SHE Pod Season 2 Episode 7: Angus Dawson and Diego Silva on Lockdown

1:22AM Aug 17, 2021

Speakers:

Kathryn MacKay

Diego Silva

Angus Dawson

Keywords:

lockdown

angus

people

evidence

important

question

modelling

australia

laughs

values

individuals

restrictions

thinking

justification

freedom

government

pandemic

population

risk

infectious disease

Hello, and welcome to the SHE Research Podcast. I'm your host, Kate MacKay. And today I'm joined by Diego Silva and Angus Dawson, both from Sydney Health Ethics. And we're here today to talk about the ethics of lockdown. So, as some listeners may or may not know, Sydney, where the three of us are based is in a lockdown at the moment on the 12th of August 2021. And various parts of the country and other countries have been in and out of lockdown. So we thought we were talking about the ethics of it. And so, thank you for joining me, Diego and Angus, you're both experts on pandemics and infectious diseases. And I'm very excited to have your views. And I think my first question for you is really just kind of basic. You know, basically, what is lockdown? What is it supposed to do? And how, how should we understand it to be different from something like being an isolation or being in quarantine?

Yeah, so I think that the first thing to note about lockdown is that it's a bit of like 'beauty in the eye of the beholder'. Lockdown is the eye of the beholder as well. So I think that what people usually mean is that there's a set of activities that you can usually do that you can no longer do. What exactly is a lockdown? Does it mean you can't leave your house ever? Versus does it mean you can only leave your house for certain things versus what exactly, it is a bit of a mug's game and doesn't really help. So I think what what matters is what a jurisdiction or a government has said you can or can't do. So to me the the the details count moreso, than the word 'lockdown' whether you use the word 'lockdown' or not. But usually, it just it refers to a suite of restrictions that otherwise wouldn't be there, but for the pandemic. In terms of isolation and quarantine, isolation usually refers to individuals who are infected who are tested and have... are positive for an infection having to stay away from usually in their homes, but sometimes in hotels or in hospitals. But the... you know, the individual has the disease. Quarantine is a preventative measure, a protective measure, where the individual may or may not have it. So you may not have tested or you may have test... tested negative, but we know that you know false negatives are a thing or you could develop onsets later on. So in that case, if a person remains in isolation or separated, then we call that quarantine.

Angus is there anything you wanted to add to that?

Just to say, very rarely I agree with everything that Diego just said.

(laughs).

I guess the only thing that I would would would sort of draw out is this idea about in a way, lockdown is just a shorthand for a range of activities. And that's going to differ depending upon the jurisdiction. And that's true here, as we all are currently in Australia, different states are going to have different approaches. So it's kind of I think, if you mentioned the word lockdown to people, two years ago, sort of pre COVID, they would have been horrified about the idea in western democratic states, whereas so many countries have now moved to different forms of lockdown. So I think, thinking a little bit about that, you know, when when in China, the initial response was to focus on using these kinds of methods. I think there was, from many politicians, certainly the expression of the idea that this was extremely problematic, and it would never be accepted by Western democratic nations, and that we would never be using it as as a measure. But yet, here we are. And I think it's an interesting set of reasons that I guess we'll get into is thinking about, what is the relevant evidence here? Do we have evidence? And also think about the... the more ethical questions, you know, what has changed in the, in the mindset in relation to the acceptability or potential legitimacy of a lockdown?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, the... what Angus said kind of just jolted my mind a little bit, but I think it's really interesting how we forget historical precedents that happened here in Australia in different situations. So again, I think that we're much... to Angus' point about the consternation about how we could lock down people in a liberal democracy, well, we're perfectly fine doing that in context of other infectious diseases that occur but aren't necessarily in the mainstream. So tuberculosis being a very good example where thing... you know, everyday activities are precluded to the individual who has TB, you know, they are locked down, and we don't act with horror. So again, I just just to reiterate, I think Angus' point, I think the context, and what we mean is so important.

I mean, TB is an interesting contrasting case because of the isolation focus. So it's because the individual is infected, that we potentially see that as being a form of response. I guess, a really important thing, again, we'll probably get into this, but is thinking through how that is actually done and what the consequences are. Because I think, again, a really strong set of issues that comes through in here and not here in Australia, but elsewhere, is how the differential impacts of lockdowns and how they can be targeted on particular communities. So, we start getting controversial here. But certainly it's the case that in Melbourne, there were some problems in the past focusing on particular housing, accommodation sites, and here in Sydney, focusing on particular communities or suburbs, and how them... the... they do seem to be unjust implications for how so called lockdowns are managed.

Absolutely. And I definitely want to get into that. I think something that you've both raised now that I think it would be good to start with is the question of justification, both in terms of evidence, empirical evidence, so sort of what's our... yeah, what evidence do we have that this is effective? Or what are we hoping that it'll do? And the ethical justification on top of that, so how do we sort of justify that this is the right thing to do? Not just one of many potentially effective practical courses of action we can take? So I'm not really sure where to start with that, because they're very different questions, sort of empirical question then the ethical questions. So maybe let's start with the empirical question to the extent that we can sort of know these things. What evidence do we have about lockdown? Is this the best? Is this is the best course of action that we have?

I think we are gathering more and more evidence about this. And it is interesting, again, Diego mentioned history. I mean, I can't help but think about this in the context of history. And in the world's best journal, Public Health Ethics, we republished a pamphlet from 1665, which was written by somebody actually in lockdown during the plague in London. And one of the things that really striking about... about it, apart from having some fantastic recipes to prevent you becoming infected from plague...

(laughs).

...which I wouldn't recommend. The the focus of the pamphlet is very much focusing on exactly the kinds of issues that we're going to be talking about: the matters of justice, the impact upon those that are detained, the possible justifications and the problems that there might be... the fact that it might encourage people that are infected, to actually move away from the situation because of the fact... the impact of the restrictions themselves. So I think what's fascinating is that, if you read that pamphlet from 1665, you are right into the heart of the current discussions, the ones that we're going to have today, but also the ones that you see in the media and society in general. So what is the evidence for effectiveness? There, there there is some related to things like the timescale. So the suggestion that if you're going to have a lockdown, you need to have one as early as possible, and to have perhaps a particularly restrictive lockdown early on, so that it can be of short a duration as possible. So there are interesting issues here. We're straight into thinking about issues to do with trade-offs between the degree of restrictions versus the potential length of those restrictions. So, arguably, and personally, I think this is the case in New South Wales, the current lockdown that we're in, we took too long to actually enter into that lockdown. We were not looking at the evidence from other jurisdictions here in Australia, particularly from Victoria, about the success of managing a few cases. And also the restrictions have been maybe not as strict as they could be. And so it seems odd that you're able to do various types of shopping for luxury goods, for example. So there there are issues to do with both the timing and also the degree of restrictions. And they're going to have an impact upon these discussions. And I think what we shouldn't do is sort of set up discussion here as being business versus health. Because one of the things that the current evidence suggests is that if you are quicker to impose restrictions, and they are to the greatest possible degree, then yes, that will have an immediate impact upon business. But chances are, you will actually come out of those restrictions more quickly. So we're currently in New South Wales, our lockdown at the moment, the numbers are still going up. I think today we had yet again, the highest number of cases. So we've been in lockdown now for six weeks. And what this suggests is that we are not actually managing this this properly. I mean, we should be seeing the numbers going down now. And I think, again, that raises interesting questions about the kind of lockdown that we're in. So rather than having a lockdown versus no lockdown discussion, we can also have a degrees or variety or a type of lockdown kind of discussion as well.

Yeah, Diego, did you want to add to that?

First on the just the historical point. So I think that, I'll have to have to read that pamphlet that's been republished, that sounds fascinating. But remember, last year, my partner and I stayed the weekend at Quarantine Station here in Sydney. And in the little Museum, they had the pamphlets that were used for the influenza pandemic in 1818, and 1919. And when you read it, it again just strikes you how absolutely it's still the things that we're doing to this very day. So there's a... there is sort of... history repeats itself, not just, you know, from Europe and the black plague, but you know, here in Australia as well. In terms of the justification, you set it up, Kate as sort of justification being sort of the ethic... yeah, so there's the ethics, and then there's the science. To me, and I don't think this is controversial, the two happen simultaneously. And so I think one of the things that we're not doing is having discussion about what we value explicitly. So we're... we we tend to, through the media, pretend like this is all on the basis of science, and not on the basis of what it is we value and how we value it, and what does that mean. So that's not to say that the evidence, obviously, you want to act in an evidence-based manner. But Angus was talking about, well, what are your objectives when you have that first case? Right. Setting forth an objective is a values question. The amount of risk that you're willing to take on or forced or if you're the government, permit or force, your population to take on, is also a values question. So I think that... I think that we need to sort of understand that they come together very, very quickly, right at the outset. And moreover, that, that again, I think that there is this tendency to sort of hide behind evidence. So yeah, in terms of whether we went in, you know, that we didn't go in quickly enough. You know, I think certainly, hindsight suggests that's right. I think that in previous outbreaks when there have been sort of outbreaks from the ho- from the hotels in Sydney, into the community, there have been calls to have the, for lack of a better description, I'm going to do the thing that I just said we shouldn't do, you know, we needed hard lockdowns right away. Right. So all pretty much all moving stuff and stuff. So in those instances, New South Wales, Sydney was able to handle it just fine. So certainly we got it wrong this time. Just I mean, the evidence kind of bears that out. But again, I think that prior to hindsight at the moment that you're making the decision, there's a values question, which I agree with Angus, I think it's a, I think it's dumb to sort of think in terms of the economy versus public health. That's just backwards. But it is a it is a, it is a question about, again, values.

Yeah. And that kind of makes me think about the differences that we see between different nations and jurisdictions and how they've handled things so we can compare Australia's overall strategy of, I think, I think the strategy has been elimination or kind of zero community transmission, whereas the approach in Britain has been the polar opposite. It's been like that it run rampage, and we'll sorts... we'll we'll finally reach sort of herd immunity at some point one way or another, or something like that. I'm not sure if that's actually there. That's from the outside perspective that looks like that's what's happening (laughs). But it's, it's what you've highlighted, I think, for me is that these questions are not exactly scientific, or I guess they are scientific, but they're not objective. I'm not a person who thinks that there is such a thing as a kind of purely neutral scientific endeavour. So it kind of highlights that the other values that are being invoked here are, first of all, behind the scenes, they're not actually being spoken about explicitly. And secondly, are very importantly, impacting what we think, is evidence, or what we think that evidence points to.

And I think the modelling a few weeks ago, again, for listeners, not in Australia, the Prime Minister of Australia set forth the vaccination thresholds necessary in order to go back to quote unquote, "normal", whatever that actually means. And that was based on modelling done by the Doherty Institute in Melbourne. If you read the... if you read the document, they start out articulating two aims. Right, two key parameters that their modelling take, including the fact that, you know, it's, it's a policy similar to COVID-zero, you know, the, the idea was, you know, what are the sets of different numbers that you get with regards to morbidity and mortality with the different vaccination rates? But again, there it was, it was values questions that were setting forth the parameter of the modelling. That's not, that's not a that's not a knock on the modelling. That is what modelling is. And yet, how it was reported in in the news was as if well, this is what the science tells us - I'm holding up my hand as if I'm holding up a pamphlet. But, you know, this is what the science tells us. Hence, it's immutable. It's like, No, no, the science is really important, like the modelling is super important. But there's values before it that set the parameters to help help set the parameters not exclusively, and then there's values in the interpretation. And I think, again, I'm kind of going on and on. But that I think, is current logic.

Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think on the the way I think about modelling is that it's a piece of useful evidence about what potentially happens given a certain set of assumptions. And those assumptions are things that we we need to question. And there's a real danger that just as you can select the empirical evidence according to what your prior view, actually is, you can also commission and select your modelling. I'm not suggesting that's what's happened in this particular case. But what I do want to emphasise is that modelling is a is just one thing that goes into the decision making. And it shouldn't be just like people say, evidence tells us that this is what we should do, modelling won't actually tell you what you should do. Once we're into should questions, of course, then we're into ethics and politics, and that's where the values actually come in. So yeah, I think Diego exactly right, that the values and presumptions that are behind the modelling is one thing, but then there's the kind of the, the consequences downstream from the modelling itself. In terms of that, in its on its own is not going to give you the answer about what what we should actually do.

So can we talk for a second... about freedom?

(laughs) I just like the way you segue, that's what I'm laughing about (laughs).

(laughs). We've got all the modelling, we've we've got the, you know, the case numbers, we've got our aims COVID-zero or, you know, herd immunity or whatever it might be... immunisation. But the... there have been protests here recently, and there have been protests, you know, sort of throughout the world, as COVID has been going on there kind of been anti-mask protests and anti-lockdown protests and all these various protests against the restrictions that are presumably put in place based on this kind of evidence about what will get us out of a COVID problem sooner. So I wanted to ask you, how do we balance freedom? And what's going on with the people who are... is it just that they're misunderstanding? Or is it that there's a true value-conflict here, between between aims, essentially, what do you think?

I mean, I think it's certainly a clash of values and how we prioritise particular values. So when I was thinking in advance about what we would focus on in this discussion, I think, one potential disagreement between Diego and myself - I'm interested to find out whether this is this is true or not - is how we might think about the place of freedom or liberty, we can just use those terms interchangeably, I think, for the purposes of this discussion. But there's a very well articulated position in human rights, and also in some constitutional contexts. So German Federal law, for example, articulates this, it's it's not explicitly articulated here in Australia, but it might actually come in, because there isn't a Charter of Rights here. It's not explicit in the law. And what I'm talking about here is the so called Least Restrictive Alternative. And essentially, this is the thought that we should when we're thinking about policy, always try and do that, which allows a maximum amount of freedom or liberty possible. So the people that are protesting might actually think... they might accept that. Maybe they've never heard of it. But that's the view that they are essentially articulating. And I think what's interesting is that I would actually make out a case for the state government here in New South Wales, being broadly speaking supporters of the same kind of idea. And that was used as a justification for not locking down earlier. So if we step back from the least restrictive alternative, the alternative... the alternative view to it, is to stress that there are some other kinds of values apart from liberty, that are very often as equally important. And in some cases, that can be more important. And the key idea would be rather than thinking about liberty as being the default, and then seeking to justify any restriction on that, that gets you into situations as we have currently in New South Wales. And that argument can go through both theoretically, and in relation to the application to this particular case, I would argue, and again, I'm interested to hear what Diego thinks. My alternative approach to this would be to say that there are other kinds of considerations and that a primary duty of government is to actually protect the population, and particularly where there are actions that can be taken, that can't be taken by individuals. So there are certain things that I can do to protect my health. But there are lots of things that I require action by others. And very often, that's something that that power is given to government to perform as a means of collective protection for the whole of the population. And I think infectious disease is a classic example of that. So the Australian policy of essentially locking the borders, so that the three of us are here locked in Australia, even though we would love to go elsewhere in the world to see our families. You could argue that that's an extreme measure. But it is justifiable as a means of protecting the population. Given a certain set of circumstances relating to infectious disease rates outside of the country and inside of the country, as we move towards equalisation between the two, then I would argue it becomes unjustifiable to actually restrict our freedom to then travel internationally, where that sort of distinction ceases to actually make any any difference. So what th... what this tells us is that the background rates of infection, what's actually going on in the population itself, is also another factor that contributes to thinking about the justifiability of various kinds of policies.

Yeah, I mean, I think the epidemiology of locations is absolutely critical and all. So Angus and I have this weird little thing where we often disagree with the justification but reach similar conclusions. I think there's going to be differences. Obviously, the way that Angus I approach it. So when Angus would say you know, 'liberty is not the only thing that's important' in my mind is like, yeah, it's it's liberty and equality. Right. Those are the two... those are the two important things (laughs). So, so yeah, like, for me, the role of government is to promote those two ideals and to do so in a robust way. And I think that, though, what I mean by Angus and I sometimes reach similar conclusions through different arguments is that to me, there's a liberal argument for lockdowns, which is lockdowns improve my ability to be free. Right. So James Wilson, back in 2014, publishing, or had an article published in Journal of Medical Ethics - a second to Public Health Ethics, but still a very good journal.

(laughs).

And the article is called the article is called 'The Right to Public Health'. And I think that in there, he was taking sort of fun berean sort of position, if I remember correctly, but I might be misremembering, but the idea was that, as individuals, as people who... who value freedom as a primary value as a primary concept in political philosophy, that we, we can think of public health as a right because it is something that allows us to then live our lives as we see fit. So I don't think that we need to... so for me, I don't think it's necessarily... the balance isn't a balance of values, right? Isn't the clash of values. It's sort of in the execution of that goal, which is how do we understand sort of the balancing of, of, of liberty? With regards to the protests that occurred in Sydney, actually, Melbourne, Brisbane, several weekends ago, with regards to sort of the anti-lockdown protests, one of the things that came out that I think is super important was the makeup of that group. So there were individuals who participated who had a anti semitic flags flying. Okay. I think we're all in agreement that's shitty, right?

(laughs)

That's not a... that's bad. You have people who are anti-vaxxer, you were having people, right, who you whatever, but you also apparently, again, and this I'm I'm taking based on what the media reported, you had people who, who were there because their livelihoods were at risk, because they felt like they weren't being supported by government, because maybe they were from Western Australia... (laughs) (not) Western Australia - Western Sydney, you know, and they, they felt like they weren't being represented. So I think that that's also really interesting. And I think it's, it should give us pause as to what's actually occurring. So I think that I think that... and all this to say is I'm not supporting them. I think that it was folly to do that, to have those protests. But I do think it's interesting to see sort of who the makeup is. And I think that, I mean, we'll get to the we'll get to the justice argument. Well, I I'll go back to one point, which is about the freedom stuff and I'll get to the justice part. So one of the things that was an 'aha' moment when I was an undergrad, right, was learning about tyranny of the majority. And, and right, the the idea that minority populations if you don't have these checks, you know, can be... can suffer great harms. And I think that's what we're seeing in Western Sydney right now. In Western Sydney, for those who who aren't from here, it's a highly immigrant population, where English as a first language is... are lower rates than other places, socioeconomically, it's not as wealthy as the eastern part of the city. All the classic demographics that you could probably imagine if you're listening from, you know, UK, or, or US or Canada. So this is a situation where the, the restriction of freedom is most acutely felt by those populations who are least able to argue for their their rights and their freedom. And we see this going back to the point about history. We see this in Tuberculosis, we see this in HIV, right. It wasn't until gay men who, you know, gay, white men who had power, you know, who were able to, you know, advocate. So the pattern is the same as other infectious diseases. And so I think that when we when we think in terms of, 'Oh, you know, liberty ought not to be the only thing that we care about'. I agree, I think we ought to care about equality as well. And therein lies those justice issues. So to me, I guess the the the, I guess, one of the take homes for me is that the idea of restrictions of freedom - I care very little about, you know, the 30 year old white guy who can't go to a frat party, I'm with you all, right. But but we are restricted in very heavy ways, the freedoms of those individuals who are most likely or who are less likely to be able to advocate for themselves. The idea of freedom and justice aren't separate. They they're they're intertwined in important ways. And and I'm usually in favour of the least restrictive measures.

(laghs). Just sneak that in the end.

Well, of course, you're wrong about that.

(laughs).

(laughs).

But I think just picking up on the justice side of things. So I suspect that I want to argue for a more substantive notion of justice rather than one that's formally linked to purely the idea of equality. And the discussion makes me think back to some of the WHO, Ethics Working Party work that I was involved in right at the start of the COVID outbreak. We wrote a very generic, general document about ethical issues to do with the response to these kinds of pandemics. And one of the things that we we chose to add in there, it was partly based upon work that had been done previously, by a group attached to WHO where Working Party brought together, I think, in 2015-ish. But ultimately, it was drafted and very much has the ethos of a lawyer who had written it from a human rights perspective. And one of the things that in our revisions to the general approach that that we added in with a focus on thinking about what the consequences of things like lockdowns are for the locked-down population. So the impact of a measure will be unequal in terms of the impact upon individuals. And governments have a responsibility to think about that in advance, to plan for it, and make sure that that people are essentially not without the necessary provisions for them to sustain a reasonable life. So maybe we don't sort of set the threshold that bankers have to... they can't go to work, but they can carry on with the same kind of salary that they had before. But we do want to have the level of support as being a reasonable level within a particular society. And something that's really important, just adding into what Diego was saying about those in Western Sydney, is that many of the people who live in this area do essentially the crappy jobs that most of us don't want to do and they are truly, very often essential jobs. They are on the front line in terms of risk and therefore potential exposure to the infectious disease, but we also need them to work in supermarkets and work in the transport system, and so on. So there's a really strong argument for thinking in advance about what kinds of relevant support and compensation are necessary. And I think that's - I'm sure Diego will agree with this - but they're thinking in advance about potential disadvantage, and how we protect people from the consequences of actions that actually protect us all. So that is then pushing more in a direction of a substantive notion about - we are genuinely all in this together, the consequences are different for different individuals. So we can carry on a lot of our working activity, online, from home, not at great risk. But that's because of the nature of the work that we do. Other people don't have that luxury. And I think it's really important that governments actually think very, very carefully in advance what the consequences are going to be of the measures that they take.

I just want to add one thing now. Look we can't get around the fact that a lot of the policies enacted are done so from a position of racism, or with some kind of, whether you want to call it systematic racism, so it sounds a little bit better and makes the sleep a little bit better. Okay, fine. Right. But at the beginning of the pand- I'll just speak about Australia. But again, whoever's listening to this, you can you can extrapolate to your country that you're living in right now, unfortunately, but you know, who was it that we put on Christmas Island in March 2020? Right, it was Chinese Australians. Our Australians coming from China. It wasn't necessarily... by that point, the virus had already spread beyond Wuhan. Like, it wasn't like, other people weren't bringing it in. You know, who was you know... what Australian citizens weren't allowed to enter the country for two weeks on penalty of imprisonment. It was Indians. People coming from India, right? So the excuse was, well, there's the Delta variant, right? The Delta variant got in months later from FedEx guys from the US, right? Truth of the matter is tt doesn't actually matter where it came in, right? The communicable diseases that are community transmitted, like trying to actually pin responsibility is besides the point, which I mean, we can talk about police measures and ADF, as well. But like, you know, you know, Angus mentioned briefly, the housing towers, that were... those were I mean, under any circumstance considered extreme lockdown back in July, or end of June 2020, in Melbourne? Right. That was a highly racialized community. Right. So I think that we - and I don't think Angus would disagree with this - like, I think one of the things that's frustrating is, for those of us who have done infectious disease ethics, or have like, actually read a few like history books, in March 2020, you knew exactly where we'd be. Globally and domestically. Like, this is predictable. So is the racism. Right? So to Angus' point about the essential workers - 100%. You know, we can you know, we can buy things on whatever and it gets delivered. Well, where's the delivery guy usually from? Right. So wholeheartedly agree. Yeah.

I think something that you're both sort of making me think about is just that the more unequal society is going into a pandemic, the more unequal it will be when it comes out of that pandemic. I think we're seeing that here.

100%.

Yeah, absolutely. You could actually say that these kinds of situations essentially magnify pre-existing inequalities. And we see that all the time. So, so again, I think, approaching this from the perspective of Public Health with a focus on thinking about social justice is really, you know, vitally important. One thing that we haven't mentioned so far, which I think is is interesting, I know, given Diego's interests, I'm surprised he hasn't mentioned these magic words. One magic word is 'risk'. And the other magic word is 'uncertainty'. So thinking back to the least restrictive alternative, again, I think ideas about risk and about uncertainty are important when we're thinking about balancing these different considerations. We're thinking about this really tough question about - when is the moment to lock down? So if we focus on that one central question, we're not going to be certain that we're going to hit exactly the sweet spot. Because we don't have fantastic evidence about when that would... might be. There are so many variables to take into account in relation to the kind of, the politics and the, the society, and so on. So it's a really, really difficult question. Having said that, a really important consideration to me is, which side do we want to err on? Do we want to err on the side of being, perhaps locking down early on? And therefore restricting freedoms a little bit more? Or do we want to let it go for a few days, see how things go, look at the evidence and then decide to lock down, I would argue that there has been a tendency here in New South Wales to go with that second way. And that tells us something about the ranking of different kinds of values about possibly some of the political dispute that's going on within within the government itself, perhaps within wider society, about relevant values and how they're, they're ranked. But given the fact that this was always inevitable that we would have outbreaks, whether they're out of hotel quarantine, or people coming into the country that are potentially infected, those are the risk points, given the naivety of the Australian population to COVID, because of the lockdown at the national borders level, it becomes even more important to think about protecting the population. Because essentially, because we're not like the US because we haven't been like the UK because we haven't had widespread community transmission. Ironically, we're in a worse position in terms of risk once this actually gets into the community.

So yeah, so like, I was totally in favour of not jumping the gun with this particular lockdown. Empirically speaking, that was the wrong decision. Like, right? Like, you got to own it.

(laughs).

But I think that there's a lot of contextual factors. So I think that the powers that be whoever that is, within the government had faith in the public health infrastructure and in the ability of a contact traces to do their job. That does not mean it's foolproof, right, as we're as we're discovering, it's also contingent on the on the strain. But, you know, yeah, I'm, I would be in the camp that says, look, you you err on the side of trying to uphold people's freedoms to the point that you can, and you eat these situations, and they're catastrophic. Right, so like, I don't want to like... it's not a flippant thing, right? Like, like, this shit counts, like, depending on when you pull that trigger. It counts, right? It counts psychologically. How quickly in and out of lockdowns you go, right. There's a mental health cost to hard lock downs, the moment... the moment you get one case. Right. So I think that the I think that the risks are... the one thing I'll say about the risk and... yeah, you're right. I mean, I haven't talked about risk and uncertainty. And I think this colours, all of it, is that I think in the risk... risk-benefit analysis... not, you know, again, I don't know what's happening at the decision-making tables, I have a sense about some tables, some places, but you know, there is a sense in which the risks that are primary risks are always the infectious disease ones, are the ones around the actual virus. There are many other risks: psychological, economical, so on and so forth. So I think even on the... even the idea of the balancing of risk, nuance is needed. And yeah, I think it... I think these are the important shades where Angus and I disagree. Right. Just that, you know, it is what it is, I guess.

Well, I think we're gonna have to leave it on that cliffhanger. (laughs). Thank you so much for speaking with me about lockdown.

Yeah, pleasure.

It was great.

Yeah. It's a really good discussion, and we got into so many different things. And of course, we haven't reached any conclusions. But that's our job (laughs). Thanks again for joining me, Diego and Angus. And thanks, everyone for listening to this episode of SHE Research Podcast. You can find our other episodes on Spotify, Radio Public, Anchor, or wherever else you get your podcasts of quality. SHE Pod is hosted by me, Kathryn MacKay and produced by Madeline Goldberger. Thanks so much for listening. Bye,