Georgina Ferry interviews Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine, 21 September 2022.
Topics discussed include (00:00:20) personal impact during the pandemic, including relating to student supervision, change in the pace of work; (00:03:30) national lockdown and impact on work, meetings and calls with Lord Bethall [Lords Minister in the Department of Health], work with Matt Hancock MP, gaps in information distribution; (00:06:25) media and press appearances, including Channel 4 and ITV; (00:08:37) family life, including home working; (00:09:56) impact of the work on wellbeing, keeping to a routine including sleep and exercise; (00:13:11) progress of vaccine programme, including results from Pfizer, data from Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine results; (00:14:35) personal threat of catching COVID-19, including lifestyle changes; (00:18:20) early assumptions relating to the pandemic; (00:19:40) population level exposure to the virus, immunology, antibodies and T cell protection; (00:23:25) virus sequencing, including appearance of variants; (00:25:30) mistakes in modelling and differences of opinion amongst the scientific community; (00:28:04) differences in opinion in the scientific community relating to lockdown restrictions, worries relating to the collapse of the health system during the early stages of the pandemic; (00:29:34) manual for pandemic management, lockdown restrictions in Africa (00:34:58) calls with Chris Murray [University of Washington, Seattle] relating to modelling; (00:35:45) vaccination and protection for life from severe disease; (00:38:00) stepping back from advisory roles relating to COVID-19; (00:38:36) future pandemic preparedness, including preparedness for other viruses including Nipah; (00:41:32) new work including a systematic approach for characterising infections and identifying pathogens earlier, development with the G20; (00:43:47) One Shot campaign.
