EHO Knows: Corona Royale w/Dr. Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey

And as the cinema lights dim and the clack of the projector starts, we once again catch up with our hero, Dr. Stephanie Fletcheratti, sipping on a co-free collar in her cozy hideaway in the Caribbean, ready to jump on her flight to continue her battle against CO in the land down under. So you go for total shutdown. You reopen, you work out how to get things moving. And so things are now looking relatively rosy. Yeah, there is a global pandemic going on, but then you decide to make another move and say, “Here we go. James Bond time back on a plane and you head for Sydney, Australia.” Woohoo. So, so you leave paradise and you come to to Sydney. So, what’s your new role? When I came back, you know, I mean, I don’t even want to get started on how drab and dreary it looked when I arrived back in Sydney. It really felt like a ghost town when I came back in in at the end.

Well, it was a ghost town, wasn’t it? Because you literally could walk through Sydney and it looked like those zombie movies where there was no one. When you say it looked like a ghost town, it it lit Sydney CBD was a ghost town.  It was.

Yeah. Yeah. We were just this close to shooting people for walking down the street. So, welcome back to Sunny City. And so, back into a ghost town. And so, your new role is 

Yeah, I landed a new role as the program manager for the optimized COVID study with the Bernardet Institute in Melbourne. I was working remotely, by the way, like everybody else.

Yeah. everyone who was working in the building was still working remotely because there’s no way you could ever walk back into whatever you were doing. So what were you know you’re you’re heading back to Australia. What were you expecting to see in terms of how Australia was dealing with it and then how did it compare to what you actually saw?

Yes. So I think my expectation was you know this is my Australia. We’ve got the best expertise in the world. our day-today life had been something, you know, I worked in public health as an epidemiologist here and we, you know, we could deal with a measles outbreak. We could deal with a Ross River situation. We can deal with all the Legionnaire’s disease in the world. And I got back here and I was like, wait, wait a minute. Where where’s everybody? What’s going on? And you know, I was quite taken aback at how quiet everything was like naturally outside. But I could see that the the the machine was pretty much running in the background. But what surprised me though was the padlock on the the gates, the borders of Australia, the the virtual iron gates. I came on a plane from the USA and I’ve done that journey from LA to Sydney multiple times in those big boying 7 787s which carries about 500 passengers. I was in first class and there were literally four of us in the entire first class which seats about maybe 50 60 people and the the economy section which seats probably another 400 was absolutely empty. There was literally less than 50 people in that big old plane. Right. So that was that was really shocking. and then coming back and just seeing everything just seemed so dull and and the fact that people weren’t traveling as we always do, you know, like Sydney is a place where people are moving around. So that was big. But then you know my job was with this big um international institute in Melbourne that was leading one of the big COVID studies that the government was using to advise you know what was happening on the ground and and that was really really interesting. So even though I was working remotely it was equally as exciting as if I was traveling to the office.

Oh now we go how close to all the the political dirt do we go? But you’re doing the this research and giving advice without naming names or you know just you how close or far was the government in terms of implementing the recommendations or acting upon the followings and how often were you waking up listening to the news and going what the hell did you just say?

Well thankfully not many not very often. So I know there were quite a few groups around the country. Um this this study I was working on was particularly for Victoria but eventually because I think of the high level findings we had then it started to be used nationally in some other places. And when I started initially, there was this really really important cohort that they were following over time to get feedback from people on the ground about how the pandemic was affecting them and eventually we had to make sure that you know people from non- English speaking backgrounds got included so that it really represented the general population. So I think they did a pretty good job from from a general perspective in terms of bring taking on board the findings but I think that developed over time

and this is the year that Melbourne went into extreme lockdown wasn’t it? So okay so all of our international listeners Australia and New Zealand the way they dealt with um co was almost unique. We’re we’re islands. Like we we don’t let people in. So we aimed for zero. We wanted no CO at all and we achieved it. Like we we literally had days where we were measuring the number of COVID cases in in double digits whereas the rest of the world was inviting tourists in. And so we got to the stage where we were in total lockdown. And Melbourne had it for how many days? I think it was the record. It was I think seven months cons continuously but it it was a world record. I think it was over more than 180 days continuous lockdown in Melbourne.

I can’t remember what the record was but it it did hit a world record. 

So some people were fully on board with it and some people were were not on board with it. I think psychologists will be having years and years of material on what’s the long-term impact of, you know, just locking people up for six months in um in isolation. But yeah, Melbourne was extreme and Sydney was bad enough as it was. So what was the advice you were or you know the the organization was giving in terms of the government in terms of aiming for zero or doing lockdowns or you know how was the disease spreading? What could happen? Yeah. What was the dirt? I think most of it was really understanding how the pandemic was impacting on people’s lives. So, their mental health, their well-being, ability to participate in what people do normally dayto-day and how best can they do that in a way that preserves their mental health, but also understanding how the impact is affecting people over time. One of the areas that I significantly and I I don’t want to go too much in detail on this part was the representation of people from non-English-speaking backgrounds into the data was being captured. So one of the things that I was able to do is to make sure that those voices were being represented in the data so that it wasn’t just a blanket response for the traditional population groups. Much of it was around how is this particular recommendation affecting people and how can we actually modify those so it has a reduced impact on people’s overall long-term well-being. I think eventually that ended up coming down to when we actually got vaccines as well. So a lot of that was the prevaccine period and a post vaccine period. So it was understanding some of those initial thoughts around vaccine hesitancy and all the mark of the beast type fears and you know people are going to go sterile and impotent if they take vaccines and just making sure that we weren’t manhandling or repeating some of the mistakes from the earlier part of the pandemic when we were manhandling people and forcing them and you know hypothetically knocking them over the head to do things against their will. I mean a lot of that still ended up happening but we would have hoped I think that’s probably one of the areas that I feel generally speaking we didn’t do very well and much to my dismay because when I left the Caribbean to come back to Australia I had told everybody I’m going back to Australia cuz the Australian government meant to would never allow anybody to knock me over their head to take a vaccine. Well, much to my shock and surprise, you know, I had to take my words back. And so,

you know, that was something that I wish would have turned out differently, but, you know, it was within my control to stop that.

Yes. So, we’re talking 2021 going on to 2022. So, we’re now a couple years, but I think we’ve probably blanked as much of CO out of our memory as possible. But what you’re highlighting is that at the same time there was just a total lack of information going out to different communities. Australia, as much as we’re multicultural, we’re largely not. We’ve got strong areas where we’ve got strong local groups. And so the information that was getting into those groups and being passed around was very different to what was going on around. And so at that stage you’re living in the one of the western suburbs of of Sydney.

Yeah. So you’re live living in the western suburbs for anyone from Sydney will understand the references there.

Wild west.  Uh the wild west and you’re dark and you’re also working for with co so what was your experience like in the community? So, forget about your job. What was life like at home?

The life at home was probably a little bit more quiet because there was just nobody around.

But it is it was a major challenge. There were lots of important things that happened. I lost my mom during the middle of 2021 who was in Jamaica.

in Jamaica and I could not leave to travel to see my mom. So, so that was one. Then there were all these people who were either giving birth or losing someone and it was so different because you know in the in the multicultural context that we live you know people support each other and as a lot of us as migrants we don’t have long many family members here and in the norm under normal times or as us epidemiologists would say in peace times these people are your community these are your tribe. So can you imagine going through major life experiences, giving birth, losing someone and and not being able to have your tribe around you to have people there which which has really really significant impact on your mental health. So it was a very dark time for us in Western Sydney. Churches were closed down as you can imagine. Um Western Sydney it’s not just one faith group. There are multiple faith groups, very strong faith groups live in the area. So people unable to gather to to do the things that keeps you together as community. A lot of um collectivist societies and and backgrounds in this area. It really had a major impact on the life of communities. One of the things was I had a young child and hadn’t having been in lockdown for so long working overseas. When I came back to Australia, my young child who was just turning three, he really wanted to go to the park. He he had been in isolation for so long because of my role as an expatriate and a diplomat overseas, you know, he wasn’t really able to go outside. So coming back home and I remember him just crying about I really really would love to go to the park, sit on a swing and those were some of the frightening situations where one of my friends actually gave birth and another friend went to visit and the neighbors called the police on them. That’s the kind of context we were living in. And I could go on and on and on about it. It’s in the past now. But you know this was the our reality that life was just like some of those movies that you see about 2040 and 20 what you think happens in the future when civilization has come to an end. It felt like that in Western Sydney and in one sense you know we’ve got the the benefit of hindsight but we also don’t know what would have happened if we had done nothing. So would millions of people have died if we literally had done nothing. All we know is that having done what we did, people didn’t die. But then so the reason why I asked about your personal life is because you’ve got the Sydney response, the Melbourne response. You’re you’re professionally advising into that. At the same time, you’ve come back from countries which have gone in a different path because of necessity and you know gotten on with life and trying to make it work. And then on the personal front, you you’re going through personal tragedy, but you’re looking at everything else that’s going on. 

One thing I want to add in as well from a community perspective. So I’m connected to community groups and one of the things that was happening was I also felt there was this kind of responsibility on my shoulder because I spent so much time interpreting the science to break that down into simple easy language for communities to understand especially groups that were really concerned about. Initially it was just around explaining what terms and concepts meant and how to keep safe. But then when we got to the stage where we had vaccines, it got to the place when I had to start now breaking down some of the myths um misinformation and helping people to understand the science behind vaccines or the the the rational and reasoning behind some of the measures that were implemented and and and help people understand that so they could navigate this whole fear and the darkness that they they perceived. believed was going to eat them up and and really help. So, I did quite a bit of that in my spare time as well, doing webinars for churches, preparing bite-sized little nuggets for people to post on social media and so on. So, just wanted to throw that in there.

Yes. So as much as you’re advising governments, the practical impact is you know what you were saying trying to say to small communities and just publishing was that official or unofficial? I did some of that in my role in Bernett, a big project that we actually developed on how to communicate to to these, you know, multicultural and culturally diverse backgrounds. But eventually I was doing unofficial stuff just through the communities that I’m associated with on the ground, you know, like you can’t just take your badge off and say, you know, I’m just Mrs. Ly. People know who you are. So they start to call you up, you know, little organizations start to call and ask you and then sometimes you just hear people say things and you think, “Oh, I have that responsibility. I need to help them understand what this means and how they can actually live within the context of all the regulations that were happening without losing their mind as well. 

Australia was quite extreme in terms of it. It was virtually a state and thankfully has managed to make look worse than Australia now in terms of being a state and this comment is now going to get me banned from ever traveling to the for the next 3 years. But yeah, we we literally had a government that was shutting down conversation and so the ability to have Q&As’s uh just really didn’t exist. So, if you’re stepping into community groups to answer their questions, yeah, our international viewers probably won’t recognize how amazing that is to actually have someone who’s prepared to step in front of a group and say, “Hey, what questions you have because they were largely just being suppressed. You know, listen to us. Do what we say. Don’t ask questions.” And that was pretty much 2122. And so the vaccine’s rolling out and we basically go unless you’re vaccinated, you know, you can’t do bang bang bang bang. And once again, in the benefit of hindsight, we can say, was that a good decision or or not a good decision? But the personal impact of yeah, you have to accept what was being done. And then you’ve got, you know, communication, miscommunication, ethnic groups not being um being heard. That was the the landscape in Australia. Another interesting aspect, the media definitely was racist and the government in terms of the policies. Were they bordering on being racist or

I definitely think there was a lot of racial profiling across the board. Um we saw it on the ground in our communities when police would follow like police would follow certain people home. It happened to my husband and my son. A police car followed my son home which was absolutely ridiculous. He came home, parked on the street, and and they accosted him right at the gate. And it was like, how ridiculous can one get? And and and that was probably one of the very mild examples, but they would be highly prevalent in certain communities where, you know, there’s a very high proportion of, you know, darkkinned people or foreigners and people from non-English-speaking backgrounds. It was so blatantly obvious, right?

We also had the classic of We had a CO outbreak over Christmas. I forget which year it was in the northern beaches.

And what’s really good about CO is it doesn’t spread between rich people quickly. And so it was okay for them to continue on having fitness with their family

as long as they were rich in the northern suburbs. But then a couple months later, we had a couple people in Bankstown with CO and suddenly we had three LGAs just locked down for 6 months because what we know is that CO spreads rapidly between people with no money.

So I was here it was 2021. 

It was definitely 2021 cuz I was here when that travesty happened. So it’s good that we can identify the causes for disease spreading poverty and the things that So in one sense I’m reflecting on this going damn I didn’t want this to be such a depressing episode at the same time I’m thinking wow this has been a like in one sense it’s interesting reflecting back on how we were as a people and responding because I think it makes it a lot harder for us now to point the finger at Americans going what the hell how can you be putting up with what’s going on when there is definitely a degree of trust or whatever. What I love about this conversation is there’s the information that you’re providing and you’re trying to do the best. You personally are trying to do the best in your job and stopping the spread of disease and then at the same time you’re feeling the total weight of of what’s going on. So, it’s not like you’re outside doing this experiment over there.

You’re not immune.

So, let’s now jump back into James Bond mode and you’re now the jet setting international. We’re going to save the world. So, you finish that job and you jump on a flight and when, where, what?

Yeah. By the end of 2021, I was getting ready to go to the Pacific to work again as an advisor, this time as a COVID advisor in the Solom Solomon Islands. And this was pretty exciting. And that’s where we suddenly stop again. Bit like Melbourne really, just long enough to start getting going and then bush, nothing. Now you’ll have to wait another week to hear the final installment. In next week’s episode, you will hear of a yet another totally different response to CO. There is now finally a growing awareness of the cause, but there are still communities that have never been infected, but not for much longer. See you next week.