TRIGGERnometry - August 11, 2021


Should We Vaccinate Children Against COVID？ - Prof Karol Sikora


Episode Stats

Length

58 minutes

Words per Minute

174.35135

Word Count

10,129

Sentence Count

665

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

22


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:15.440 Is this normal to vaccinate people who are not at risk of a disease
00:00:20.220 to protect other people? Is that normally done?
00:00:23.640 No, this is the first time it's been suggested.
00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin.
00:00:38.800 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:00:44.520 A fascinating guest we have for you today. He is a consultant oncologist. He's a professor
00:00:49.840 of medicine at the University of Buckingham and most important of all, a returning guest
00:00:53.880 to the show. Dr. Karasakor, welcome back. Thank you very much. It's so good to have
00:00:57.860 you back on the show. It's been about a year since we last had you on to talk about lockdown and
00:01:02.540 COVID. And we didn't really get into vaccines, I think, much of the time. What have you made of
00:01:07.160 the last year and everything that's been going on? Well, it's been fairly fast paced, not what I
00:01:12.220 expected. I mean, going into lockdown and when it began was easy. It was easy for the politicians.
00:01:18.560 It was easy for those that implemented it. Getting out is much more complex. And that's what we're
00:01:24.800 seeing now. We're seeing the tail end of getting out of it. And, you know, the ridiculous business
00:01:30.580 of the different four countries having different rules within the UK. And yet anyone can travel
00:01:37.660 between them. So the rules are sort of nonsense, basically. But I think now we're in a very good
00:01:43.520 position. The number of hospital admissions has fallen, the number of cases has fallen,
00:01:48.740 and we seem to be getting out of the third wave.
00:01:52.740 The pessimists, the gloomy boys and girls say,
00:01:56.480 what about the fourth wave?
00:01:58.620 If there is anything, it'll just be a little blip.
00:02:01.480 That's my reading of the situation.
00:02:03.420 But what about winter?
00:02:04.880 Surely there's going to be another peak in winter.
00:02:06.820 And I don't say this to someone who's in any way desperate
00:02:09.120 for that to happen.
00:02:10.440 It's more that I think it's been a year and a half
00:02:13.140 of these constant expectations.
00:02:15.700 And you're known for your positivity.
00:02:17.380 Of course you are.
00:02:17.960 And I think last time we talked, you were hopeful that this would be over by previous January, but that hasn't transpired.
00:02:24.680 So the concern for, I think, for everybody is that as winter comes, there will be pressures, whether they're COVID or not.
00:02:31.720 There's always pressure on the NHS. And the feeling, I think, is given the public sentiment, which I find difficult to explain, frankly, at this point, we will be in another lockdown.
00:02:41.160 Don't you think that that's likely? Well, if it was due to COVID, yes, but it's not likely to be due to COVID.
00:02:47.120 It's likely due to other viruses and secondary pneumonia.
00:02:50.480 It happens every winter.
00:02:51.520 You know, I was a medical student many, many years ago.
00:02:54.240 And when I came out of the book work and went to the wards, the first year there was a flu
00:02:59.440 epidemic and it was chaos.
00:03:01.460 The whole wards, no routine operations, everything cancelled because of flu.
00:03:07.300 And mainly elderly patients got a bit of an infection with the virus and then they got
00:03:13.180 secondary pneumonia and some of them ended up on ventilators.
00:03:16.540 And that happens every year. We call it winter pressures in the NHS. It's a euphemism. No other country has winter pressures. It's a failure to have the capacity to deal with it. And therefore, you have to shut down services such as routine non-urgent surgery to make beds, to make facilities available, to make intensive care available for those that need it because of the infection.
00:03:41.480 So will we actually get coronavirus causing a problem in the winter?
00:03:47.160 Perhaps in a small way, but it's much more likely
00:03:49.780 there are a whole row of other things coming along,
00:03:52.760 flu, other coronaviruses that will dominate
00:03:56.860 and cause the winter pressures.
00:03:59.280 And of course...
00:03:59.760 That's great.
00:04:03.320 So I guess what I'm saying is I'm just...
00:04:07.380 You're positive that this is the tail end of it.
00:04:10.540 But should people be positive about it?
00:04:15.640 I think they should.
00:04:16.920 We've got to learn to live with this.
00:04:18.580 We can't have this nonsense just this week about travelling.
00:04:22.880 I mean, you know, either you go for it and you say,
00:04:25.580 that's it, we're opening things up, or you don't.
00:04:28.960 You can't suddenly say, oh, this country's just become red on Sunday,
00:04:33.120 and so unless you get back by Sunday, you're stuck.
00:04:36.400 And this is Mexico, where there's quite a lot of tourists have gone.
00:04:39.180 and these people are desperate.
00:04:41.480 I mean, you know, it costs an awful lot
00:04:43.560 to organise your own trip home on a commercial airliner
00:04:47.480 and they don't get any help
00:04:49.240 from their existing provider of transport.
00:04:51.660 So I think it's that sort of thing
00:04:53.600 that's really irritating.
00:04:54.960 We've got to come out of it in a smooth way
00:04:57.440 instead of a sort of a jagged way
00:05:00.600 which leaves bad taste.
00:05:01.920 And then the rest of society,
00:05:04.420 you know, there's lots of illogicality.
00:05:06.540 The biggest one, I was in Wales, yes,
00:05:09.180 day before yesterday. Wales has different rules. So they're still with masks everywhere, with
00:05:15.140 social distancing. No one's enforcing it, but they have that rule. So I went to a little
00:05:21.940 restaurant for a curry with a colleague, and you had to wear a mask to go from the door. It's a
00:05:27.260 tiny little place, no bigger than the studio here. And you had to wear a mask to go through the door.
00:05:32.720 You sat down, you take the mask off. And this has seemed ridiculous that, you know, for 10 yards,
00:05:38.300 So you wore a mask, then you took it off.
00:05:40.060 And obviously the staff all wore masks.
00:05:42.640 So it's these sort of rules that are not based on any real science
00:05:47.280 that seem to be still lingering and will probably linger way until Christmas
00:05:53.000 as people still don't get totally relaxed about the virus, basically.
00:05:59.160 Do you sometimes worry, Carol, that with the lockdowns,
00:06:01.880 we've opened the Pandora's box?
00:06:03.920 So you say that every winter the NHS comes under pressure
00:06:08.260 because of capacity, the government's going to say,
00:06:10.820 right, well, the NHS, we need to protect the NHS,
00:06:14.120 let's shut everything down again.
00:06:16.280 That certainly is a worry, that you use the experience of the last year,
00:06:20.960 anything that comes along, whether it's winter or not,
00:06:23.440 you say, oh, let's shut down again, and you do a dramatic shutdown.
00:06:27.700 The other way is to say, let's expand the NHS, expand healthcare,
00:06:31.980 not necessarily in the same form as we've got it now,
00:06:35.880 and develop places that people can go that have chest infections.
00:06:40.880 And, you know, when you look at it, the problem we've got,
00:06:44.440 you've got hospitals, which are expensive,
00:06:46.480 £500 a night for a bed in a hospital anywhere in the country
00:06:50.080 because of the staff costs.
00:06:52.260 And you've got care homes which have no medical care,
00:06:55.460 no qualified nurses usually.
00:06:57.520 Maybe the head person there is a nurse,
00:07:01.060 but on the whole they have no medical facilities.
00:07:04.320 And they don't want to.
00:07:05.200 They're commercial. They're all private. And so there's only two choices. What we need is a third choice in the middle. For older people, they can go there and they can get medical care, a light version, not intravenous drips and not ventilators and things, but they can stay there and be looked after whilst they get better well enough to go to the care home with no medical care.
00:07:28.920 So it's a matter of, it's called a step-down accommodation, but we just don't really have any in this country.
00:07:36.440 Who runs it, the NHS or the private sector, it really doesn't matter.
00:07:40.240 And it could be free at the point of delivery.
00:07:42.320 So that's the key to it all.
00:07:44.560 Care homes are not free, of course.
00:07:46.140 I mean, some people get them free, but you have to have very little money.
00:07:49.760 If you've got a house, you're going to have to pay for your care home.
00:07:53.300 So that's the problem.
00:07:55.080 And Carol, we're talking about the NHS.
00:07:57.840 and it seems that the NHS, as long as I've been alive,
00:08:01.160 we've been talking about how it's in crisis.
00:08:03.300 But it does seem to be in crisis at the moment,
00:08:05.780 particularly when you look at waiting lists,
00:08:08.020 particularly when you look at the effects that COVID has had on the NHS.
00:08:12.220 I think the reason COVID's impinged on our healthcare system
00:08:16.200 compared to other European systems is simply capacity.
00:08:20.440 You know, waiting lists and rationing have been there.
00:08:23.940 I've been a consultant 40 years and we've had it all the time.
00:08:27.440 And to get an MR scan, a magnetic resonance scan,
00:08:31.200 if you've got backache or a knee problem,
00:08:33.440 or even if you've got sort of weight loss and abdominal pain,
00:08:37.300 it can take six months and everyone accepts it.
00:08:40.640 Whereas in France, you'd go within two days, you'd have the scan.
00:08:45.640 There's the capacity in the system, which we don't have.
00:08:48.740 So building up that capacity is clearly something that we can learn from COVID.
00:08:53.000 And it came suddenly.
00:08:55.000 And, of course, nobody really knows how many people are on the waiting list.
00:08:59.480 It's amazing.
00:09:00.400 The figures vary.
00:09:01.700 There's probably more than the government figures, 5.3 million at the moment.
00:09:05.620 But there's almost certainly more if you take everything, including scans and blood tests and so on.
00:09:12.440 And we sort of accepted a very sluggish system, GP, hospital.
00:09:19.660 And to get to see your GP can take six weeks now.
00:09:23.080 So just imagine you've got a, you know, you may have cancer
00:09:27.220 and you have to wait six weeks before you start.
00:09:30.160 Then you get to the GP.
00:09:31.340 Then you have to have a blood test.
00:09:32.660 You wait two weeks for that.
00:09:34.160 Then you get referred for an MR scan.
00:09:36.280 You wait another six weeks or even two months,
00:09:38.760 even for an urgent one.
00:09:39.920 So it's all that waiting that we have here
00:09:42.780 that other countries have avoided by having more capacity.
00:09:46.400 And why is that, Carol?
00:09:47.580 Because, you know, the people on the left go,
00:09:49.440 it's a funding problem.
00:09:50.380 The people on the right go, you know, the fact that the NHS is bloated,
00:09:54.580 it's misspending.
00:09:55.800 What is the truth?
00:09:57.740 It's between the two.
00:09:59.100 It is underfunded for what can be achieved with modern medicine.
00:10:03.000 It's also challenged by old people, people older than me.
00:10:06.480 That's my definition of an old person.
00:10:09.180 And people older than me are big consumers of it,
00:10:13.160 all of it from GP to hospital care and so on.
00:10:17.300 And often there's not much health systems can do for old people.
00:10:21.760 They have chronic comorbidities and generally body crumble.
00:10:27.960 And, you know, you're stuck with that.
00:10:31.320 For younger people, it's episodic care, which is what they want.
00:10:34.900 You have the defined procedure for doing something,
00:10:37.960 such as hernia or, you know, cataracts and so on.
00:10:42.820 You get that done.
00:10:43.720 The problem we've got is that the NHS is also a political tool, and it's very much bloated with middle management that want to be politically correct.
00:10:57.420 And, for example, two months ago, I had to do my yearly appraisal.
00:11:01.580 To do that, you have to do mandatory training online, and it involves all sorts of things, you know, courses on fire extinguishers.
00:11:11.060 Well, I can see the use of the violence in English, of course, just in case.
00:11:15.340 I can see that.
00:11:16.820 But to have to learn about equality and diversity,
00:11:20.460 I understand the problems of equality and diversity,
00:11:23.640 but to spend an hour going through it,
00:11:26.800 it's sort of almost religious.
00:11:28.820 I was brought up as a Roman Catholic,
00:11:30.660 so I'm used to catechismic learning,
00:11:33.200 where people tell you this is what you have to do,
00:11:35.740 and this is the right way.
00:11:37.660 So you have to go through all that.
00:11:39.420 And someone has to supervise it.
00:11:41.420 And ironically, most of these training courses are outsourced to the private sector.
00:11:46.400 So it's almost ridiculous that we all have to do this.
00:11:50.000 But I think throughout the NHS, there's a sort of a cult of a religion there.
00:11:55.300 And, you know, we saw it with the banging of spoons in COVID.
00:11:58.500 That's a sort of almost a religious act that you're praising your priests, the high priests of the NHS.
00:12:05.580 And, you know, you can say what people are praising, of course,
00:12:09.880 is the medical nursing staff.
00:12:12.200 They're not praising the structure.
00:12:14.120 And that's the problem.
00:12:15.540 They have to dissociate that and try and move forward.
00:12:19.560 And you talk about the priest class,
00:12:22.520 which I think is actually a very important conversation,
00:12:24.640 but there's been another area in which I feel that that's been happening,
00:12:27.600 which you alluded to earlier,
00:12:28.860 which is this notion that every restriction that has been imposed on the country,
00:12:34.100 every decision that's been made, it's all been following the science, which is a phrase that
00:12:39.620 irritates me massively because from what I know about the science, both my parents are scientists,
00:12:45.120 the science is about discussion and debate and different points of view and testing hypotheses
00:12:49.940 and sometimes being wrong and being able to admit it. The idea that the science has one
00:12:56.060 particular view is frankly absurd, yet that has been the messaging. What have you made of that?
00:13:02.360 I think we've seen the politicians on one side trying to implement the advice they're getting from committees, and SAGE is the main committee, but there are little subcommittees, and it's very difficult.
00:13:15.080 I mean, the committee's work, they take the data and maybe 20 people on stage on the committee, obviously just doing it virtually.
00:13:25.520 And so you get one or two people that are very negative and want to have, you know, severe lockdown, vaccinate everybody, including babies, all this sort of stuff.
00:13:36.080 Everyone has to wear masks everywhere.
00:13:38.480 And so they tend to dominate the thinking of the group.
00:13:42.740 So it's called groupthink, and they convert people.
00:13:45.840 Everyone wants the committee to come to an end,
00:13:48.880 so you have to get some sort of consensus.
00:13:51.600 And so the consensus tends to go with the severest option, goes down.
00:13:56.140 If you remove two or three people that are doing that,
00:13:58.760 you'd have a much more balanced view.
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00:14:04.920 No, mate, I'm English.
00:14:06.560 If foreigners can't understand me, I just shout at them.
00:14:09.460 Think about it, you could learn how to say penalties in Italian.
00:14:13.160 Leave it.
00:14:14.060 But if you do want to learn another language because maybe you want to have new experiences,
00:14:18.680 live in another country, or maybe you just want to open your mind.
00:14:22.000 My mind's open enough. If I open it up any further, my brain's going to hurt.
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00:15:56.060 The other beef I've got about it is the data is not disclosed.
00:16:00.620 So a great example last week, vaccinating 16 and 17-year-olds.
00:16:07.940 So, OK, it's a valid point.
00:16:10.680 If the risk of getting COVID would lead to more illness, then vaccination, provided it doesn't cause a lot of side effects, would be justified.
00:16:22.160 But, you know, where's the data?
00:16:23.920 Show us how you've come to that conclusion.
00:16:26.380 And there was nothing.
00:16:27.320 This was a subcommittee called the Joint Committee of Vaccines and Immunisation.
00:16:32.580 And it's been around for years and they've looked at how to do schedules for mumps and for measles and polio and so on.
00:16:39.700 Now they're stuck with COVID.
00:16:41.820 And immunising the 16 and 17-year-olds is a valid point.
00:16:46.900 But let's see the risk-benefit analysis.
00:16:49.320 And it's not public.
00:16:50.780 And so we don't really know.
00:16:52.600 So all these GPs are going to have to go out and collect up the 16 to 17 rolls
00:16:57.420 and shoot them up with vaccine without really knowing
00:17:01.260 if the risks of the vaccine outweigh the risks of getting COVID
00:17:05.980 because they're not a group that get ill with COVID on the whole.
00:17:08.920 They get COVID but not.
00:17:10.760 And, you know, the ethicist...
00:17:12.600 Well, Carol, that's not good, is it?
00:17:14.300 The GPs are going to be vaccinating people without really knowing
00:17:17.660 whether the risk is worth it.
00:17:20.240 Absolutely.
00:17:20.600 That's not a good thing, is it?
00:17:21.480 You know, I've asked them to publish the data, but they won't.
00:17:27.100 And, you know, one suspects the data are muddy because, you know,
00:17:31.720 the vaccine, and it's only the Pfizer vaccine that's going to be allowed.
00:17:35.500 So the Pfizer vaccine is probably the best studied of the vaccines
00:17:39.600 because it was the trials in the States and in South America
00:17:42.980 were right at the very beginning, and they included young people,
00:17:46.360 including children.
00:17:47.720 Carol, sorry, can I just interrupt?
00:17:49.020 why is it they're only going to give the Pfizer vaccine to the kids and not the AstraZeneca?
00:17:54.800 Okay, so the AstraZeneca doesn't go to anybody below 40 at the moment. And the reason is that
00:18:00.900 the AstraZeneca has a side effect profile, which is age related. In other words, if you're over 40,
00:18:06.760 you don't get the side effects. If you're under 40, the side effects on the heart and on the lungs
00:18:12.260 are more severe with the vaccine.
00:18:14.820 All vaccines have severe side effects,
00:18:18.360 but in very small numbers of people.
00:18:20.660 Even polio has side effects.
00:18:23.120 The polio vaccine.
00:18:24.040 The polio vaccine has side effects.
00:18:26.260 But it's very low,
00:18:29.280 and the consequences of polio are very bad for a child.
00:18:32.660 They can be paralysed.
00:18:35.680 When I was a youngster,
00:18:37.700 you could see people that had polio.
00:18:39.320 They were limping around with a bad leg
00:18:41.240 and calipers and so on.
00:18:42.360 That's all gone for a society because of the vaccine.
00:18:45.700 But coming back to SARS,
00:18:48.080 the problem there is that you're going to immunise an age group
00:18:52.220 that really is not troubled by the infection if they get it.
00:18:56.060 Very few are going to be in hospital.
00:18:58.140 Very few are going to be on a ventilator.
00:19:00.480 So the ethicists love the situation
00:19:02.840 because they say one of the reasons they want to vaccinate kids
00:19:05.680 is because you're protecting the older people.
00:19:09.180 So you're vaccinating, you're putting at risk a young person
00:19:12.980 so an older person can live.
00:19:15.620 Well, the older person has now been double vaccinated.
00:19:18.500 So why should this help?
00:19:20.760 I mean, it's in a logical area.
00:19:23.220 That's why it would be good to see the data on these sort of decisions.
00:19:26.580 Other countries have the same mess.
00:19:28.440 I mean, it's not just us.
00:19:29.940 Sure.
00:19:30.080 So the United States, everybody over 12 is being offered the vaccine
00:19:35.040 and the data is just not there for that.
00:19:37.180 Carol, what do you make of this? Because it's not something that Francis or I know about,
00:19:41.340 and these are real questions that I think a lot of people want to hear the answer to.
00:19:45.360 Is this normal to vaccinate people who are not at risk of a disease to protect other people?
00:19:52.220 Is that normally done?
00:19:53.680 No, this is the first time it's been suggested.
00:19:57.060 Really?
00:19:57.500 And that's why I'd be very keen to see the data. Forget the protection business.
00:20:02.360 See what's the risk-benefit analysis on the patient, on the child, on the 16-year-old.
00:20:09.160 What benefit do they get?
00:20:10.900 I mean, the story is all, well, September's coming up, they're going to go back to school
00:20:15.760 or back to college, and the boys and girls at 16 to 17, social distancing is not part
00:20:22.540 of their agenda, and they'll go dancing and so on, so they need protection.
00:20:26.820 But if the risk is greater than the benefit, we shouldn't be doing it.
00:20:32.340 And so that's the sort of analysis you want to see.
00:20:35.520 And it's all right saying this is our conclusion, accept it without the data.
00:20:40.000 Well, that's wrong. We should be able to see the data.
00:20:42.700 But it's now been done. What about smallpox?
00:20:44.820 Didn't that get eradicated by the vaccinating?
00:20:47.360 It did. Smallpox and polio are the best success stories ever
00:20:52.340 because they were lethal diseases.
00:20:54.260 is, you know, the story of smallpox vaccination
00:20:56.940 goes back nearly 300 years.
00:21:00.140 And cowpox, it was noted by Jenner,
00:21:04.320 Edward Jenner, the founder of vaccinology, really,
00:21:08.100 that the milkmaids that have the cowpox
00:21:10.460 didn't get smallpox.
00:21:11.780 There was a cross-reaction.
00:21:13.400 And so we went around vaccinating people.
00:21:15.960 Vaca comes from the word cow, Latin,
00:21:18.220 I think way back from my O-level days.
00:21:20.680 So taking the cowpox and scratching it into the arms of not milkmaids, but everybody.
00:21:28.340 In fact, what was fascinating about Jenner, 20 years before, there was a guy called Benjamin
00:21:34.340 Jesty.
00:21:35.080 He wasn't a medic.
00:21:36.020 He was a farmer in Yetminster, which is a small village in Somerset.
00:21:42.540 And he did the same thing with his family and others around him.
00:21:46.860 But he got no credit for it.
00:21:48.800 He's got a blue plaque on his house because I've been there,
00:21:51.540 the farmhouse he had, but he got no credit for it.
00:21:54.780 Jenner got the credit because he was a physician.
00:21:57.340 His portrait's up in the Royal College of Physicians,
00:21:59.740 whereas our friend Benjamin Jesty was just the blue plaque on his farmhouse.
00:22:05.440 But, no, the whole business of vaccination is fascinating
00:22:09.360 because you're taking normal...
00:22:11.140 They're not patients.
00:22:12.160 They're the people that are normal, as we are the three of us sitting in the studio.
00:22:16.820 And so you're going to do an intervention
00:22:18.980 that must, by definition, carry risks for their benefit.
00:22:24.040 Can you do the same thing for other people's benefit?
00:22:26.860 And that's the question you're really asking.
00:22:28.740 That's what I'm getting at, because to me,
00:22:30.300 look, I'm not a medical ethicist,
00:22:32.160 but the ethics of that surely are questionable, aren't they?
00:22:35.380 They are.
00:22:36.240 And so that's why the data from JCVI on what benefit,
00:22:41.720 what's the risk benefit to the person you're vaccinating,
00:22:44.580 and forget what benefit on the population.
00:22:47.740 And is there not another way?
00:22:49.680 I mean, if a 16-year-old could do social distancing
00:22:54.460 from his grandparents, for example,
00:22:56.360 there's other ways of protecting the grandparents.
00:22:59.820 One of the problems of the whole immunisation business,
00:23:03.020 it's voluntary, there's no compulsion.
00:23:05.380 And it's the same for childhood vaccination.
00:23:07.500 As you know, with Andrew Wakefield
00:23:09.340 and all that data about autism and vaccines,
00:23:12.140 a lot of people stopped immunizing their kids. And that has led to an increase in the number of
00:23:17.560 children with measles and mumps and rubella and things like that, because parents have just
00:23:24.640 avoided getting vaccination. That's sort of disappearing now. With this, it's giving
00:23:30.700 vaccination a bad name for the reasons you just suggested. If you can't see the data,
00:23:35.540 why are we doing it? And it's a very, very, very good point. And you were saying that,
00:23:40.960 you know, we don't coerce people into taking vaccines.
00:23:44.260 We're kind of doing it now, aren't we, Carol?
00:23:46.160 Well, it's a very clever game.
00:23:48.060 You know, I think there's some very smart people in Number 10
00:23:50.720 that are sitting there looking at how to persuade people
00:23:53.320 to be vaccinated.
00:23:54.600 These are guys that have been to top universities.
00:23:57.520 They're very bright.
00:23:58.840 And they've come up with this idea that what we do,
00:24:01.420 we just drip it in.
00:24:02.260 We don't say vaccine passports are going to be compulsory.
00:24:04.980 We just drip it in.
00:24:06.020 And then you remove it.
00:24:07.360 But because you're dripping it in and the PR comes out,
00:24:10.420 You're going to have to have a vaccine passport.
00:24:12.720 I mean, how is it really going to be implemented?
00:24:14.560 A vaccine passport to go in the pub at the end of the road?
00:24:17.740 Who's going to check it?
00:24:18.820 Who's going to be able to validate that what you're showing is yours
00:24:22.160 and all the rest of it?
00:24:23.140 It's much more complex.
00:24:24.820 Crossing international borders is easy because you've got trained people
00:24:28.360 that can look at documents, you can insist on various things.
00:24:32.500 But going down to the king and queen at the end of the road,
00:24:35.400 that's not the real pub there.
00:24:36.800 So, you know, this is a different level.
00:24:40.960 So I think that the smart guys in number 10 have got a plan
00:24:45.240 that you just keep going with it, people then get vaccinated,
00:24:48.940 and then you remove the need for any certification
00:24:53.240 because you've succeeded.
00:24:55.120 The great thing about all vaccines,
00:24:57.420 you don't need to do the whole population.
00:25:00.200 If you do 80%, that's good enough.
00:25:02.800 And, of course, we're already at about 80% immunity
00:25:05.700 Jim, because a lot of people have COVID. So you've got the infected and you've got the vaccinated
00:25:10.740 people and both of them will have immunity. And so that stops the spread. So it reduces the R
00:25:16.840 number of spread. Well, let's go into the whole vaccine passport thing. Francis, sorry, just one
00:25:23.220 thing. I know I've been hogging the mic. I just wanted to say one thing on that particular issue,
00:25:27.360 which is the counter argument to everything you've said that we keep hearing. And I'd love for you to
00:25:32.000 address this, is the idea that if there's a small unvaccinated population, then that will be the
00:25:38.780 breeding ground for new variants, which will then reinfect and sabotage the whole programme.
00:25:43.840 What do you make of that argument? I think that's unlikely, simply because if you destroy the roots
00:25:49.880 of communication, transmission for the virus, you destroy the chances of a mutant getting out
00:25:55.820 into the immune people. There's very little evidence that once you're vaccinated, you're
00:26:00.480 going to get infected, even with mutants. So if a mutant arises and unvaccinated people,
00:26:08.900 it's unlikely that it can transmit back to your immune population.
00:26:13.020 Hold on, aren't we seeing people in hospital with COVID having been double-jabbed now?
00:26:17.000 A few, but it's mainly people that haven't been double-jabbed that go into hospital.
00:26:21.820 That serious illness is prevented by the vaccines, and there's no doubt. What's not
00:26:26.920 prevented by the vaccine necessarily is the transmission, especially after just one jab.
00:26:33.980 But on the whole, the vaccinated population protects the unvaccinated population. So
00:26:39.680 there is again, this sort of, you know, it's a strange business. And if you look at it,
00:26:46.740 we've never had it before, because if you look at things like polio, that doesn't,
00:26:51.480 the vaccines are perfect compared to SARS vaccine, which is not perfect. It's 80% effective. So 20%
00:27:00.500 you're getting no benefit for. So that's the trouble with it all. And people play around
00:27:05.480 with those numbers. I mean, you know, I'm not an immunologist, but I know enough to understand that
00:27:10.500 it's to say, well, the Pfizer vaccine is 95% effective. Well, what does that really mean?
00:27:17.720 You'd really love to do the experiment.
00:27:19.560 You've got 100 people, you give them the shot,
00:27:21.920 and then you infect them deliberately.
00:27:24.860 And you see how many get it.
00:27:26.800 Then you take another 100 people, no vaccine,
00:27:29.320 shoot them up, you know, and they all get it.
00:27:32.200 And that's the number you really want to do the comparison,
00:27:35.300 but that would be an unethical experiment.
00:27:37.880 So going back to the idea of vaccine passports,
00:27:40.920 there's a lot of people who will say that those people
00:27:45.400 are putting others at risk in an event, in a concert, et cetera, et cetera.
00:27:50.920 We can't have them in that area.
00:27:53.900 This is how we protect people.
00:27:55.440 Do you agree with that argument?
00:27:56.720 No.
00:27:57.140 I think you can do it alternatively.
00:27:59.020 You can do testing.
00:27:59.980 We've got very good rapid tests now, lateral flow tests,
00:28:04.140 which, sure, there's false positives, there's false negatives,
00:28:07.260 but they're really not bad.
00:28:08.760 And I think that should be enough to gain your entrance to Wembley
00:28:12.320 or some big event.
00:28:14.140 I think it's interesting.
00:28:15.180 I noticed an advert for cruising.
00:28:17.620 I've never been on a cruise, and I never want to go on a cruise, by the way.
00:28:21.380 Saga Cruises, and it said everyone has to be vaccinated.
00:28:25.580 So it was in the advert for the cruise.
00:28:27.880 It said vaccine people only or something like that.
00:28:31.180 I know that's an interesting, exactly what you say,
00:28:34.340 people feel more secure if everyone's been vaccinated on the boat.
00:28:38.120 But it's much better to test everybody as they go onto the boat.
00:28:41.600 The trouble with that is what do you do?
00:28:43.560 with people who are in Southampton docks
00:28:45.280 and someone tests positive, you're stuck.
00:28:48.740 They've got to take their luggage back.
00:28:50.600 They've got to go.
00:28:51.640 They'll be really very distraught about the situation.
00:28:55.780 So that is the problem of testing.
00:28:57.840 But you could test before they leave the house.
00:29:00.340 I mean, there's ways of doing it.
00:29:02.340 And there are lots of, around the corner from your studio,
00:29:05.180 there's a place that says testing, same-day service.
00:29:08.400 Everywhere you can get these things.
00:29:10.700 Wouldn't you agree as well, Carol,
00:29:12.260 that the introduction of vaccine passports
00:29:15.700 or the threatened introduction of vaccine passports
00:29:17.900 actually heightens suspicion amongst people
00:29:21.420 who are worried about the vaccine?
00:29:24.540 It does.
00:29:25.740 And that's why mandatory, making it mandatory,
00:29:28.980 is probably the wrong approach.
00:29:31.760 Now, a lot of arguments within healthcare
00:29:34.180 whether you can make mandatory vaccination of staff.
00:29:38.360 And that is a really difficult issue.
00:29:40.200 And we were all very privileged to be offered vaccination right at the beginning.
00:29:44.640 I got mine the first week of January.
00:29:46.660 I went round to Hammersmith, my old hospital,
00:29:49.660 and eight o'clock in the morning, coffee and a bun and shoot up.
00:29:54.100 And, you know, but there are a group of people that just don't want it.
00:29:59.080 Whatever reason, they just don't want it.
00:30:01.080 Now, can you insist that they don't work front line with patients?
00:30:05.640 If they're going to insist on that, what use are they to you?
00:30:08.440 because if a nurse can't be on a ward, what are you going to do?
00:30:12.860 Make her an administrator or something?
00:30:14.940 I mean, there's not that many roles for people that are, you know,
00:30:19.460 frontline clinical to go behind because they won't be vaccinated.
00:30:24.200 So much better to try and persuade them to be vaccinated or to, you know,
00:30:28.960 does it really matter?
00:30:30.700 It's back to following the science that you mentioned, Constantine.
00:30:34.640 We don't really know if a small percentage, say 10% of your staff are not vaccinated,
00:30:42.060 are there going to be a problem in dealing with patients?
00:30:46.240 Because obviously patient safety is paramount in any healthcare system.
00:30:49.860 Care home is the same.
00:30:51.620 And so can you immunise all the staff to prevent them being a route of transmission?
00:30:57.000 And I think you can persuade them to be without making it compulsory.
00:31:01.320 Do you think it's illogical for people to be fearful of this vaccine? I'll give you an example.
00:31:06.000 My girlfriend's 32 years old. She had the AstraZeneca. It's now said that you should
00:31:10.360 be over the age of 40 to have AstraZeneca. There's countries that have said that banned
00:31:14.720 AstraZeneca for a certain period of time. Is it logical for people to be concerned about this
00:31:21.740 vaccine and not want to take it if you're looking at the science and the data?
00:31:26.080 I think the AstraZeneca has a different toxicity profile, side effect profile, than the Pfizer.
00:31:34.100 On the other hand, it's a much more established way of making a vaccine, taking another virus and
00:31:40.600 coupling it up with some proteins that it expresses to make it look as though it's a SARS virus to the
00:31:46.040 immune system. The Pfizer is just a little bit of RNA, which is the message that DNA makes protein
00:31:53.680 with. And so it's a sort of genetic engineering, if you like. You're putting an artificial gene
00:32:00.180 in the arm, which is going to turn over proteins that, again, convince the immune system you've
00:32:05.760 already been infected and therefore develop a powerful resistance if you do get exposed to the
00:32:11.460 virus. So, you know, the side effect profiles are different. And what's emerged in the clinical
00:32:17.940 trials is that the Pfizer seems to have less side effects in younger people than the AstraZeneca.
00:32:25.300 And that's the reason for the age cut off. Other countries have made it 60 rather than 40. So
00:32:30.480 Scandinavian countries won't give AstraZeneca under 60 to try and avoid this. And the most
00:32:37.200 serious problems are in the heart, the brain, and the lung. And it's inflammation. It's
00:32:42.700 non-specific inflammatory change. Most cases, it's transient. Two or three weeks, it gets better.
00:32:50.260 But in some, it doesn't. And that's the worry. And there have been deaths, but there are deaths
00:32:55.340 with both vaccines. The real trouble with relating anything to a vaccine is people are primed when
00:33:02.980 they get the vaccine. Anything that goes wrong, they blame the vaccine. And it may have happened
00:33:08.080 anyway and you can't separate that then how do you convince these people who are worried of which
00:33:14.500 I'll be honest with you I am one of them yeah because I like you said I saw the way that they
00:33:19.620 changed continually I and I was thinking at one point do I take the AZ oh I can't take the AZ
00:33:26.280 how do you convince people then but also Francis you've had COVID right yeah and I've had but I've
00:33:31.860 had COVID. So I think to myself, should I take it? Should I not take it? I've had COVID. I was
00:33:39.300 fine with it. I felt rough for a week, but then I got over it. Do I need the vaccine?
00:33:45.100 The answer is, Francis, nobody knows what to advise an individual. And that's where we are,
00:33:50.700 that we can't advise an individual. We can look at the whole population and look at the benefit
00:33:56.140 in terms of preventing COVID-related illness and then including long COVID. And then we can look at
00:34:03.260 the risks of having the vaccine. And in someone of your age, they're relatively small, whether
00:34:09.760 it's AstraZeneca or Pfizer. I mean, they're almost trivial. But if you do get bad side effects,
00:34:15.300 they're not going to be trivial. And that's the problem. So the advice for populations is get
00:34:21.520 immunise, how we persuade people. I mean, I think it's crazy persuading people by giving
00:34:27.060 monetary offerings and $100 in the States and so on, or a Big Mac, have a Big Mac. This seems
00:34:33.580 counter-insuitive as a health gift to have, with chips, of course, and a nice fizzy high-calorie
00:34:41.840 drink to go with it. So bribing people doesn't work. They have to understand. And I think the
00:34:48.380 other thing we've not spent enough time on is working out why people are scared, what the
00:34:53.040 reasons for it. But, you know, it's still very sad. There are families that don't, that mothers
00:34:58.280 won't let their kids have polio, for example, vaccination. And that seems a little strange in
00:35:03.900 the modern world, but people have different beliefs. And I guess my training within the
00:35:09.380 NHS for diversity means you have to encompass all beliefs and not force things through. I mean,
00:35:16.640 in a sense lockdown was forced through although our lockdown in the UK was very light compared
00:35:23.700 with a lot of other countries which used police and military in a much more aggressive way to
00:35:29.760 keep people you know that you got shot if you came to the door you know that's and but you know
00:35:36.000 you were certainly accosted to know why you were moving around whereas here it was almost voluntary
00:35:42.140 And you talk about the lockdowns and the sort of various measures. Have you been concerned by the government's willingness to coerce people into doing things, whether that's, you know, taking the vaccine or whatever other measures that they're encouraging?
00:36:01.400 The thing that's really concerned me about it
00:36:04.100 is the willingness of the government in a free society
00:36:07.240 to use Boris Johnson saying,
00:36:10.440 oh, well, if you want to enjoy life, you're going to have to get the...
00:36:13.160 To me, that's quite a forceful way of doing things, isn't it?
00:36:17.180 Yeah, I really don't like it.
00:36:18.900 Civil liberty is really important, and we've seen that go a bit.
00:36:24.000 But as I say, the UK has not been the worst country.
00:36:27.720 We call these interventions MPIs,
00:36:29.980 non-pharmacological intervention. It's not a vaccine. It's not a drug. It's social distancing.
00:36:36.440 It's mask wearing. And it's lockdown. I mean, avoiding crowds, shutting restaurants, shutting
00:36:43.040 all these things. And, you know, all these rules, these bubbles. I never understood the bubbles and
00:36:48.540 why restaurants wouldn't take more than six people, because otherwise you'd be breaking the
00:36:52.980 rules. I just couldn't get my head around those. And again, they varied in Wales and London and
00:36:58.900 Glasgow and so on
00:37:00.340 so
00:37:00.940 the enforcement
00:37:03.520 is not easy
00:37:04.880 and you know
00:37:05.660 I felt sorry
00:37:06.480 for the police
00:37:07.260 I mean
00:37:07.620 they were trying
00:37:08.420 to enforce it
00:37:09.320 and now and again
00:37:10.280 you get some
00:37:10.860 heavy handed
00:37:11.560 you know
00:37:12.300 episodes happening
00:37:14.040 a couple of ladies
00:37:15.840 walked around
00:37:16.540 a reservoir somewhere
00:37:17.580 and they got arrested
00:37:18.460 and fined
00:37:19.360 for having a cup
00:37:20.320 of coffee there
00:37:21.180 and that sort of thing
00:37:22.520 is bad taste
00:37:23.700 and
00:37:24.020 I remember seeing
00:37:25.360 a picture of
00:37:25.960 a roadblock
00:37:27.040 somewhere in the
00:37:27.660 West Country
00:37:28.280 and they were looking in the boot to see if you'd been shopping.
00:37:31.180 You had to show you shopping.
00:37:32.700 But this is ridiculous.
00:37:34.580 I mean, so I think that's been the problem,
00:37:39.320 that no one wants it.
00:37:41.720 And I think you have to persuade people
00:37:43.360 that vulnerable people need to be older people,
00:37:47.500 people with existing chest disease,
00:37:50.100 who if they do get COVID are going to get it bad.
00:37:52.720 They should avoid restaurants.
00:37:54.940 They should just not go out.
00:37:55.960 But you and me, we can go out because we're healthy.
00:37:59.740 I mean, that's the sort of way I'd look at it.
00:38:02.080 What do you make of the counter argument to that that people make very often?
00:38:05.120 Because, you know, the conversation the three of us are having here is not representative of the public mood of the deposit to be believed.
00:38:11.980 Right. So the counter argument that people often make is, well, you talk about your civil liberties, Carol.
00:38:17.740 But actually, by being in a restaurant, let's say me and Francis, who both had COVID but haven't had the vaccine.
00:38:24.180 I mean, you are denying me my civil liberty to be in a restaurant
00:38:28.960 because I have to be afraid for my health.
00:38:30.700 What about that argument?
00:38:31.600 Isn't that a reasonable way of looking at it?
00:38:33.360 It's a very interesting point.
00:38:35.460 And, you know, I travel in from the suburbs from where I live
00:38:39.040 and I come on the train and I don't wear a mask,
00:38:43.080 but nearly everyone else is wearing a mask, I've noticed.
00:38:45.860 Now, why are they wearing a mask?
00:38:47.680 Some of them probably think they're protecting themselves.
00:38:50.000 So that's a misconception that they want to believe it's protecting them, they feel better with it.
00:38:55.780 Why not let them do it?
00:38:57.360 Others think it's their civil duty.
00:38:59.280 And in fact, on the railway sign, it says, please be considerate, wear a mask.
00:39:04.600 It would help if you wear a mask in crowded places.
00:39:07.860 How do you define a crowded place?
00:39:10.300 Obviously, London Underground has been crowded throughout this whole thing.
00:39:14.020 And the central line is particularly bad.
00:39:16.500 And a lot of people have never worn a mask on that.
00:39:19.360 So it's a very difficult issue.
00:39:23.040 And again, it's civil liberties.
00:39:24.460 Do what you want.
00:39:25.820 The other thing that's fascinating,
00:39:27.800 that very few people seem to be aware,
00:39:30.000 is the exemption.
00:39:31.560 And the exemption is just ridiculous.
00:39:34.980 Anyone can be exempt.
00:39:36.100 You don't have to go to a doctor.
00:39:37.980 You don't have to go anywhere.
00:39:39.440 You just can phone up or email Transport for London
00:39:43.300 and they'll send you a badge.
00:39:45.080 And you can cut one out from the website.
00:39:48.100 And you can declare yourself exempt.
00:39:50.680 I mean, it's just crazy.
00:39:53.040 And there are all these inconsistencies in the whole system.
00:39:57.700 And I think, you know, the business that you,
00:40:00.140 even during the beginning of lockdown,
00:40:02.280 we allowed people to walk a dog.
00:40:04.420 So this is, either you have lockdown or you don't.
00:40:08.680 They allow people to go shopping.
00:40:10.340 You allow, you know, other countries didn't.
00:40:12.420 You know, my granddaughter lives in Peru.
00:40:15.660 And the story she tells, well, obviously it's a bit of a military police state there,
00:40:21.320 and they do have a serious problem with COVID.
00:40:24.680 And there you walked out and police would come and find you and take you back
00:40:29.100 and, you know, go and tell your parents off.
00:40:32.140 It's a different system.
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00:41:51.880 The civil liberty side always worries me. But what also worries me is the effect that this has had
00:41:58.000 on cancer patients and stopping the system for lockdown. What effect has that had on you and
00:42:07.260 your department and the cancer departments across the country? Huge effect. And that was one of the
00:42:12.800 reasons I got a Twitter account, was to point this out right at the beginning, that cancer
00:42:17.740 patients are going to suffer here. And what happened way back in April 2020, so more than a
00:42:24.920 year ago, was suddenly the whole system's ground to a halt. So you couldn't go and see your GP,
00:42:31.620 the GP couldn't refer you to the hospital, you couldn't get, even a chest x-ray was difficult
00:42:36.980 to a rate, even if you were coughing up blood, you couldn't get a chest X-ray, which would
00:42:40.920 diagnose tuberculosis or lung cancer.
00:42:43.000 So even if I presented at the GBIT and saying, look, I'm physically coughing up blood, which
00:42:50.640 is a classic sign of lung cancer.
00:42:52.440 Yeah, nothing would happen.
00:42:55.060 And there's a good paper in the British Medical Journal pointing that out, that people with
00:42:59.080 haemoptysis, which is coughing up blood in medical terms, were ignored in April and May.
00:43:05.300 And the best evidence that was a serious problem was looking at the number of biopsies for cancer.
00:43:12.040 So biopsy is putting a needle somewhere and taking a sample.
00:43:14.880 And that's how you know someone's got cancer.
00:43:17.000 It's the only way you can really tell.
00:43:18.740 I mean, x-rays and scans do help you, but it's not convincing that that really is cancer.
00:43:25.620 The abnormal shadows are cancer.
00:43:27.580 So biopsy level, the number of biopsies per day should be around 1,000 every day.
00:43:34.540 So, and you look at the numbers,
00:43:36.580 they dropped to about 50 during April
00:43:39.440 and to about 200 in May.
00:43:41.600 And then they gradually came up as the year went on.
00:43:44.580 But even now, access to certain services are limited
00:43:48.200 because if you've got a waiting list of 5 million,
00:43:51.580 probably more, in there, there are cancer patients
00:43:54.480 that don't know they've got cancer,
00:43:56.460 nor do the doctors know they've got cancer.
00:43:58.700 But once whatever the procedure they're waiting for is done,
00:44:01.940 cancer will be diagnosed. I've got a couple of questions for you on that particular issue. The
00:44:07.480 first one, again, the counter argument to what you're saying is, well, look, if we didn't do a
00:44:12.460 lockdown, if we didn't take all these measures, the NHS would have been overwhelmed. And you still
00:44:17.020 have a massive backlog, but also loads of people are dying of COVID. Didn't we need to do all of
00:44:22.260 that to just stop the system from collapse? I would say no. It was finally balanced,
00:44:28.400 especially with the second wave, but this wave there's no effect. I mean, the number of people
00:44:34.020 going into hospitals, not flooding it at all. The second wave was a bit different, and it was
00:44:40.300 getting close. Now, the other interesting thing is how difficult it is to predict what's going to
00:44:45.520 happen at any point in time with this. So it's very easy to look back and say, oh, we should
00:44:50.760 have done this, we should have done that. But at the time, you couldn't work out where the curves
00:44:54.340 were going. And the government's politicians are easily swayed by extreme views, extremely negative
00:45:00.260 views about where it's going. You know, the one thing that was quite amazing, and what a waste of
00:45:06.640 money it was, were the Nightingale Hospitals. They were building these places, like one close to here
00:45:12.180 in Excel in London. And no one seemed to give any thought to where the staff were coming from. Where
00:45:18.240 are you going to get the people? They're in the hospitals. They're busy. They've got jobs to do.
00:45:22.460 And getting retired doctors, retired nurses, you know, some of my friends signed up for that.
00:45:30.240 My wife signed up, she's a nurse, but they never got used.
00:45:33.500 And quite frankly, they would need to be retrained.
00:45:37.440 If you're doing intensive care in Excel, you'd have to be retrained to do it.
00:45:42.700 You couldn't just take old people, like my wife, she'll hate me for saying that,
00:45:47.640 and sort of give them a couple of hours and say, there, go on the ventilator unit.
00:45:52.460 And so they were never used.
00:45:54.040 And there was a tokenism.
00:45:55.980 They put a few patients to recover in there and then closed it down.
00:46:00.000 But it must have cost a billion pounds at least for the building that system.
00:46:05.000 And, you know, I remember seeing a brigadier in full camouflage kit, you know, with a stick,
00:46:10.660 pointing out how they were building this and doing it.
00:46:13.600 It's so easy to do that as long as you've got money.
00:46:16.680 It's so easy to create things.
00:46:18.280 It's much more difficult to run them because, you know, in healthcare, it's staff, it's always the problem and not really doctors.
00:46:27.760 It's who's going to be there all the time, healthcare assistants, you need people that know how to do things.
00:46:34.580 And that wasn't thought through.
00:46:36.060 So my second question then is the other side, which is, and it's a very sad question,
00:46:40.980 but we obviously understand from what you're saying that there will be a backlog of cancer patients.
00:46:47.780 many of whom have not been diagnosed yet many of whom and we know people like this and we get
00:46:54.120 messages every day as i'm sure you do by god i'm sure you do for people whose cancer went from
00:46:59.880 being a small lump that was easily curable to full stage four incurable inoperable deadly cancer
00:47:07.040 what will be the cost do you think of of all of this in terms of cancer deaths but also of course
00:47:14.460 you then have to heart disease and all of that but just what the thing that i i've never understood
00:47:19.840 and i've said this to people every journalist i know i said why are you not asking the politicians
00:47:24.200 how many people die from lockdown why have we never had that conversation what what is your
00:47:29.540 take on that whole thing i kept trying during the the the height of lockdown to convince people
00:47:35.960 we've got to get the cancer patient out we've got to get the heart attack people and the stroke
00:47:39.980 people fast-tracked into hospital. And if you're waiting for your hip to be replaced, you can wait.
00:47:45.900 But if you've got cancer, you can't. And the story of cancer is very straightforward.
00:47:51.180 You know, the four common cancers are lung, breast, colon, and prostate. And if you've got
00:47:56.360 a stage one cancer, which means the cancer is confined to the organ, it can usually be cured
00:48:01.360 with either surgery or radiotherapy or both. And the chances of the cure are 90% for stage one
00:48:08.220 cancer. Once it starts spreading to the lymph nodes, and then beyond the lymph nodes to stage
00:48:13.800 two, three, and then four, more widespread to the lung, to the liver, and so on, the chances drop to
00:48:19.640 less than 10% chance of cure. So you go from 90% cure to 10% cure. The time it takes to get there
00:48:27.220 is very variable, depending on the speed of growth of the cancer, the type of cancer, and so on. But
00:48:33.160 A rough rule is that three months probably drops you a stage,
00:48:37.200 in other words, and six months drops you two stages.
00:48:40.680 So you go from what the lawyers love to do for litigation cases of delay,
00:48:46.200 from the balance of probability, you would survive your cancer if it's 90%,
00:48:51.420 if it's stage one, to the balance of probability,
00:48:54.000 you're going to die from your cancer if it's stage three or four.
00:48:57.080 So you drop that within three to six months.
00:49:00.320 And that was the problem.
00:49:01.920 Now, we won't really know until another couple of years goes by, so by 2023 and so on,
00:49:08.640 when we look back at the cancer survival and we'll see a blip in the patients that presented
00:49:15.880 during lockdown because they couldn't access care. Just in the same way, we'll see it for
00:49:21.060 people that have heart attacks. And a lot of people, it's not just services weren't there,
00:49:27.840 They were too scared to go to hospitals.
00:49:30.360 So they sat at home with chest pain or they sat at home coughing up blood
00:49:33.960 because they were too scared to use the health.
00:49:36.020 Also, they were psychologically sort of corrupted, if you like,
00:49:41.520 by the slogans, protect the NHS, stay home, save lives.
00:49:45.860 Your life's not important.
00:49:47.460 You're staying at home to protect other lives.
00:49:49.880 And that was the, you know, it's very clever.
00:49:52.040 Again, these smart guys in number 10 came up with that.
00:49:55.100 And there are always three little slogans in the strap line and very powerful messaging.
00:50:03.400 And what we see now, now we're coming out, is that people are still psychologically brainwashed into the old thinking.
00:50:12.120 Doesn't the government need to take responsibility for that, though?
00:50:14.660 If you've got someone literally at home dying of a heart attack and they're too terrified to come in because they're worried about COVID,
00:50:21.360 because the government has given them a disproportionate fear.
00:50:25.100 it's basic common sense that, you know, that a heart attack is far more dangerous than COVID.
00:50:29.660 It is. But, you know, if you've convinced people to stay home and protect the NHS,
00:50:35.360 the threshold at which they'll call for help is raised considerably. And that's been the problem,
00:50:41.240 whether it's cancer or heart attack or stroke, the threshold has changed. And so we've got to
00:50:46.760 get it back. We've got to get people back into the system. But that's going to take a lot of
00:50:51.300 convincing. If you've essentially given them a diet of fear, a propaganda of fear for 18 months,
00:50:57.880 how do you undo that? People are so fearful. I mean, again, it's back to the mask wearing on the
00:51:02.660 train and people avoiding me because I haven't got a mask and this sort of thing. They're still
00:51:08.780 very scared. And these people are double vaccinated, you know, and yet they're still so
00:51:15.440 scared. We've got to remove that and sort of embrace it like we embrace the flu. We just
00:51:20.880 live with it and you know someone goes off work for the flu that's fine they come back a week
00:51:24.860 later we get back to work uh but we this is different somehow this is a uh you know the
00:51:31.500 fear factor is much greater for covid carol speaking of fear uh you you're obviously an
00:51:37.000 optimistic cheery guy francis and i are not um in you know in your quiet moments when you you're
00:51:43.700 just you've got a minute to yourself do you ever wonder if we're ever going to get back to normal
00:51:49.400 I think the population here and in other countries
00:51:53.040 has really been badly hit psychologically.
00:51:55.720 It's going to take a long time.
00:51:57.420 It's going to take probably two or three years.
00:52:00.420 And even then, will we get back?
00:52:02.860 In other words, will air travel still need PCR tests beforehand
00:52:07.560 and afterwards, this sort of thing?
00:52:11.640 Bureaucracy creates jobs for bureaucrats,
00:52:14.780 and they won't want to give up.
00:52:16.900 They'll want to carry on doing it, just like immigration controls and all the work permits,
00:52:22.760 the whole bureaucracy around that.
00:52:25.360 I can't see it going away very soon.
00:52:28.100 And you're right, it'll last at least for two years, maybe even longer.
00:52:33.700 And the fear factor here, I bet even after Christmas, people will be still wearing masks
00:52:40.240 on the train because they're scared and they think the mask is going to help.
00:52:44.240 But it's great.
00:52:45.040 It's like having a worry beads in the Arabic nations.
00:52:48.120 They all go with worry beads and they play with them.
00:52:51.200 Same thing with a mask.
00:52:52.520 If you want to wear it, why not?
00:52:54.520 So just wrapping up then,
00:52:56.500 do you think we need a public inquiry after this to find out?
00:52:59.680 Not least because we need to know what to do next time.
00:53:01.760 It's not the last pandemic.
00:53:04.160 Interesting.
00:53:04.980 We do need to do something.
00:53:06.640 We need to have a review.
00:53:08.820 Public inquiry, there's no point using it to find fault with the politicians.
00:53:13.040 They're incompetent.
00:53:14.060 You can see they're incompetent.
00:53:15.780 I mean, why would a journalist in The Spectator
00:53:19.860 and other journals like that become prime minister?
00:53:22.160 I mean, it makes no sense.
00:53:23.740 Why is that training to be prime minister?
00:53:26.240 And the same for all of them in reality.
00:53:29.860 They're there not for their skill set.
00:53:33.400 And they've got very smart people that advise them.
00:53:36.240 But now and again, it goes wrong.
00:53:37.900 So I think going forward, what we need to do
00:53:41.260 is work out the various bits that went wrong
00:53:45.560 and how we can avoid them if it happens again.
00:53:48.720 And of course, we have to broaden it from SARS.
00:53:50.960 It's got to be any infectious agent.
00:53:53.460 It could be Ebola, it could be,
00:53:55.800 which is much more serious, LASA fever,
00:53:57.860 anything like that that comes into the country
00:54:00.200 and how we can protect against it and implement a plan.
00:54:06.280 It's a very, very good point because I don't know about you.
00:54:09.680 do you think we're going to enter a stage
00:54:12.080 where we see more pandemics now?
00:54:14.120 Or do you think it's going to be...
00:54:15.620 I know it's a ridiculous question almost to ask,
00:54:18.200 but do you think we're going to see...
00:54:19.980 I love the rich one.
00:54:20.740 Yeah, it is.
00:54:21.880 It is, but...
00:54:22.760 Just stop asking your stupid question, Francis.
00:54:25.080 Do you think we're going to be seeing more pandemics as we go on?
00:54:28.580 I think the threshold, again, for pandemic fear is lowered.
00:54:34.200 In other words, as soon as...
00:54:36.440 If you remember way back in 2012, we had the MERS.
00:54:42.860 And then in 2003 and 2004, we had the SARS, the first SARS.
00:54:48.020 And it didn't really cause that much disturbance to everybody.
00:54:51.860 But now we've all been primed.
00:54:54.100 Well, that's done now. That's never going to happen again.
00:54:55.920 It's never going to happen again.
00:54:57.060 We're going to be much harder and stopping,
00:55:00.160 trying to stop with non-pharmacological interventions,
00:55:03.220 the spread of anything new that comes.
00:55:05.100 And we're going to have better monitoring systems so you don't suddenly realise that half your population have been infected.
00:55:12.300 In any pandemic, any infectious agent, there are only three types of people.
00:55:17.180 Those that are actually infected, those that are susceptible, and those that are immune, either because they've had it or they've been vaccinated.
00:55:24.480 So you've just got three groups of people.
00:55:27.020 And what you want to do is reduce the susceptible group to as small as possible and increase the other two.
00:55:33.220 go on. You don't want too many infected, but you want the immunized people or the natural
00:55:38.620 immunity people to go up and reduce the susceptible. And that's got to be the aim.
00:55:45.300 And a public inquiry, going back to the last question, could help. The public inquiries I've
00:55:52.440 been involved in have just been whitewashed. And lawyers get in and they've produced long texts
00:55:59.820 and not much happens.
00:56:02.120 So I think what we need is a direction of travel
00:56:05.640 for prevention of a further incident like this ever again.
00:56:11.680 It's a very, very poignant note to end on
00:56:14.900 because I think we all agree that we need an investigation
00:56:17.600 because we can't allow the mistakes to be repeated.
00:56:20.560 Carol, thank you so much for coming on.
00:56:22.340 Our final question before we've got a few questions
00:56:25.380 from our local supporters is,
00:56:27.780 what's the one thing we're not talking about
00:56:29.640 but we really should be. The thing we're not talking about is still death. I said that the
00:56:35.620 last time you interviewed me. And age, you know, what's the value of life? And is the value of
00:56:42.300 someone of your age greater than the value of someone my age? So that is the thing. At the
00:56:48.080 moment, the health service doesn't use age. It's ageless. But why shouldn't we use age? If you're
00:56:54.920 85, do you deserve a very high cost cancer drug if you get cancer? If we can afford it, yes, but
00:57:01.560 the priority has to be for the 40 year old or the 30 year old to get that drug. And that's something
00:57:07.480 that no one likes to talk about. And if I do talk about it, they say, oh, this is a dangerous
00:57:13.240 territory. So why should it be dangerous? We have to make decisions. Carol, thank you so much for
00:57:19.100 coming on. If people want to find you online, where is the best place to do that? The best place is
00:57:23.960 carolsicora
00:57:25.000 at hotmail.com
00:57:26.400 You're going to get
00:57:27.620 lots of emails now.
00:57:29.420 And you're on Twitter
00:57:30.440 of course as well.
00:57:31.020 And I'm on Twitter
00:57:31.780 Prof Carol Sicora.
00:57:33.000 Exactly.
00:57:33.640 Perfect.
00:57:34.320 Carol Sicora
00:57:34.820 thank you so much
00:57:35.460 for coming back
00:57:36.140 and thank you all
00:57:37.100 for watching.
00:57:38.020 We'll see you very soon
00:57:39.020 with another brilliant episode
00:57:40.240 like this one
00:57:40.940 or our show.
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00:57:45.320 Take care and see you soon guys.
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