On this episode of Going Underground, we firstly speak to Oscar Award-winning actor Sir Mark Rylance. He discusses the idea of a National Nature Service, which is gaining traction, how Coronavirus joblessness and homelessness can be solved together, comparisons between today’s situation and FDR’s America, the link between nutrition and pandemic fatality rates, fossil fuel companies and greenwashing, the need for wealth distribution, and more! Finally, we speak to Professor Karl Friston of the Independent SAGE Committee. He discusses whether it’s the right decision to ease the Covid-19 lockdown in the UK, the possibility of a second wave, the changes to the two-meter rule, meat factories being the epicenter for new spikes in covid cases, the accuracy of Coronavirus modeling, why the Nightingale Hospital proved to be less useful than had been expected, and more!
STATEMENT ADDITION
STATEMENT FROM SIR PATRICK VALLANCE: “…, two meters is safer than one meter, if it’s all unmitigated. But if you add the mitigations, and this is all in the papers that we’ve published, so if you start looking at things like orientation, are you side-by-side or back-to-back? Is ventilation good? Are face coverings being worn? Are other screens in place? Number of people in an enclosed environment is an important thing, you don't want to pack lots of people in, irrespective of whether they’re one meter or two meters apart. The time in which people spend in certain environments, and the environment itself, as we’ve just discussed in terms of the characteristics of that environment. Those are all features which are important, and what we've said in the work that’s been done by the environmental modelling group, is that one meter can be, with mitigations in place, can be equivalent risk to two meters, and that’s the basis for how you can make decisions and those are then policy decisions on the back of that. In terms of SAGE, SAGE is clearly not a, a, a decision making body, it’s an advisory body, the advice goes to all four nations and is used in all four nations and is consistent across all four.”
