EHO Knows: Rooster Gate w/ Tanya Morrison

Shane: today’s episode of EHO knows, feels like a James Bond episode, so it’s going to be starting on the back streets of Sydney and we’re, we’re going to go international and we’re going to be going around the world and then we’re going to be bouncing back to, to Australia, and then we’re back over internationally.

Shane: This is the jet setter EHO knows, and the McGuffin in this James Bond is COVID. Um, and so what we’re doing is having a look at how one person through. Multiple, jobs had such a fascinating insight into not only the spread of COVID, but how totally different countries were responding. Um, and we’re not talking about the US or the UK because everyone knows what happened there, but we’re having a look at how some of the, the smaller nations around the world, um, struggled and dealt with COVID, as well as getting the magical insight into some of what was happening  here in Australia.

So this one’s truly international. James Bond saved the world episode of EHO knows, and to take us through it, Dr. Stephanie Fletcher Lati, thank you very much for coming along

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: It’s great to be here Shane. Thanks for having me.

Shane: and so to, to get this epic journey started In 30 seconds, summarize your entire life leading up to the end of 2019.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Thank you. So I initially trained as an environmental health officer in Jamaica in 1997, and I worked in Jamaica up to 2014. Then I came to Australia to do my PhD and has been working more in the capacity of an epidemiologist post PhD and been, you know, advisor, consultant in emergency preparedness and response.

Shane: Okay, so, so there’s the backdrop. That’s the opening. the intro. And now what we’re gonna do is pick up the story. December, 2019, whereabouts were you?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So yeah, I was working as a senior bio-preparedness epidemiologist in Sydney in one of our, in Liverpool area, to be exact. And that was my primary role.

Shane: And so then suddenly. 2020 life changes for you. Before you know the rest of the world, you make another big change. So it’s now January, 2020 and you do what?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So, yeah. Um, so I was in Liverpool and I actually came to this place where I felt like I needed a change. I was looking for something big to use up all my bio-preparedness and emergency response skills. And I landed this big role as an advisor to the Caribbean Public Health Agency and just arrived in Trinidad and Tobago in January the very first week. And, and that’s where I was at the beginning of January, just settling in, in my brand new role as the head of the Communicative Disease and emergency Department at in the Caribbean.

Shane: Okay, so you’re in the Caribbean, got this brand new job. What did you think this job was going to be? I.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I thought it was going to be amazing. You know, I was really looking forward to some opportunities to, you know, use some of my technical skills in research evaluation. And of course, you know, the routine disease surveillance stuff as an advisor. of course I was really hoping to have a few outbreaks here and there that I would get to show off some of my skills that I gained in Australia. And, you know, I was hoping that something exciting would happen. I get to travel a little bit to some of the, the countries in the region and you know, I was pretty excited about the role actually,

Shane: and so you’ll go, oh, okay. Actually we can joke about, you know, hey, bring it on. Gimme a little bit of a, um, a disease outbreak. Um, and then a couple weeks into the job. Um, we know that around the world there was those, those first whiffs of, Hey, there’s something happening in China, so how did it slightly, enter your world.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So, yeah, two weeks after arriving in Trinidad and Tobago where I was based, I got, I got a request from the head of the organization that, you know, there’s this brand new virus that seems to be causing some panic in Asia. Can you write a brief so that we can be prepared? And I was like, never heard of it. Started reaching out to some of my colleagues back here in Australia to see, you know, if I could really make sense of what was happening. And they were just as clueless as I was. Anyway, you know, as, as we all did, rummaged around, found whatever little information was there and pieced it together based on previous knowledge of similar conditions and, you know, more like a hypothetical scenario of what we could potentially expect, which was pretty much nothing.

We prepared as best as we could, but, you know, the rest of it is, is history now in terms of how that played out. But I was basically just as you know, as everybody else preparing for this unknown virus and what it would mean for the rest of the world.

Shane: so in terms of the Caribbean, what, what’s the geography like? Like, you know, and, and what’s the, the politics of, you know, the, the governments and the structures? What were you working with?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Yeah, so, so the organization I was working with is the Regional wide Public Health agency, which actually reports to the government of the region quite similar to how we have here in the Pacific. You know, for example, SPC, you know, south Pacific, the health agency here, this organization had 27 member states, essentially, that were looking to us for public health leadership. And my role was basically to prepare the organization to be able to provide information to these member states in a timely manner. Um, the, the Caribbean is quite diverse, maybe not as large in size as the Pacific, but very similar in location. Very tropical, um, quite disaster prone in terms of cyclones and so on. small island, developing states quite similar to the Pacific, maybe has a little bit more advantage in terms of human resources for health and expertise. Very close in proximity to the USA. So, um, that proximity as well is, is something to be taken into consideration. But that’s kind of like the lay of the land in terms of where I was located at this stage.

Very close knit group as well in terms of governance and leadership, mainly democracies and, um, you know, similar kind of governance systems, predominantly English speaking a few French and Dutch territories in, in the region.

Shane: So we’re talking about multiple governments, but they’re working together. You’re talking about a country that’s like in the shadow of the us. Um, so there’s, there’s money coming in, but it’s not a rich nation. so in one sense it’s, it’s absolutely amazing having someone in your role and having an organization like that.

So there. Partially ahead, but then no one in the world expected, um, COVID and, and the way it rolled out. Uh, so here we are. You are in position and you are preparing reports. And I assume that it’s like the rest of the world. It went from, you know, page four n news to page one, news two. What the hell just happened?

So what was the, what the hell just experience, uh, February, March? How did it roll out?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: For us at that time in the Caribbean, we had a slight bit of advantage because of the distance we were from the epicenter of the start of the pandemic, which was a great blessing for me as well because it means that I had a bit of lead time, I still believe was the, the blessing that the Caribbean received. You know, not blowing my own trumpet. Having somebody with my expertise there on the ground before it all happened was a great, great blessing for us. So also having just maybe recently come out of the Ebola pandemic as well. With that kind of headset on, the Caribbean had just finished all their Ebola planning again, so they had a bit of a framework and they had a pandemic response policy in place in most of, in quite a few of the countries. there, there was a bit of a, a foundation to build on. So with that in mind, coming in and understanding that what we are hearing has a likelihood of [00:09:00] getting bigger and spreading, that was a great advantage for me. So remember that when I initially left, I was looking for something big, so

Shane: So COVID is your fault there going something big.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So this was my, I want something big being handed to me on a golden platter. So my mindset was already prepared to deal with something big way too early. If you ask me, you know, I needed some time to actually get to know the organization, but it was like hit the ground running, to roll out all the knowledge, the expertise.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: But that little bit of lead time that we got, it was about maybe seven weeks or so that we got before things got really, really messy around us. In, in the North America, gave us enough time to be able to put all the policies and procedures in place. And, you know, the governmental system, as I mentioned before, is a very well oiled machine in that region. [00:10:00] So they were on the front foot speaking to each other, our advice, and, and, and we were just really, not just a health response, but it was a really a whole of society response. And in these small island developing states, they really do that a lot better than some of the big countries. They actually talk to their other partners in the other sectors.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: And that’s a, was a very well oiled machine already happening in that region. So, so that was a really amazing experience for me to be able to tap into that And. If you remember, I am from the region, so I know the region extremely well.

Shane: Yes. Yeah. I’m just going say that you just lost most of our Australian and American listeners. When you said they communicate with each other, they go, sorry, I don’t understand that. Can you please explain that concept? You know, they actually work together. Um, and so, so you put these, procedures in place.

Shane: How long did it take before you went into lockdown where people [00:11:00] couldn’t be traveling and, and mingling anymore, where, you know, commerce basically shut down and everything.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So that happened in at different times in different locations. ’cause I’m talking about, we have 27 different member states here in the location where I was Trinidad and Topeka was the first country that closed down they are one of the more higher income countries in the region. So they had the resources to be able to do that. The vast majority of countries in the region are very highly tourism dependent. So lockdown was really a last resort for many of these countries. It was, we will remain open as long as possible to protect our population. So Trinidad closed. Um, early February, um, most of the other countries started closing after the pandemic was called because they were so much more highly reliant on tourism. And [00:12:00] also the fact that, it was a big, this was a big tourism season. You know, it was the North American winter season, which means all the tourists head for the sun, sand, and Sea in the Caribbean. So many countries hesitated as long as it was possible to close their borders. And so they did that in a more phased basis.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Trinidad and Tobi, on the other hand, you know, they went into it because they had, you know, internal resources that were not as dependent on foreign foreign influence from, you know, tourism coming in.

Shane: So it’s the double-edged sword that you need. Like these, these are people who are surviving, um, day to day on the tourist dollar. Uh, so you’re talking small businesses, and if the tourist stop, then effectively they’re not feeding their family anymore. But at the same time, the tourists are the bloody plagued ones who they’re gonna be bringing the problem in.

Shane: And so, yeah, you [00:13:00] can shut that, but then you’re not gonna be, uh, and you’re up feeding your family. So I, yeah, that decision to close down, must have been really, really hard. Uh, and so you then do the, the shutdown. What are the consequences for these small, locations that rely on, on tourism? What happened then?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: As you could well imagine, a lot of them had major, major implosion in their economy. This then resulted in a higher dependence on foreign support from bigger high income countries, in the Caribbean, they’re probably not as dependent on foreign income. As much as maybe our Pacific Islanders in terms of, you know, the day-to-day running of like health systems.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: But one of the beautiful things about the Caribbean is they have a very strong tourism health program that has been in existence for many years. That system was fully well in effect, where they have, you know, regular, you know, [00:14:00] collaboration with, for example, cruise shipping. It’s a very strong system in the Caribbean that came into play during the pandemic and in that planning phase where, it wasn’t just the government says no, it’s how do we work with all these players in the tourism industry, the cruise shipping industry, to make the transition as smooth as possible? I mean. It, it worked really well for a little while, but there were, as you could well imagine, was so new and the scale was so big that, you know, we, we had to calibrate a lot of things to make sure that it could work. And then there came a point in time when they just said, look, know we do our best to protect our people, but we gotta live.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So many countries started to open back their borders quite early.

Shane: Yeah. So, um, great place to just slow down. what do you mean by that? Like what was happening, um, in the lockdown that then said, you know, we can’t [00:15:00] sustain lockdown. I.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Yeah. in some of the smaller countries, for example. You know, they stopped coming in for a little while, but they recognized that it was going to be absolutely impossible to maintain their economy without having a stream of income from those external, um, tourists coming in. what they did wa they recognized that, you know, people were out of jobs.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: That was one of the biggest thing. People couldn’t feed their families because their, their employers weren’t earning income to pay them. many countries ended up trying to do some kind of relief. But our, our economies are not really structured that way. You know, we don’t have a center link in these countries.

Shane: Yeah, so here in Australia we had job keeper and um, or job, whatever the other one was. So, so the government was pouring money in to try and keep people employed. Um, and so the RE is, we’ve got [00:16:00] teenagers who are buying laptops because they’re suddenly so much wealthier than before. Here you’re saying. The businesses weren’t being subsidized, they weren’t paying their ex-employees.

Shane: Um, you were largely now starting to rely on, um, international donations, but they weren’t necessarily getting through. So you’ve now got families that have no income. so how bad did it actually get?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Some, some countries it, it got bad, but then the governments decided, look, there’s gonna be a measured risk taken. So I think many countries decided that they were gonna put in as many mitigation type policies and risk reduction type strategies, and have some kind of phased, um, reintroduction of tourists coming in.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Some of the things that happened were stuff like people get tested first, so they had a lot of those tests before you fly policies. [00:17:00] then, or, um. The quarantine was, was probably a introduced a little bit later, but people didn’t want to go on holidays and be in quarantine. One of the other strategies they used were, was that, you know, if you enter and you test positive, there’s a certain qua, um, zone that you had to remain in.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So that was maybe towards the. Closer towards the end of, of the first year of the pandemic where you could travel, but if on arrival you ended up testing positive, a quarantine zone, you can, you cannot leave this property or you know, all the people here have COVID anyway, so, nobody’s going anywhere or something like that.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: You know, we, we are all positive and we are enjoying the Sun Sea and anyway, um, they’re not seek requiring hospitalization and so on. So lot of it was just some of those policies that we are well used to with surveillance and disease risk [00:18:00] controls and tailoring them for the, the need while allowing people to be able to come in and have the, the, the currency flowing again in the system.

Shane: So were you keeping, um, track of numbers, like, you know, so here in Australia every single day it was, you know, number of COVID cases in Australia, you know, 1024 or whatever. And we were literally just tracking them day by day, going, oh, and we were aiming for, for zero. Um, that was never the case. You weren’t aiming for zero.

Shane: Were you doing that daily? Hey, we’ve got, you know, 20,000 cases of COVID or whatever. yeah, what was the messaging going out into the, um, the public.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: did, with my background as an epidemiologist, I was the one writing those reports not just for our organization, but remember there were 27 countries that were sending data to us and we were compiling that and sending that back out. So we were tracking the numbers. [00:19:00] And where I was based was also the regional reference lab.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So before individual countries had capacity to test, everything came to us. So we had all the numbers from day one, and we were tracking that until capacity was built in some of these smaller locations to be able to do like PCRs and. We didn’t embrace, for example, the antigen testing until way down when, you know, when I think the rest of the world started to do that. But we were tracking numbers and we, we were writing these reports. I remember when we produced our 100th surveillance report, we actually had a 100th celebration, a special edition of our 100th COVID-19 surveillance report. And we had a special designer. it, that’s how you know it was so big.

Shane: so, so you’ve got an autograph copy, um, out there [00:20:00] now worth It’s, it’s weight in gold, how many additions did they make it to? Did they, you know, um, you, it was after your time you left, but.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I, I don’t remember to be honest. Um, I think I got to probably about maybe episode 300 or something before I left. ’cause we were doing, initially we were doing maybe once a week, and then by, by March when the pandemic was declared, we were doing twice. So Tuesdays and Thursdays we were sending out a report for, I think the rest of the six months, we were doing like two reports per week. And then

Shane: Yeah.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: end, I think that became just so unsustainable because it, it took a lot of time. So I think eventually we returned to once a week. So by the time I left we were probably up to about episode 200 and something, or close to 300. Um, but a lot of the systems that were set up continued until after I left.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I.

Shane: Yes. Okay. so you’ve got the first year you, um, [00:21:00] are waiting for something and you get more than you ever hoped for. Um, but it’s just really, really interesting that you are in an environment where, uh, the goal was never, ever to have total suppression. It was the focus was, um, you have to get on with life.

Shane: and so you go for total shutdown. You’ve reopened, 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 so here we go, James Bonine back on, back on a plane, and you head for

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Sydney, Australia.

Shane: Woohoo. So, so you leave, you know, paradise and you come to to Sydney. Uh, so what’s your new role?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: When I came back, you know, I mean, I don’t even wanna get started on how [00:22:00] drab and dreary it looked when I arrived back in Sydney. it really felt like a ghost

Shane: So.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I came back in, in, at the end.

Shane: 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, like when you say it looked like a ghost town, it, it lit. Sydney CBD was a ghost town.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: It was,

Shane: yeah, you know, we were just this close to shooting people for walking down the street.

Shane: Um, so, so welcome back to Sunny Sydney. and so back into a ghost town and so your new role is

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Yeah. I landed a new role as the program manager for the optimized COVID study with the Bernard Institute in Melbourne. working remotely, by the way, like everybody else.

Shane: 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 are, you are heading back to Australia. What were you expecting to [00:23:00] see in terms of how Australia was dealing with it, and then how did it compare to what you actually saw?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Yeah. So I think my expectation was, you know, this is my Australia. We’ve got the best expertise in the world, our day-to-day life had been some, 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, I. Taken aback at how quiet everything was, like naturally outside. But I could see that 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, the virtual iron gates. I came on a plane from the USA I’ve done [00:24:00] that journey from LA to Sydney multiple times in those big Boeing 7, 7 8 sevens, which carries about 500 percenters. 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. So that was, that was really shocking. And then coming back and just seeing 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. 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.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: And, [00:25:00] and that was really, really interesting. So even though I was working remotely, it was equally as excited as if I was traveling to the office,

Shane: Oh, now we go how close to all the, the political dirt do we go? But, you are doing this research and, uh, giving advice without naming names or, you know, just Yeah. how close or far was the government in terms of implementing the, 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?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Well, thankfully not many of, not very often, so I know there were quite a few groups around the country. 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. [00:26:00] And when I started initially there was this really.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: A 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 EEE 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 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.

Shane: And this is the year, uh, the year that Melbourne went into extreme lockdown, wasn’t it? So, okay. So all of our international listeners, um, Australian, New Zealand, the way they dealt with, um, COVID was, almost unique we’re, we’re islands like we, we don’t let people in. so we aimed for zero.

Shane: We wanted no COVID at all, [00:27:00] 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 were inviting tourists in. Um, and so we got to the stage where we were in, uh, total lockdown and Melbourne had it for how many days

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I think it

Shane: It.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: the record. It was I think seven months con continuously, but it, it was, it was a world record. I think it was over more than 180 days continuous in Melbourne. I. Uh, I can’t remember what the record was, but it, it did hit a world record.

Shane: 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.

Shane: Um, and Sydney was bad enough as it [00:28:00] was. so what was the advice you were, or, you know, the, the organization was giving in terms of the government, in terms of, um, aiming for zero or doing lockdowns or, you know, how was the disease spreading? What can happen? Um, what was the dirt.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I think most of it was really understanding how the pandemic was impacting on people’s lives, so their mental health, their wellbeing, ability to participate in what people do normally day to day, how best can I. They do that in a way that preserves their mental health, but also understanding how the impact is affecting people over time. Um, one of the areas that I significantly, and I I don’t wanna go too much in detail on this part, was 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 [00:29:00] population groups. Um, 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 wellbeing. I think eventually that ended up coming down to when we actually got vaccines as well. So a lot of that was a pro-vaccine period and a post vaccine period. So it was understanding some of those initial thoughts around vaccine hesitancy and the mark of the beast type fears. And you know, people are gonna 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 hypothetically knocking them over the head to do things against their will.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I mean, a lot of that still ended up happening, but. We would’ve [00:30:00] hoped. I think that’s probably one of the areas that I feel generally speaking, 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. ’cause the Australian government would never allow anybody to knock me over their head to take a vaccine. Well, much to my shock and surprise, you know, um, I had to take my words back. And so, know, that was something that I wish would’ve turned out differently. But you know, it was within my control to stop that.

Shane: Yes. So, we are talking 2021, going on to 2022. Um, so we are now a couple years, but I think we’ve probably blanked as much of COVID out of our memory as possible. But 2021 was a really, really funny year in that it was the, the final year of Trump. And, uh, as far as I’m concerned, there were two comedians that [00:31:00] were making COVID possible to get through.

Shane: So one was Jimmy Reese, um, absolute legend, Australian comedian, and the other one was Donald Trump. Um, the American comedian. Um, and you were tuning in on all the stupid things he was saying every day on the news. So, yeah, it was a time of, uh, misinformation and obscure stuff. Um, but what you are highlighting is that at the same time there was just a total lack of information going out to, um, to different communities, Australia as much as we’re multicultural, we’re largely not.

Shane: We’ve got strong areas where we’ve got, um, strong, uh, local groups. And so the information that was getting into those groups and being passed around, um, was very different to what was going on around. and so at that stage, you are living in the, um, one of the western suburbs of, um, of Sydney. yeah. So you, you are live living in the Western suburbs, [00:32:00] uh, for anyone from Sydney will understand the references there, uh,

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: West.

Shane: the Wild West. and you are dark and you’re also working for, um, with COVID. Um, so what was your experience like in the community? So forget about your job. What was life like at home?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: the life at home was probably a little bit more quiet because there was just nobody around. Um, but it is, it was a major challenge. There were lots of important things that happened. Um, I lost my mom during the middle of 2021, who was in

Shane: Sorry, sorry to.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: 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 [00:33:00] support each other. And as a lot of us as migrants, we don’t have long, um, many family members here in the norm on the normal times, or as us epidemiologists would say, in peace times, these people are your community.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: 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. it was a very dark time for us in Western Sydney. Um, 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, um, 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, collectivist societies and and backgrounds in this area. It [00:34:00] really, it had a major impact on the life of communities. Uh, one of the things was I had a young child and having, having been in lockdown for so long, working overseas, 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. 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 there were some days when I actually broke the quarantine. I took him, there was a little park near like two or three minutes to walk from my house, and I just got to the point when I thought, I’m not gonna kill my child.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I took him down to the, down the road and sit, and it was just me and him in this park by ourselves sometimes for an hour. And, and, and those were some of the frightening [00:35:00] 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 20, 40 and 20. What you think happens in the future when civilization has come to an end. It felt like that in Western Sydney.

Shane: And in one sense, you know, we’ve got the, the benefit of hindsight. Um, but we also don’t know what would’ve 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, uh, you’ve got the Sydney response, [00:36:00] the Melbourne response.

Shane: You are, you are professionally advising into that. At the same time, you’ve come back from, um, countries which have gone in a different path because of necessity and, you know, got 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.

Shane: You become a law breaker and you just admitted it. And now the cops are gonna be buttoned down your door. You become a law breaker by taking your child to the park. And so, so you are trying to, you know, keep sanity and life going as much as possible as you’re advising governments on how to respond.

Shane: Realizing that where you are at the moment is, is not sustainable and you are breaking the law,

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Yeah.

Shane: just to, to do that little bit.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: One thing I want to add in as well from a community [00:37:00] 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 easy language for communities to understand, especially, um, groups that were really concerned about, um.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I 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, misinformation and helping people to understand the science behind vaccines or the, the, the rational and the 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, [00:38:00] they perceived was going to eat them up and, and, and really help.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So I did quite a bit of that in my spare time as well, um, doing webinars for churches, preparing, um, bite-sized little nuggets for people to post on social media and so on. So just wanted to throw that in there.

Shane: Yes. So as much as you are advising governments, um, the, the practical, impact is, you know, what you were saying, trying to say to small communities and just, uh, publishing was that official or unofficial.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I did some of that in my role in Burnett. Um, a big project that we actually developed on how to communicate to, 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.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: You [00:39:00] know, like you can’t just take your badge off and say, you know, I’m just Mrs. Light. People know who you are, so they start to call you up, you know, a little organization start to call and ask you, and then sometimes you just hear people say things and you think, oh, I have that responsibility.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: 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.

Shane: Australia was quite extreme in terms of, it, it was virtually a dictator state. Um. Uh, and thankfully Trump has managed to make the US look worse than Australia now in terms of being a dictator state. Uh, and this comment is now gonna get me banned from ever traveling to the US for the next three years.

Shane: Um, but yeah, we, we literally had a government that was, um, shutting down conversation. Um, and so the ability to have q and as, uh, just really didn’t [00:40:00] 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 do you have?

Shane: Uh, because they were largely just being suppressed. You know, listen to us, do what we say, don’t ask questions. Um, and that was pretty much 21, 22. and so the vaccine’s rolling out. Um, and we basically go, unless you’re vaccinated, you know, you can’t do bang, bang, bang, bang. Um, and once again, in the benefit of hindsight, we can say, was that a good decision or, or not a good decision?

Shane: Um, 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. Um, that was the, the, um, [00:41:00] landscape in Australia. Um, another interesting aspect, the media definitely was racist and the government, in terms of the policies, um, were they bordering on being racist or.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: 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 and, which was absolutely ridiculous.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: 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. Uh, be highly prevalent in certain communities where, you know, there’s a very high proportion of, you know, dark-skinned people or foreigners and people from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: It was so blatantly [00:42:00] obvious, right. with the government side of stuff, I’m not sure I. I probably wasn’t paying enough attention. I feel like maybe there were areas that it was probably, I wouldn’t call it racist, I would more call it a bit of a avoidance type. It was more avoidance. What, let’s stay clear from that. Let’s not talk about that. Instead, next thing we, we open up a can of worms. So I feel like there was a big avoidance initially around dealing with certain aspects that affected people who, who were from the culturally diverse backgrounds. And I really feel like people didn’t know how to answer questions if they got them.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: And so let’s not, let’s pretend that those things are not there and you know, the ostrich syndrome. Push our heads in the sand, pretend it doesn’t exist, and if nobody says anything, we’ll be fine. I feel like that was more of it. Let’s avoid it as much as we can [00:43:00] and, and, and just pretend it doesn’t exist and hope nobody says anything. That’s how I would describe it.

Shane: We also had the classic of um. We had a, a COVID outbreak over, uh, Christmas. I forget which year it was in the Northern Beaches. Um, and what’s really good about COVID is it doesn’t spread between rich people quickly. And so it was okay for them to continue on having Christmas with their family, um, as long as they were rich in the northern suburbs.

Shane: Um, but then a couple months later we had a couple people in Bankstown with COVID, and suddenly we had three LGAs just locked down for six months because what we know is that COVID spreads rapidly between people with no money. so yes, it’s, it’s how a disease.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: definitely 2021. ’cause I was here when that travesty happened.

Shane: 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, [00:44:00] damn, I didn’t want this to be such a depressing episode. Um, at the same time I’m thinking, well, this has been a, like, in one sense it’s interesting reflecting back on how we were as a people and responding, um, because I think it makes it a lot harder for us now to point the finger at Americans going, what the hell?

Shane: How can you be putting up with what’s going on when there is definitely a degree of trust or whatever? Um, and I, what I love about this conversation is, um, there’s the information that you are providing and you’re trying to do the best. You personally are trying to do the best in your job, um, and stopping the spread of disease.

Shane: And then at the same time you are feeling the total weight of, of what’s going on. Um, so it’s not like you’re outside doing this experiment over there.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Not

Shane: It’s, so let’s now jump back into James Bond mode. And you are now the jet setting International. We’re gonna save the [00:45:00] world. Uh, so you finish that job and you jump on a flight and when, where, what?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: 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 Solomon Islands. And, and this was pretty exciting. That big outbreak at the end of the year did slow me down a little bit because I couldn’t travel for about seven weeks because everything here and there was closed, and I had to wait all the necessary clearances before I was able to actually move. to the Solomon Islands. Yeah. So it, it was quite an exciting experience as well, just to kind of be back on the road leave the dismal environment in Australia. I was really open for a bit of fun again because I was like, oh, you know, it’s not happening. You know, [00:46:00] I’m, I’m not into this whole, know, lockdown situation and everything else that was playing out, but, you know. Yeah. Landed, landed in, in Hara in early February and they were also on the curfew, which was a kind of a lockdown in, in some way, but it wasn’t the kind of lockdown that we experienced here. ’cause people were able to go out and about, go to shops, the schools and so on were closed. but people could move around.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: People could move around within reason. And, and it was in a way, a bit welcome to just see people on the streets again doing normal day-to-day stuff. but it was quite an exciting opportunity to be out there and supporting the country at the national level with own response because they had a, their very first outbreak, and this was three years later, they were experiencing their very first outbreak.

Shane: Okay, so they went largely with nothing. Um, and so you are now stepping in. [00:47:00] Um, the vaccine was starting, had rolled out so vaccines rolling out and now they’re starting to get their, first case. Uh, so when did the COVID numbers start to take off for them?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So I think the original plan was that I would’ve gotten there to prepare them for the eventuality of the. first case, but in that period while I was waiting to travel, they actually ended up got their first case. So, um, by the time I got there, they had a few, maybe close to a hundred or so cases. So they had the very first outbreak, just in the early February of 2022. And, um, why they had gone into that kind of, um, restriction of movements and, and curfew type operation. Yeah.

Shane: did they go for the, let’s rip the bandaid off sort of approach and just go, okay, it’s out there. How are we gonna deal with it? Or did they go, [00:48:00] no, no, no, quick, we need to try and bring the numbers back down and, and control it. What, what was the attitude? What was in the mind of Yeah. The government.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: much the Australian version. Lock it

Shane: Okay.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So nobody in, nobody

Shane: Yeah.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Um, it was very like literally drip feed. It was very much like what we did in Australia in the, in the first year of the pandemic shot everything. But I mean, they, most of their advisors were so it was blows everything. can’t get in and you can’t get out, but. That only works in a country. That’s just one land mass. Solomon Islands has hundreds of little islands, and to control movement is, although they’re quite far away from each other, it’s not as easy to control movements in island, you know, in a country that has so many island part of, its, you know, geographical area. but they’re, by virtue of their very [00:49:00] isolation, they were able to maintain that for quite a while. But the moment the cases came in, then it was no, no holes Barr. It was really difficult to stop it from spreading because they are a very mobile population.

Shane: So on any particular island, would you suddenly just see, you know, COVID enter and then suddenly, you know, uh, half the island would end up with COVID in, in the space of a couple months? Or how did it spread?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: No, I think it was a blessing that that didn’t happen. Um, because they, they still have very remote areas, so in, in a way it can be a blessing and a curse at the same time. So, let’s say for example, the main capital, a lot of the traveling is from there going outwards. So were able to be able to like test people before they’re able to board a shape or a boat. and they were able to actually do that fairly well, um, throughout the, the main outbreak [00:50:00] periods up until that point. And so when, for, for many people, they still live in very rural areas in the islands. And that natural isolation is what protected them initially. However, when you had situations where you may have bigger pockets of a more kind of like suburban area in those remote areas, that’s when we would be seeing more of the, the outbreaks happening, bigger numbers, but that level traffic, most of the traffic would be coming from the main capital into each of the, the regions as they call them, or that way, they were able to. Qua, test isolate people because they have big ships that are moving from the main capital into these more remote areas. But after they suspended some of these movements, then that’s when we started to [00:51:00] see numbers escalating in some of the provinces. and I think over time it kind of just run its course and, and people were able to just figure out, they got to the place eventually, like what we did in the Caribbean when it was no longer sustainable to stop people from moving around.

Shane: in Australia we basically had, you know, face it, there’s only, when it came to COVID, there were only three cities in Australia. There was Sydney, Melbourne, and Canberra. Uh, and the only reason why Canberra existed is ’cause that’s where we stuck all our politicians. but if you looked at our, the way our policies were sort of run, it was virtually just around this, you know, very city centric mentality.

Shane: Um, and so, you know, once Melbourne went into lockdown, all of Victoria went into lockdown. But here you’re talking about a, a large number of islands, a lot of, isolation or whatever. So did they have a, a city-centric sort of approach or did they have a very much an an [00:52:00] island. Sort of policy. What?

Shane: What was in their thoughts? Did they look after the big cities or did they look after the islands? Or how did they do the juggling?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: think for Solomon Islands, they, their, their governance system is, they’ve got a very strong provincial government governance as well. So these remote islands, uh, or small groups of islands, they, they’re provinces and they’ve got fairly good, um, provincial leadership. So even most of that leadership was coming from the, um, the main big city or the capital city and was kind of trickling down.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: But because of the local governance at the provincial level, they were also looking after their population at that local government. So even though at times maybe some of the national policies may not have necessarily, um. And seeded enough what’s happening at the provincial level, their governance structure at that local level was really rising up and taking control of the situation [00:53:00] underground, in consultation with the, the national level. Um, but one of the things that I did also was to make sure that the voice of the provincial people was being heard at the national level because sometimes that that can happen, you know, when you have these kind of more remote areas, most of the resources gets bottled up at the national level and it doesn’t really trickle down some so well to the province or some provinces that maybe have a more assertive leadership might end up getting more than those are a little bit less assertive or they’re far further away and may more difficult to reach. So sometimes some of these things can happen.

Shane: yeah, I’m just thinking aloud because of the way the government’s structured in terms of having more representation from, um, the remote areas, you’ve got a better focus. Whereas the challenge in Australia is that we tend to have most of our politicians coming from the large cities. [00:54:00] Uh, and I know talking to environmental health officers here in Australia, there tends to be a really strong country city sort of, um, mentality where, um, most of the country just feels like they’re totally neglected.

Shane: Um, probably because they’re totally neglected and all the focus tends to be on the city. Uh, so it’s just interesting that, uh, if we had more country representation in government, then that divide wouldn’t have been there. Um, so yeah, it’s just an interesting reflection on, on, it’s probably very similar to Australia.

Shane: but because of the influence it’s, uh, played out differently. Okay. So when did life start to get back to normal then? Or, you know, when did the outbreak happen? Breaking points. Everything has to change.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So yeah, we had a few outbreaks while I was there. The very first one that I got arrived in run for another couple weeks. We had about maybe a month break or [00:55:00] almost six weeks before we had like a second wave. And then we had a maybe a good maybe six months break till there was like, towards the end of the year we started to see a little bit of an uptick in cases again, when the variants began to change. But I had an amazing experience too, because at the. In November of that year, you know, while the numbers had gone down almost to, two digit, two digits, again, had an outbreak in one, one of the, the provinces that had never reported a case and it was a pretty big outbreak. So I, I got deployed to that, that province, as, you know, leading an emergency response team.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: ’cause it was quite, it’s a small area with very low numbers of human resources in health. So we had to deploy a team and it was very exciting to go out there and help them just bring normalcy back and support the, the, the patients [00:56:00] and, and buffer the, the health staff on the ground. It was, it was quite, it was quite a James Bond kind of experience to be honest.

Shane: So just backtracking all the way back to the Caribbean days. So the Caribbean, you said, had a lot of, um, tourist medical in infrastructure in place because, you know, it’s close to the us uh, cruise ships coming through or whatever. Solomon Islands, the opposite. Then you don’t have that same, um, tourist

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: that’s right.

Shane: influx.

Shane: Um, and so you’ve got, uh, more remote islands and so less infrastructure. And so, so you literally are going to those James Bond islands just in the middle of nowhere, private little islands, virtually, um, where the tourists just don’t go. Um, but COVID did. and so then, yeah, stepping into, so were they prepared for it?

Shane: Did they know it’s coming? Or, you know, what, how were they dealing with it?[00:57:00]

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: No, of perspective, this province is like five hours by plane from the central island. That’s how far,

Shane: Wow.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: far away, it’s a long flight in the same country. Right? it’s very far away. And know, you, you get there. People travel by boat to get there and that, sorry, the boat takes five days to get there.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: It’s a long trip. People have left incubating COVID then by the time they arrived, they’re symptomatic and they’re infectious. So even though so though they used to have a very strong, um, and quarantine, I. A system in place. By this time there were hardly any cases coming from the capitol anyway, so they had relaxed and the case actually came on the boat. So you can imagine what happens [00:58:00] on a boat, and this is not a, like a cannel, it’s a big ship. It’s a ship that’s coming through and it’s brings supplies and it’s stopping within these provinces. There are even very smaller islands within that province. So you’re going from, you know, island to island, you drop off a few people, a few supplies from the main city and with each of those, you know, a, a few COVID patients as well. that was it. It was quite something. and so there’s a small provincial hospital with maybe two or three doctors, maybe not even that many. And, and a few I. Few beds. So was a kind of scenario that we were faced with. A lot of this is in the public domain anyway, so I’m not speaking. It’s, there’s lots of news reports about this.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: You know, initially, pretty much every single staff member in hospital was infected. every staff member [00:59:00] had tested positive. Well, I think initially there were only, there were about 32 staff members, 30 tested positive, and the two who hadn’t tested positive initially tested positive within a few days. You know, and that was the reason why we had to deploy a whole team of medics, nurses, and myself, as the, the team leader went over there to just give them a respite from working while being sick because there were patients in the hospital. And so with everybody’s sick, you send them 90% of your clinical staff you know. was the kind of situation we were faced with. So it was really like a, a, a, as I said, it was like an action, action movie scenario.

Shane: And that really then was the original risk with COVID, wasn’t it? That you had COVID enter a community where you’ve got existing hospital facilities. Um, and so it didn’t matter whether or not, um, it was Milan or any city in the world. [01:00:00] You would then be rapidly take out all your doctors and nurses.

Shane: They’re sick and, and they’re not necessarily dying, but they’re so sick that they can’t treat people. And then at the same time, you’ve got the public getting sick and now they can’t go to the hospitals because the doctors and nurses are sick. And so they’re trying to deal with it at home. Um, and then someone has a motorcycle accident and they’re rushed to the emergency department and there’s no one there because the doctors and nurses are sick.

Shane: And in fact, all the beds are taken up with people with respiratory problems. Um, so you’ve, you’ve got, um, fortunately relatively late in the, um, the process. An example of what COVID could have been like if it had just, um, let rip straight through the, the world’s population. Um, and that could have been Sydney.

Shane: but they’ve got the benefit. Hey, let’s just jump up, uh, get a bunch of people on a plane. Let’s fly them in. And now you’ve [01:01:00] got the precautions in place to make sure you’re not being infected, and then you can look after the sick and deal with it. Um, so that’s, yeah, just a really interesting insight into that’s what COVID could have been just on a much grander scale.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Absolutely. And, and so looking back at some of the other things we’ve spoken about, about the measures and some of the things, and I think earlier on you asked, you know, could we have done this differently? I really do believe so, but I also say to people, we did what we did under the circumstances.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: Hindsight is wonderful now, but sometimes when you’re in the middle of it, you don’t have that advantage of having the hindsight because it’s happening and you are reacting of responding. And that can be really dangerous. However, one of the things that I would say is if you know your environment well enough. You should have a good [01:02:00] understanding of what can work in certain scenarios. COVID, on the other hand, so different from anything else we’ve seen. It was so dynamic, it was changing so rapidly, and it didn’t help that we had so many other external factors that were feeding into that response that oftentimes made people make the wrong, wrong judgements. I was part of it. I was out there doing my thing. And one advantage I believe I had when I went to some of these other places was I was drawing from the experiences in the, the first place. And building on that, on that when I went to the other place, which helped to not just do a reactive response now, but more of a responsive, well thought out, proactive, response. And, believe that these are some of the key lessons that we. learned, well, I have learned from COVID, and I do hope that it’s not just me who’s learned that, that, [01:03:00] know, we can actually take things a little bit slower, slower in some situations, but at the end of the day, we can be a little bit patient or a compassionate to some of the mistakes that were made where people, some people genuinely made mistakes because they wanted the best interest of the community, while some people just blatantly did whatever they wanted to do because it felt good and was not informed by science and, and that’s where we, we have to try and separate some of what has happened over that period of time.

Shane: You don’t finish your story there. You then, uh, head where.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: I came back to Australia. So after 12 months serving in that region, made the decision to come back home. My youngest little man who’s been traveling with me the world on all of these journeys, by the way, I had a little companion. I think all the traveling was started to get to him and he was quite early in his developmental phases.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So I think they [01:04:00] got to a place when he was really not coping too well all the transitions. So led to me deciding, you know what, give him a break from all these big transitions. And I came back to Australia and came back into the health system, which is where my heart is, and, and work at, um, in one of the local health districts.

Shane: So you’ve now, uh, returned down to Yeah. Rubber hitting the road daily. yeah. Having that impact, but then by that stage, uh, the. The vaccines rolling out, uh, the lockdowns are over. Um, and we’re now, uh, yeah, getting life back to normal. Um, and, fast forwarding to now, where are you and what are you doing now?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So I am leading research and evaluation in the integrated and community health space, which is a [01:05:00] very stark difference from chasing COVID and you know, speaking to prime ministers and high level government and un level officials, now speak to, you know, community health executives and staff. And I’ve also brought in a lot of my strengths in terms of capacity building in really helping people to understand the, the, the evidence base for the work that they need to do and the community health preventative type work that we do in health. ’cause I’ve always, I’ve always been a public health person and it’s nice to have a break from the real fast paced emergency response and just settling down and think. What evidence do we need to support us? How do we evaluate the programs we are doing and translate that into effective policies and service provision at the community level?

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: So that’s what I’m doing and I’m really enjoying it.

Shane: [01:06:00] Fantastic. So just to be really, really clear, you are not hoping for pandemic this year just to make your new job interesting anymore? I,

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: am not, I don’t even speak of it. Um, I’m not asking for anything like that, and I, I’m careful not to actually make it co even if it enters my thoughts, it’s not coming out of my mouth.

Shane: no, no. You just want evidence now? No more pandemics lights back to normal. So.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: from the, the pandemic experiences and just how can we pivot based on a lot of the things we’ve learned. now we enjoy benefits like working from home, which was something that was never, ever entertained in the pre pandemic period of my professional life was I actually got in trouble for going home early one day after coming for a field trip in, in 2019, you know, and, and that is absolutely unheard of in today’s day, you know, so I’m really enjoying the post pandemic blessings of [01:07:00] virtual care and like working from home a once or twice a week. So no more pandemics for me in, in the near future. Please.

Shane: Yes. Um, I was just thinking what hasn’t happened, this, this podcast, uh, but would now be class as totally normal is for your child to actually come bouncing in. Sit on your lap, wave at everyone and then disappear. Um, 2019 unheard of you. You do not have a personal life 2021, totally normal for, you know, your kids to go screaming through the background and jumping there and that.

Shane: And so, and now we take it for granted. And in fact, now the government’s trying to take it back again. and so yeah, it’s, it’s, um, and I think at the same time we’ve now really started to appreciate, it is important to have those social connections. Um, and we will fight tooth and nail next time someone tries to put us into [01:08:00] lockdown, um, because of the cost that’s involved, uh, which then makes it a little bit more difficult if we do have a pandemic where, you know, we do not want another pandemic in the next 20 years because we’ve got a generation of people who are going, we’re not gonna go there again.

Shane: Um. In a hundred years time, we’ll have forgotten it all and we’ll, um, go through it again. Um, and maybe that’s why pandemics take every a hundred years to, you know, rip through the world. Um, so yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for this James Bond episode where, uh, the McGuffin was finally, well, we haven’t eliminated it from the world, but it’s now just a part of life and we’re now back to life as normal.

Shane: Um, awesome insights, uh, awesome story. So yeah, thank you very much and, um, all the best in the future. Thank you, Stephanie.

Dr Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey: you, Shane. My pleasure.