably rewriting the narratives that we're forming right now. 240 00:24:53,370 --> 00:24:56,460 I mean, I was struck by your point about location and. 241 00:24:56,460 --> 00:25:07,650 Right. So its distance, it can be temporal distance, but also geographical distance, as I think I mentioned, when soon after lockdown started. 242 00:25:07,650 --> 00:25:13,350 One of the things that I did as a historian, as opposed to kind of wanting to do something as a human, 243 00:25:13,350 --> 00:25:17,110 but trying to think about what it is that historians can do to convey. 244 00:25:17,110 --> 00:25:21,330 Mirror, who's the editor of Centaurus, an academic journal, 245 00:25:21,330 --> 00:25:27,690 asked about Coedited special issue on thinking about the history of science medicine in the context of Cauvin 19. 246 00:25:27,690 --> 00:25:35,160 And I was really struck by how when I asked contributors, we have 15 articles in total. 247 00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:38,670 There is a sense of urgency from historians, anthropologists, 248 00:25:38,670 --> 00:25:44,790 scholars wanting to write and to share about their expertise in the reflection within a very short period of time, 249 00:25:44,790 --> 00:25:49,050 feeling like they had something to say and drawing on their careers and their 250 00:25:49,050 --> 00:25:54,300 insights and trying to figure out how to formulate that for a broader audience, 251 00:25:54,300 --> 00:25:59,760 perhaps a different kind of audience, an audience that might be more interested in what they had to say. 252 00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:10,730 One of the articles comes from two anthropologists who work on Kenya, Wenzel Geissler, and with Prince, who I contacted. 253 00:26:10,730 --> 00:26:15,270 And they were just in the midst of actually having to have left Kenya where they were doing fieldwork. 254 00:26:15,270 --> 00:26:21,180 We're turning back to Oslo, where they're based for their institution and they immediately. 255 00:26:21,180 --> 00:26:26,340 I have to say, I've been really touched throughout making a special issue by people's responses, 256 00:26:26,340 --> 00:26:30,240 their willingness to write long after their work days. 257 00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:33,390 But having this sense of urgency to try to record things and express what they 258 00:26:33,390 --> 00:26:39,760 were seeing and Gaster Imprint's talk about how from the perspective of Kenya. 259 00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:44,710 Covered 19 is part of one long epidemic. So we're in what we call the global north. 260 00:26:44,710 --> 00:26:51,430 There's often it's been seen as a kind of upheaval of normal life, whereas in Kenya, there was Ebola. 261 00:26:51,430 --> 00:26:57,820 There was cholera. It's interacting with an epidemic of tuberculosis, with cancer. 262 00:26:57,820 --> 00:27:06,790 And so in many ways, the practises of surveillance of PPE, all of these things are being recycled from one epidemic to the next. 263 00:27:06,790 --> 00:27:12,500 And so actually, it's about a kind of chronic long epidemic on the long JRA. 264 00:27:12,500 --> 00:27:19,300 And so I was very struck by how that highlighted this difference and in time and geographic perspective, 265 00:27:19,300 --> 00:27:23,110 but also, of course, helped us to rethink about. About these narratives. Right. 266 00:27:23,110 --> 00:27:31,860 To rewrite them. I mean, I was I was struck you mentioned Robin right now as people are writing these obituaries of Kramer. 267 00:27:31,860 --> 00:27:39,650 There are also, like you were saying, Dr. Fred, she's also kind of maybe rethinking his own version of what he remembered that happened. 268 00:27:39,650 --> 00:27:47,110 Right. So also, within our own lifetime, we'll reflecting on what we remember happening and perhaps shaping them into a narrative. 269 00:27:47,110 --> 00:27:56,900 Right. Narratives are also about us trying to make sense of things, which means that we're selecting evidence, perhaps highlighting other parts of it. 270 00:27:56,900 --> 00:27:59,540 I don't that every one of the things that amused me, I mean, 271 00:27:59,540 --> 00:28:08,840 there's been some very beautiful statements that he's made in a. a very touching interview in The New York Times today, 272 00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:11,420 talking about how he loved Larry Kramer. 273 00:28:11,420 --> 00:28:21,490 And yet, if you looked in through the window of the media, you would hear Larry Kramer denouncing him as the devil. 274 00:28:21,490 --> 00:28:28,730 And they had this extraordinary relationship where they knew that they were playing a part in a role and 275 00:28:28,730 --> 00:28:39,200 somehow personifying the conflict between the government neglect and the need of the patient who is dying. 276 00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:41,540 And there is a real kind of resonances of history. 277 00:28:41,540 --> 00:28:52,870 And indeed, the fact that when one hundred thousand Americans died of HIV, there wasn't even a proper attention paid to it. 278 00:28:52,870 --> 00:28:59,360 It was, of course, that that awful milestone just past for Kofod 19. 279 00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:09,230 So that's quite interesting. I was also bemused because in Kramer's own activism, he was not particularly a treatment person. 280 00:29:09,230 --> 00:29:15,820 And yet, in fact, his recollection, he sees this massive change in the science of HIV coming about because of frame. 281 00:29:15,820 --> 00:29:24,580 Now, it certainly was because of the movements act up the AIDS coalition to unleash power that fought so hard with the scientific establishment. 282 00:29:24,580 --> 00:29:31,370 So certainly something he led, but not him as a person. But it's so much easier to choose to figureheads. 283 00:29:31,370 --> 00:29:38,570 And I suppose as a feminist, one of my thoughts around this is, you know, how to make women visible from the earliest days of HIV. 284 00:29:38,570 --> 00:29:51,620 I was in contact with women who were living with HIV, for whom it was often exceptionally complicated to be open about their HIV, 285 00:29:51,620 --> 00:29:56,850 often because they feared and usually quite rightly, their children being taken away from them. 286 00:29:56,850 --> 00:30:02,910 And in many contexts, women were sterilised or forced to have abortions if they wanted to, if they were pregnant. 287 00:30:02,910 --> 00:30:09,230 And there was just shocking and abysmal, very direct abuse of women in the early days. 288 00:30:09,230 --> 00:30:12,380 And it was frightening for many people to be open. 289 00:30:12,380 --> 00:30:22,160 But over time, a remarkable set of women and a remarkable diversity of women, so to speak, out about their very diverse experiences of HIV. 290 00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:27,740 And it was just so important to remain so important that that diversity of 291 00:30:27,740 --> 00:30:32,060 narrative is there and that in different communities and different populations. 292 00:30:32,060 --> 00:30:35,570 This is lived so differently. And I really love your example from Kenya. 293 00:30:35,570 --> 00:30:41,150 And I've been fascinated watching different African countries respond in different ways and where 294 00:30:41,150 --> 00:30:47,420 they've had a very inclusive response to HIV that's brought together communities and scientists. 295 00:30:47,420 --> 00:30:53,070 They're doing the same thing in countries because that's how they know how to live. 296 00:30:53,070 --> 00:31:02,890 So I find that really extraordinary. And I mean, if I may, one of the other thoughts I had when I was hearing you talk about about spaces. 297 00:31:02,890 --> 00:31:08,730 There's a really great book that I love, which is a sort of memoir of her experience as an AIDS activist, 298 00:31:08,730 --> 00:31:12,290 a woman called Sarah Schulman from the East Village in New York. 299 00:31:12,290 --> 00:31:19,490 And she's written this beautiful book called The Gentrification of the Mind Witness to a Lost Imagination. 300 00:31:19,490 --> 00:31:30,440 And really what she talks about is the lives that weren't lived and how that whole space of lower Manhattan changed because of the AIDS crisis. 301 00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:36,800 And we're such a huge proportion of a local population, many of whom were young artists, 302 00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:41,690 some great, some not so great at the beginning of their career. So many of them died. 303 00:31:41,690 --> 00:31:51,680 And not only did we lose their creativity and their contribution to the arts, but also achieved the economic basis of that part of Manhattan changed. 304 00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:59,570 And it got taken over by your yuppies because suddenly there were lots of apartments available and because gay men couldn't marry, 305 00:31:59,570 --> 00:32:04,370 they didn't have the capacity to inherit their partners home when they passed away. 306 00:32:04,370 --> 00:32:13,520 And since you know that the social political impacts of diseases are often quite hidden and change 307 00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:21,980 our societies and much one on one thought I had and this I covered an interaction with Rich McKay, 308 00:32:21,980 --> 00:32:27,770 who's written a wonderful book on the history of Patient Zero and this notion during the AIDS epidemic. 309 00:32:27,770 --> 00:32:35,270 But one one thought that we, which I kept returning to is how in some ways we know these epidemics, that the high point of drama. 310 00:32:35,270 --> 00:32:39,620 But there are, of course, just one point that sometimes distracts us from actually what's underneath. 311 00:32:39,620 --> 00:32:45,980 So people who work on morbidity, thinking about sickness more broadly, often talk about morbidity, icebergs. 312 00:32:45,980 --> 00:32:51,110 Right. How well you actually see is just the tip of an iceberg, which is very striking and dramatic. 313 00:32:51,110 --> 00:32:56,150 But actually, of course, there's a much larger mass underneath and this is often what I feel. 314 00:32:56,150 --> 00:33:04,130 We write about epidemics even in the past. That those are the momentous times that people record or bother to record. 315 00:33:04,130 --> 00:33:10,790 But actually, of course, what they are is there are indicators about this larger movement underneath the kind of day to day illness. 316 00:33:10,790 --> 00:33:14,920 The Day-To-Day lives affects a much broader part of society. 317 00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:19,730 But that we have to dig down in some ways in order to record. 318 00:33:19,730 --> 00:33:29,960 Now, I know that there will be questions from the audience and West is going to come return back to us in order to take us through some of this. 319 00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:41,660 Hello. I am indeed. And there are indeed. Thanks so much for an amazing, amazingly rich array of points, questions, stories and so on. 320 00:33:41,660 --> 00:33:52,430 I have a host of questions here. I will try and get through at least half of them, if I can, where you ended up really might be, where to start. 321 00:33:52,430 --> 00:33:57,260 So this question of the sort of drama or the different shape of an epidemic at different moments in history, 322 00:33:57,260 --> 00:34:00,950 earlier on, you talk about the beginning, the middle and end. Now, you took a nice bergens on there. 323 00:34:00,950 --> 00:34:08,860 Different ways we can think about this. But a number of people have asked. 324 00:34:08,860 --> 00:34:14,560 What's unusual or unexpected about this pandemic? 325 00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:19,940 What is that what is there about this that you hadn't recognised or you hadn't seen coming? 326 00:34:19,940 --> 00:34:26,680 So now it's an odd place to start. What can we not learn from history? But in a way, what what does what does this teach us? 327 00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:33,760 That's unusual. Wolf, if anything. 328 00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:39,600 Great question, Erica. You want to have a stab at it best, or am I going to? 329 00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:43,600 I'm trying to think because because in some ways, of course, there's a tension here, right? 330 00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:50,580 And there's been a there's a there's been a tendency amongst historians to actually say look at how epidemics are similar. 331 00:34:50,580 --> 00:34:57,690 And partly they're similar because they're unexpected and they're uncertain and we don't know actually where we are. 332 00:34:57,690 --> 00:35:02,670 And so it strikes me that, of course, that's a that's a very good point to keep in mind. 333 00:35:02,670 --> 00:35:07,920 And perhaps that's what struck me actually, when I was reading I was rereading Rosenberg's essay from 1989, 334 00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:15,810 and you talked about how AIDS was a postmodern epidemic, that it was happening in a context in which actually we had a lot of new scientific 335 00:35:15,810 --> 00:35:21,780 research which was able to identify the virus and a kind of record short time. 336 00:35:21,780 --> 00:35:28,350 And yet society was reflecting on it and it was unknown because modern societies don't usually deal with that. 337 00:35:28,350 --> 00:35:32,520 And I've been struck by how we've actually been using the same rhetoric. 338 00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:36,120 Am I right that people have been talking about, which is true, that we have this amazing amount, 339 00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:44,250 the kind of phylogenetic information very fast, very impressive technology, the move towards vaccines. 340 00:35:44,250 --> 00:35:49,740 And yet we again seem to be discussing how there's this there's something about 341 00:35:49,740 --> 00:35:55,230 being in a modern society that should make us not have to deal with the unknown, 342 00:35:55,230 --> 00:36:00,240 an unknown disease. And so I've been struck by how maybe what's interesting to me is that we haven't 343 00:36:00,240 --> 00:36:06,810 actually retain that historical consciousness about unknowable uncertainties, 344 00:36:06,810 --> 00:36:11,050 our inability to predict the future. I really agree with that. 345 00:36:11,050 --> 00:36:15,030 And I think I was reading something on Kofod yesterday and I said, 346 00:36:15,030 --> 00:36:20,160 because it's this ratkovic or is it about HIV in terms of exactly this point, about the acceleration. 347 00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:29,300 And yet there are really interesting timelines looking at comparing Cavitt 19 with Saar's and if they were published a couple of months. 348 00:36:29,300 --> 00:36:37,560 And if you can pair it with HIV, that the timelines are just extraordinary in terms of how I think scientists have stood on the shoulders 349 00:36:37,560 --> 00:36:45,570 of previous epidemics and collaborated in a way that was a really massive struggle 40 years ago. 350 00:36:45,570 --> 00:36:53,880 And so that there is that side of it, I suppose a couple of things that might be a little different. 351 00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:57,540 The fact that we can't physically come together to respond. 352 00:36:57,540 --> 00:37:04,270 So I have a kind of colleague and friend who's stuck in lockdown in in L.A. and he keeps saying, 353 00:37:04,270 --> 00:37:10,140 but where are the activists that they can be together? And and I'm saying, well, they could be there in my echo chambers. 354 00:37:10,140 --> 00:37:20,160 And social media is very different from the physical manifestation of rage that happened through things like active demonstrations and the 355 00:37:20,160 --> 00:37:30,810 solidarity that you get from being in more than a virtual room with someone and being able to find connexions that that can grow more organically. 356 00:37:30,810 --> 00:37:40,410 So I think the very fact of the way we are handling the pandemic is creating difference in terms of our ways of organising. 357 00:37:40,410 --> 00:37:44,100 The other thing that I'm struck by, and I'm not sure whether it's a difference, 358 00:37:44,100 --> 00:37:50,220 but I'm very struck by the way in which there's an expectation that the academic will go up, 359 00:37:50,220 --> 00:37:57,930 the plateau will end, and the concept of the double dipping and the returning and the second wave, that seems almost inevitable. 360 00:37:57,930 --> 00:38:04,980 That seems quite challenging. But as a historian, you may be able to tell me that there's been many examples of that before. 361 00:38:04,980 --> 00:38:07,320 But it seems something we're very old prepared for. 362 00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:14,160 Well, I might jump in here because precisely one of the questions is, so how did epidemics spend in the past? 363 00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:17,610 There's a lot of talk about, you know, when we get this vaccine or when we get the tracking trace. 364 00:38:17,610 --> 00:38:21,330 Right. Or whatever. How does an epidemic end or a pandemic? 365 00:38:21,330 --> 00:38:26,510 And I mean, obviously, we can talk about AIDS is ongoing. 366 00:38:26,510 --> 00:38:30,300 Right. And one of the interesting points I was think so. 367 00:38:30,300 --> 00:38:34,740 I don't in terms of my research, in some ways, I don't work so much on epidemics. 368 00:38:34,740 --> 00:38:38,160 I work on endemic disease. And to me, that's a very important distinction. 369 00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:45,510 Right, that the the lack of the opposite of an epidemic is not a disease free world, but as endemic disease. 370 00:38:45,510 --> 00:38:51,090 And what that basically means is disease that is normal, that we've accepted as being part of our life. 371 00:38:51,090 --> 00:38:53,070 It doesn't mean that we don't fear the disease, 372 00:38:53,070 --> 00:38:58,080 but it means that generally it's not it doesn't create a kind of social dislocation or economic dislocation. 373 00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:02,580 So I think probably we can think about how it's true that the incidence of disease can decline. 374 00:39:02,580 --> 00:39:07,500 But very often what we should think about is how disease comes to be accepted. 375 00:39:07,500 --> 00:39:11,190 Certain types of diseases, perhaps we accept more than others. 376 00:39:11,190 --> 00:39:19,740 Some forms of disease are more frightening to humans, but also we can think about how we accept disease in certain parts of the world. 377 00:39:19,740 --> 00:39:24,300 And so disease, for example, can be. Malaria is endemic in some parts of the world. 378 00:39:24,300 --> 00:39:29,790 But if it appeared in Europe or in England, we would see it as an epidemic disease because we would see it as a problem. 379 00:39:29,790 --> 00:39:33,090 So I think the bigger question is, and this is why, as a historian, 380 00:39:33,090 --> 00:39:38,540 I think it's important to remember that this is about defining what is a problem, which, of course. 381 00:39:38,540 --> 00:39:42,320 Was central to the activism to do with AIDS. 382 00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:47,480 When is that a problem? For whom is it a problem if it only affects a certain population? 383 00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:52,700 Then do people not declare it an epidemic? So I think we're starting to get into these discussions. 384 00:39:52,700 --> 00:40:00,300 Right. What happens if this becomes endemic? What if we see constant waves when it becomes a problem and then is no longer a problem? 385 00:40:00,300 --> 00:40:06,050 But I think it's very important to recognise that this these are social political decisions. 386 00:40:06,050 --> 00:40:11,910 This is not a kind of medical definition about when something is an epidemic and when it is not. 387 00:40:11,910 --> 00:40:19,040 And I'd really like to build on that. And stemming from the epidemic, I know most of HIV is definitely not over. 388 00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:25,490 And I find myself enraged by a lot of statements about ending AIDS or, you know, 389 00:40:25,490 --> 00:40:28,790 I don't believe we're going to end AIDS is something quite unpleasant about 390 00:40:28,790 --> 00:40:33,440 the idea that the only way we end date is if all people with AIDS don't lie. 391 00:40:33,440 --> 00:40:41,720 And actually what we're looking at is how do we as a world, as well as individuals, live with the AIDS crisis? 392 00:40:41,720 --> 00:40:47,210 And now how do we live with the Kofod epidemics on top of that? 393 00:40:47,210 --> 00:40:53,390 And I suppose what does change is going from the crisis mentality to the normalising. 394 00:40:53,390 --> 00:41:01,070 I think in terms of HIV, we're still not there with the normalising and in terms of the sort of the tools that get you there. 395 00:41:01,070 --> 00:41:04,460 Well, partly it's about good science and treatments and the rest. 396 00:41:04,460 --> 00:41:16,400 But it's also about smart behavioural interventions, integrating it culturally and understanding of people being a part of society. 397 00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:22,070 And I still think it's quite fascinating having hope if there's a sense that you should run away and hide and isolate. 398 00:41:22,070 --> 00:41:27,680 And then when you come back out. When am I allowed to be a part of society? 399 00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:33,530 Yeah, I know that question also came up at building on what you were talking about right at beginning your discussion. 400 00:41:33,530 --> 00:41:37,850 Aramic the question of shame. And of course, 401 00:41:37,850 --> 00:41:44,090 if is going to move to a sort of living with rather than getting rid of somehow the discourse around the 402 00:41:44,090 --> 00:41:50,780 narrative around shame or having a shameful disease or being somehow tainted body has got to shift. 403 00:41:50,780 --> 00:41:57,400 Do you feel that konbit has produced sort of shamefulness amongst people who have it? 404 00:41:57,400 --> 00:42:00,190 I do. And it's been quite a curious journey. 405 00:42:00,190 --> 00:42:07,490 And one of the pieces that I wrote, I spoke about how uncomfortable I felt that people kept asking me how I got it. 406 00:42:07,490 --> 00:42:12,500 And if someone so over informed and who'd been writing about it, had I done something wrong. 407 00:42:12,500 --> 00:42:18,860 And when I was chatting with a friend with HIV, she really recognised that because she hates the language. 408 00:42:18,860 --> 00:42:25,040 How did you get infected? It's no one's business. The challenge is her living with it in her body. 409 00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:28,630 And I do believe and agree, and I've talked with many about this, 410 00:42:28,630 --> 00:42:35,540 that the stigma of acquiring a sexual disease or predominantly sexual diseases is much greater. 411 00:42:35,540 --> 00:42:43,340 But let's be clear. Kove, it is true that some really weird safe sex advice that says wash your hands and you won't get covered. 412 00:42:43,340 --> 00:42:46,910 Let's be clear. Intimate contact is is part of the problem. 413 00:42:46,910 --> 00:42:54,470 But that in terms of the stigma around it, I think part of the driver is if you look at the public messaging and again, 414 00:42:54,470 --> 00:42:59,870 we saw the same thing in HIV, it's all about avoiding this disease. 415 00:42:59,870 --> 00:43:07,880 And with one in six of us in London having been or currently living with Kofod, there is no information. 416 00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:13,040 There is no way of me finding out if I'm infectious and can safely go to the park. 417 00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:19,270 I'm just told I can leave the house up seven days. Where do I find out? 418 00:43:19,270 --> 00:43:24,980 I mean, I always think this is the kind of interesting point narrative's in some ways that we've set out about agency. 419 00:43:24,980 --> 00:43:29,570 So you can write around narrative. But of course, the flip side, the agency has responsibility. 420 00:43:29,570 --> 00:43:35,120 And I think this would be part of the point of having a narrative of of being a patient with 421 00:43:35,120 --> 00:43:41,730 agency also means there's a notion that you're also therefore responsible for your health destiny. 422 00:43:41,730 --> 00:43:47,600 And I actually wonder, you know, this isn't just about disease. I think it's about a broader way in which we approach notions of health. 423 00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:51,020 And I think especially in Western culture, this is a long history. 424 00:43:51,020 --> 00:43:58,910 Notions of the terminology, the concept of contagion and infection are about pollution. 425 00:43:58,910 --> 00:44:06,560 And so the quarantine and all these other words have these roots in the notion of being purified and being able to rejoin society. 426 00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:09,590 But I also think this is not just about infectious disease. 427 00:44:09,590 --> 00:44:16,700 When we talk about health and people being unhealthy, we assume a kind of agency which can be very positive and enabling. 428 00:44:16,700 --> 00:44:23,060 But of course, it also has its flipside, which is that you're responsible for your ill health or your state of ill health. 429 00:44:23,060 --> 00:44:28,730 And it's it should therefore theoretically be within your control to fix that. 430 00:44:28,730 --> 00:44:35,090 So I think this is a fundamental concept within Western by. 431 00:44:35,090 --> 00:44:41,390 Agency is, of course, multiply valence, though, I mean, the shift from stay at home to stay alert is, 432 00:44:41,390 --> 00:44:46,280 of course your now to blame for if anything goes wrong with you from one perspective. 433 00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:49,550 And one of the questions that people are asking is, is again, 434 00:44:49,550 --> 00:44:53,900 another difference between the so-called social construction of covered and the narrative 435 00:44:53,900 --> 00:44:59,030 around AIDS around the perception is who is vulnerable to contracting the disease? 436 00:44:59,030 --> 00:45:01,190 It goes back to your question about sex, Robin. 437 00:45:01,190 --> 00:45:09,440 But it's also about the aged, the elderly, the sort of dangerously old and so on as a kind of fetish figure within this narrative. 438 00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:15,780 Do any of you do either we have anything to say about that? I yes, absolutely. 439 00:45:15,780 --> 00:45:26,820 I mean, I think that there is this sort of, again, the lack of attention to what those of us who have it might be the lack of access to testing. 440 00:45:26,820 --> 00:45:29,730 I mean, I've tried repeatedly to get tested and I've completely given up. 441 00:45:29,730 --> 00:45:34,320 The only way I can get tested is to pay a remarkable amount of money to a private provider. 442 00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:42,630 So there's sort of this sense in which I ought to be able to protect because I know I have this. 443 00:45:42,630 --> 00:45:46,740 And yet nobody is helping me access the resources to do this. 444 00:45:46,740 --> 00:45:54,690 I think there's also this sort of it speaks, again, to my point about equal opportunities and yet the stratification at various levels. 445 00:45:54,690 --> 00:46:03,180 So sort of the angry over 70 saying how dare you try and shield me when there's a very, you know, reasonable epidemiological argument. 446 00:46:03,180 --> 00:46:08,100 But it's not being nuanced and layered with the variety of what we know. 447 00:46:08,100 --> 00:46:14,970 And there's a certain, you know, the simplicity of messages that might help people to vote in a certain way are not 448 00:46:14,970 --> 00:46:20,820 messages that will then help us to take agency and make wise decisions of our lives. 449 00:46:20,820 --> 00:46:29,310 And that's part of what we did learn in HIV, was actually developing stories and musicals and plays and books and, 450 00:46:29,310 --> 00:46:35,640 you know, this whole cultural conversation that emerged. And I think here, because of our dislocation from each other, 451 00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:42,090 because as well-intentioned as they are, virtual concerts don't quite have the same impact. 452 00:46:42,090 --> 00:46:53,580 We've not really developed a powerful cultural, conversational and Kofod beyond the absolutely wonderful means that I keep receiving on my own. 453 00:46:53,580 --> 00:46:58,510 I mean, I think and I think isn't this again, this comes to the heart of disease in general, 454 00:46:58,510 --> 00:47:04,720 which is that if they are susceptible groups always that are going to be more susceptible. 455 00:47:04,720 --> 00:47:09,910 And whether it's because of biological differences or whether it's because of living situations. 456 00:47:09,910 --> 00:47:13,600 So and there's various things that are within the individual's control and not. 457 00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:22,030 But I think if we look at the long view of history, disease always throws up these differences within society, 458 00:47:22,030 --> 00:47:24,520 whether they be economic, whether they be physical. Right. 459 00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:29,140 And I think this is why to me, it's always an important reminder that disease is part of society. 460 00:47:29,140 --> 00:47:33,220 This is not simply a biological thing that's somehow separate from it. 461 00:47:33,220 --> 00:47:38,650 It acts within societies. It takes into account forms of human communication. 462 00:47:38,650 --> 00:47:43,150 Right. Our practises that we see now that are shifting, no more handshakes, no more kissing on the cheeks. 463 00:47:43,150 --> 00:47:51,350 But it also takes into account how societies are structured. And so this is why it's able to eliminate so many of these structural functions, 464 00:47:51,350 --> 00:47:57,580 things in the past as well as today as has often happened on these Thursday talks. 465 00:47:57,580 --> 00:48:04,990 Your recent answer has just responded to a number of questions that have come up around structural inequality and around the degree to which disease, 466 00:48:04,990 --> 00:48:12,550 like from what you said right at the beginning, is a kind of it is itself a symptom of structural inequality as much as anything. 467 00:48:12,550 --> 00:48:22,000 And this question of sort of learning to understand the disease and is part of the social world raises two different questions, it seems to me. 468 00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:27,400 One is. So from someone go, Michelle, will this curtail megacities? 469 00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:35,340 Are we now going to be differently socially organised in the future? Let's start with that one. 470 00:48:35,340 --> 00:48:42,330 To go with American troops? Well, I mean, I think the historian in me says never predict. 471 00:48:42,330 --> 00:48:46,310 Right. Because history littered with with people who've tried to predict. 472 00:48:46,310 --> 00:48:53,760 And maybe that is part of my answer. Right. Because the very interesting point is that these things provide us with opportunities. 473 00:48:53,760 --> 00:49:00,780 But they I don't think that an epidemic or disease in some ways provides us with firm direction. 474 00:49:00,780 --> 00:49:07,560 Right. And I think, again, it's a very interesting point that we often think this is just about a biological agent, 475 00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:13,170 but it's also about human responses to that biological agent. There's a number of responses that we can take. 476 00:49:13,170 --> 00:49:17,710 We might end up just taking one and not being able to see that there were other options available. 477 00:49:17,710 --> 00:49:23,010 And this is very often where I think history comes in to kind of remind us that somewhere back there, 478 00:49:23,010 --> 00:49:27,690 there were many paths to choose from and perhaps we didn't even notice them. 479 00:49:27,690 --> 00:49:34,650 So I think the point is that these can reopen questions. They might have us reflect upon things. 480 00:49:34,650 --> 00:49:38,190 But that isn't necessarily inherent in the disease itself. 481 00:49:38,190 --> 00:49:44,810 I think it's it's up to us as humans to take on those decisions. 482 00:49:44,810 --> 00:49:47,550 A couple of reflections bouncing off that, I mean, 483 00:49:47,550 --> 00:49:55,740 I think many people are predicting that we will endeavour to find ways to live more spatially separate from each other. 484 00:49:55,740 --> 00:50:05,130 And yet just glancing at the images of beaches in the past few days and people, you know, 485 00:50:05,130 --> 00:50:12,300 saying with great kind of pride that we are socially distanced and they also patently not. 486 00:50:12,300 --> 00:50:15,590 And it looks to me like some of the worst days in Brighton. That's it. 487 00:50:15,590 --> 00:50:19,950 So there's this kind of concept of the fantasy of how we're going to live differently. 488 00:50:19,950 --> 00:50:23,680 And the reality in terms of pursuing our individual agency, 489 00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:31,800 that I think more fundamentally in terms of this question of structural inequality is one of the things I'm really 490 00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:38,430 conscious of is the position of privilege with which we look at this question of how we're going to reorganise our world. 491 00:50:38,430 --> 00:50:45,090 And if we just think about the meat industry and, you know, some of the most vulnerable workers on our planet, 492 00:50:45,090 --> 00:50:51,690 other people forced into factories where the noise is so high work that they do not have the 493 00:50:51,690 --> 00:50:57,180 capacity to physically distance from each other where they're required to speak at high volume, 494 00:50:57,180 --> 00:51:02,520 therefore making the likelihood of contamination so much greater. 495 00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:09,690 Construction workers outside my front door and so on and so forth. I mean, we know the professions that are most at risk. 496 00:51:09,690 --> 00:51:14,880 And in addition to all those people, nobody thinking they are two metres from the next picture. 497 00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:17,760 To what extent are they thinking about the toilet attendants, 498 00:51:17,760 --> 00:51:25,860 the parking attendants and all those people who don't have the control, the protective equipment to protect themselves? 499 00:51:25,860 --> 00:51:32,760 So I absolutely agree with the fact that this is exposing that the lines of structured inequality and I 500 00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:39,030 must say one of the the joys I have is reading the weekly report from the Office for National Statistics. 501 00:51:39,030 --> 00:51:50,010 I don't know who is running that, but they're doing a spectacular job at helping us see how any clue this epidemic is in this country. 502 00:51:50,010 --> 00:51:58,620 And the range of ways in which that happens. That takes us back, in a way, to the question of who speaks for the patient. 503 00:51:58,620 --> 00:52:06,150 And what you're now suggesting, I think, is that the patient is not just the people who are living with covered in their own bodies, 504 00:52:06,150 --> 00:52:10,530 but more broadly that are kind of a broader set of people that you might think of as 505 00:52:10,530 --> 00:52:16,480 the patient if this disease is demonstrating something about structural inequality. 506 00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:21,850 And it's an old idea that the person who's telling the best narrative about the patient as a person is putting the onus statistics together. 507 00:52:21,850 --> 00:52:25,290 But but, you know, it takes it takes all sorts. 508 00:52:25,290 --> 00:52:33,430 And in time, I guess we'll have our plays or operas are our pieces of music that tell us more about this period. 509 00:52:33,430 --> 00:52:39,510 On that score, somebody was grateful. Allison said, thank you for mentioning class. 510 00:52:39,510 --> 00:52:43,670 Thank you for mentioning Rosenberg's work. Are there other people that you would recommend? 511 00:52:43,670 --> 00:52:46,140 In other words, can we have a reading left, please? 512 00:52:46,140 --> 00:52:54,660 Or a minable reading list as to who to read on this crisis and on the relationship between now and AIDS? 513 00:52:54,660 --> 00:53:00,880 Or or on pandemics more broadly? Other than your forthcoming memoir, Robert. 514 00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:05,390 I mean, there are many books. I mean, I think I should hand to the academic on that. 515 00:53:05,390 --> 00:53:12,860 But you know that there are many stories that were books that were written in the early epidemic that I would really encourage people to look at. 516 00:53:12,860 --> 00:53:18,860 I mean, what is the policing desire to really understand how epidemics situate themselves? 517 00:53:18,860 --> 00:53:21,270 There are great memoirs of HIV. 518 00:53:21,270 --> 00:53:32,330 I did Francis book have survived and survived the Plague or Peter Piltz book reflecting on both HIV and Ebola could no time to lose. 519 00:53:32,330 --> 00:53:36,920 So, I mean, there are many and I'm very happy to make my shortlist available. 520 00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:41,480 But Eric. I think you've got a much better list. Well, I was going to say I'm happy to. 521 00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:47,570 So as people are now, the special issues about to come out and it's it'll be openly available online. 522 00:53:47,570 --> 00:53:53,120 And so there's obviously there'll be fifteen articles for people to read. But of course, a lot of those articles, some are written. 523 00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:58,100 So we have a range of scholars in terms of early in their career, later in their career. 524 00:53:58,100 --> 00:53:58,610 And of course, 525 00:53:58,610 --> 00:54:05,070 a lot of them will be citing some classic work and a lot of them are referring back to that classic work to kind of rethink some of that. 526 00:54:05,070 --> 00:54:11,720 So John Henderson, who's written these wonderful things on plague in in France, Italy, 527 00:54:11,720 --> 00:54:19,160 and so to have his perspective on who's been writing about quarantine within this context and then suddenly to have it breached the public, 528 00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:25,070 we a wonderful colleague, Margaret Spelling here at Oxford, who's emeritus and working through with her. 529 00:54:25,070 --> 00:54:28,250 She she wrote a really wonderful article on endemic disease. 530 00:54:28,250 --> 00:54:35,150 And I think for someone who's been who spent a career writing about the history of disease, 19th century cholera, 531 00:54:35,150 --> 00:54:40,610 and then to suddenly have this pandemic unfold and then to be able to come back to your work and write on it, 532 00:54:40,610 --> 00:54:50,140 not necessarily with explicit reference to cover 19, but I think suddenly with a kind of return to the urgency of the ideas that they want to capture. 533 00:54:50,140 --> 00:54:58,550 And I do think you can have a kind of long doray that might help us to to think about what's new, what's not new, but also in some ways to remove us. 534 00:54:58,550 --> 00:55:08,360 Because I do think to have that distance when we're in the immediacy to try to think about what's different, what might be the same is very useful. 535 00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:10,280 So be very happy to post that, 536 00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:16,940 as well as a question of the readings that we've been doing in this reading group with the students, which really I have to say, 537 00:55:16,940 --> 00:55:21,590 these are readings that I've been teaching for 10, 15 years, 538 00:55:21,590 --> 00:55:25,700 including to some of the students where apparently they don't remember reading them, you know, a few terms ago. 539 00:55:25,700 --> 00:55:32,000 But I think now in the midst of in the midst of the pandemic, they know things that you think, 540 00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:38,550 why why are we reading this old text about history of disease? Suddenly it comes alive to you and you way. 541 00:55:38,550 --> 00:55:41,900 So very happy to have that on the website. 542 00:55:41,900 --> 00:55:50,600 I mean, on that score, I was working on a translation piece of a number of colleagues from French that about touch on the history of touch. 543 00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:55,370 And people were sort of very originally when we first article we've got about a month ago. 544 00:55:55,370 --> 00:56:05,330 Now everybody's going, oh, yeah, touch. It's so important. And so, of course, we come to new understandings of our own bodies through this as well. 545 00:56:05,330 --> 00:56:12,350 We're running almost out of time. But this time, I think for two or three more questions, if you've still got the energy and the time for it. 546 00:56:12,350 --> 00:56:21,380 The first one is about the role of the press conferences and the daily briefings and the sort of the degree. 547 00:56:21,380 --> 00:56:27,550 I mean, there's two ways of thinking about this. It seems to me coming from the questions. Some people are saying these are enormously helpful. 548 00:56:27,550 --> 00:56:34,460 And isn't it interesting that now we believe an expert again when they were supposedly not believed in a while back? 549 00:56:34,460 --> 00:56:38,870 Others are saying this is just a distraction from what's really going on. 550 00:56:38,870 --> 00:56:41,120 Whether that's about poverty, discrimination, 551 00:56:41,120 --> 00:56:49,010 the kind of social element of disease that we've been talking about or whether it's sort of a political part of political theatre. 552 00:56:49,010 --> 00:56:54,590 And that's all it is. Can I invite you to reflect on either of those things? 553 00:56:54,590 --> 00:56:59,270 Well, my personal and I'm really glad that whoever asked these questions asked them, 554 00:56:59,270 --> 00:57:05,360 because I'm quite fascinated by me in terms of it being this epidemiological scientific narrative. 555 00:57:05,360 --> 00:57:13,500 And I mean, many public health friends have been commenting about the way in which everybody suddenly overnight an epidemiologist. 556 00:57:13,500 --> 00:57:21,650 And there's something quite touching about the fact that you hear counsellors in in distant parts of the country talking about the number, 557 00:57:21,650 --> 00:57:26,720 which was something that, you know, very few people understood what the our number was even two months ago. 558 00:57:26,720 --> 00:57:29,840 So it's quite wonderful, this sort of expansion of knowledge around this. 559 00:57:29,840 --> 00:57:37,910 But it's also in terms of narratives creates a story which is the story of epidemiology and health in a very narrow concept. 560 00:57:37,910 --> 00:57:46,730 And I was struck about a statement by Caroline Noakes, who was questioning the prime minister yesterday from a gender perspective, 561 00:57:46,730 --> 00:57:50,750 and she's been quite hammered for the fact that she spoke about child care. 562 00:57:50,750 --> 00:57:57,010 She took it, talked about women's impact, the impact of the epidemic on women in terms of women. 563 00:57:57,010 --> 00:58:00,910 Being furloughed for longer, having less access to employment, 564 00:58:00,910 --> 00:58:08,050 and she was being hammered by male politicians saying why you're not talking about the fact that women are dying. 565 00:58:08,050 --> 00:58:13,360 And so it seems as if what we want through the ways in which at least the scientific component 566 00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:18,610 to this is going is to maintain a narrative which is about the numbers of people infected, 567 00:58:18,610 --> 00:58:27,800 the numbers and the amount of disease, rather than this much broader, more complex narrative of our societies changing. 568 00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:32,340 I mean, I would I would definitely pick up on that, because one that I have is. 569 00:58:32,340 --> 00:58:37,440 Epidemics, outbreaks of disease are always a period when people are very hungry for information. 570 00:58:37,440 --> 00:58:42,270 And so you have large amounts of information circulating. This is true in the past, as in today. 571 00:58:42,270 --> 00:58:48,270 But whether that knowledge, whether that information is to be relied upon. 572 00:58:48,270 --> 00:58:53,380 I actually think we have an right as we have this notion that somehow now we have all these forms of media. 573 00:58:53,380 --> 00:58:58,270 So we're going to know what's going on. But I'm often struck by how we still have more information. 574 00:58:58,270 --> 00:59:02,070 And it's not clear if that information is any more trustworthy. 575 00:59:02,070 --> 00:59:09,630 And that actually we might be in a very similar situation to periods in the past in which we have this desire that we can't fill. 576 00:59:09,630 --> 00:59:15,630 But also to pick on Robin's point about numbers. So one of the things I work on is the history of numbers. 577 00:59:15,630 --> 00:59:16,050 And of course, 578 00:59:16,050 --> 00:59:25,830 numbers very often are brought up during times of war and during times of disease because numbers give us this reassurance of certainty. 579 00:59:25,830 --> 00:59:31,050 Both war and epidemics tend to be periods of crisis and great uncertainty. 580 00:59:31,050 --> 00:59:36,210 And I think we want to think about whether or not those numbers actually do provide anything tangible. 581 00:59:36,210 --> 00:59:43,140 So I think there's this amazing way in which the Johns Hopkins dashboard has those numbers in red. 582 00:59:43,140 --> 00:59:50,310 And yet, what actually are the numbers of cases telling us? Like Robin is saying, this is actually a very complex narrative. 583 00:59:50,310 --> 00:59:58,780 And to turn it into one about numbers might be trying to reassure us that we can we can predict and that we know where we are when when we might not. 584 00:59:58,780 --> 01:00:05,430 Now, just bouncing on that, you know, when my personal obsessions is this whole problem with testing and the lack of access to testing, 585 01:00:05,430 --> 01:00:11,340 which is agitating me massively before I even try to find my way through the system personally. 586 01:00:11,340 --> 01:00:16,110 But, you know, the back calculations that came out last week suggest that one point five million 587 01:00:16,110 --> 01:00:21,460 people in this country have already acquired the virus and yet the numbers. 588 01:00:21,460 --> 01:00:30,090 But many, many, many miles away from that. And so, of course, you know, it's always, you know, you look you find what you look for. 589 01:00:30,090 --> 01:00:32,160 And if you're not looking, you don't find. 590 01:00:32,160 --> 01:00:40,110 And most likely, if you tested me today, you wouldn't find virus because it's only transiently in the body from what we know. 591 01:00:40,110 --> 01:00:44,050 And so we're never going to be able to have an accurate data. 592 01:00:44,050 --> 01:00:54,000 And yet there was a fantasy that's being created by all these charts that we do have that knowledge and that we can compare ourselves with others. 593 01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:58,380 And of course, you know what what gets counted, what gets measured, gets done. 594 01:00:58,380 --> 01:01:08,400 And there is a long history and really quite a sad history still at the w.h of the lack of data disaggregated by gender and by gender, 595 01:01:08,400 --> 01:01:12,570 I mean not by sex, so that we never have adequate consent, you know, 596 01:01:12,570 --> 01:01:19,920 information on how different genders are affected by different diseases, how different age groups is. 597 01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:24,690 The data that is presented is as good as the data that is put in. 598 01:01:24,690 --> 01:01:30,480 And it's extremely limited, particularly in countries with fewer resources. 599 01:01:30,480 --> 01:01:35,910 I mean, one, I'll just say very quickly what one might think about this is, of course, numbers also are a narrative, right? 600 01:01:35,910 --> 01:01:40,650 I think very often we've been talking as if narratives have to do with this kind of positive version. 601 01:01:40,650 --> 01:01:43,790 But actually, I always think it's important to remember that they, too, are a narrative. 602 01:01:43,790 --> 01:01:48,840 They to tell their own version of a story with some hearts left out. 603 01:01:48,840 --> 01:01:51,680 That's exactly what I was going to say anyway. 604 01:01:51,680 --> 01:02:00,960 And perhaps one more thing, which is a recurrent metaphor that's run through our discussions every now and then. 605 01:02:00,960 --> 01:02:05,880 Robin, you even apologised for it at one point. Is the militaristic narrative. 606 01:02:05,880 --> 01:02:09,990 And I, again, would invite you to reflect on that as a final thing. 607 01:02:09,990 --> 01:02:17,310 And in particular, perhaps, again, the kind of agency that that militaristic narrative distribute, 608 01:02:17,310 --> 01:02:21,350 whether that's in relation to gender or in relation to technology or, 609 01:02:21,350 --> 01:02:30,990 you know, how what kind of agency is implied by a narrative of a battle, a war against this, 610 01:02:30,990 --> 01:02:36,180 you know, opposing force that's coming into our lives, et cetera, et cetera? 611 01:02:36,180 --> 01:02:40,590 I think it's a it's been such a troublesome concept in the area of HIV. 612 01:02:40,590 --> 01:02:47,260 And it's it's rearing its head again here. And quite fascinating in terms of the whole world is at war with this virus. 613 01:02:47,260 --> 01:02:57,670 We're no longer at war with each other. And yet this concept is, you know, are you a bad person if you don't manage to battle through and survive? 614 01:02:57,670 --> 01:03:06,480 You know, we'll put it in the moral statements about winning the war against a virus and how, you know, 615 01:03:06,480 --> 01:03:14,460 how do we wage war on something which is a pathogen that is affecting societies in a variety of ways. 616 01:03:14,460 --> 01:03:19,440 I think I think that's a very simple side of creating the good and the bad. 617 01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:28,420 And the victorious person who drinks hydroponic chlorine daily is not going to get infected with this. 618 01:03:28,420 --> 01:03:34,350 And yeah, I think you've thought a lot about it in the locate circle perspective, would you, Erica? 619 01:03:34,350 --> 01:03:38,490 I was going to say, because, of course, I work on the history of war as well as this rare disease. 620 01:03:38,490 --> 01:03:42,740 And I suppose what is fascinating to me is war is also a complex social phenomena. 621 01:03:42,740 --> 01:03:48,960 Right. And and we also have different cultural approaches to understanding whether we think or as a normal part of life, 622 01:03:48,960 --> 01:03:56,700 as many people dead and the premodern period and whether we think it's an unacceptable part of life, which is abnormal. 623 01:03:56,700 --> 01:04:01,260 So I think what's also interesting is in some ways, we're trying to reach for metaphors, 624 01:04:01,260 --> 01:04:08,400 for concepts that themselves are still complex and bound up with our own social assumptions, 625 01:04:08,400 --> 01:04:16,870 which is an indication of of what we're trying to deal with them, perhaps that there's not a straightforward solution or even an easy way to discuss. 626 01:04:16,870 --> 01:04:21,370 Thank you. I think we should bring things towards a close. 627 01:04:21,370 --> 01:04:27,550 And start by saying thank you to our brilliant speakers, Eric and Robin, for a wonderful session this evening. 628 01:04:27,550 --> 01:04:33,550 And a big thank you to to all our viewers and listeners at home for watching, listening and for your comments and questions. 629 01:04:33,550 --> 01:04:39,520 I'm sorry if we didn't quite have time to get to all of them, but I hope you will feel like I do that. 630 01:04:39,520 --> 01:04:46,120 We've all learnt a great deal and every now and then had a bit of fun as well this evening from this evening's discussion. 631 01:04:46,120 --> 01:04:52,630 So thank you once again, Erica. And thank you, Robin. 632 01:04:52,630 --> 01:04:56,890 Everyone else, please do come back to the big tent for next week's live event. 633 01:04:56,890 --> 01:04:59,800 On Thursday, the 4th of June at 5:00 p.m., 634 01:04:59,800 --> 01:05:06,670 we'll be joined by Professor Katherine Cole from the mediaeval Amun Languages Faculty here in Oxford and Rajinder Dederer, 635 01:05:06,670 --> 01:05:11,500 professor of cultural studies and creative industries at Birmingham City University. 636 01:05:11,500 --> 01:05:18,620 Together, they'll be discussing creative multilingualism as part of next week's theme languages. 637 01:05:18,620 --> 01:05:24,710 You've all given your own time, your thoughts, your questions and your engagement as we come together online. 638 01:05:24,710 --> 01:05:31,910 This series would not be possible without the support from so many people, including the so-called backstage talk torch team. 639 01:05:31,910 --> 01:06:10,090 And I'm grateful to them, too. For now, then. Thank you, everyone, and goodbye.