Undisciplinary
Undisciplinary
The COVID Memory Gap: Reflections Five Years Later
Five years after COVID-19 upended our lives, we've developed a curious collective amnesia. When was the last time you seriously reflected on playground closures, door-to-door testing teams, or the "disappointing Dan" press conferences? These once-extraordinary interventions now seem like strange artifacts from another era.
Jane Williams shares how COVID researchers now apologetically preface their ongoing work with self-deprecation, as though examining one of history's most significant social and medical disruptions is somehow passé. "I've made the decision to quite actively try not to be rude about my own work," Jane explains, pushing back against this strange cultural shift to minimize the pandemic's continued relevance.
Contrary to prevalent punditry suggesting public trust has been irreparably damaged by pandemic measures, Jane's research with participants across multiple Australian states revealed something surprising: most people would accept similar interventions again if needed – with the crucial caveat that communication and respect must improve. "We'd do it all again, as long as there was a bit more transparency... as long as we were treated better than we were last time," participants consistently stated. This challenges the narrative that procedural justice, rather than the measures themselves, represents the path forward for public health emergency management.
The conversation explores how working patterns have permanently shifted, creating flexibility for some while highlighting inequities for others. The concerning trend of sick days transforming into "work from home while sick" days indicates how pandemic adaptations have sometimes eroded traditional boundaries between work and personal life. Meanwhile, students who experienced educational disruptions during formative years continue navigating the ripple effects alongside broader challenges facing younger generations.
By excavating these pandemic memories and examining their lasting impact, we gain valuable perspective on our changed world. What other aspects of this transformative period deserve more thoughtful reflection before they fade completely from our collective consciousness? Join the conversation by reaching out on Instagram or emailing undisciplinarypod@gmail.com.
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Undisciplinary is recorded on the unceded lands of the Wadawurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and the Gadigal peoples of the Eora Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to Elders, past and present.
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Speaker 1:Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics and the politics of health, co-hosted by Chris Mays and Jane Williams. Welcome back to another episode of Undisisciplinary, where we are going to continue the um trip down memory lane, uh, and reflecting on the past five years, although this time not explicitly about the podcasts. Uh, and five years of the podcast, although the very second episode so that released on the 30th of july was, uh, public health, ethics and covert blame games with jane williams. Uh, so you were our second guest uh on the episode.
Speaker 1:On the episode, um, and yeah, just looking at the notes, we had this walled map thing that I think we discussed. Why some an article that you'd written with Bridget Hare in the conversation, why some people don't want to day? When I spent more time doing the production of this, I had an audio from Dan Andrews.
Speaker 3:Hmm.
Speaker 1:How about I share that, just for maybe to?
Speaker 3:Drip down memory lane people from PTSD or something. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Let's hear it go, let's see.
Speaker 2:People have felt sick, they've got symptoms and they've kept going shopping, they've kept going to work, they have been at the height of their infectivity and they have just continued on as usual. But the only thing you can do when you feel sick, the one and only thing that you can and must do when you feel sick, is to go and get tested, and if people don't do that, then we will continue to see numbers increase. I'm being as frank, as blunt, as clear as I can, because this message is central to the overall success or otherwise of the strategy and the restrictions that we have in place, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I'm just reflecting on that and the testing and it is with some shame that I don't actually remember what I wrote with Bridget in the conversation five years ago, but I think that was at a point where people were door knocking, where public health people were door knocking and asking people to take tests. Health people were door knocking and asking people to take tests. Um um, like that seems strange in retrospect, but I'm pretty sure that that was accurate.
Speaker 1:Yeah I'm just looking at your article, people were reluctant. So these hot hot spots, right, um and yeah, they had 900 people in the hot spots. Suburbs had declined door-to-door testing right, which I'd forgotten the whole door-to-door testing no same I was.
Speaker 3:I was just trying to remember like that actually seems quite extraordinary, hey yeah like bringing an unexpected and presumed and unwanted unwanted in many situations health intervention into somebody's home is an extraordinary thing and there were so many extraordinary things about COVID and you know not wanting too hard to trot out the whole unprecedented thing, but it was unprecedented and there were all sorts of things that we did and accepted with good reason to try and manage the uncertainty and the unmanageable, but yeah, that seems like a really extraordinary one in retrospect.
Speaker 1:Well, you aren't supportive of this. Just to remind you, Bridget say we don't think forced testing is the way to go. A heavy-handed approach can create an antagonistic and mistrustful relationship with public health institutions.
Speaker 3:Exactly so. When I said that things are justifiable, I meant that trying new things broadly and trying to figure out ways to manage an unknowable situation. You know that sort of thing is justifiable. Yeah, not knocking on people's doors and getting them to do something they don't want to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But, yeah, five years is a long time, it's a long time yeah. Yeah, any retrospectives about this period?
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm just going to say something really trite, and that's that time is weird, because when you were playing your teaser in the previous episode, it felt like it was extremely recent. The beginning of covid feels like it was a very long time ago. You know, we've done a a great job of this collective and and I think, willful forgetting, yes, and I don't know how I feel about that. I think in some ways that's a bit damaging, like as somebody who continues to do some COVID work, and I notice that whenever I talk about COVID work with other people who still talk about COVID work, with other people who still talk about COVID work, we're all like really terribly self-deprecating and like, oh my god, we're so boring we're still doing these things and so on, um, and really minimize any value that our work continues to have and it's really hard to get COVID work published at the moment.
Speaker 3:But that's kind of crazy, right, like I kind of need to sit with it a bit more. Like when I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, I made the decision to quite actively try not to be rude about my own work, to, you know, to to not to not kind of float this whole thing about. Oh my God, I can't believe we're still talking about COVID. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah, because of course we're talking about COVID. It's this huge disruptor, this huge social disruptor, medical disruptor. You know huge disruptor, this huge social disruptor, medical disruptor, you know it.
Speaker 3:It continues to affect us all now in many ways, so why would we not talk about it anymore?
Speaker 1:yes, it is interesting. I mean in, I think even maybe it's in that episode we say that we're not going to talk the podcast isn't going to be all about covid but it ends up primarily becoming all about COVID.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know what you I think that point that you make about sort of this active not remembering and there'd probably be something worth thinking about or writing about, with what Charles Mills and others talked about epistemologies of ignorance, I think that we are and that's used in a variety of different ways but I think sort of collectively we are trying not to remember and discounting memories. I think I said to you when we were looking together to putting together a panel or being on a panel for a conference coming up and I said I might do something around COVID and then I said I'm not sure people are really interested in COVID memoirs because it was going to be sort of personal reflections on some aspects to do with space around, particularly in Victoria, with a young child and playgrounds being closed and I still have actually one of those posters or things that they tied to the playgrounds to say that they were closed. Yeah, another sort of extraordinary intervention that's just hard to imagine now.
Speaker 3:Hard to imagine and also hard to justify. Some of them are just really what were we thinking?
Speaker 2:It's just hard to imagine now Hard to imagine and also hard to justify.
Speaker 1:Some of them are just, really, what were we thinking? Mm-hmm, but um. The other thing that I do think about, and and was thinking about even at the time, is you know, there's that adage um, it takes 30 days to establish a habit, um I did not know that, but good to know well, I think covid demonstrated that.
Speaker 1:That was, um, bullshit like, because the amount, like just thinking, listening to that dan andrews quote, I was somewhere the other day and someone was just hocking and coughing, you know, in a workplace. It's back to pre-covid days where people are just, um, you know, uh, coming to work and coughing up and spluttering wherever they want. Uh, it would be. I think we still do at my university still have the COVID provisions and COVID safety protocols and all of that sort of stuff. It would be interesting to know what would happen if you tried to enact them Like last. I remember when I had COVID last it was still when COVID was taken seriously and I wasn't supposed to come onto campus for like two weeks, or something like that. If I said that I have COVID and I'm not coming onto campus for two weeks, I think people would be okay with it, but they'd be a little bit like, oh, oh, gee, chris is taking this all a bit too seriously.
Speaker 3:And that's an interesting point as well that the idea that trying to protect yourself against COVID and trying to protect others from getting COVID now is a bit of an extreme move. You know it's seen as people taking things a bit too seriously, which is an interesting sort of judgment on people who are looking to minimize the spread of infection. Like how can that possibly be a bad thing?
Speaker 3:minimizing the spread of infection, like how can that possibly be a bad thing, minimizing the spread of infection? But there are all sorts of, because it's become politicized as well, I think there are all sorts of judgments that people make about people's behaviors, particularly when they're visible behaviors. You know things like mask wearing and so on, particularly when they're visible behaviours. You know things like mask wearing and so on. And so now when people wear masks, quite often people think that they are of perhaps a particular political persuasion or that they have some medical vulnerabilities that are all of a sudden kind of for public consumption or something. It's just such a strange visual signal and you know if any listeners who regularly wear masks want to weigh in on this, on some they can send us an email.
Speaker 1:Instagram is what we're trying to, what I think I'm going to put my energies into, so we are on instagram.
Speaker 3:It's a little bit difficult with the old socials these days, but, um, yeah, I mean I'm I'm curious to know how that goes for people who, um, wear masks um, yeah, we also have the, the email undisciplinarypod at Gmail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that would be really interesting and you are continuing to do work around this area and one of the things that I would be interested in hearing more about. So something that people I think intuit is that if this were to happen again, people wouldn't do the lockdowns. The public would revolt against all of that sort of stuff. But you have some work that suggests otherwise. It's not intuited.
Speaker 3:This is the other thing there have been. You know, given that this is our five-year retrospective well, the world's five-year retrospective on COVID, in the last what, what? Nine months or so, there have been quite a few reports released or opinion pieces written, or, you know, pundity things and so on. Australia and New Zealand have both released a big, each released a big report about each country's response, what worked, what didn't, and so on the like. Overwhelmingly everybody, all of these kind of official accounts or pundity accounts, say that the way that we managed COVID has led to a massive breakdown in public trust and that people won't do this again. That's a really interesting thing for me, I guess. So some work that I did a year ago, maybe 18 months ago, with Chris Deglan at the University of Wollongong, we did some dialogue groups with people in New South Wales, victoria and South Australia about non-pharmaceutical interventions in a future pandemic. So what would you do if this happened again? Or if something you know with slightly different characteristics happened again, what would you be willing to do? And the response was not, we wouldn't be willing to do any of it, because we don't trust any government that that trust wasn't a massive factor, what they wanted. What they all said really was we'd do it all again, as long as there was a bit more respect involved and a bit more transparency, as long as we were treated better than we were last time.
Speaker 3:I do think sometimes it was a bit difficult because they were being treated better quite often meant as long as there were exceptions for people with particularly difficult circumstances. And you know there were reasons why people didn't make exceptions during COVID and that's because, unfortunately, spread of infection is infection does spread. But I think people were much more interested in the idea of procedural justice doing it right if it needed to be done again rather than a blanket nut. We're not going to do that again. So you know, it often obviously depends where your data comes from. In the Australian one it was all done from a market research company that I think did a great job. But they did a whole lot of focus groups and those were with people who were more likely to be negatively impacted by COVID interventions, which is terrific that that was their population of interest. You know that's so great talking to people who bore heavier burdens, I suppose, but it also means that outcomes from those studies aren't necessarily useful as kind of headline news.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean the other aspect to all of this in terms of the punditry, saying that publics won't do this is that their. You know covid really contributed to and exacerbated a lot of the media biases and different media organisations were wanting to push for different particular interventions or lack of interventions and rolling back restrictions and those sorts of things. So the idea of you know this distrust and disinformation go hand in hand and the very difficulty of trying to find honest brokers or honest pundits to talk about these things and even now prosecuting the past and vindicating themselves. You still see a lot of it still online in the place formerly known as Twitter, where I venture a little more often than Jane yeah, you still see it all the time and particularly any male heart-related death is still attributed to something to do with vaccines and any additional public health, or you know lots of people on these on Twitter.
Speaker 1:I've seen in these different communities. You know if there's a report to do with. I think there's. You know there was a 7.30 report just recently on cancer among. There's been a spike in cancers among people under the age of 40.
Speaker 1:And so people immediately attributing that to um vaccines or covid infection, or was it just vaccines?
Speaker 3:I actually watched that. I didn't. I'm not talking about the program, I'm talking about I'm talking about people on twitter like yeah, you know, the program was interesting um it is undeniable that there has been increased social and political polarisation, possibly everywhere, I don't know over the last five years, and that is a pity yeah.
Speaker 1:But I think back to your point about the procedural justice and the like we commented in that second episode. One of the things that we were talking about was um, I think we were talking about disappointed dan, like the way that he in that press conference, that sort of scolding um language that he used to communicate a lot of these things to the public. Now there's a lot of hatred that had developed against Dan Andrews and even now, you know, some people still talk about him, as you know, dictator Dan, etc. But I think just on that sort of more minor issue around some of the communication was spoken as if we were all children.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, who couldn't quite be trusted to do the right thing.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then obviously the policing of you know so, the scolding of the sort of white middle class populations, and then the active policing of racialised, minority and vulnerable groups as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%, yeah, yeah. Sorry, Just reading a bit of paper, do I have anything new to talk about?
Speaker 1:Well, no, you had I mean you were going to talk about this Sociopolitical responses to the pandemic have, you know, changed the way we live over the past five years, and so, in not acknowledging that shift and just thinking, well, no one's interested in talking about COVID anymore, or we don't want to take people back to that period, how are we going to make sense of those changes? So one of the changes being working from home, which is being politicised in different ways, wanting to get people back into offices. But I think Peter Dutton's failure at the recent federal election when he was trying to suggest that all public servants would have to go back to work full time, you know that's a massive change. I still wonder what has happened to the sort of petty cat burglar has they.
Speaker 1:I mean, there must be stats on this, and maybe I'm completely wrong about home break-ins, but you know it's a tough gig with everyone working from home all the time.
Speaker 3:True, but also people have got cameras now, chris you know, oh, I've got that too.
Speaker 3:Really difficult to tease out the you know, the confounders in that particular situation. Yeah, so it's kind of interesting, the working from home thing, because that provided a huge amount of flexibility for a certain type of worker. Hey, yeah, so people like me and you, where having the option to not go to the office is a huge bonus if you need to be at home to let in a tradie or you've got a sick kid or just all of the, the myriad things that require day-to-day flexibility. Um, if you are lucky enough to have a job where you sit at a computer and do stuff, then that's fine, okay. But then there are also, like, so many people who can't work from home and, important to acknowledge, so many people who could never work from home during covid as well. Um, that I feel like those. That's kind of ignored. It's like, oh, we all used to be able to work from home yeah, you know, of course we couldn't.
Speaker 3:The idea about coming back to the office is a really interesting one, so people got used to being able to live where they wanted to live. A lot of people moved further away from the office, um, because you know, during COVID it didn't really feel like anything was ever going to end right.
Speaker 3:There was this new normal that was going on, and so people made all sorts of life decisions that involved, yeah, moving further out of the city or whatever, and then having to face, I suppose, a reality of that now being a massive inconvenience is sort of interesting. So I personally am not sure where the working from the office thing comes from.
Speaker 1:but I think what do you mean? Working from the office thing?
Speaker 3:Like the drive to push everyone back into the office. The drive pushing everyone back into the office. They say that it is better for communicating with your colleagues and coming up with new ideas. Things like that it could be.
Speaker 1:yeah, I don't know, depends on what you do.
Speaker 3:Depends on what you do. Does it get more work out of people? I would doubt it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I would say as well the main from people I've spoken to like just in the university context. I think, firstly, there will be a further push towards open plan offices and shared offices and that sort of stuff because of the obvious underuse of people's individual offices. But yeah, it does bring in equity issues around. You know, even well-paid university people Not everyone has the same kind of home and the same kind of home physical setup to work from home. So there's that. But also a lot of people, I think it's the travel to work, even even people who didn't, you know, do a tree change or a sea change during covid, particularly if it's in a city like melbourne or sydney, it could be a, you know, two-hour commute um, even within the metropolitan area yeah, um and traffic and all that sort of business.
Speaker 1:So for some people it's less the comfort or otherwise, it's more just the travel to and from.
Speaker 3:The time the petrol if you're driving, the expense of well in Sydney, the increasing expense of toll roads, but also the increasing expense of well in sydney. The increasing expense of toll roads um, but also the increasing expense of public transport you know all of that.
Speaker 3:It was stuff that I suppose felt free um, you know not having those expenses felt free during covid I will say that when I was working at the university of wollongong, uh, I used to pay pay $35 a day in totes to drive there and back Incredible which is a decision that I made because I didn't want to sit in traffic, but you know not cool, yes, yeah, so working from home, intersection between work.
Speaker 1:I think the other thing, a note that you had, was about the. It has changed, though, and this was already in place, but that blurring of the boundaries between home and work and being able to shut off from work is more difficult.
Speaker 3:And being able to shut off from work is more difficult. There does appear to be a much greater encouragement to work from home when you're sick ie keep working when you're sick now than there was before. I, a couple of weeks ago, had an in-person meeting with somebody who cancelled and wrote to me saying I'm really sick with COVID. I can't make it into the office, let's just meet online.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I'm like no, let's just not meet because you're really sick with COVID and that sucks. You know Like the idea of actual rest time or actual time away from work has become even more difficult, and it was difficult anyway yeah, yeah, exactly something else that it will be interesting to see.
Speaker 1:I think we're coming up. You can help me with my maths here. I'm not that good with with the math, um, but I guess with five years now, in terms of the schooling and the education, that's sort of moving people through. I do think at the university level, having a few of the students who were sort of at their late stage high school, you know, from 10 to 12 or whatever smack bang in the middle of COVID, I think we could see that somewhat among the cohort and that is maybe shifting. I'm not sure I am seeing more engagement, at least with some of my students, but marginally more I guess, and I guess hoping and at least the cohorts who are really wanting to come be on campus and engage with each other.
Speaker 1:But I don't know. There's still a lot of lack of engagement at the university level. But I think that's more reasons than just COVID and the experience of doing high school on a laptop.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Life sucks for the young'uns.
Speaker 1:I've got to say but still now or just then.
Speaker 3:Well, for different reasons I think cost of living stuff and just generally. You know world is a bin fire sort of scenario just means that things are hard.
Speaker 1:Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3:I agree with that it was easy in the 90s.
Speaker 1:Easy in the 90s.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I know the 90s were something else. Yeah, yeah, I um, just in finishing, I I mean, I guess my youth was my sort of teen adult youth was more in the early 2000s. But um, yeah, I mentioned to my students something about being at class on 9-11 when that happened and at first I thought they were being facetious when they were like, oh wow, tell us about that. But they were really interested and I then it made me realize I was some kind of um artifact for them.
Speaker 1:They were genuinely, genuinely interested in what was life like back then I was like well, gather around children let me tell you about there were more bins in public spaces.
Speaker 3:Didn't have to take your belt off to get onto an airplane yep, like old people everywhere, my I do sometimes try to explain to my children that you used to only be able to listen to music that you either owned, or that you'd taped off the radio, or that was on the radio and you couldn't just pick whatever you wanted at the drop of a hat. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:Good times, Blah blah, Exactly All right.
Speaker 3:This is the problem with doing retrospectives you end up in nostalgia and anyway, um, thanks for listening people who are still with us yeah, we appreciate you.
Speaker 1:We do have some, uh, some interviews coming up uh which should be very interesting to you listeners and to us to do them. I was thinking we could have a prize for somebody who's listened to every single episode, but how would we judge it, Don't know. We could do a test, a quiz. The underserved A quiz.
Speaker 3:And also, what would the prize be? Because it would have to be funded by the. Would the price be? Because it would have to be funded by the maze institute.
Speaker 1:So it might have to be like one of your old t-shirts or something like that we did once have a giveaway for my uh, a book, one of my books, um, but yeah, I haven't got a new book yet. Um, you can get an advanced copy of the history of bioethics in australia I actually genuinely am looking forward to that book yes, some people have genuinely said this to me and uh, yeah, I just got to get cracking on writing that book, um. So to that end, I'm gonna call it a day and start writing.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, thank you.