CG Podcast

Did Covid-19 restrictions break British society?

In this CG Conversation, Dr Jennie Bristow talks to Professor David Livermore about the consequences of lockdowns and social distancing restrictions for the fabric of social life. As we move on from the pandemic itself, to what extent have the behaviours and mores of pre-Covid times changed? On one hand, dystopian fears about the end of handshakes, hugs, and parties have not materialised. On the other, something subtle has changed in the culture of work and education, and we’re no longer sure what we can take for granted.
David and Jennie also discuss the relationship between politicians, the media, and the public during the pandemic, in the demand for more and more rules restricting social behaviour. Was the government responding to an irrational crowd mentality, or was the fearful demand for rules generated by the exclusion of the public from a calm, balanced discussion about what could and should be done? What did the injunction to ‘be kind’ by obeying all the restrictions do to our deeper understanding of what kindness means, and why it matters? Where do we go from here, in reckoning with the Covid years without allowing them to define us?

The Covid Consensus

Lucy Johnston interviews Toby Green about his revisionist history of the pandemic
In this podcast Lucy Johnston, Health Editor of the Sunday Express, interviews Professor Toby Green (CG steering group) about the new book he has coauthored with Thomas Fazi, The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor -- A Critique from the Left (The Covid Consensus | Hurst Publishers). Their discussion ranges widely, from the causes of the lockdown response and the functioning of the scientific establishment, to the impacts on the Global South and how Green came to write the book. In the final part they discuss the imperative of debate and discussion of what has happened as a key part of the healing process of the traumas of this pandemic.

Pandemic Response and the Cost of Lockdowns

One of the editors of the new book published by Routledge -- Pandemic Response and the Cost of Lockdowns: Global Debates from the Humanities and Social Sciences -- Peter Sutoris (assistant Professor, University of York) discusses the book with CG steering group member Professor Toby Green. They range over the response of academics from the humanities and the social sciences, the importance of these disciplines to pandemic response, and the role of fields such as Philosophy and Anthropology to a more balanced response to new diseases.

The Power of a Good Example: Nicaragua and the Covid Response

In this podcast, CG steering committee member Toby Green talks with John Perry, contributor to the London Review of Books, FAIR and other publications on Nicaraguan affairs.
Perry gives the perspective of the pandemic response in Nicaragua and Honduras, 2 neighboring countries in Central America. Honduras's neoliberal government followed the dominant lockdown policy, with harsh policing, and closed schools for 2 years: this led to high levels of excess death, and contributed to the collapse of the Honduran government at the end of 2021.
In Nicaragua, by contrast, the Sandinista left-wing government did not follow a lockdown model for fear of the socioeconomic and educational impacts. Perry describes how this policy proved to be more effective, with lower excess deaths, and a much lower socioeconomic effect to poorer communities. This was also made possible by years of health investment by the Sandinista government, with over 20 state-of-the-art hospitals built in the previous decade which helped to see the country through the first Covid wave.

Covid & the humanities

What could humanities scholars have to say about Covid? Here Caitjan Gainty, a historian of medicine and healthcare at King’s College London, discusses the Covid response with her colleague Daniel Hadas, a lecturer in Latin and Ancient Greek.
In the Covid response, governments and public health authorities opted to side-line the knowledge and discourse of the humanities, in a singled-minded focus on “following the science”. This project of setting aside the humanities was both an illusion and a mistake. An illusion, because science itself is a human activity, and the philosophical and political constraints within which it always operates must be acknowledged. A mistake, because the question of what to do in times of pandemic is not just medical or scientific, but raises that fundamental concern of the humanities, and of all human kind: how we can best live and die.
Accordingly, this conversation considers how a philosophical and spiritual analysis can both help us understand more clearly the forms taken by the Covid response, and point to how a better response, one more in accord with the fullness of human dignity, could be possible in future health crises.

Making (Historical) Sense of the Covid Response

In this CG conversation, Daniel Hadas talks to Caitjan Gainty about how the history of medicine and healthcare can illuminate our attempts to analyse and understand the Covid response. Set in the UK but branching out globally, the conversation winds through some of the thorniest of Covid era issues. Vaccines and vaccine mandates, for example, look quite different when set against the problematic and checkered history of global vaccination campaigns. And so do the logics of lockdown and the other non-pharmaceutical interventions, when considered in the context of evolving national security and public health programs over the past 50 years.
In unravelling these issues, further questions arise: what are the right historical moments, events, currents of thought to turn to when trying to contextualise the pandemic? And where does the way in which we choose to contextualise the Covid response intersect with other larger themes: the relationship between science and politics; the scientific and political imaginaries that govern our views of healthcare and medicine; the very nature and role of health in our lives.

The ethics and reality of Kenya’s Covid policy

Dr Reginald Oduor, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Nairobi, discusses Kenya's experience of lockdowns and vaccine mandates with Collateral Global SAB member Toby Green of King's College, London. The impact of the lockdowns on civil rights, the poor, education, and health are discussed -- and also the impacts that this might have into the future, as ethical and political issues mount up.
There is a big focus also on the question of how to foster debate in an environment of the censorship of dissent. How to create engagement and ensure proper debate going forward is a key task for academics and those engaged in civil society, and a duty of those with concern for the experience and lives of future generations

Fear, trust, and the sociology of pandemics

The Covid-19 pandemic was often described as an ‘unprecedented’ disaster, which required wholly new ways of thinking about, and managing, social life. But what was different about this pandemic to those that have afflicted societies over time?
Sociologists have long been interested in pandemics, because they disrupt the existing social order and throw existing problems and tensions into sharp relief. Yet there seemed to be relatively little critical discussion about the historical and sociological dimensions of the response to Covid-19, or balanced debate about the consequences of organising social and economic life around fear of infection.
In this CG conversation, Jennie Bristow talks to Professor Robert Dingwall about the role of the historical and sociological imagination in making sense of the past two years, and where sociology could have done more to put fear into context.

Impacts of Covid Restrictions on the Performing Arts

In this podcast, actor and singer Clifton Duncan discusses the impacts of the Covid restrictions on the world of theatre with CG Scientific Advisory Board member Professor Toby Green. The impacts of Covid restrictions on performers have been devastating, with a strong class dimension.
Clifton and Toby discuss the new dimension of the theatre world, segregation of venues, and the consequences for the future of the performing arts, with a special focus on New York.
Originally released March 2022

2 Years On - In conversation, Professor Jay Bhattacharya and Professor John Ioannidis

Listen to this engaging conversation between two of the most eminent scientists, Professor Bhattacharya and Ioannidis as they look back on the past two years.
Their discussion includes the early seroprevalence studies, Infection Fatality Rates (IFR), precision shielding, the collateral damages caused by lockdowns, and how we can begin to rebuild faith in public health.
Original release March 2022